The interim report of the US-British Iraq Survey Group confirms what many have come to suspect in the months since Baghdad fell. In sum, Saddam Hussein's regime did not possess useable biological, chemical or nuclear weapons when the war was launched. Iraq could not therefore accurately be said to pose a current or serious or imminent threat to its neighbours and the west, at least in terms of WMD, as the US and Britain claimed. Less expected, perhaps, is the strong probability, on the basis of these preliminary findings, that such proven Iraqi WMD capability as did exist was largely destroyed in 1991, as Saddam maintained. "We have not yet found stocks of weapons," the ISG says. And, it concedes, it may never find them.

The main thrust of the report amounts to a damning, official indictment of the principal intelligence and therefore of the political judgments upon which the case for war, in Britain at least, was based. Here is what Tony Blair said in the Iraq dossier published in September last year: "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." According to the ISG, all three of these assertions are wrong. There was no current production of biological or chemical agents; and no armed shells or missiles have been found. If Saddam had stockpiled previous agent production, that, too, if it existed, is missing or destroyed.

There are no caches of anthrax, ricin mustard gas, VX and the other horrors of which we were repeatedly warned; there are no mobile laboratories, as George Bush prematurely claimed. The report says that "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons (CW) programme after 1991... We have not yet found evidence to confirm prewar reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces." On nuclear weapons, it is the same story: "We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq took significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material" (as indeed the IAEA concluded before the war). Saddam certainly wanted to build or buy bigger missiles. But he had not managed to do so and apparently lacked even the 20 al-Hussein missiles he was thought to have kept.

Here is not the familiar picture of a rogue state bristling with offensive terror weapons, as painted by the government. Here instead is a picture of a malign regime whose aggression and arms ambitions had in fact been very effectively restrained, curbed and contained over the preceding years. In any dispassionate analysis, Iraq in March 2003 was not a serious threat in terms of WMD. Iraq had already been disarmed.

As we have found mass graves now.

 http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/10/278336.html

All our spying and aerial monitoring all this time did not know about something that we actively encouraged, started off and finished.

We had to invade to find mass graves and then declassify news that was censored in 1991-1992.
So cool.

Hang on – isn’t this Gordon Brown fellow the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

As such, didn't he sign the cheques to pay for Britain's contribution to the Iraq campaign?

Hasn't he been instrumental in the creation of New Labour, and hasn't he taken part in running the country since 1997?

Was 'old' Labour really so much better anyway?

Aren't the problems of the modern world a little more structural than your simplistic analysis suggests (something to do with capitalism, perhaps), rather than simply being all Tony's fault?

Wasn't the original Tom Paine situated firmly within the classical liberal tradition (apart from a few nods towards a limited and reformist welfare system)?

Admit it, 'Tom'. You're Paul Routledge.

Fuck it, open that door. The sooner people realise that parliamentary democracy is not the road to socialism, the better. Bring on GB, let's dispel a few illusions.

Once again, we were defending both ourselves and the safety and survival of civilization itself. September 11 signaled the arrival of an entirely different era. We faced perils we had never thought about, perils we had never seen before. For decades, terrorists had waged war against this country. Now, under the leadership of President Bush, America would wage war against them. It was a struggle between good and it was a struggle between evil.

It was absolutely clear that the number-one threat facing America was from Saddam Hussein. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda had high-level contacts that went back a decade. We learned that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and deadly gases. The regime had long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. Iraq and Al Qaeda had discussed safe-haven opportunities in Iraq. Iraqi officials denied accusations of ties with Al Qaeda. These denials simply were not credible. You couldn't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talked about the war on terror.

The fundamental question was, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer was, absolutely. His regime had large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox. Our conservative estimate was that Iraq then had a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical-weapons agent. That was enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets. We had sources that told us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons--the very weapons the dictator told the world he did not have. And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as forty-five minutes after the orders were given. There could be no doubt that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more.

Iraq possessed ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles--far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations. We also discovered through intelligence that Iraq had a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We were concerned that Iraq was exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States.

Saddam Hussein was determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. We knew he'd been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believed he had, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. The British government learned that Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources told us that he had attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear-weapons production. When the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied-finally denied access, a report came out of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I didn't know what more evidence we needed.

Facing clear evidence of peril, we could not wait for the final proof that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. The Iraqi dictator could not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Inspections would not work. We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. The burden was on those people who thought he didn't have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they were.

We waged a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it, but we fought it, and we prevailed. We fought them and imposed our will on them and we captured or, if necessary, killed them until we had imposed law and order. The Iraqi people were well on their way to freedom. The scenes of free Iraqis celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks, tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad were breathtaking. Watching them, one could not help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

It was entirely possible that in Iraq you had the most pro-American population that could be found anywhere in the Arab world. If you were looking for a historical analogy, it was probably closer to post-liberation France. We had the overwhelming support of the Iraqi people. Once we won, we got great support from everywhere.

The people of Iraq knew that every effort was made to spare innocent life, and to help Iraq recover from three decades of totalitarian rule. And plans were in place to provide Iraqis with massive amounts of food, as well as medicine and other essential supplies. The U.S. devoted unprecedented attention to humanitarian relief and the prevention of excessive damage to infrastructure and to unnecessary casualties.

The United States approached its postwar work with a two-part resolve: a commitment to stay and a commitment to leave. The United States had no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belonged to the Iraqi people. We have never been a colonial power. We do not leave behind occupying armies. We leave behind constitutions and parliaments. We don't take our force and go around the world and try to take other people's real estate or other people's resources, their oil. We never have and we never will.

The United States was not interested in the oil in that region. We were intent on ensuring that Iraq's oil resources remained under national Iraqi control, with the proceeds made available to support Iraqis in all parts of the country. The oil fields belonged to the people of Iraq, the government of Iraq, all of Iraq. We estimated that the potential income to the Iraqi people as a result of their oil could be somewhere in the $20 [billion] to $30 billion a year [range], and obviously, that would be money that would be used for their well-being. In other words, all of Iraq's oil belonged to all the people of Iraq.

e found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were.

We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We didn't want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We've tried every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to go to war than President Bush.

It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning. The number of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region dropped as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. There is a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain--he is no longer a threat to the free world, and the people of Iraq are free. There's no doubt in my mind when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind.


 http://www.harpers.org/online/revision_thing/?pg=1

You ARE aware that at least two of things you've just mentioned that we 'knew' and are therefore justification for the invasion and the slaughter of innocent Iraqis to save them from persecution have now been shown to be clumsy forgeries by US/UK intelligence organisations?

Ho hum, at least there's no doubt in your mind at all. They do say ignorance is bliss.