Iraq WMD assessments, October 2002 to March 2003

¶552. From October 2002 onwards, the JIC focused on two main themes:

Iraq's attitude to the return of the inspectors and, from 8 November, its compliance with the specific obligations imposed by resolution 1441; and

Iraq's options, diplomatic and military, including the possible use of chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles against Coalition Forces or countries in the region in either pre‑emptive attacks or in response to a military attack.

¶553. In its Assessment of 18 December, the JIC made the judgements in the UK Government September dossier part of the test for Iraq.

¶554. The judgements about Iraq's capabilities and intentions relied heavily on Iraq's past behaviour being a reliable indicator of its current and future actions.

¶555. There was no consideration of whether, faced with the prospect of a US‑led invasion, Saddam Hussein had taken a different position.

¶556. The absence of evidence of proscribed programmes and materials relating to the production or delivery of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons was attributed to Iraq's ability to conceal its activities and deceive the inspectors and the difficulties which it had been anticipated the inspectors would encounter.

¶557. The JIC Assessment of 11 October 2002 stated that a good intelligence flow from inside Iraq, supporting tougher inspections, would be "central to success".

¶558. A key element of the Assessments was the reporting and intelligence on Iraq's intentions to conceal its activities, deceive the inspectors and obstruct the conduct of inspections, particularly Iraq's attitudes to preventing interviews with officials who were identified as associated with its proscribed programmes or who had been involved in Iraq's unilateral destruction of its weapons and facilities.

¶559. The large number of intelligence reports about Iraq's activities were interpreted from the perspective that Iraq's objectives were to conceal its programmes.

¶560. Similarly, Iraq's actions were consistently interpreted as indicative of deceit.

¶561. From early 2003, the Government drew heavily on the intelligence reporting of Iraq's activities to deceive and obstruct the inspectors to illustrate its conclusion that Iraq had no intention of complying with the obligations imposed in resolution 1441.

¶562. The Government also emphasised the reliability of the reporting.

¶563. The JIC's judgement from August 2002 until 19 March 2003 remained that Iraq might use chemical and biological weapons in response to a military attack.

¶564. Iraq's statements that it had no weapons or programmes were dismissed as further evidence of a strategy of denial.

¶565. In addition, the extent to which the JIC's judgements depended on inference and interpretation of Iraq's previous attitudes and behaviour was not recognised.

¶566. At no stage was the hypothesis that Iraq might not have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or programmes identified and examined by either the JIC or the policy community.

¶567. After its 9 September 2002 Assessment, the JIC was not asked to review its judgements on Iraq's capabilities and programmes which underpinned UK thinking. Nor did the JIC itself suggest such a review.

¶568. As a result there was no formal reassessment of the JIC judgements, and the 9 September Assessment and the 24 September dossier provided part of the baseline for the UK Government's view of Iraq's capabilities and intentions on its chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

¶569. Given the weight which rested on the JIC's judgements about Iraq's possession of WMD and its future intent for the decision in March that military action should, if necessary, be taken to disarm Iraq, a formal reassessment of the JIC's judgements should have taken place.

¶570. This might have been prompted by Dr Blix's report to the Security Council on 14 February 2003, which demonstrated the developing divergence between the assessments presented by the US and UK. Dr Blix's report of 7 March, which changed the view that Iraqi behaviour was preventing UNMOVIC from carrying out its tasks, should certainly have prompted a review.

¶The search for WMD 571. Section 4.4 considers the impact of the failure to find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq in the months immediately after the invasion, and of the emerging conclusions of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), on:

the Government's response to demands for an independent judge‑led inquiry into pre‑conflict intelligence on Iraq; and

the Government's public presentation of the nature of the threat from Saddam Hussein's regime and the decision to go to war.

¶572. The Inquiry has not sought to comment in detail on the specific conclusions of the ISC, FAC, Hutton and Butler Reports, all of which were published before the withdrawal by SIS in September 2004 of a significant proportion of the intelligence underpinning the JIC Assessments and September 2002 dossier on which UK policy had rested.

¶573. In addition to the conclusions of those reports, the Inquiry notes the forthright statement in March 2005 of the US Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Reporting to President Bush, the Commission stated that "the [US] Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre‑war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure."

¶574. The evidence in Section 4.4 shows that, after the invasion, the UK Government, including the intelligence community, was reluctant to admit, and to recognise publicly, the mounting evidence that there had been failings in the UK's pre‑conflict collection, validation, analysis and presentation of intelligence on Iraq's WMD.

¶575. Despite the failure to identify any evidence of WMD programmes during pre‑conflict inspections, the UK Government remained confident that evidence would be found after the Iraqi regime had been removed.

¶576. Almost immediately after the start of the invasion, UK Ministers and officials sought to lower public expectations of immediate or significant finds of WMD in Iraq.

¶577. The lack of evidence to support pre‑conflict claims about Iraq's WMD challenged the credibility of the Government and the intelligence community, and the legitimacy of the war.

¶578. The Government and the intelligence community were both concerned about the consequences of the presentational aspects of their pre‑war assessments being discredited.

¶579. By June, the Government had acknowledged the need for a review of the UK's pre‑conflict intelligence on Iraq. It responded to demands for an independent, judge‑led inquiry by expressing support for the reviews initiated by the ISC and the FAC.

¶580. The announcement of the Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly on 18 July, reinforced the Government's position that additional reviews were not needed.

¶581. The Government maintained that position until January 2004, backed by three votes in the House of Commons (on 4 June, 15 July and 22 October 2003) rejecting a succession of Opposition motions calling for an independent inquiry into the use of pre‑war intelligence.

¶582. Mr Blair's initial response to growing criticism of the failure to find WMD was to counsel patience.

¶583. After the publication of the ISG Interim Report, the Government's focus shifted from finding stockpiles of weapons to emphasising evidence of the Iraqi regime's strategic intent.

¶584. Once President Bush made clear his decision to set up an independent inquiry, Mr Blair's resistance to a public inquiry became untenable.

¶585. After the announcement of the Butler Review, the UK Government's focus shifted to the content of the next ISG report, the Status Report.

¶586. The Government, still concerned about the nature of the public debate on WMD in the UK, sought to ensure that the Status Report included existing ISG material highlighting the strategic intentions of Saddam Hussein's regime and breaches of Security Council resolutions.

¶587. Mr Blair remained concerned about continuing public and Parliamentary criticism of the pre‑conflict intelligence, the failure to find WMD and the decision to invade Iraq. After the reports from the Hutton Inquiry, the ISG and the US Commission, he sought to demonstrate that, although "the exact basis for action was not as we thought", the invasion had still been justified.

¶588. The ISG's findings were significant, but did not support past statements by the UK and US Governments, which had focused on Iraq's current capabilities and an urgent and growing threat.

¶589. The explanation for military action put forward by Mr Blair in October 2004 was not the one given before the conflict.

Iraq WMD assessments, October 2002 to March 2003

Planning for a post‑Saddam Hussein Iraq