The Butler Report

Lord Butler's report has taken us no further in really understanding what went on when war was declared on Iraq. Even those who were gung ho in favour of war are now starting to admit that weapons of mass destruction will not be found in Iraq. The '45 minute' claim has been shown to be ridiculous. Yet it was because of the claims that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD that we went to war.

Whatever anyone says now about the world being a better place without Saddam as dictator of Iraq, our Prime Minister repeatedly said that the reason for war was not regime change. Again and again, when pressed on this in the Commons by MPs opposed to war, he said that if Saddam cooperated with the UN weapons Inspectors, and gave up his WMD, we would not attack Iraq.

So why was the intelligence so flawed, and what light does Butler shed on how the decisions to go to war on the basis of flawed intelligence came to be taken, and who was involved? First it is clear from the Butler Report just how scanty the intelligence actually was and how few intelligence sources there really were. He says that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it should bear". Translated into normal English this means that it was exaggerated, and that the intelligence reports which suggested caution, and that there were serious doubts about Iraq's possession of WMD were conveniently ignored. Far too much credence was given to Iraqi exiles, including those funded by the CIA, who had very little real contact with Iraq any more, and certainly little, if any, access to what Saddam's regime was actually doing.

The point is clear. If George Bush and Tony Blair had not been so determined to go to war they could have seen enough reasons in the intelligence to avoid it. To argue that it would have seemed weak to back down simply doesn't stand up if there was no real and immediate threat from Iraq. This is an area Butler doesn't go in to, because he was given the brief to examine the intelligence and how it was used, rather than make a judgement on the political decision to declare war. Whatever the intelligence does or does not say, the decision in the end is a political one, and on the rights or wrongs of that political decision we all have to make our own minds up, not expect to be told by Lord Butler or anyone else.

It was noticeable in the recent debate in the Commons on Iraq how few MPs were now prepared to stand up and defend the decision to go to war. There was no motion before the Commons to vote on, so those of us who wanted to make a point had to vote on a procedural motion to adjourn the sitting. Forty one MPs, including 32 Labour MPs, of whom I was one, voted against the Government. We wanted to show that those of us who were always opposed to the war had not changed our minds, and were not convinced by Lord Butler's report that nobody was to blame.

July 2004

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