The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), after 17 months of hunting through Iraq and interviewing hundreds of members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this week delivered a verdict unhelpful to George W Bush or Tony Blair: that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when they went to war and that there was no imminent threat.
Bush and Blair will have to take comfort in the ISG’s conclusion that Hussein intended to resurrect his WMD programme as soon as the United Nations sanctions, imposed in 1991, were lifted.
They will also find solace in the report’s disclosures of the extent to which, as the British Foreign Office long claimed, France and Russia received millions in oil revenues in expectation that they would use their influence in the UN Security Council on behalf of Iraq.
The 1 200-page report also lists individuals, such as Russia’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Liberal Democratic party leader, and the former French defence minister, Pierre Joxe, as beneficiaries of Iraqi money; the latter claim based on an Iraqi intelligence report.
The report concludes: ”ISG has not found evidence that Hussein possessed WMD stocks in 2003 but the available evidence from its investigation — including detainee interviews and document exploitation — leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability.”
The conclusion undermines Blair and Bush’s repeated claims before the war that, based on US and British intelligence reports, including the two infamous British dossiers, there was conclusive evidence that Hussein had stockpiles of WMD and posed a clear and imminent threat.
The mystery has been why Hussein refused to comply fully with the UN, given that he no longer possessed WMD. The ISG focuses on Hussein’s psychology, suggesting that he was driven by two opposing requirements: one to have sanctions lifted by persuading the UN he no longer had WMD and the other to persuade his own military, his internal enemies and neighbouring countries, primarily Iran, that he had WMD.
In a stunning insight into Hussein’s preparations for war provided by the former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, the report describes how he called his senior military officers together in December 2002, only three months before the invasion and informed them that he had no WMD.
The basis on which Britain went to war is undercut by the report, the most comprehensive study to date of the threat posed by WMD. Bush and Blair will be forced in future to fall back on the claim that even if Hussein did not pose a threat at the time, he would have done so a few years later.
The report provides supporting evidence for that, based on interviews with former members of the regime. About 500 ministers, officials, officers and scientists were questioned. The consensus was that once the sanctions were lifted Hussein would embark on a chemical weapons programme and a ballistic missiles programme.
”The Iraq Survey Group has uncovered no evidence Iraq retained Scud-variant missiles, and debriefings of Iraqi officials in addition to some documentation suggests that Iraq did not retain such missiles after 1991.”
Iraq was allowed to retain missiles with a range of up to 150km. When the UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in January last year, after an absence of two years, they found missiles with a range of 165km. This was seized on by the US and British governments as evidence of non-compliance, but opponents of the war regarded the extra 15km as insignificant in terms of targets that Iraq could threaten.
The report suggests that Hussein’s ambition went much further than 165km, and that he had plans or designs for ballistic missiles with ranges of between 400km and for a 1 000km and a 1 000km cruise missile.
In one of the British dossiers on WMD it was claimed that Hussein had missiles capable of reaching Cyprus, which has a British military base, allowing Blair to claim there was a direct threat to Britain. In reality, Hussein had no such weapons, but Blair can now point to the ISG to claim he had ambitions to extend his reach.
”Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a chemical warfare effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favourable.”
In spite of Bush and Blair’s protestations to the contrary and the issuing of US and British military with chemical warfare suits going into battle, the report concludes that Iraq, in compliance with the UN, got rid of its chemical warfare capability after the 1991 Gulf war.
Bush and Blair will again have to justify the war in terms of Hussein’s intentions rather than the reality. The report concludes that Iraq maintained scientists with the knowledge to produce chemical weapons and new chemical plants from the 1990s onwards that were capable of producing such weapons. Such weapons could be manufactured within a matter of weeks or months.
The ISG sees chemical weapons as the main threat. Almost no trace is found of a biological weapons programme, although the ISG argues that it is easier to hide, only small amounts are needed and that such a programme could be found within a matter of weeks.
On nuclear weapons, the ISG said that Hussein wanted a nuclear capability and would have sought to develop one after sanctions were lifted, but there was no evidence of any such programme in Iraq. The ISG dismisses the idea that aluminium tubes, claimed by the US as part of a nuclear programme, were intended for use as weapons. It takes a neutral position on the idea, still pursued by British intelligence but rubbished in the US, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger.
The ISG report is intended as the final word from the US and British governments on WMD. But there are a few questions left over for further investigation, mainly a claim that Hussein smuggled some WMD to Syria on the eve of the war. The ISG says that the question remains open, though it is difficult to square this with the report’s assertion that Hussein would have used WMD to protect his regime. If that claim is true, it is hardly likely he would have moved them over the border.
”Saddam’s regime, in order to induce France to aid in getting sanctions lifted, targeted friendly companies and foreign political parties that possessed either extensive business ties to Iraq or held pro-Iraq positions. In addition, Iraq sought out individuals whom they believed were in a position to influence foreign policy.”
This is the freshest and politically most combustible part of the report. France will have to challenge the assertions. Similar claims are made about Russia.
The central allegation is that Hussein creamed off Iraq’s oil revenues under a programme set up by the UN to alleviate the impact of sanctions. Iraq’s oil was intended to buy food for its population. Instead, Hussein used it to try to secure influence to block moves hostile to Iraq by the US and Britain in the UN Security Council and to promote resolutions favourable to Iraq.
Both France and Russia, as permanent members of the security council, were in an ideal position to influence deliberations.
Since the late 1990s and into the new century, the US State Department and the British Foreign Office have claimed that French and Russian opposition to sanctions in Iraq and the subsequent move to war was based not purely on humanitarian motives but, at least in part, on financial considerations. The ISG report provides support for that contention.
Similar allegations, including a list of people said to have benefited, were published by an Iraqi paper in January this year. But the ISG report goes further. Among the new claims is that the then Iraqi ambassador to Paris, Razzaq al-Hashimi, handed $1-million to the French socialist party in 1988. The claim is based on an Iraqi intelligence report dated September 1992 and captured after the invasion. — Â