Examination of Witness (Questions 140-156)
CLARE SHORT
MP
17 JUNE 2003
Q140 Andrew Mackinlay: Can I be devil's
advocate. It seems to me at some stage you have to blow the whistle
and say, "The game is over, the time has run out". Are
you not slightly confusing the decision to go war, which was taken
in the late summer/autumn, as the deadline? Either we have unimpeded
access for UN inspectors, full compliance or, in a sense, Saddam
triggers the tripwire?
Clare Short: There was a sleight
of hand over 1441. As I have said, assurances were given to the
Security Council that there was not automaticity, the thing the
French objected to, and if Saddam Hussein did not co-operate with
1441, it would come back to the Security Council and of course
Blix came back with his reports. Our Prime Minister had got himself
committed to the second resolution. I do not agree, 1441 was not
in terms which said, "Comply now or there is military action."
Q141 Andrew Mackinlay: No.
Clare Short: Therefore the second
resolution, therefore you are back to why not more time to do
it right but with an absolute determination to take action. You
have to take this point, if the real objective was to overthrow
the Saddam Hussein regime rather than the WMD, then there are
legal questions.
Q142 Andrew Mackinlay: Yes. But supposing
there had been more time but still no second resolution mandating,
where would you have stood then?
Clare Short: Then we would have
had to have the advice of the Attorney General and we got that
advice, very strangely, very late. By then there was agitation
in the Ministry of Defence that they would not go if it was not
legal. The published Attorney's advice—and the day Robin
Cook resigned from the Cabinet was the day we got it and he came
and sat in Robin's seat—and I saw everything but that was
all I ever saw and I did not see any longer papers from the Attorney
General. He said there was legal authority for conflict without
a second resolution. That caused surprise to some but I accept
that. This is our system. If our Attorney General says that, that
is the legal position. I still think we should have gone on to
see if Blix could work, but once we had that advice we knew we
could legally take military action even if it was impossible to
get a second resolution in the Security Council. We did not know
it until that date but from then on we knew it.
Q143 Andrew Mackinlay: It seems to
me, although you were not Foreign Minister you were in foreign
affairs in the broad sense, and it seems to me there would have
been cataclysmic consequences for the Atlantic Alliance, for perhaps
even the relationship of the United States with Europe, commitment
to NATO, many other things, if the United Kingdom had at the eleventh
hour said, "We are not going to play ball." The die
was cast.
Clare Short: No, I am sorry, this
is really important. That implies we had given our word earlier.
I am absolutely clear we had to mean resolving it this time but
it was not the eleventh hour and we had all worked together to
get 1441 and to get Blix in, and we should have had more time
and the UK could have been a really helpful player and helped
to try to get the international community together and try to
see if it could have been resolved together and if that had failed
then it would have come to military action as we took, and that
would have been a deeply honourable role. That is not what we
did. So I do not agree that all those things were at stake. I
think enormous harm has come out of what has been done. I think
probably very large numbers of recruits to al-Qaeda have come
out of what has been done.
Q144 Andrew Mackinlay: You raised
the question of the moral justification for war, proportionality
and last resort and so on, and the legal advice and so on, but
surely the kernel of this matter is that Saddam at the end of
the first Gulf War sought an armistice, it was granted subject
to conditions, he never complied, so surely the legal and the
moral basis is there, taking Thomas Aquinas on board. He abrogated
the armistice terms and basically there was a search warrant.
If a policeman turns up at your door and my door, you do not negotiate
with him, you either give him unimpeded access and full disclosure
or he has to force his way in.
Clare Short: The trouble with
that argument is that he is a monstrous dictator who has inflicted
enormous suffering on the people of Iraq and indeed endangered
neighbouring countries and defied the UN, and the people of Iraq
have suffered terrible and are suffering terribly. The teaching
on the just war and the law on the just war says, "no other
means". I think you could say it was a just cause, you can
argue proportionality because of the nature of the regime and
so on, but we did not exhaust "other means" and in the
teaching on the just war and politically that was a very big mistake.
The determination to take the route you are on, "We are fed
up, time is up, we are going to do it anyway" means our country
was deceived about what the plan really was.
Q145 Chairman: Roughly how many meetings
did you have with the chairman of the JIC or someone else briefing
you on the Iraq situation?
