Executive
Summary
571.
Section 4.4
considers the impact of the failure to find stockpiles of WMD in
Iraq
in the
months immediately after the invasion, and of the emerging
conclusions of the
Iraq Survey
Group (ISG), on:
•
the
Government’s response to demands for an independent judge‑led
inquiry
into
pre‑conflict intelligence on Iraq; and
•
the
Government’s public presentation of the nature of the threat from
Saddam
Hussein’s
regime and the decision to go to war.
572.
The Inquiry
has not sought to comment in detail on the specific conclusions of
the
ISC, FAC,
Hutton and Butler Reports, all of which were published before the
withdrawal
by SIS in
September 2004 of a significant proportion of the intelligence
underpinning the
JIC
Assessments and September 2002 dossier on which UK policy had
rested.
573.
In addition to
the conclusions of those reports, the Inquiry notes the
forthright
statement
in March 2005 of the US Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities
of the
United
States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. 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.”
574.
The evidence
in Section 4.4 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.
575.
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.
576.
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.
577.
The lack of
evidence to support pre‑conflict claims about Iraq’s WMD
challenged
the
credibility of the Government and the intelligence community, and
the legitimacy
of the
war.
578.
The Government
and the intelligence community were both concerned
about
the
consequences of the presentational aspects of their pre‑war
assessments
being discredited.
579.
By June, the
Government had acknowledged the need for a review of the
UK’s
pre‑conflict
intelligence on Iraq. It responded to demands for an independent,
judge‑led
inquiry by
expressing support for the reviews initiated by the ISC and the
FAC.
77