This is a project to monitor and comment on the Iraq Inquiry.
Read more about the projectChirac conundrum not solved
by Chris Ames
I watched the first episode of the BBC documentary series Putin, Russia and the West on Thursday night and read David Blair’s review of the programme for the Telegraph yesterday.
You can watch the programme here, which is just as well because David Blair says:
The US-Russia relationship was essentially on an even keel right up until the Iraq war. Here, the documentary settled a vexed question that was pondered by our own Chilcot inquiry on Iraq: would France under Jacques Chirac really have vetoed any UN resolution providing authority for war? Yes, said Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, then the Elysee’s senior diplomat. He recounted how Putin and Chirac agreed to block any such resolution during a meeting “a deux” in February 2003. So Tony Blair’s testimony was right: France genuinely was determined to scupper his drive to secure UN backing for war.
Unfortunately, this is the same old misrepresentation, based on claiming that when Chirac said in March 2003 that France would vote against a second UN resolution in the current circumstances, this meant that it would have at any time “vetoed any UN resolution providing authority for war”. What was said on the programme was this:
Narrator: Putin wanted Chirac’s word that he would vote against the war, unless there was hard evidence that Iraq had weapons of Mass Destruction.
Gourdault-Montagne: The joint position was agreed. If there a vote without these conditions we would both veto it.
Here is what Chirac said subsequently:
THE PRESIDENT – My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote “no” because she considers this evening that there are no grounds for waging war in order to achieve the goal we have set ourselves, i.e. to disarm Iraq.
As should be well established by now, Chirac’s reference to “regardless of the circumstances”, was in the context of stressing that there may or not be a Security Council majority for war. In the latter case, France would not need to use its veto. But the point that he repeatedly stressed in the interview, that his stance applied to the current circumstances – “this evening” – is the same point that Gourdault-Montagne made in the interview. France was not yet convinced that there was a case for war based on Iraq’s alleged hiding of WMD. In the terms in which Gourdault-Montagne put it, the conditions under which France would support a resolution were not met.
So no, the documentary did not settle the question, did not show that Tony Blair was right and did not agree to veto “any UN resolution providing authority for war”. It’s the same old lie recycled.
My pick for the end of the (war) year
by Andrew Mason
Never Forget the Iraq War
Paul R. Pillar was the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. In early 2006 he became publicly critical of the Bush Administration’s political use of intelligence material to evidently justify the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
He wrote that:
“In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized. … The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.”
He now writes regularly at The National Interest. On 15 December he published the following essay, plainly timed to coincide with the formal ending (at least as far as the US is concerned) of the war in Iraq.
Read the rest of this entry »
Seasonal greetings from the Digest
by Andrew Mason
Once again we would like to collectively thank all our writers, readers and supporters for their individual contributions to the Digest over the course of this past year.
I think it is fair to say that many of us believed a year ago that we would all have seen, read and, dare I say it, completely digested the final Iraq Inquiry report by this time. As we now know, the whole process is taking much longer than was earlier anticipated, and is now not expected to be concluded until at least next summer. We will remain dedicated to bringing you the best possible coverage and analysis of all things related to the Inquiry throughout the coming year.
We would like to wish everyone associated with the Digest, no matter of any differing political persuasions, a happy, prosperous, and most enjoyable holiday season.
Key letter is indeed “missing”
by Chris Ames
I wrote earlier this month about a key document (in fact two versions of a letter) that the Foreign Office said it was unable to find in response to my freedom of information request. At the time I passed this information on to the Inquiry, which has now confirmed that it has been given one version of the letter but not the one that is most revealing.
To recap very briefly, in September 2002, the FCO’s UN Department sent UN ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock a draft letter from foreign secretary Jack Straw’s office to No 10 which included a proposal to use a UN resolution to engineer a situation where Iraq would refuse to readmit weapons inspectors.
In response to my FOI request, the FCO provided a copy of a later draft but said it could not find the copy sent to Greenstock or the final version of the letter. The implication, at least as far as the original draft was concerned, was that the Inquiry had not been given the letter, if the FCO did not have it.
