Inquiry finds Blair didn’t lie about Iraq

LONDON – British intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities was “seriously flawed,” but there is no evidence to suggest that Prime Minister Tony Blair deliberately misled the public to make a case for war, an official inquiry has found.

The Butler Inquiry’s report, published Wednesday, said that Iraq “did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment or developed plans for using them” and that intelligence sources used to support claims to the contrary were “open to doubt.”

To Blair’s relief, the much-anticipated, 160-page report was far less critical than many had expected.

“No one lied, no one made up the intelligence,” Blair told Parliament. “Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty.”

Blair’s popularity has plummeted since the Iraq war, and there was much speculation that a highly critical report from the Butler Inquiry might have prompted the prime minister’s resignation.

Lord Robin Butler, a career civil servant and former secretary of the Cabinet, headed a five-member committee that was asked to examine Britain’s prewar intelligence-gathering in Iraq after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. The committee questioned Blair, senior members of his government and top intelligence officials. The most contentious issue taken up by the inquiry was the claim, published in a September 2002 dossier issued by Blair’s office, that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons that could be deployed within 45 minutes.

Butler faulted the September dossier for not explaining that the “eye-catching” 45-minute claim referred to “battlefield” munitions only. He also said the September dossier should have made clear the “thinness of the evidence” on which that claim was based. The failure to do so was a “serious failing,” he said.

“More weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear,” said Butler, but he added that “there is no doubt the government believed the judgments behind the dossier.”

Blair, appearing in the House of Commons immediately after the release of the report, said he “fully accepts” the Butler inquiry’s criticisms, and acknowledged that claims about Iraq’s weapons stockpiles were “less certain, less well-founded than stated at the time.”

Blair also suggested that “the issue of good faith should now be at an end.”

But the prime minister’s critics do not appear ready to let the matter drop. Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said the Butler report raised serious questions about Blair’s credibility.

Although the Conservatives still generally back the war in Iraq, Howard said, “The issue is the prime minister’s credibility. The question he must ask himself is, does he have any credibility left?” The most persistent charge leveled against the Blair government is that it “sexed up” the intelligence to sell the war to a skeptical public. Perhaps the most pointed criticism came from panel member Peter Inge, a former chief of the defense staff, who said that “intelligence and public relations must be kept separate.”

But compared with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings last week on the CIA’s shortcomings, Britain’s intelligence services were let off lightly by Butler.

Butler blamed budget cuts, structural problems and the lack of reliable sources in Iraq for the poor quality of the intelligence.

The report said Britain’s intelligence services, unlike those in the U.S., had not been overly dependent on the claims of Iraqi dissidents.

It also found no evidence to suggest a link between Iraq and al Qaeda, and dismissed U.S. claims that a shipment of aluminum tubes was proof of an effort to revive a nuclear weapons program.

It did, however, back a British intelligence finding – now rejected by the U.S. – that Iraq tried to purchase “yellow cake” uranium from the African country of Niger, and also from Congo.

Blair, in his remarks to Parliament, insisted that even if the intelligence was wrong, the decision to go to war against Iraq was correct.

Echoing President Bush, Blair said, “I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam.”