"Iraq's weapons of mass destruction: the assessment of the British government", 24 September 2002: Problems, contradictions, falsehoods.

I'm dividing this presentation into 5 groups of claims. As a whole, the dossier does not make all that many sweeping allegations, as government ministers went onto make from early 2003. However, a considerable amount of it is still open to criticism.

1. The sites mentioned in the dossier have been found not to contain any weapons of mass destruction.
2. There are two direct claims in the dossier which have subsequently been shown to be false.
3. There are claims about prohibited weapons that is highly unlikely Iraq has.
4. The document claims that Iraq has managed to retain stockpiles of weapons from before 1990, which is highly unlikely.
5. The Prime Minister's foreword is an exaggeration.

The dossier is at:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp

Much of the September dossier is about places in Iraq that it claims "are capable of being used" for producing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The dossier does not at any point say that these facilities are being used for such weapons, but it provides large satellite photographs of these sites together with some details about how the facility has been rebuilt, who runs it, etc.

All these sites were visited by weapons inspectors soon after they entered Iraq on 27 November 2002. Here is a list of the sites that are mentioned in the dossier, together with the date on which they were first visited:

• Fallujah II (p.20) - 9 December
• Ibn Sina, Tarmiyya (p.20) - 11 December
• al-Qa Qaa (p.20) - 9 December
• al-Sharqat (p.21) - 2 January 2003
• Fallujah III (p.22) - 8 December
• al-Dawrah (p.22) - 28 November
• Amariyah (p.22) - 15 December
• al-Rafah / Shahiyat (p.29) - 27 November

At none of these sites were any traces of prohibited weapons found. Here is a description provided by one journalist of al-Dawrah Vaccine Institute on inspection:

I should make clear: the dossier does not contain any "lies" with regard to these facilities. It however does raise suspicions about the sites that were found to be groundless. This point was made by the then Foreign Office minister, Mike O'Brien, in a parliamentary answer on 22 January 2003:

(i) As part of its claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear programme, the dossier claims on p.25:

According to the US State Department, the country in question that they claimed Iraq was trying to import uranium from was Niger, in West Africa.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/16118pf.htm

On 7 March 2003, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, revealed to the Security Council that the allegations were centred around "documents provided by a number of States that pointed to an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the sale of uranium between 1999 and 2001." After reviewing the evidence extensively - including "correspondence coming from various bodies of the Government of Niger" - and "compar[ing] the form, format, contents and signatures of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation", ElBaradei gave his assessment of the reliability of this information:

ElBaradei concluded: "There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990."

http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml

According to reports, the documents provided by the British and American governments to the IAEA were letters supposedly from members of the government of Niger. "One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked [..]"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1

How it was that the UK passed such obvious forgeries onto the IAEA without noticing that they were forged, and made them the basis of its claims about Iraq's nuclear programme, remains a mystery. However it could be put down to seizing whatever indications that they have, without properly investigating them, and attempting to build a case for an invasion upon them.

(ii) The second claim made three times in the dossier is that Saddam Hussein's "military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them." (from the Prime Minister's foreword).

Adam Ingram, defence minister, has now acknowledged that this claim came from a single source. According to an intelligence official who spoke to BBC Radio 4, this claim had never been accepted by the intelligence agencies as reliable.

It has also been contradicted by Tony Blair himself after the invasion, at his 28 April monthly press conference, when he said:

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page3535.asp

That is, Blair said that six months before inspectors entered -- May 2002 -- Iraq had disassembled its weapons into a condition under which they could not easily be used in conflict - he says that intelligence left "no doubt in [his] mind" about this. This flatly contradicts his claim in September 2002 that Iraq could have used these weapons at 45 minutes notice.

One of the most prominent claims in the dossier is on p.28 that:

There are pictures of what these missiles would look like which we looked over in the interview.

The weapons inspectors found no sign of these missiles. But perhaps the decisive evidence comes not only from the fact that they weren't used against US/UK forces (whilst other short-range missiles were), but most importantly because finding them does not seem to be a priority for the US/UK. The dossier claims that Qusai Hussein (Saddam's son) has authority to use chemical and biological weapons: he is still at large. If the UK really believed that there were 20 hidden missiles capable of hitting Cyprus or Israel with chemical or biological warheads, and that these missiles were under the control of someone who is still not found, then surely finding and destroying them would be the highest priority?

Instead, this is what Tony Blair has had to say in Poland on 30 May:

"We have only just begun the process now of investigating all the various sites. We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons, but this is a process that is going to go on over the coming weeks and months. It is not the most urgent priority now for us since Saddam has gone. So you are just going to have to have a little bit of patience."

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page3786.asp

Either this policy is exceedingly reckless, or he does not consider his original claims about Iraq's missiles valid.

(D) The document claims that Iraq has managed to retain stockpiles of weapons from before 1990, which is highly unlikely.

The dossier claims at p.23 that "Iraq has chemical and biological agents and weapons available [..] from pre-Gulf War stocks".

In other words, it is claiming that Iraq has managed to retain stockpiles of these weapons for 12 years. This is not credible, and can be contrasted with the findings of the weapons inspectors.

Iraq produced 4 sets of chemical agents (1. VX, 2. sarin, 3. tabun, 4. mustard) and 3 sets of biological agents (5. anthrax, 6. botulinum toxin, 7. aflatoxin) in bulk that it weaponised before 1991. All of these, except mustard, would have degenerated within 5 to 10 years. These are the relevant quotes from the 173-page report of the weapons inspectors, entitled "Unresolved disarmament issues" (6 March 2003), which is at http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/6mar.pdf:

1. "VX produced through route B must be used relatively quickly after production (about 1 to 8 weeks), which would probably be satisfactory for wartime requirements." (p.82)

[NB: Iraq produced the 1.5 tonnes of VX referred to on p.16 of the dossier using the method the inspectors called "route B". There are other ways to produce VX, but the quantity of VX that the government is referring to was produced in this unstable form]

2. "According to documents discovered by UNSCOM in Iraq, the purity of Sarin-type agents produced by Iraq were on average below 60%, and dropped below Iraq’s established quality control acceptance level of 40% by purity some 3 to 12 months after production." (p.72)

3. "documentary evidence suggests that Tabun was produced using process technology and quality control methodologies that would result in the agent being degraded to a very low quality through the action of a resulting by-product." (p.68)

4. mustard produced before 1991 would still be viable today.

5. anthrax can only be stored for ten years or more if it is dried. But the weapons inspectors recorded: "UNMOVIC has no evidence that drying of anthrax or any other agent in bulk was conducted." (p.120)

6. "any such stockpiles of botulinum toxin, whether in bulk storage or in weapons that remained in 1991, would not be active today." (p.101)

7. on aflatoxin: "Such stocks would have degraded and would contain little if any viable agent in 2003" (p.105).

In summary, all chemical and biological agents that Iraq produced before 1991 - with the one exception of the chemical agent of mustard gas - would have degenerated by now. In particular, the claim that Iraq could still have biological agents left over from 1991 -- a claim that the document does make -- is contradicted by the findings of the weapons inspectors.

(E) The Prime Minister's foreword is an exaggeration.

The Prime Minister begins his dossier by stating:

The assessments of the UN weapons inspectors are strikingly different:

IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, statement to the Security Council, 7 March 2003:

http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml

UNMOVIC working document, "Unresolved Disarmament Issues" (6 March 2003), p.15:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/cluster.htm

UNMOVIC Executive-Chairman Hans Blix, interview with the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel, 23 May 2003:

quoted in http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,962405,00.html

Author: Glen Rangwala

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