Planning the Iraq war in public

The Chilcot inquiry published new documents on 14 July. I noted one here, which was not reported in the newspapers or by the BBC because it helps to explain why military action in Iraq was justified. The only thing that was reported were the views of SIS 2, an intelligence officer, including that Alastair Campbell was an “unguided missile”.

I think this was a colourful way of saying that he did his job. More significant was SIS 2’s view that the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) was “probably too eager to please” No 10. “The pressure to generate results, I fear, did lead to the cutting of corners,” he told the inquiry. “I think perhaps SIS was at that point guilty of flying a bit too close to the sun.”

This is the criticism examined by the Butler report. It found that spies and politicians alike were caught up in groupthink, feeling certain that Saddam was up to no good. SIS 2’s criticism is not the one imagined by anti-war conspiracists, that politicians put pressure on spies to come up with evidence for something that the spies thought was untrue. It is that pressure to make a public case to support what they thought they already knew led them to be less scrupulous in checking the intelligence than they should have been.

Chris Ames at Iraq Inquiry Digest, however, posted comments on others of the documents, suggesting more ways in which they support the anti-war view.

One is on a memo (pdf) from Simon Webb, policy director at the Ministry of Defence, to Geoff Hoon, his Secretary of State, on 12 April 2002, after Tony Blair had visited George Bush at Crawford (right), which says:

To achieve a successful regime change, the UK would need to be actively involved (one might also argue that the Prime Minister has effectively committed us).

He meant “in effect” rather than “effectively”, but you can see what he means. For the anti-war conspiracy theorists, he means that Blair had secretly pledged the UK and its military assets to Bush’s policy. For a normal person, Blair had said publicly at Crawford:

Any sensible person looking at the position of Saddam Hussein and asking the question, would the region, the world, and not least the ordinary Iraqi people, be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein? The only answer anyone could give to that question would be yes.

And he went on to say:

Now how we approach this, this is a matter for discussion, this is a matter for considering all the options.

In other words, not “planning a war in secret” as Ames alleges, but planning a war in public and being clear about what had to happen before the final resort. A demand that the UN inspectors be readmitted; due process at the UN and a “final opportunity” to comply with UN resolutions.

What Webb was talking about, in imprecise language, was Blair’s public commitment to confronting the threat from Saddam, which Blair thought meant that Saddam would almost certainly have to go, and could well mean military action. It was not possible, constitutionally or in practice, for Blair to “commit” the UK until a decision by the Cabinet and a vote in the House of Commons.

There is more of this, but it may have to wait.

Photograph of Blair and Bush at Crawford news conference: Reuters

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