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.