Claims about WMD 'may
have been excuse rather
than reason for war'
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political
Editor
25 August 2003
One of Britain's most senior former military
intelligence chiefs said it was "unacceptable" for
Tony Blair to rely on a single source for the
controversial claim that Saddam Hussein could
deploy chemical and biological weapons within
45 minutes, new documents to the Hutton inquiry
show.
In perhaps the most scathing criticism of Mr Blair
by a former officer, Air Marshal Sir John Walker, a
former chief of Defence Intelligence, suggested
the Government's claims about Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction were "not the reason to go to
war, but the excuse to go to war".
Sir John, who served as deputy chairman of the
Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), the body that
drew up the September dossier on Iraq, also
queried whether normally cautious intelligence
procedures had been changed.
His concerns were revealed in a letter and note
to MPs investigating claims that the government
dossier had been "sexed up" to exaggerate the
dangers posed by the Iraqi regime. The
documents for the Foreign Affairs Select
Committee, which have until now never been
published, show that Sir John shared the
concerns of his former colleagues in the Defence
Intelligence Staff (DIS) about the dossier.
The Hutton inquiry has heard that two members
of the DIS, together with another official who
described himself as "the most senior" British
intelligence expert on WMD, complained about
the way intelligence was being used last
September.
Sir John, who served as chief of Defence
Intelligence from 1991 to 1994, oversaw reforms
of intelligence procedures after the Scott inquiry
into the arms-to-Iraq affair. In his letter, Sir John
is highly critical of the fact that the "45-minute"
claim was given such prominence even though it
came from a single source.
"It was the immediacy of the WMD threat that
convinced some MPs to vote with the
Government on the crucial division on taking the
country to war," he wrote. "As an ex-deputy
chairman of the JIC and chief of Defence
Intelligence, I cannot credit that an assessment
on which such an awesome decision rested
should be based on a single source. I find that
inconceivable. I also find it unacceptable"
In his note to the committee, written on 2 July, Sir
John suggests that the change in the no-fly zone
operations from defensive to offensive tactics last
autumn was because the US and UK had
already decided to "prepare the battlefield" by
removing threats such as Iraq's Silkworm
missiles. "It points to a question that needs to be
posed," he wrote. "When was the decision taken
to go to war? If this thesis bears examination,
then the nation was committed to war in the late
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