[A-List] UK state: Iraq crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Ten killer questions to put to Blair

The PM faces the Commons today. This is what he should be asked

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday June 4, 2003
The Guardian

1. Did Downing Street ask the joint intelligence committee to add to, or
change the wording of, the September dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction?

The dossier contains four references to the claim that Iraq could deploy
chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. A
senior British official told the BBC this was one of several claims added
against the wishes of intelligence agencies. Adam Ingram, the armed forces
minister, admitted the claim was made by an uncorroborated, single, source.

The dossier said Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa - a reference to
Niger. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, omitted it from his speech to
the UN security council on February 5. "It turned out to be untrue; that
happens a lot in the intelligence business," he said this week.

The dossier said aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy could be for nuclear
weapons. The US energy and state departments dismissed the claim. That very
month, the US defence intelligence agency concluded: "There is no reliable
information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons."

2. Why did the government fail to publish a promised first dossier in March
2002?

The intelligence agencies said there was little new they could say about
Iraq's WMD, no evidence that the threat from Iraq had increased
significantly since the 1991 Gulf war, and no smoking gun.

3. Who was responsible for the "dodgy dossier" published by Downing Street
in February?

No 10 apologised for failing to admit that much of the dossier came from
published academic sources, including an article by a Californian PhD
student. Intelligence officials were furious. One called it a "serious
error". Tony Blair said on Monday: "Every single piece of intelligence that
we presented was cleared very properly by the joint intelligence committee."

4. What do the minutes of meetings between Alastair Campbell and John
Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee, show?

Campbell and Scarlett spent weeks arguing about what should go into the
September dossier, with Blair's communications chief wanting to beef up the
content and the language. A comparison between what Downing Street wanted
and what the intelligence agencies preferred would be telling.

5. Did Jack Straw express concerns similar to those of his US counterpart,
Colin Powell, about intelligence claims?

The foreign secretary denies he expressed doubts to Powell about the quality
of intelligence prior to the crucial UN security council meeting on February
5. Yet Powell said on Monday: "I had conversations with the British, with
Jack Straw, constantly during the period ... so he had a sense of how the
presentation was coming together and what I would be saying ... I was in
constant communication with Jack." Two US magazines, Newsweek and US News
and World Report, revealed this week that Powell was disturbed about
questionable intelligence on Iraq's weapons programme, describing some of it
as "bullshit".

6. What price the "special relationship" in the light of a succession of
unwelcome comments made by the Bush administration?

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, undermined the British
government's position by saying last week that Saddam Hussein may have
destroyed his banned weapons before the war. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz,
went further, telling Vanity Fair magazine that "for reasons that have a lot
to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that
everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction."

The special relationship is hailed as most valuable when it comes to
intelligence cooperation. Yet in the run-up to the war, UK and US security
and intelligence agencies clashed repeatedly, for example over claims of
links between al-Qaida and Baghdad.

7. Why were the UN inspectors pulled out of Iraq in March: is it not now
clear that there was no need for urgency to rid Iraq of whatever WMD stocks
it had?

Intelligence sources say it will take weeks, perhaps months, to track down
Iraq's WMDs. This is precisely what Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons
inspector, told the security council.

8. What were military commanders told?

According to Whitehall officials, they were told to expect an attack with
chemical or biological weapons - which of course did not happen.

9. Why were there no plans to protect Iraqi hospitals and to deal with
looters?

Military commanders were told, on the basis of intelligence, to expect
Saddam's regime to "implode", and that Iraqi troops would quickly help
British and US forces to maintain law and order.

10. Did Iraq really possess WMD which posed an urgent threat?

That was the ostensible reason for the war, the casus belli, on which the
government based its legal case, both here and in the UN, and its argument
that it had to be started quickly. There is no evidence for this, and Blair
has gradually confused the issue with regime change and human rights.