I have no intention of reopening old arguments, but since I have been directly quoted I believe I should exercise my right of reply and state my own views, rather than have others misrepresent them.
I believed that Saddam posed a threat, not because of large stocks of WMD, but because he had a WMD capability which could, if he so desired, be used to support terrorist activities. I also believe that he had the intention to resume full scale protection once sanctions were lifted. My reason for backing the war was that sanctions had failed. Their primary aim of forcing the removal of Saddam had failed and, as stated above, would not prevent the reacquisition of WMD if lifted. In the meantime, the presence of the sanctions was causing immense suffering to the Iraq people with little effect on the regime. They were, however, having a profound effect on the opinion and attitude of the larger arab population.
As stated at the time, and as quoted above, the legal justification for the war was not the possession of WMD by Saddam, it was the failure of Saddam to abide by the terms of SCR 1441. These were much more wideranging than WMD and included research into WMD, ballistic missiles and much else. Is anyone denying that was the official legal justification?
I believed and continue to believe; as did Dr Kelly, and as does David Kay; that action against Saddam's regime was therefore not only justified, but necessary. Since everyone is making much of David Kay's pronouncement last week, I may as well quote from the transcript of his recent statement to Congress:
"In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material."
Much is being made of the fact that no large scale stocks of WMD have been found. As if the scale of the stocks was a vital criteria. I will quote from the late Dr Kelly's Panorama interview, since he was also an accepted expert in this field.
"In the interview Dr Kelly also made it clear that he did regard Saddam as an "immediate threat". Describing Iraq's weapons, Dr Kelly told Panorama that.... Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme posed a "real threat" to neighbouring countries. Dr Kelly said: "We're talking about Iran and Israel, and certainly he can use those weapons against them and you don't need a vast stockpile to have a tremendous military effect."
In summary, I believed, and still believe, that Saddam posed a continuing long term threat and, since sanctions had failed, he needed to be removed and that his failure to obey the terms of resolution 1441 provided a legal justification for doing so.
There then, however, arises the matter of politics and national consent. Whilst I believed the above was justification, many did not.
George Bush persuaded Congress that action was necessary based on several arguments. The failure to uncover large stocks of WMD, whilst a worrying intelligence failure, is not particularly damaging, as it did not remove his case for war.
Tony Blair had a much more difficult job to persuade Parliament, and the country, to support him, and did base much of his case upon the existence of an immediate threat. As such the failure was not in incorrectly seeing the real threat, but in using spin and false threats to deceive the country and win the vote.
In short, right decision, wrong justification. There may have been major intelligence failures, but they should not be used to disguise the far greater major political failure. For which Blair should pay the political penalty at the next election.
At which point I will leave the matter.
Last edited by ORAC; 3rd Feb 2004 at 02:42.