Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Key findings of Butler report
• In March 2002, the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to prove Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions
• Since the war events have "thrown doubt" on a high proportion of the sources used to justify the war
• Some human intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "seriously flawed" and "open to doubt"
• The Joint Intelligence Committee should not have included the "45 minute" claim in the Iraq dossier without stating what exactly it referred to
• There is no evidence of "deliberate distortion" of the intelligence material or of "culpable negligence"
• The language of the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons may have left readers with the impression that there was "fuller and firmer" intelligence behind its judgments than was the case
• Tony Blair's statement to MPs on the day the dossier was published may have reinforced this impression.
• The judgments in the dossier went to the "outer limits", although not beyond the intelligence available.
• Making public that the Joint Intelligence Committee had authorship of the Iraq dossier was a "mistaken judgment".
• This resulted in more weight being placed on the intelligence than it could bear, the report found.
• John Scarlet, the head of the JIC in the run up to the Iraq war should not resign, the authors of the report said.
• The Butler report said it would be a "rash person" who claimed that stocks of biological or chemical weapons would never be found in Iraq.
• The report found no evidence that the motive of the British Government for initiating military action in Iraq was securing continued access to oil supplies.
• The report raised concern about the "informality and circumscribed character" of the Government’s policy-making procedures towards Iraq.
'Open to doubt and seriously flawed'
British intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the run up to the Iraq war were "open to doubt" and "seriously flawed", the Butler Inquiry said today.
However, the ex-cabinet secretary's 200-page report absolved Tony Blair's government and the intelligence agencies of "deliberate distortion or culpable negligence".
The report said the dossier on Iraq's alleged WMDs should not have included the notorious 45-minute claim and went to the "outer limits" of the available intelligence.
It said the intelligence was "insufficiently robust" to justify claims that Iraq was in breach of United Nations resolutions requiring it to disarm and named the prime minister as one of those who may have reinforced the view that it was based on something firmer. ...
