The content of key Cabinet meeting deliberations on 13 and 17 March 2003 may give further insight to this. Interesting questions are raised from the Parliamentary debate of 18 March, voting for military invasion on the imposition of New Labour and Conservative party three line whips.

Given that the two Government motions involved made allegations about the immanent threat of Iraqi WMD and breaches under UN Resolution 1441, it is very curious that no space was made available in the debate for the latest UNMOVIC report presented by Hans Blix on 07 March 203 reporting significant progress in the disarmament of remaining Iraqi weaponry.

Blix reported Iraqi co-operation and movement on a number of weaponry fronts. His report contained the memorable quotation, “The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament, indeed the firsty since the middle of the 1990s. We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed”.

Blix ventures that, although Iraqi co-operation in complete disarmament was not immediate, such could be expected in a matter of only months. Defiance remaining from Saddam was built on bluff and not threat.

Once the emptiness of his arms cache became known domestically, there would arguably have been a time limit on his power base without outside intervention

This vital report was available to Parliament but not presented as evidence nor properly debated. Was this because the two main party leaderships had already struck their position of support for Blair and the Government’s resolution and blotted out with the three line whip any inconvenient countervailing evidence?

Anyone now reading the hyperbole and rhetoric of Blairs introductory speech in support of the 18 March war motion and the responses by Duncan Smith and Hague would appreciate that regime change was the elephant in the room while alleged WMD breaches of the UN were secondary unsubstantiated pretexts.

An argument could even be made that timing of the military invasion was driven by the narrowing of the window of opportunity for regime change by the findings of Blix’s report that Iraqi disarmament would be decisive and demonstrable within months. If that occurred, the grounds for an invasion would be entirely removed.

One of the lessons the Inquiry may draw from its investigation- if it looks at how the Parliamentary vote for war was constructed on 18 March 2003- is the malign effects of party control and the process of party whipping over the full presentation of relevant evidence and the scope and freedom of deliberation and decision making.

It seems that most enlightened commentators are now in general agreement that Iraq had been effectively disarmed of its stocks of (and production capability for) its earlier non-conventional weaponry by the time that UNSCOM left Iraq in 1998.

I too picked up on George Joffé’s point that: “In effect, Iraq no longer had any significant weapons programmes but the regime concealed this behind a cloak of ambiguity, apparently because it believed that this was the only way to deter Iran from attacking it.”

Both myself and another researcher have spent some time trying to find references to this suggestion. We’ve only come up with one example, a speech given by Saddam Hussein (in Arabic) on 12 June 2000, as was reported by Republic of Iraq TV and transcribed by the BBC World Monitoring Service. This was plainly an internal political statement, on account of it being presented only to Iraqi Military Industrialization Organization officials.

Running slightly contrary to this is a report originally from either Ceefax or Teletext on 21 November 1997, which stated:

Iraq Swears Weapons All Gone

Saddam Hussein has insisted he has neither a nuclear or biological weapons arsenal.

The Revolutionary Command Council (of which Saddam Hussein was chairman) said:

“In the name of Allah we assure you on our honour that there are no more biological or chemical weapons in Iraq.”

“Concerning nuclear arms and missiles the non-Iraqi parties concerned have recognised there are none left.”

I don’t know what to make of the Joffe article, which is concerned about Iraq in the wider Middle East in any case. It points to the fact that Iraq’s WMD programme was in tatters by 1994, but also states there was a lack of evidence to allow decision-making, a lack of objectivity in assessing what evidence there was, and an approach of non-co-operation on the part of Iraq which cloaked the lack of WMD (it is suggested to deter Iran).