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The Prime Minister:
The JIC assessments are set out in Butler. However, the UN resolution accepted as a fact that Saddam was a WMD threat. Once that was secured, the question was whether we would enforce the UN resolutions, or not. Our intelligence community—like the UN and, as far as I am aware, most intelligence services in the world—certainly believed that Saddam had WMD weapons, capability and intent.
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The Prime Minister: I said that I would give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), but then I must make progress. I am sorry about that.
Mr. Savidge: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Am I not correct in thinking that Dr. Blix communicated to the Prime Minister the fact that the inspectors believed that they were getting a far greater degree of co-operation than ever before? Admittedly that was under the pressure of a military threat, but does that not mean that it could have been worth giving the inspectors time to complete their job and to prove what we have now found?
The Prime Minister: At some point I may go into all the detailed conversations that I had with Dr. Blix. However, the basic position was that the inspectors told me that there was some co-operation, but that there was not full co-operation. The problem is that that is precisely what the Iraqi regime had offered before. If one goes back over the 12 years of Saddam Hussein and of the whole saga with the UN, one finds that it was not the case that he never co-operated with the inspectors. From time to time he would co-operate, usually when there was a threat of military action.
I remember that it was in February 1998 that we first gave Saddam a strong and clear indication that military action would follow if he did not co-operate. As a result, he started to co-operate a bit more, and there was an elaborate dance throughout the rest of the year. Finally, in December 1998, the inspectors were not able to get access to some of the places that they wanted to see. They left, and effectively we took military action to try and do what we could to deal with the threat that was posed.
Saddam Hussein, however, was never prepared to co-operate fully—and I think that the reasons for that are to be found in the Butler report. Whatever the truth in respect of readily deployable weapons was, part of the trouble is that people have gone to the opposite extreme. They say that there was nothing there at all and that there was no threat. That that was not the case is absolutely clear, and some of the intelligence remains entirely valid. It was absolutely clear that he had every intention of carrying on developing those weapons, that he was procuring materials to do so and—for example, in respect of ballistic missiles—he was going way beyond what was permitted by the United Nations.
I return to the central point. There was little doubt about the breach of UN resolutions, and in the debate on 18 March 2003 the House rightly took the view that there was no way that he would co-operate fully, and therefore that we had to take military action.
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con):
The Prime Minister appears to be leaving the question of what he told the country about the intelligence. He has referred, briefly, to the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments. They all make it clear, in terms, that the intelligence on which they were based was sporadic,
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patchy, little and limited. Why did the Prime Minister say that the intelligence was extensive, detailed and authoritative?
The Prime Minister: The right hon. and learned Gentleman must have been asleep earlier in the debate, for which I apologise. The phrase "sporadic and patchy" appeared in the assessment dated 15 March 2002. He keeps trying to suggest that it appeared in the later assessment: it did not. It was in the earlier assessment. In the assessment of 9 September 2002, it does say that the intelligence remains limited, but the JIC then goes on to make its judgments. If necessary, I shall read them all out to the House—[Hon. Members: "Yes."] All right.
"Iraq has a chemical and biological weapons capability and Saddam is prepared to use it."
"Faced with the likelihood of military defeat and being removed from power, Saddam is unlikely to be deterred from using chemical and biological weapons by any diplomatic or military means."
I am going on and on—[Hon. Members: "More."] Let me give two other judgments that are relevant:
"we judge that . . . Iraq currently has available, either from pre Gulf War stocks or more recent production, a number of biological warfare . . . and chemical warfare . . . agents and weapons",
"even if stocks of chemical and biological weapons are limited, they would allow for focused strikes against key military targets or for strategic purposes (such as a strike against Israel or Kuwait)".
The judgment then details that point over many pages.
I must say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it is absurd to suggest that anyone, given that JIC assessment, would have said, "Saddam Hussein? Weapons of mass destruction? I don't think that's much of a problem."
Mr. Howard: The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that that is not what I was suggesting. He has read out the conclusions of the assessments: I am asking about the nature of the intelligence on which those conclusions were based. The assessments were themselves stated to be on the basis of intelligence that was sporadic and patchy, little and limited. The Prime Minister told the country that the basis of the intelligence
"is extensive, detailed and authoritative."—[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c. 3.]
That was wrong. Why did he say that to the country?
The Prime Minister:
I do not accept that that was wrong. I do not want to read it all over again, so—even better—I shall read what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said—[Interruption.] Well, I have to say to Opposition Members that the judgments of the committee are the key things. If it judged that Iraq had a WMD capability and actual weapons, what Prime Minister would have said, "That may be what the committee judges and concludes, but I am going to come to a different conclusion"? Imagine what would have happened afterwards had the threat materialised.
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I raise what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said because in the past few days he has tried to suggest that somehow the Conservatives—no, that is unfair, because many Opposition Members voted for the war on the basis that they did, and still support the war. I understand that, so I shall deal specifically with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I do not often read the Kentish Express, but on this occasion I have done so. On the day of the debate on the war, he said:
"Why is Saddam Hussein a threat to us here in the United Kingdom? Four years ago Iraq had tons of anthrax and the nerve agent VX. These deadly materials are easily transported and easily hidden. There has been no convincing explanation as to what has happened to them."
He did not say that on the basis of the intelligence in the dossier: it was the same reason we had supported action the whole time.
I come to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said after the war. I read the other day some of the things that he said to the News Corporation in March this year—after the Hutton report and after all the issues had been raised. I have managed to find out a little bit more about that speech. He said:
"We must remember that it was not the overthrow of Saddam that spawned terrorism and instability. Quite the reverse. It was the failure of the West to act decisively again and again in the late 1990s, in the face of threats and provocation, that emboldened the terrorists and the rogue states. That failure must never be repeated . . . The war against Iraq was necessary. It was just. It was, indeed, arguably overdue. And, let us not forget, it was overwhelmingly successful—a judgement which subsequent difficulties do not change."
"Of course . . . Iraq has become the frontline in the War against Terror . . . I have no doubt that if the West maintains its resolution, Iraq will be a much better place than it was under Saddam."
[Interruption.] I shall tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman what my point is. It is that we will not maintain our resolution by pretending that we would not have voted for the motion that saw us go to war. It is absurd to suggest that he or the shadow Foreign Secretary were in two minds about Iraq, were not quite sure, sat around scratching their heads wondering whether it was a threat or not, and were then persuaded by me that it was. To be fair, the previous Leader of the Opposition warned, in my view rightly, about the threat of Saddam Hussein long before I did.
It is time the right hon. and learned Gentleman realised that shabby opportunism is not the solution to his problem: it is his problem. The public will respect people who were honestly for the war and they will respect people who were honestly against the war: they will not respect a politician who says that he is for and against the war in the same newspaper article.
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