Welcome to day two of the Iraq Inquiry at the QEII conference centre in London. Today’s official subject matter on the inquiry’s updated witness list is weapons of mass destruction, the issue that lies at the heart of how and why the US/UK coalition shifted from “containment” policies to regime change.
Witnesses are being asked about UK government policy on Iraq and WMD all the way from the end of the first Gulf war to the end of the Iraq Survey Group’s hunt for them after the second conflict.
That means we’ll be covering some ground the Butler Inquiry which reported in July 2004 wasn’t around to hear.
As the inquiry heard on Tuesday, the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought about a ground-shift in how Washington viewed so-called rogue states and intelligence that suggested they were attempting to develop or procure WMD.
In no time at all primacy for America’s Iraq policy passed from Colin Powell and the State Department to the hawks at the Pentagon. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than in President Bush’s memorable “axis of evil” State of the Union address four months later.
To quote the president, the US stance changed from “if it feels good, do it” to the regime change doctrine of “let’s roll” .
As I said on Tuesday night, both the latest witnesses are of senior FCO stock and between them have backgrounds in security, defence and intelligence and weapons counter-proliferation.
Sir William Ehrman has since worked as Our Man in China but he also served a post-Iraq war stint as chairman of the JIC between 2004-05.
Besides his counter-proliferation work the name Tim Dowse also features a couple of times in the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.
Purely out of interest it is worth noting he’s also the sole person on the inquiry’s initial witness list not to have a gong or similar set of initials after his name, bar the intriguingly-named Dominick Chilcott (just one letter out).
Sir John Chilcot did warn that today could get quite technical, so bear with me. Live updates throughout the day on our Twitter site and video on the inquiry website.
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There was a massive and long-term deception about Iraq’s alleged wmd. The full version of Iraq’s declaration of December 2002 was withheld from all but the permanent members of the Security Council. Curveball’s “intelligence” was baseless, but found its way into Colin Powell’s Security Council speech, which also claimed there were mobile weapons labs. David Kelly scotched the claim that any such labs had been found, before his untimely death. Why were these and related matters not probed during today’s sessions? How can lessons be learned if there is no impulse to establish the truth?
good luck TB
wmd??? There never were any , except in the mythical writings of ALISTER. Bush and his adopted poodle used them and the supposed search to justify the war .We already know that Bush and Blair were aware that there was no threat and used the WMD as an excuse for regime change . End of story , start the prosecution from the Hague
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