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What the Butler said

Stephen Pullinger reports on the Butler Inquiry

A full report will be published in Disarmament Diplomacy Issue No.78.

On July 14, 2004 The Butler Inquiry into the accuracy of intelligence on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) published its findings. Its main task had been to examine any discrepancies between the intelligence gathered, evaluated and used by the government before the conflict, and between that intelligence and what has been discovered by the Iraq Survey Group since the end of the conflict.

It produced a report that offered serious criticism of British intelligence in relation to Iraq and also of the government's failure to provide warnings about the thinness of the evidence.¹ Nevertheless, Butler stressed that there was no deliberate distortion on the government's part and that the inquiry had seen no evidence to suggest that the government had not acted in good faith. The fault was procedural and mistakes were "collective".

Others drew rather more critical conclusions. For example, according to former Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook:

After the Butler report, it is embarrassingly clear that Parliament was misled into voting for war on the basis of unreliable sources and over-heated analysis, producing between them false intelligence. ²

It should be remembered that the Prime Minister's case for war against Iraq was built around his assertion that Iraq, through its possession of WMD, constituted a "serious and current" threat.³ Because of the type of weaponry involved and Iraq's closed society it was extremely difficult to reach definitive conclusions about the extent and nature of this threat. It fell upon intelligence to play the major role in determining whether or not Iraq posed a threat of sufficient magnitude and proximity to necessitate war as the only and final option.

Yet Butler casts doubt on a "high proportion" of human intelligence sources and, therefore, on the quality of intelligence assessments given to ministers. Perhaps of most significance is the finding that in July 2003 the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) withdrew two reports that had derived from a 'new source on trial' in September 2002. This source had provided significant assurance to those drafting the September dossier that active, current production of chemical and biological agent was taking place. By July 2003, however, this sourcing chain had become discredited, with the sub-source denying that they had ever provided the information in the reports. Hence, Butler found that information on Iraqi production of biological and chemical agents "were seriously flawed" and the grounds for British assessments that Iraq had recently produced such stocks "no longer exist".⁴

The Prime Minister drew upon this erroneous piece of intelligence in the Foreword to the September 2002 dossier to claim that:

the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons.⁵

Ongoing production was an important factor in determining the contemporary and growing nature of the Iraqi threat and yet it is now known that Iraq:

…did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for use, or developed plans for using them.

Indeed, Butler concludes that:

There was "no recent intelligence" to lead people to conclude Iraq was of more immediate concern than other countries, although its history prompted the view there needed to be a threat of force to ensure Saddam Hussein's compliance.

Moreover, when the opportunity to test this intelligence against what was happening on the ground presented itself, through the resumption of the international inspection process, the inquiry was "surprised" that no-one in government reassessed the quality of that intelligence once the inspectors failed to make any finds. Indeed, it is curious that whilst the Government was so willing to trust secretive (and sometimes questionable) intelligence sources, it was so unwilling to accept the demonstrable findings of the expert inspectors who were attempting to confirm the accuracy and veracity of what these sources claimed.

In respect of the notorious claim that Iraq could use WMD within 45 minutes, Butler says that this should not have been included in the dossier without explaining what the claim referred to. As was revealed during the Hutton Inquiry, it only ever referred to battlefield chemical and biological weapons (CBW) and not to any nuclear weapons or longer-range CBW. In addition, the SIS now says the intelligence report on the claim "has come into question".

Butler was particularly harsh about the Government's dossier of September 2002. Not only did it display a "serious weakness" by not making clear intelligence chiefs' warnings about the limitations of their judgements, but those judgements expressed in the dossier also

… went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available.

And the impression that there was "firmer and fuller" intelligence backing up the dossier was reinforced when the Prime Minister told MPs that the picture painted by intelligence agencies was "extensive, detailed and authoritative".

Yet, as the Leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, pointed out in the House of Commons on the day the Butler Report was published,⁶ the Joint Intelligence Committee had said on 15 March 2002 that intelligence on Iraq's WMD was "sporadic and patchy", and on 21 August 2002, that it had "little intelligence on Iraq's CBW doctrine, and know little about Iraq's CBW work since late 1998".

In relation to the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, Butler said that this was "credible", although there was not conclusive evidence that Iraq had actually purchased the material.

