4.4 | The
search for WMD
Reporting
to President Bush, the Commission stated that “the [US]
Intelligence
Community
was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about
Iraq’s
weapons of
mass destruction. This was a major intelligence
failure.”
900.
The
evidence in this Section shows that, after the invasion, the
UK
Government,
including the intelligence community, was reluctant to admit, and
to
recognise
publicly, the mounting evidence that there had been failings in the
UK’s
pre-conflict
collection, validation, analysis and presentation of intelligence
on
Iraq’s
WMD.
901.
Despite the
failure to identify any evidence of WMD programmes during
pre-
conflict
inspections, the UK Government remained confident that evidence
would
be found
after the Iraqi regime had been removed.
902.
Almost
immediately after the start of the invasion, UK Ministers and
officials
sought to
lower public expectations of immediate or significant finds of
WMD
in Iraq.
903.
At the end of
March 2003, Mr Scarlett informed No.10 that the Assessments
Staff
considered
that:
•
most sites
associated with WMD production had been “cleansed over the last
six
to nine
months”; and
•
“the best
prospect of exposing the full extent of the WMD programmes
rests
in free
contact with scientists, and other individuals, involved in the
WMD
programmes
and the (extensive) concealment activity”.
904.
On
21 April, Mr Straw expressed concern to Mr Blair
that the Government was
being
pushed into a position where it accepted that war would only have
been justified if
there was a
significant find of WMD.
905.
The
post-invasion search for WMD did not start well. XTF-75, the US-led
military
unit
responsible for locating and securing personnel, documents,
electronic files, and
material,
achieved little on WMD. It failed to make significant finds or to
prevent the loss
of
potentially valuable information.
906.
By May, when
the US announced the creation of the ISG to take over the
search
for WMD,
the absence of significant finds in Iraq was already generating
critical media
comment on
the nature of the pre-invasion intelligence.
907.
The UK
Government employed the same arguments used to explain
the
inspectors’
lack of finds – the regime’s skill at cheating and concealment and
the need to
conduct
interviews with key personnel – to explain the lack of any
significant finds from
the early
post-invasion searches.
908.
The Government
sought to emphasise the complexity of the exercise and the
time
needed for
work to be completed.
605