by Cary Gee
PETER KILFOYLE has called for a “fully independent judicial inquiry” into why Britain went to war following new allegations that intelligence staff were leaned on by a senior official from the Ministry of Defence during the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Mr Kilfoyle, Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, says an inquiry is vital after the publication of an email correspondence between officials – whose names have been deleted – which refer to “iffy drafting” of a dossier warning of Iraq’s weapons capability.
He said: “This latest twist represents more obfuscation and circumvention of the truth and previous inquiries have suffered from too narrow frames of reference. Embarrassing questions like those posed by these emails need to be asked and answered.”
In one email exchange one unnamed official tells another, with reference to an earlier version of the dossier: “Given how long we have been drafting this paper, I think we could probably say ‘We judge that at least 50 [Radioactive Dispersal Devices] probably more… have been produced’ instead of ‘intelligence indicates that at least 50 have been produced’,” dismissing the earlier expert estimate by the Joint Intelligence Committee, as “very approximate”.
A later email questions “the fact that at least some require re-assembly makes it difficult to judge exactly how many could be available for use” and suggests inserting “we do not know their true state of readiness” instead. The emailer insists that “This formula has been used in previous assessments and covers variables other than just whether all [weapons] are fully assembled.”
The memo was mailed to Sir John Scarlett, then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, by Des Bowen, a senior official at the MoD who was seconded to the Cabinet Office. The memo reveals that wording of the dossier was not the only area of disagreement in the build-up to the war.
Britain disagreed with the Bush administration on the effectiveness of sanctions against Iraq, saying that “Iraq could build a bomb in five years if sanctions have gone away” and the United States insisting that Iraq could build a bomb within five years regardless of sanctions.
