Creativity about WMD

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This morning the BBC reports an un-named senior official saying the British
dossier in WMD in Iraq was re-written shortly before publication to make it
more exciting. I am not quite sure which document they are referring to but
it is the one containing the claim that the WMD were in a form that could
be used within "45 minutes". The source alleges that the British security
services were not happy about this re-writing.

Tony Blair is now perceived as under some pressure as he visits Iraq,
carefully in a civilian suit, since yesterday Donald Rumsfeld said
disarmingly that perhaps Iraq had no WMD on the eve of the invasion.

BBC2 Newsnight took this apart yesterday evening. They had James Woolsey,
formerly of the CIA ,suggesting the surprisingly subtle hypothesis that
Hussein calculated on somewhat more mass resistance than has emerged,
paralysing the coalition advance into the cities with the scenario that the
French and Germans would have got Blix back in, who could then announce
that the regime was indeed free of WMD and should be allowed to get on with
running the country. But Tony Blair had said that it was incredible to
believe that Saddam Hussein would destroy his WMD just before the war. What
is interesting is that to present this defence they will have to admit that
Iraqi society was more complicated than they admitted, and although
draconian, there was a consensual and patriotic side to it.

John Bolton, the neo-con within the State Department was quietly mocking
that the mobile alleged biological weapons plants have not been found in
any other country, despite the fact that no traces of biological material
have been found in them yet..

Professor Michael Clarke, who is Director of the International Policy
Centre at King's College, London, was damning in a laid back scholarly way.
He suggested there is a history of western intelligence agencies getting
vital data wrong but there is a also a tendency particularly in the USA for
their reports to be politicised and further to hype up the threat. He also
suggested there was an interactive process between the US and UK
intelligence agencies leading up to the Iraq war which mutually reinforced
this hyping process. His damning comment was that the reports were
"exaggerated to the point of dishonesty".

The worst retribution coming to the hegemons, Newsnight suggested, was a
loss of credibility around the world, and that it will be more difficult to
get support for the next military enterprise. The pressure will presumably
fall harder on Britain, and the US is more likely to find itself alone.
Indeed Blair's trip to Iraq now, is probably designed subtly to signal a
slightly different message to that of the USA, to the effect that an Iraqi
government is urgent, (and in the background that they should get troops
from other muslim countries in quickly).


Chris Burford
London