Preaching in the face of the facts (16 January 2003)
Published in Labour Left Briefing, February 2003.

For some time now, the Prime Minister has been speaking with a heady fervour about the supposed threat of Iraq's weapons. In his foreword to the dossier from last September, he staked his claim: "What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons".

With his certainty on the issue already proclaimed, Tony Blair has left himself with little reason to consider any evidence. Like the religious zealot who has already had his personal experience of the One Truth, the facts of the matter are either to be ignored or explained away with ever more tenuous appeals to the strength of his own conviction. Blair does not seem to realise that the issue is not what he personally believes; it is whether or not there is actually a real threat from Iraq's weapons.

However, with 150 UN inspections of 127 different sites inside Iraq by 8 January, there are plenty of new facts to take into account in an assessment of the existence of Iraq's weapons. The Blair dossier placed the Fallujah II plant, north of Baghdad, first on its inventory of Iraq's "production capabilities" for chemical weapons, as it produced chlorine. The CIA's report on Iraq's programmes from October 2002 was even more heated: Iraq was producing far more chlorine here than it needed for civilian uses, and Fallujah II provided "the best examples" of chemical weapons production capabilities. The judgement of the UN after the inspectors visited on 9 December 2002? "The chlorine plant is currently inoperative."

The self-proclaimed best example of weapons of mass destruction was thus no more than a faulty supposition built upon a false conjecture. The lesser examples fare no better. Take al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute, a prime "facility of concern" in the Blair dossier for the production of biological weapons, and highlighted by the CIA and US State Department in building their case for a war. The New York Times reporter who accompanied the inspectors from UNMOVIC described the site: "By the time the inspectors left the plant today, after four hours, they had concluded that the plant was no longer operational -- not for the production of toxins, and not for animal vaccines either. Reporters who were allowed to wander through the plant after the inspectors left found the place largely in ruins."

The alarmist case for Iraq's production of nuclear weapons has taken perhaps the most severe battering over the inspections period. Blair's case had been built primarily on three claims.

Firstly, satellite photos showed that Iraq had constructed new buildings at Tuweitha, a former nuclear site. Blair stood alongside Bush to proclaim that this meant Iraq's "threat is real". Contrast this to the description of a journalist from The Independent on 5 December 2002, who accompanied inspectors at Tuweitha: these buildings "appeared to be no more than a few sheds. Nor were there overt signs of the infrastructure needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Secondly, Blair's dossier claimed that aluminium tubes that Iraq was attempting to import could be used to build nuclear centrifuges, for enriching uranium. Wrong, replied the Director General of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the IAEA. "We believe, at this stage, that these aluminium tubes were intended for the manufacturing of rockets", he told the press on 9 January (Iraq is allowed to develop short-range rockets). He reaffirmed to the Security Council: "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."

Finally, and perhaps most remarkably, Blair's dossier claimed that "Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa". The US State Department later clarified that this was a reference to uranium from Niger. No-one seems to have told the Prime Minister of Niger to keep quiet. Iraq's attempt, he revealed, was in the early 1980s, and it failed. It doesn't reveal all that much about Iraq's current nuclear programme that it tried to buy natural uranium twenty years ago.

The head of the IAEA concluded to the Security Council on 9 January that "no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities has been detected" in the inspections. UNMOVIC and the IAEA reaffirm that inspections must continue in order to verify their initial inability to find any prohibited weapons inside Iraq, and to monitor sites at which they could be developed. They have also recognised that their inspections have deterred Iraq from attempting to acquire or build prohibited weapons.

As the US hawks point out, Iraq produced more weapons before 1991 than the UN has verified that Iraq has dismantled. Iraq claims that it destroyed these weapons in 1991 but failed to keep full records. It would be valuable to know what exactly had happened to these weapons, but a historical anomaly is not the same as a present threat. With the exception of one chemical agent, mustard, any stocks produced before 1991 will have decomposed by now.

It may just be possible that the Iraqi government has managed to hide functioning stocks of chemical and biological weapons where no inspector has thought of looking. But for Tony Blair to reiterate at his 13 January press conference that, on the basis of his now discredited dossier, "there is no doubt at all in our mind that Saddam has been trying to rebuild that arsenal of chemical, biological and potentially nuclear capability" shows that the only voice he has been paying attention to over the past two months is the little ill-informed one inside his own head.