Margaret Aldred, Secretary to the Inquiry, has now written to me, helpfully stating that:
… the Inquiry holds a copy of the letter to No 10 from Mr Straw’s office, which was provided by another Government Department, and I am sending a copy of this letter to the FCO’s Inquiry Unit. The Inquiry has acknowledged that the Government has not been able to find every document which may be relevant; the draft letter forwarded to Sir Jeremy Greenstock by UND is one of those documents.
It is a concern that what could be an important piece of evidence is not available to the Inquiry, although the Inquiry itself is clearly taking the cock up rather than conspiracy line. I can only hope that the significance of the draft letter, as described by Greenstock’s contemporaneous account, has been understood.
A hat tip to John Rentoul
by Andrew Mason
We have to thank ‘Eagle Eye’ John Rentoul for bringing our attention to the fact that the Iraq Inquiry published on 14 December an exchange of two letters between Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the Inquiry, and the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell.
We had not picked up on the release of these letters because the Inquiry chose not to make the publication of this new documentation a ‘news item’ at their website, as is the usual practice. Instead they placed the notification at the lower section of their front page (below the line on my screen) where it attracts little attention.
The letters deal with the continuing (slow) progress of the Inquiry itself.
Sir John to Sir Gus (21 October 2011)
Sir Gus to Sir John (2 December 2011)
My favourite part of the correspondence was also picked up by John Rentoul, although for some reason he decided to omit the last six words of the sentence.
We are also mindful that it will need to withstand the level of detailed scrutiny to which it will inevitably be subjected by a range of different interests.
Hope for the future, if at great cost
by Chris Ames
The Telegraph has a comment piece on the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, which observes:
Serious questions also remain over whether the war was legitimate in the first place, a subject closely analysed by Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry, which has still to report. Certainly, no proper assessment can be made of the merits or otherwise of Britain’s participation until Sir John’s conclusions are delivered. This makes it all the more regrettable that publication has been postponed until next summer, owing to the refusal of certain departments to disclose sensitive documents.
This has gone beyond the usual story – a misapprehension in itself – that the government’s tardiness in agreeing to allow the Inquiry to publish documents is behind the delay. According to the Telegraph the government is now keeping them from Chilcot – or at least outright refusing to let them be published.
Incidentally, the title of the piece, “Hope for the future, if at great cost”, could be a comment on the Inquiry itself. We may get a report next year, by which time Chilcot and co will have run up quite a bit bill, albeit one that is dwarfed by the cost of the Saville Inquiry, or the war itself.
Inquiry witness runs for President
by Chris Ames
The Guardian reports that:
Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who gained international renown as the country’s spokesman against the war in Iraq, has shaken up the presidential campaign by announcing that he will run as an independent.
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Best known internationally for his impassioned 2003 UN speech against the US invasion of Iraq, Villepin served as foreign and interior minister under Chirac before being named prime minister.
Villepin has spoken to the Inquiry but is not strictly speaking a witness, according to its definition. The Inquiry announced in May 2010 that he was one of “a number of French citizens who provided perspectives on international issues in the lead-up to and during the conflict in Iraq.”
We don’t know what Villepin told the Inquiry. Interestingly the May 2010 statement included an announcement that the Committee was visiting the US and that “if the committee wishes to use any of the information it receives from individuals in America in its report, it will seek their permission first.” It isn’t clear whether the same applies to the French participants, whether prior permission has been given or won’t be sought, or whether they have been told that their contributions will remain forever secret.
Iraq, Kurdistan and Oil
by Chris Lamb
The West’s desire to get its hands on Iraq’s oil is a subject that has hardly been discussed at the Inquiry, as the Digest has noted previously. Last week the Financial Times and the Independent covered the story of Exxon Mobil’s deal with the Kurdish Regional Government to exploit six oil fields in the North of Iraq while bypassing Iraq’s national government. It is reported that three of the six fields are outside of the Kurdish Regional Government’s borders but militarily controlled by the Kurds although the ownership is disputed by northern Iraq’s Arab populations.
