IN THE CROSSHAIRS: Ten killer questions to put to Blair
guardian.co.uk
The PM faces the Commons today. This is what he should be asked
Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday June 4, 2003 The Guardian
1. Did Downing Street ask the joint intelligence committee to add to, or change the wording of, the September dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
The dossier contains four references to the claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. A senior British official told the BBC this was one of several claims added against the wishes of intelligence agencies. Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, admitted the claim was made by an uncorroborated, single, source.
The dossier said Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa - a reference to Niger. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, omitted it from his speech to the UN security council on February 5. "It turned out to be untrue; that happens a lot in the intelligence business," he said this week.
The dossier said aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy could be for nuclear weapons. The US energy and state departments dismissed the claim. That very month, the US defence intelligence agency concluded: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."
2. Why did the government fail to publish a promised first dossier in March 2002?
The intelligence agencies said there was little new they could say about Iraq's WMD, no evidence that the threat from Iraq had increased significantly since the 1991 Gulf war, and no smoking gun.
3. Who was responsible for the "dodgy dossier" published by Downing Street in February?
No 10 apologised for failing to admit that much of the dossier came from published academic sources, including an article by a Californian PhD student. Intelligence officials were furious. One called it a "serious error". Tony Blair said on Monday: "Every single piece of intelligence that we presented was cleared very properly by the joint intelligence committee."
4. What do the minutes of meetings between Alastair Campbell and John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, show?
Campbell and Scarlett spent weeks arguing about what should go into the September dossier, with Blair's communications chief wanting to beef up the content and the language. A comparison between what Downing Street wanted and what the intelligence agencies preferred would be telling.
5. Did Jack Straw express concerns similar to those of his US counterpart, Colin Powell, about intelligence claims?
The foreign secretary denies he expressed doubts to Powell about the quality of intelligence prior to the crucial UN security council meeting on February 5. Yet Powell said on Monday: "I had conversations with the British, with Jack Straw, constantly during the period ... so he had a sense of how the presentation was coming together and what I would be saying ... I was in constant communication with Jack." Two US magazines, Newsweek and US News and World Report, revealed this week that Powell was disturbed about questionable intelligence on Iraq's weapons programme, describing some of it as "bullshit".
6. What price the "special relationship" in the light of a succession of unwelcome comments made by the Bush administration?
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, undermined the British government's position by saying last week that Saddam Hussein may have destroyed his banned weapons before the war. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, went further, telling Vanity Fair magazine that "for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction."
The special relationship is hailed as most valuable when it comes to intelligence cooperation. Yet in the run-up to the war, UK and US security and intelligence agencies clashed repeatedly, for example over claims of links between al-Qaida and Baghdad.
7. Why were the UN inspectors pulled out of Iraq in March: is it not now clear that there was no need for urgency to rid Iraq of whatever WMD stocks it had?
Intelligence sources say it will take weeks, perhaps months, to track down Iraq's WMDs. This is precisely what Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector, told the security council.
8. What were military commanders told?
According to Whitehall officials, they were told to expect an attack with chemical or biological weapons - which of course did not happen.
9. Why were there no plans to protect Iraqi hospitals and to deal with looters?
Military commanders were told, on the basis of intelligence, to expect Saddam's regime to "implode", and that Iraqi troops would quickly help British and US forces to maintain law and order.
10. Did Iraq really possess WMD which posed an urgent threat?
That was the ostensible reason for the war, the casus belli, on which the government based its legal case, both here and in the UN, and its argument that it had to be started quickly. There is no evidence for this, and Blair has gradually confused the issue with regime change and human rights. |
