As you know, I’ve so far seen nothing in the Hutton inquiry in London to justify the left’s hysterical complaints that Tony Blair “sexed up” the Iraq weapons dossier against the advice of intelligence experts in Britain. It’s clear to me that it was the BBC that sexed up its reporting to damage the government for purely ideological reasons. And nothing has emerged to give the slightest credibility to BBC hack, Andrew Gilligan’s, specific allegations. Au contraire. But yesterday and the day before provided the first real worries about the process that led the British government to declare Saddam an imminent threat to the West:
Brian Jones, a retired branch head of the defence intelligence analysis staff, told the Hutton inquiry there were several concerns about the 45 minute claim and one of his staff felt some of the assessements of the threat posed by Iraq were “over-egged” in the dossier. The inquiry heard the “shutters came down” on the dossier before intelligence officials’ reservations had a chance to be properly considered and there were fears “spin merchants” had been too involved in the dossier’s production.
The bottom line is that the dossier had not been finally approved in all its nuances by the intelligence chiefs, in the way that Blair had indicated. Here’s a particularly worrying incident:
[Jones] also told the inquiry a chemical weapons expert within his branch was concerned about the intelligence in the dossier relating to the production of chemical weapons in Iraq. “He was concerned he could not point to any solid evidence of such production. He did not dismiss it may have happened… but he didn’t have good evidence it had happened. It is the difference between making the judgment that the production of chemical weapons had taken place as opposed to that judgment being that it had probably taken place or even possible taken place. It was that degree of certainty in the judgment that was being made.”
This is not a smoking gun. It is not as if the government deliberately ignored the advice of its experts; or inserted data that had not been put forward by the same analysts. But the packaging, use of language, spinning of certain imponderables, all might have led to a misleading notion of the certainty that intelligence sources had about Iraq’s WMD capabilities. That matters. Like many people, I simply took on trust that intelligence assessments of Iraq’s threat were genuine. We know now, I think, that the real issue was not Saddam’s imminent capability but his long-term ambitions and connection with the terrorist network. None of this changes my view of whether the war was justified. But it’s troubling. To say the least.
The Dish 