This deal makes commercial profit for Exxon whilst threatening the territorial integrity of Iraq. The Kurds have long pursued an independent Kurdistan, recently engaging in military conflicts with Turkey over borders and territory. The pursuit of an independent state undoubtedly underpinned the Kurds’ lobbying of the Bush and Blair administrations for the military invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.
A major institutional shareholder in Exxon Mobil is JP Morgan Chase, which employs Tony Blair as a part time advisor. JP Morgan Chase recently downgraded the value of Exxon Mobil stock.
Interestingly, the FT reports that the ubiquitous Sir Jeremy Greenstock was at the heart of this story when it broke, attending an oil conference for the region in Kurdistan in his role as non-executive director with the oil advisory company, Lambert Energy.
We did not feel we had any kind of certainty
by Chris Ames
I wrote yesterday about a draft letter setting out options for a UN resolution that was apparently produced in early September 2002 by Stephen Pattison, head of the UN Department at the Foreign Office. The letter, which was referred to in other evidence but apparently cannot be found, appears to show that Pattison proposed framing a resolution in such a way that Iraq would continue to refuse to readmit weapons inspectors.
Sir Roderick Lyne has been the Inquiry member who has most directly asked witnesses whether the policy in the run up to the war was intended to deal with Iraq’s supposed WMD or to result in regime change. When Pattison appeared at the Inquiry in January, Lyne asked the question and Pattison gave a long and convoluted answer before eventually saying that the issue was WMD, although Tony Blair may have had a different emphasis. In defence of this approach he said the following:
The reason Iraq was a problem and Saddam was a problem was because of his defiance of the UN, because we did not feel we had any kind of certainty about exactly what his capabilities were, what his intentions were, where the regime was going in terms of developing its weapons programmes.
Compare that with what Blair said in his foreword to the September 2002 Iraq dossier:
What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme. I also believe that, as stated in the document, Saddam will now do his utmost to try to conceal his weapons from UN inspectors.
The picture presented to me by the JIC in recent months has become more not less worrying. It is clear that, despite sanctions, the policy of containment has not worked sufficiently well to prevent Saddam from developing these weapons.
I am in no doubt that the threat is serious and current, that he has made progress on WMD, and that he has to be stopped.
Saddam has used chemical weapons, not only against an enemy state, but against his own people. Intelligence reports make clear that he sees the building up of his WMD capability, and the belief overseas that he would use these weapons, as vital to his strategic interests, and in particular his goal of regional domination. And the document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.
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The threat posed to international peace and security, when WMD are in the hands of a brutal and aggressive regime like Saddam’s, is real.
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The case I make is…that since the inspectors left four years ago he has continued with this programme…
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I believe that faced with the information available to me, the UK Government has been right to support the demands that this issue be confronted and dealt with. We must ensure that he does not get to use the weapons he has, or get hold of the weapons he wants.
Key letter goes missing
by Chris Ames
The question of whether “the UN route” – seeking UN backing for the return or weapons inspectors backed by the threat of military action – was intended to achieve a peaceful solution (if possible) to the issue of Iraq’s alleged WMD or to provide cover for intended military action is one that the Inquiry occasionally grapples with.
The Inquiry has published a letter that former ambassador to the UN Sir Jeremy Greenstock wrote to the Foreign Office’s permanent secretary, Sir Michael Jay, on 3 September 2002, in response to a request for advice on what a UN resolution on Iraq might look like, if President Bush agreed to go down “the UN route”. This letter includes reference to a proposal in another document to use such a resolution to engineer a situation where Iraq would refuse to readmit weapons inspections.
Unfortunately, in response to my freedom of information request, the FCO has told me that it is unable to find a copy of the document to which Greenstock was referring. This presumably means that the Inquiry has not been given what looks like a key piece of evidence, particularly as it was the FCO’s “Iraq Inquiry Unit” that handled my request.