7 | Conclusions: Pre-conflict strategy and planning

those resolutions, dating back to February 2002, before his meeting with President Bush

at Crawford on 5 and 6 April.

324. As Mr Cook’s resignation statement on 17 March made clear, it was possible for

a Minister to draw different conclusions from the same information.

325. Mr Cook set out his doubts about Saddam Hussein’s ability to deliver a strategic

attack and the degree to which Iraq posed a “clear and present danger” to the UK.

The points Mr Cook made included:

• “… neither the international community nor the British public is persuaded that

there is an urgent and compelling reason for this military action in Iraq.”

• “Over the past decade that strategy [of containment] had destroyed more

weapons than in the Gulf War, dismantled Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme

and halted Saddam’s medium and long range missile programmes.”

• “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood

sense of the term – namely a credible device capable of being delivered against

a strategic city target. It probably … has biological toxins and battlefield chemical

munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold

Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical

and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military

action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for twenty years, and

which we helped to create? Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while

Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the

presence of UN inspectors?”155

326. On 12 October 2004, announcing the withdrawal of two lines of intelligence

reporting which had contributed to the pre-conflict judgements on mobile biological

production facilities and the regime’s intentions, Mr Straw stated that he did:

“… not accept, even with hindsight, that we were wrong to act as we did in the

circumstances that we faced at the time. Even after reading all the evidence detailed

by the Iraq Survey Group, it is still hard to believe that any regime could behave

in so self-destructive a manner as to pretend that it had forbidden weaponry, when

in fact it had not.”156

327. Iraq had acted suspiciously over many years, which led to the inferences drawn

by the Government and the intelligence community that it had been seeking to protect

concealed WMD assets. When Iraq denied that it had retained any WMD capabilities,

the UK Government accused it of lying.

328. This led the Government to emphasise the ability of Iraq successfully to deceive

the inspectors, and cast doubt on the investigative capacity of the inspectors. The role

155 House of Commons, Official Report, 17 March 2003, columns 726-728.

156 House of Commons, Official Report, 12 October 2004, columns 151-152.

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