On a television programme about religion, Tony Blair made his confession: weapons of mass destruction, the stated aim for going to war with Iraq, were merely an excuse and not the reason.
Asked by Fern Britton if he had known then what he knows now, would he still have gone to war, the former Prime Minister replied that he would have done because “it was the right thing to do”. He added that he would have deployed different arguments.
And that’s a rather different argument from the now notorious and false claim that the Iraqi military were able to deploy chemical or biological weapons at British bases within 45 minutes of an order being given. That was an argument with a claim designed to deceive.
While the members of the Chilcot Inquiry are not entirely forensic in their interrogations, the investigation has already served a useful purpose. First, it has forced Blair to pre-empt his evidence to it and shift his public position from the case for war being predicated on the threat of Saddam’s WMDs to the argument that Saddam was a menace to the Middle East region.
Second, Chilcot has been a master class in mandarin-speak, with a trail of former ambassadors, foreign policy advisors and military personnel distancing themselves from their former boss. They have seized the opportunity to try to set the record straight and salvage their own reputations from the consequence of the disastrous conflict.
Sir John Scarlett, onetime chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, admitted that the 45 minutes claim “did not refer to ballistic missiles”. It would have been better if that fact had not got “lost in translation”.
Yet those making the case for war were happy for a mistranslation at the time. And it worked, with the media serving up headlines that placed drama above accuracy: “45 minutes from attack” – the London Evening Standard, “Saddam can strike in 45 minutes” – the Daily Express and “He’s got ’em – let’s get him”. That last one was from The Sun – then Labour’s favourite newspaper.
Blair derided his opponents who questioned the existences of WMDs. “We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he [Saddam] decided unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd.”
Millions of deaths later, we know now just how far from absurd it was. Unfortunately, when it had an opportunity to strike a blow against the presidential style of Blair’s Government by voting against war, the House of Commons failed to take it.
MPs were duped. Worse, they were misled. They should have put their trust in the two million people who took to the streets of London to demonstrate against war.
They should have followed the United Nations and they should have listened to Robin Cook, who was aware of the intelligence but, because he was not fixated on “regime change”, drew other conclusions about it.
After he had resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war, Cook made what is rightly regarded as one of the finest speeches ever heard in the Commons.
He said: “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term – namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?”
Cook then asked another question: “Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?”
We now have Blair’s answer. The weapons were a cynical ploy to try to get a UN resolution and the acquiescence of his Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues.
We are told leadership is a lonely business and that Blair had to take a decision and get on with leading. But what followed was a war that divided the country, divided political parties and failed to win the support of the UN. It was not a decision for Blair alone to make. If Parliament hadn’t been misled on WMD, it is unlikely MPs would have voted to invade Iraq and the war would not have gone ahead – or would have gone ahead without this country’s participation.
Blair would have been forced to renege on whatever commitment he had given George W Bush at his Texas ranch. Bush and the Americans would have had to go it alone.
Blair is due to give evidence to Chilcot early next year. We are assured that anything to do with “regime change” will be heard in public. If the inquiry is to have any credibility, there must be no backtracking on that commitment.
Blair can still rest assured he is among friends. Chilcot is the political establishment writ large. Blair’s calculation in speaking out during his interview with Fern Britton held risks, but he knows the establishment is unlikely to let him down.
