Britain went to war against Iraq on an “assumption” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair’s closest adviser told the Chilcot inquiry yesterday.
However, Jonathan Powell, the former Prime Minister’s chief of staff, said that intelligence on WMD was not the pivotal factor in Mr Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq.
There was a long-standing “assumption” that Saddam had WMD because he had used them in the past, Mr Powell said. Without intelligence evidence that he had destroyed his stockpiles, the Government continued to believe that he must still have them.
Mr Powell admitted that Mr Blair’s claim in a foreword to the September 2002 intelligence dossier that it was “beyond doubt” that Saddam had WMD would “obviously be better” if it matched up with the rest of the document. But he said that the dossier’s importance had been overstated.
The inquiry also heard that:
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?The Attorney-General was ordered by Mr Blair to provide definitive advice on the Iraq war less than two weeks before the invasion after initially warning that it could be illegal;
?Colin Powell, the former US Defence Secretary, repeatedly asked Mr Blair to persuade Mr Bush to continue with sanctions rather than take military action;
?Mr Blair was first told of US plans to overthrow Saddam in March 2002 but did not give President Bush “an undertaking in blood” to join the invasion.
Mr Powell, Mr Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007, told the inquiry: “We had that assumption because Saddam Hussein had lied about using WMD and he had lied about getting rid of them. We had bombed Iraq in 1998 on that basis and it would have taken some quite strong evidence to suggest he had got rid of them.”
“We didn’t really have any doubts about it and I don’t think other people had any doubts about it.”
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He revealed the shock in Downing Street when it was discovered that Saddam had dismantled his WMD programme before the war, but said that the lack of evidence was not a reason for delaying the invasion.
“When our forces went in, we were absolutely amazed to discover there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “We were wrong, the intelligence was wrong, so no matter how long you carried out inspections they weren’t going to find anything.”
Mr Powell said that he could not recall seeing intelligence that would justify Mr Blair’s statement to MPs in September 2002 that Saddam’s WMD programme was “active, detailed and growing”.
Sir Roderic Lyne, a member of the inquiry panel, said that it was “struggling to find evidence” to support the claim.
Mr Powell defended his own role in the September dossier, saying he asked for the removal of a reference to Saddam only using WMDs for defensive purposes to ensure it was “more accurate”. He said with the benefit of hindsight it would have been better to present the raw reports of the Joint Intelligence Committee rather than compiling them into a dossier.
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Mr Blair and Mr Bush discussed Saddam the day after the 9/11 terror attacks in September 2001, he told the inquiry. Dick Cheney, then the US Vice-President, told Mr Blair about the plans to overthrow Saddam during a visit to London in March 2002.
The following month Mr Blair had a private meeting at the President’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, where they discussed Saddam. Mr Powell said that Mr Blair then sent Mr Bush the first of a series of private notes warning of the need to be prepared if things became “militarily tricky”. “There was not an undertaking in blood to go to war with Iraq. There was no firm decision to go to war,” he told the inquiry. “We were offering [President Bush] a partnership ... but being with the Americans didn’t necessarily mean going to war.”
Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the inquiry, said that even after the United Nations approved resolution 1441 in November 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, did not appear convinced that “it would be a secure basis” for military action.
Mr Powell said: “My experience of lawyers is often you have ‘On the one hand, on the other’, but sometimes they have to come down on a decision one way or another on an issue. You cannot have it both ways and I think that is what is happening in this period.”