LONDON, 18 June 2003 — Britain went to war against Iraq with information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that was “highly suggestible,” former minister Robin Cook said yesterday at the start of a Parliament inquiry.
Cook stopped short of accusing Prime Minister Tony Blair of lying in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, which Blair justified in terms of ridding Saddam Hussein’s regime of weapons of mass destruction.
But he said that a controversial dossier, published last September, on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction was “highly suggestible” and contained no fresh evidence that Saddam had such firepower in his arsenal.
“The dossier is a spectacular own goal ... there is very little in that document to suggest a new or alarming threat,” said Cook.
Clare Short, who like Cook quit Blair’s Cabinet in protest over the war, testified that the prime minister was guilty of “honorable deception” in the run-up to the war.
Cook and Short were the first to testify in an inquiry by the House of Commons foreign affairs committee into how the decision to take Britain to war against Iraq was taken.
Blair himself has declined to face the MPs, though Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is to testify twice — once in public next Tuesday, and later behind closed doors.
The probe and a parallel investigation by the intelligence and security committee were launched amid a furor over claims that the September dossier was “sexed up” to beef up the case for military action.
In particular, the 50-page dossier claimed that Iraq had the ability to deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes. Blair denies that line was included over the reservations of intelligence chiefs.
Cook quit Blair’s government on March 18 to protest that the war was launched without a clear mandate from the United Nations.
As leader of the House of Commons, responsible for organizing the government’s legislative program, Cook was a member of Blair’s inner cabinet, and would have been privy to prewar decision-making. So too was Short, who quit on May 12 as international development minister.
Short testified that she had been told by MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency, that while Iraq was hiding the work of its weapons scientists, “the risk of use (of weapons of mass destruction) was less.”
She said she had access to intelligence, and had seen all material on Iraq, but only after she had “made a fuss” and made a direct appeal to Blair to overcome resistance from Downing Street staff. She said MI6 believed that Iraqi scientists were still working on chemical and biological weapons programs, but the public was led to believe that Saddam had weapons ready to use.