Clare Short: With the chairman
of the JIC I only went to that meeting when the groupings in the
Cabinet were being briefed, until the War Cabinet was set up and
he attended that daily. I saw representatives of SIC five or six
times, something like that.
Andrew Mackinlay: Chairman, does that
square with what we were told by the Security Intelligence Committee?
Chairman: That is one thing for the Committee
to discuss.
Andrew Mackinlay: Can you put that to
Clare because she might be unaware that the Annual Report says
that the Intelligence and Security Committee says that, "Ministers
confirm they were given the JIC papers which their private offices
believed they needed to see. Officials in the Department drew
papers to the ministers' department and reflected their ministers'
views at JIC meetings."
Q146 Chairman: Do you dissent from
that?
Clare Short: I saw the JIC papers,
and they became more frequent. That is the assessment then of
the intelligence. I was never asked to comment on them or feed
into meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee but I read all
those papers.
Q147 Chairman: You read them?
Clare Short: I did not meet the
chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee when I read those papers.
Q148 Chairman: When you met him,
that was before the dossier of 24 September?
Clare Short: No, I do not think
it was, I think it was afterwards. It was quite late on, the meetings
of groups from the Cabinet. They must have given you the date
of that.
Q149 Chairman: What briefing did
you get before the 24 September dossier?
Clare Short: As I said, personally
I was reading all the raw intelligence and the JIC reports regularly.
And I had had individual briefings.
Q150 Chairman: Did you conclude there
was any discrepancy between what you had heard and what you had
read and what appeared in that document?
Clare Short: As I said earlier,
it is spin, it is exaggeration of imminent threat. There is no
dispute on the fact the regime is resisting the UN, committed
to chemical and biological weapons and had ballistic missiles
with too great a range, it is how you present how imminent the
danger is as a result of that. That is where I think the exaggeration
took place.
Q151 Chairman: From your contacts
with members of the agencies, did you have any indication of any
dissent, any concern about exaggeration?
Clare Short: You have asked me
that already. This dispute came later. Once the conflict started
I attended the daily Cabinet but I ceased to have—well,
I had a couple of personal chats in the margin, I suppose—those
individual briefings. It was too late then.
Q152 Chairman: But the imminent threat
appeared on the 24 September dossier. There were a number of occasions
when you met these people, when you would have had the opportunity
to express your views.
Clare Short: Indeed. As I said
to you, senior people in the system said to me that a date had
been fixed sometime ago.
Q153 Chairman: Did they express their
concern about any exaggeration in the document?
Clare Short: No, we did not have
that conversation. There was concern about whether a date had
been fixed and there were people who were very keen on a second
resolution.
Q154 Chairman: A very final question,
are there any matters which you want to raise which we have asked
you which you would like to leave with the Committee?
Clare Short: I would like to mention—and
I have just mentioned it in the exchange here—the incompetence
of ORHA and the failure to take seriously the Attorney General's
advice prior to the passing of the Security Council Resolution
which then authorised the coalition to act in ways that have not
previously been seen as the powers of an occupying power. I think
that is a very serious question which helps to explain the disorder
we have in Iraq. There is also the very serious constitutional
issue of how important is the Attorney's advice. I thought it
was sacrosanct, yet it was brushed to one side. He wanted to negotiate
a memorandum of understanding with the US so British people who
were put into ORHA, British public servants, would be protected
to comply with legality, but the US would not do it. I think that
is another extremely serious question. The question of the Attorney's
advice and what is his power and what is supposed to happen in
our system when it has been given, needs further examination.
Q155 Chairman: The advice you are
referring to is the limits of the occupying powers?
Clare Short: Absolutely, which
was later leaked. I would like to draw your attention to it. I
think it is another very serious set of issues.
Q156 Chairman: It is your judgment
that those concerns have been overridden by the subsequent UN
Security Council Resolution?
Clare Short: I am sure they have
legally. Once the Security Council has passed a resolution, it
has authorised the coalition to behave in ways which the advice
said it could not. So there was an interim period when that advice
was ignored. It seems to me this is extremely serious—systems
of government, powers of the Attorney General, how are you supposed
to operate as an occupying power—which I ask you to look
at.
Chairman: You have been very helpful.
I am sure the Committee will ponder and reflect on your concerns.
Many thanks.
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