The Hindu : International : `Weapons intelligence was stretched'

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Thursday, Jul 15, 2004

International

International

`Weapons intelligence was stretched'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JULY 14. The British Government stretched intelligence to its `limits' to make the case for invading Iraq, and the way it was presented to Parliament and the public created a misleading impression about the `threat' posed by Saddam Hussein.

These are the damning findings of a high-power committee, which examined the Government's intelligence claims in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The committee, headed by Lord Butler, a former Cabinet Secretary, sharply questioned the quality of intelligence, saying that much of it was `flawed', particularly the key claim that Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction within 45-minutes.

In its keenly awaited report, released on Wednesday, the committee said the 45-minute claim, which persuaded many anti-war MPs to change their mind, should not have been included in the intelligence dossier published by Downing Street in September 2002 and used by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to justify military intervention in Iraq.

Echoing the BBC's controversial broadcast, which had accused the Prime Minister's Office of "sexing up" the dossier, the Butler Committee said that the language used in the document, and subsequently by Mr. Blair, did not reflect the weakness of the intelligence. And in an attempt to portray an alarming picture of the threat from Saddam Hussein, the reservations expressed by intelligence agencies about the limits of their information were ignored.

The caveats that came with intelligence reports should have been made more clear in the dossier, it said.

The report, though less devastating than the recent U.S. Senate Committee's criticism of American intelligence, was sufficiently strong to prompt calls for Mr. Blair to apologise and acknowledge that his Government's case for war was based on false premise. Among other things, the report criticised the `informal' style of decision-making in Downing Street, which undermined the collective principle of Cabinet government and limited the scope for debate.

While the committee said it found no evidence of political interference in intelligence-gathering, it did point out that there was `strain' on intelligence chiefs as a result of the tension between the Government's desire to make a case against Mr. Hussein and the Joint Intelligence Committee's `normal standards' of neutrality and objectivity.

The committee noted a `tendency' to put forward the "worst case" scenario about Iraq's weapons capability and the threat from Mr. Hussein. It was `surprised' that there was no attempt to `re-evaluate' assessments even after it was becoming increasingly clear that the initial information may have been faulty.

The validation procedures, the report says, were not applied with sufficient rigour.

But the committee did not blame any individual either in the Government or the intelligence establishment for the mistakes, calling it a `collective' failure.

Lord Butler, replying to persistent questions from the media, said there was no evidence that Mr. Blair or his Government either `deliberately' distorted intelligence or misled the country.

The Government, he said, acted in "good faith" — words which were seized by Mr. Blair later in the Commons to claim that he had been vindicated.

"No one lied, no one made up the intelligence," he said, declaring that the "issue of good faith" had now been settled.

But critics said that, on the contrary, the report had confirmed that the Government exaggerated the threat from Iraq and fudged information to suit its political aims.

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