A new British report about the the of intelligence before the Iraq war was published on Wednesday. The report, prepared by former Cabinet Secretary Lord Butler, came down heavily on "serious flaws in pre-war intelligence".
The report said the dossier justifying the Iraq war had taken to the "outer limits" the intelligence available. It condemned the inclusion in the document of the highly-publicized claim that some Iraqi weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes.
Lord Butler also said the Prime Minister's statement to the Commons on the day the dossier was published may have misled the country into believing there was "fuller and firmer" information behind the reasons. However, the inquiry concluded there was no evidence of "deliberate distortion" of intelligence by politicians.
Additionally, Blair's style of government was criticized, with the report saying that its "informality and circumscribed character" shut much of his cabinet out of the decision-making process.
"We do not not suggest that there is or should be an ideal or unchangeable system of collective government, still less that procedures are in aggregate any less effective now than in earlier times," the report said.
"However, we are concerned that the informality and circumscribed character of the government's procedures which we saw in the context of policy-making towards Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgement."
Butler's report contradicted a central claim made by Blair and found that, before the start of the war in March 2003, Iraq "did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment or developed plans for using them."
Lord Butler was commissioned in February to look into the gap between the intelligence community's pre-war claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had illicit arsenals of WMD and the failure to find any trace of such stockpiles.
The inquiry also said that when the British government began considering military action against Iraq in March 2002, the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to justify claims that Iraq was in breach of United Nations resolutions requiring it to disarm.
But despite the reprimand for Britain's intelligence services, the report stopped short of calling for the resignation of John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Commenting on the report, Blair accepted responsibility for any mistakes, saying that they were in "good faith".
He stressed the conclusions proved "no one lied, no one made up the intelligence". But he admitted evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was "indeed less certain, less well informed than stated at the time".
"I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam." (albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
