LONDON, 13 October 2004 — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was pressed yesterday for a “full apology” on how his government presented intelligence to the public as it built its case for the war in Iraq.
During a grilling in Parliament, opposition Conservative member Gary Streeter accused the Labour government of “stripping out” caveats from the intelligence before making its arguments publicly.
Streeter then demanded “a full apology — not an apology for the intelligence, but an apology for the way that the intelligence was conveyed by the government to the country.”
Streeter is foreign affairs spokesman for the Conservative Party, which supported the decision to invade Iraq but has sharply criticized the government for the ensuing chaos there.
Straw replied by referring to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s qualified apology to the Labour Party conference two weeks earlier — a conference that could be the last before general elections expected next May.
“The problem is I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can’t sincerely at least apologize for removing Saddam,” Blair said on Sept. 28.
The give-and-take in the House of Commons came after the Iraq Survey Group reported in Washington last week that President Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the conflict last year.
They also came a week after Straw made a surprise visit to Iraq, and after the beheading of British hostage Ken Bigley — an event that revived public fury over Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq. In a statement that preceded the challenge from Streeter, Straw had insisted his government was right to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 even though “some of the intelligence was wrong.”
“I do not accept, even with hindsight, that we were wrong to act as we did,” Straw said in the House of Commons. Though Straw admitted that some of the intelligence was incorrect, he insisted: “I continue to believe the judgments we made and the actions we took were right.”
To have given Saddam the benefit of the doubt at the time would have required “a huge leap of faith,” Straw said. “We would have had to conclude that all the intelligence — not just our own, but from many other agencies around the world — was wrong,” Straw said.
“Although we can now see that some of the intelligence was wrong, I continue to believe the judgments we made and the actions we took were right.
“It was the whole of the international community and every one of the 15 members of the Security Council which concluded that Saddam posed a threat to international peace and security.” Looking forward, Straw said logistical preparations were moving ahead for Iraq’s elections in January.
“Successful national elections would deal a huge blow to the terrorists and insurgents who reject the ballot box and seek to rule with the bullet and the bomb,” he said Streeter also joined a chorus of statements of condolences, including from Straw, for Bigley’s family, and expressed outrage over his execution.
Streeter asked what confidence Straw had that his murderers could be captured and brought to justice while seeking details about the part which ministers played in the government’s efforts to secure Bigley’s release.
