The
lies that led us into war ...
By Glen Rangwala
Independent
01 June, 2003
One key tactic of the British and United States governments in their
campaign on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was to talk up
suspicions and to portray possibility as fact. The clearest example
was the quotation and misquotation of the reports of United Nations
weapons inspectors.
Iraq claimed it had destroyed
all its prohibited weapons, either unilaterally or in co-operation with
the inspectors, between 1991 and 1994. Although the inspectors were
able to verify that unilateral destruction took place on a large scale,
they were not able to quantify the amounts destroyed.
For example, they were able
to detect that anthrax growth media had been burnt and buried in bulk
at a site next to the production facility at al-Hakam. There was no
way - and there never will be - to tell from the soil samples the amount
destroyed. As a result, UN inspectors recorded this material as unaccounted
for: neither verified destroyed nor believed to still exist.
Translated into statements
by the British and US governments, it became part of "stockpiles"
that they claimed Iraq was hiding from the inspectors. Both governments
knew UN inspectors had not found any nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons in Iraq since at least 1994, aside from a dozen abandoned mustard
shells, and that the vast majority of any weapons produced before 1991
would have degraded to the point of uselessness within 10 years.
Even the most high-profile
defector from Iraq - Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and
director of Iraq's weapons programmes - told UN inspectors and British
intelligence agencies in 1995 that Iraq had no more prohibited weapons.
And yet Britain's dossier last September repeated the false claim that
information "in the public domain from UN reports ... points clearly
to Iraq's continuing possession, after 1991, of chemical and biological
agents and weapons produced before the Gulf War".
There is no UN report after
1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess weapons of mass destruction.
This was well known in intelligence circles. That such a claim could
appear in a purported intelligence document is a clear sign that the
information was "pumped up" for political purposes, to support
the case for an invasion.
The Government began to resort
to more direct misquotation in the immediate prelude to war, with UN
chief inspector Hans Blix reporting on 7 March that Iraq was taking
"numerous initiatives ... with a view to resolving long-standing
open disarmament issues", and that this "can be seen as 'active',
or even 'proactive' co-operation".
In response, Mr Blair and
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, seized on the Unmovic working document
of 6 March entitled "Unresolved Disarmament Issues",about
matters that are still unclear. Although Mr Blix acknowledged Iraqi
efforts to resolve these questions, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary
repeatedly claimed that the document showed Iraq still had prohibited
weapons, a claim the report never made. They relied on the presumption
- probably accurate - that few MPs would have time to go through its
173 pages, and would accept the Government's misleading précis.
Mr Blair quoted from the
report in his speech to the Commons two days before the war began, to
the effect that Iraq "had had far-reaching plans to weaponise"
the deadly nerve agent VX. Note the tense: that quotation was from a
"background" section of the report, on Iraq's policy before
1991.
US and British leaders repeatedly
referred to the UN inspectors' estimate that Iraq produced 1.5 tonnes
of VX before 1990. But in March Unmovic reported that Iraq's production
method created nerve agent that lasted only six to eight weeks. Mr Blair's
"evidence" was about a substance the inspectors consider to
have been no threat since early 1991. The Prime Minister didn't mention
that.
(Glen Rangwala is a lecturer
in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge)