Britain: Report on Iraq weapons proves anti-war movement was right
18 July 2004



On 24 September 2002 Tony Blair told the House of Commons, "It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability..."

These claims formed the basis of the Blair's war policy; the UN policy of containment was fruitless and Saddam needed to be disarmed forcibly and soon if he refused to come clean about his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Blair's claim was the sole reason that Blair could get a majority of Labour Party MPs in parliament to support the invasion.

Yet not a word of this was true.

Millions said so at the time and took to the streets in an attempt to stop the war in February 2003 - on the eve of the invasion.

Now, more than a year since the invasion and overthrow of Hussein, a scion of the British establishment, former cabinet secretary and peer, Lord Butler has concluded the anti-war movement was right all along.

His report published last week concludes:

• 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.

• A "high proportion" of human intelligence sources were dubious or wrong - as was therefore the quality of intelligence assessments given to government ministers and officials

• Information from another country's intelligence agency 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".

Naturally for such an establishment figure Butler is at pains to protect his former boss, Blair. His report lambasts the intelligence services but says the government did not lie to the public, but at most was guilty of being prepared to be led astray by faulty intelligence.

At most Blair is judged guilty of not including the serious caveats that surrounded come of the intelligence claims in the government dossier issued to seek public backing for the invasion.

More incredibly, although there were serious failings, no one is to be blame! Several journalists have resigned or been sacked for their claims about "sexed up" intelligence but those who did it (John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee) are explicitly protected in the report from the clamour to have him sacked from the post he was promoted to after the intelligence debacle!

Individual responsibility is conveniently dissolved into erroneous "processes" and poor "structures". Blair's "good faith" is not impugned by Butler; not so much Tony Bliar as Tony Bluster.

Of course Butler's inquiry was only allowed to investigate intelligence failings and explicitly forbidden from delving into how Blair's inner sanctum - communications head Alistair Campbell and chief of staff Jonathan Powell - put pressure on the intelligence services to refine and shape the reports to suit the preconceived ends.

Even so the report still manages to conclude that Tony Blair's policy on Iraq shifted because of 11 September 2001, not the pace of Iraq's weapons programmes. In other words, the "intelligence chased the politics" i.e. the decision to go to war was made in early 2002 after George Bush made it clear that that was his intention. Blair was determined to follow and ensure there was no breach in the US and UK imperialist alliance.

Blair bears great responsibility for the deaths of more than 11,000 Iraqi civilians killed during and since the invasion. Without his support for Bush, it is unlikely that the other members of the "coalition of the killing" would have rushed to Washington's side. It would have made the naked, imperialist nature of the whole enterprise clearer for many millions more if it had been deprived of the "bleeding heart" sanctimonious cover lent to it by Blair.

Naturally, Blair accepted the report's findings, as it did not find him guilty of deliberate deception. He apologised for nothing. He claims in his defence that although there were no WMD, no programmes and hence no imminent threat, the war was correct. Why?

First, because the world is "better off without Saddam". No progressive can mourn Saddam's passing as such, but the world would be better off without many other tyrants, in China as well as North Korea ,in Israel as well as Iran.

But Bush and Blair chose Iraq to invade, lay waste and provoke ongoing civil and military resistance. And they did so because they claimed Saddam was a threat to us all not just his own people - and this was a lie.

Blair claims in addition that despite the absence of WMD the war was justified because Saddam was in breach of UN resolutions. Leave aside the many other broken and unobserved UN ultimatums that are left un-enforced by the US and UK, especially when they are directed at their allies, such as Israel.

Leave aside the fact that it is clear the Butler report backs up the alternative reactionary bourgeois policy being pursued by France and the UN, namely that weapons inspections and containment were slowly strangling Iraq.

Leave aside the fact that it is for the UN security council to enforce its own resolutions - not Blair and Bush.

The fact is that if Blair had used this justification as the basis of a parliamentary vote to back the invasion he would not have got a majority and he would have probably resigned.

Even Butler criticises the "informality" of government procedures which reduced the "scope for informed collective political judgement" in cabinet decision making.

The one cabinet member who did resign before the invasion, former foreign secretary Robin Cook, has made it clear that the cabinet was not allowed to see relevant documents.

Blair was not prepared to take the chance that the majority sentiment in Britain against the war was going to determine how MPs voted. Blair had made his mind up to go to war. His aides shaped information to create a phantom menace; they selected which bits to present to whom.

Truth is always the first casualty of war, but not the last. Many have died for Blair's imperialist ambitions. Let us now work to make sure that he becomes a casualty of Iraqi and global resistance to the occupation.

Now read: more articles on the Iraqi resistance