Straw: Iraq war based on judgment, not intel
Former foreign secretary Jack Straw admits intelligence never "at the heart" of UK decision to go to war with Iraq
Thursday, 21, Jan 2010 05:06
By Matthew Champion
Former foreign secretary Jack Straw has admitted that intelligence was never "at the heart" of the UK decision to go to war with Iraq.
In a revealing statement released as the former foreign secretary underwent questioning at the inquiry into the war, he said Britain's policy was instead based on the aggressive and warlike behaviour of Saddam Hussein's regime in recent history.
He said its known stockpiles of chemical weapons, which it used against its own people, and its invasions of Iran and Kuwait, were more of a basis for war than "this secret document or another".
"Intelligence alone was never the basis for my judgment about the nature of the threat which Iraq posed," Mr Straw, foreign secretary from 2001 to 2006, wrote.
"My starting point on the assessment of the threat was what was publicly known about Iraq's WMD programmes, and its behaviour going back more than a dozen years.
"It was that judgment - not intelligence - which lay at the heart of the UK government's strategy for disarming Iraq, by diplomacy backed by the potential use of force."
9/11 "changed everything"
Former prime minister Tony Blair, who is due to appear before the inquiry next week, has also already distanced himself from contentious intelligence used to convince parliament and the public of the need for war.
In a BBC1 interview with Fern Britton broadcast last year Mr Blair admitted he would have gone to war even if Saddam had not possessed the weapons of mass destruction two intelligence dossiers - the September dossier of 2002 and the dodgy dossier of 2003 - claimed he did.
The current justice secretary is the first current serving Cabinet minister to appear before the inquiry.
During questioning by Sir John Chilcot's inquiry panel he admitted to being privy to correspondence between Mr Blair and George Bush after the September 11th 2001 attacks, which he said "changed everything".
But he refused to answer in public what he thought of the way in which the former prime minister was conducting his relationship with President Bush.
It was revealed this week that Mr Straw had written to Mr Blair prior to the meeting between the prime minister and president at the latter's Crawford ranch in Texas, warning him that military action against Saddam was of dubious legality and would not necessary guarantee a more stable Iraq, not to mention far from the minds of the Cabinet and MPs.
The meeting has long been cited as the moment when the former prime minister allegedly told his American counterpart Britain was committed to military action to remove Saddam Hussein.
"Deep regret"
Despite initially being firmly against the prospect of a war which he agreed the US had been effectively planning for since Bill Clinton's presidency, Mr Straw explained he was steadily convinced about the threat Iraq posed to international peace and security during the 15 months from President Bush's Axis of Evil speech to invasion in March 2003.
"But because no WMD were in the event found, I have of course thought greatly whether we could or should have acted differently," he wrote in his lengthy statement.
"But we did not know then what we know now; nor in my judgment could we have done. And one of the dreadful ironies is that we would never have known if inspections had continued without an ultimatum and the short time scale as our draft second [United Nations security council] resolution proposed. All that would have happened is that the inspections process would have petered out; the unresolved disarmament questions would have remained unresolved, and the Iraqi regime would have been re-emboldened."
He wrote that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction had "undermined trust" and that the loss of lives incurred by the invasion was a source of "deep regret".
"I made my choice. I have never backed away from it, and I do not intend to do so, and fully accept the responsibilities which flow from that," Mr Straw said.
"I believed at the time, and I still believe, that we made the best judgments we could have done in the circumstances; we did so assiduously and on the best evidence we had available at the time."
Crucial vote
Mr Straw said he drew massive distinctions between his support for Iraq war and the Falklands and first Gulf War conflicts.
"Those choices were much easier," he wrote. "Iraq was very different, and the moral as well as political dilemmas were profoundly difficult."
The justice secretary admitted that the UK would have never gone to war in the first place if it had not been for his backing.
"I was also fully aware that my support for military action was critical," he wrote.
"If I had refused that, the UK's participation in the military action would not in practice have been possible. There almost certainly would have been no majority either in Cabinet or in the Commons."
Mr Straw is expected to be the only member of Gordon Brown's Cabinet to appear at the inquiry until after the general election, despite loud protests from the Liberal Democrats for the current prime minister, and then chancellor, to appear.
Geoff Hoon, defence secretary at the time of the conflict, appeared before the inquiry on Tuesday, while former prime minister Tony Blair is due to provide evidence on Friday January 29th.