The Joint Intelligence committee (JIC) was cleared "of deliberate distortion or of culpable negligence" and in general, original intelligence was "reported correctly" in JIC assessments, with the exception of the 45-minute claim. Although Butler concluded that JIC chairman John Scarlett should not withdraw from taking up his new job as director of MI6, there was an implied criticism. The inquiry said that there was a…

… strong case for future JIC chairmen being people with experience of dealing with ministers in very senior roles and being "demonstrably beyond influence" and so probably in their last post.

Perhaps the most unsatisfactory aspect of the Butler Inquiry and Report was that the "political judgments" that informed the decision to go to war were not "placed properly under the microscope" because "that was not possible within the remit set".⁷

Nevertheless, this did not prevent politicians, journalists and other pundits using the Butler findings to bolster their various analyses of why Britain went to war.

There was always a sizeable proportion of opinion that was wholly unconvinced of the case for war against Iraq and would not have countenanced supporting one, regardless of whether or not that country had stockpiles of WMD. This is not where the Prime Minister had chosen to pour his persausive energies. Mr Blair had to convince those 'waverers' in the middle that the erstwhile policy of containment and deterrence was now insufficient vis-à-vis Saddam: that the threat was so "serious and current" that action had to be taken urgently - we could wait no longer.

The exchange between Tony Blair and both Robin Cook and Peter Kilfoyle⁸ during the Prime Minister's statement to the House on the day of the Butler Report's publication is instructive in this respect. In response to Mr Blair's assertion that the lack of WMD stockpiles "most certainly does not conclude that Saddam Hussein was not a threat in respect of WMD" , Mr Cook said:

He is entitled to argue that that does not mean that there was no justification for the war, but it does surely mean that there was no urgent necessity for the war, because there was no imminent threat.¹⁰

Mr Kilfoyle said:

The Attorney-General said that there would be no justification for the use of force against Iraq on the ground of self-defence against an imminent threat.¹¹

During his responses the Prime Minister made a careful distinction between an "imminent" threat and the terminology he had used, namely, a "current and serious" threat. He said:

… on 24 September, when I presented the dossier to the House, I said that I could not say that Saddam would use the weapons this year or next year.¹²

… if I had thought that Iraq was a direct threat to this country, I would have taken immediate action. I did not do that, but I did think that the WMD issue had to be dealt with. September 11 meant that we could not wait around for it to materialise; we had to get out and get after it now.¹³

This reflected a point that Lord Butler had recognized:

Tony Blair's policy to Iraq shifted because of 11 September, not the pace of Iraq's weapons programmes.

The government's case for taking action against Saddam rested more on what he might be capable of in the future than what he was capable of doing at the time. This was reflected in comments made by Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, in a private email in September 2002, when he stressed to the Prime Minister that: "We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat."¹⁴

"In the penultimate para you need to make it clear Saddam could not attack us at the moment. The thesis is he could be a threat to the UK in the future if we do not check him."¹⁵

The longer term implications for international law in general and for British counter-proliferation policy in particular have yet to be examined. It is high time that Parliament began to scutinise this area of critical importance to the country's security.

Notes

1. Devil in the Detail, Paul Reynolds, 15 July 2004, BBC Analysis at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3894403.stm

2. Robin Cook, Independent, 15 July 2004.

3. See Disarmament Diplomacy, Issue No.73, October-November 2003, News Analysis, The Hutton Inquiry: was Iraq a Serious and Current Threat? By Stephen Pullinger.

4. At-a-glance: Butler Report, BBC News website, 14 July 2004 at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3892809.stm

5. The Prime Minister's foreword to the September 2002 dossier entitled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - The assessment of the British Government, can be found at http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page284.asp

6. Rt. Hon. Michael Howard, Official Report, House of Commons, 14 July 2004, Col. 1437.

7. Rt. Hon. Charles Kennedy, Official Report, op. cit. Col. 1439.

8. Peter Kilfoyle was a Labour Defence Minister between 1999 and 2000.

9. Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, Official Report, op. cit. Col. 1444.

10. Ibid. Col 1445

11. Peter Kilfoyle, Official Report, op. cit. Col. 1448.

12. Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, op. cit. Col. 1449.

13. Ibid. Col. 1450.

14. Jonathan Powell to Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's Director of Communications, and Sir David Manning, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser, referring to the revised foreword to the Dossier, September 17, 2002.

15. Ibid.

See also: 'Collective' Misjudgements, background documents and links on the Butler Inquiry, July 14, 2004

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