The truth, at last; Iraqi Colonel 'Source of 45-Minute WMD Claim'...

TELEGRAPH ^ | 12/07/03 | TELEGRAPH

[Pikamax]

The truth, at last (Filed: 07/12/2003)

"The West should thank God that the Iraqi army decided not to fight," Lt Col Dabbagh tells the Telegraph's intrepid Con Coughlin in today's newspaper. "If the army had used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences." The weapons Col Dabbagh was referring to are Saddam Hussein's stocks of chemical and biological warheads. A senior officer at the heart of Saddam's armed forces, the colonel was the conduit of the now-infamous claim in the intelligence dossier which Tony Blair presented to Parliament and to the country: the claim that Saddam had the capacity to unleash weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons, within 45 minutes of ordering their use.

Col Dabbagh told Mr Coughlin that the 45-minute claim was "100 per cent correct". He added that Saddam had hidden huge stocks of arms, including his chemical and biological munitions, at secret sites across Iraq. The colonel's claims must be taken very seriously. He has no reason at all to make them up, or to lie to Mr Coughlin, by whom he was reluctant to be interviewed. Yet it is important to be clear about what Col Dabbagh's testimony does - and what it does not - establish. There can now be little doubt that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons. Col Dabbagh saw those weapons for himself when they were delivered to his unit, and indeed received instructions on how they were to be used.

The means of delivery for those weapons were, however, extremely primitive: they could only be used on the battlefield, where range was very restricted and their accuracy minimal. That seems to have been one reason why they were not used during the war. The American advance was so rapid that the Iraqis could only deploy chemical weapons around Baghdad: that would have killed the Iraqi civilian population - who did not have masks - but not the US soldiers, who did. Even Iraqi officers loyal to Saddam Hussein balked at that.

It is clear that Saddam Hussein did not have the ability to launch missiles which could carry chemical or biological weapons reliably to most sites in Iraq - never mind to places as far away as Cyprus or London. Yet when the Prime Minister presented the intelligence dossier setting out the case for war to Parliament, he described the threat to Britain from Saddam as "current and serious". He allowed the impression to be given that Saddam's ability to launch chemical and biological weapons "which could be activated in 45 minutes" meant that British troops in Cyprus, or even civilians in Britain itself, could be targeted. This was not true, and many of those in the intelligence services knew it was not true. When, however, the newspapers published stories wrongly claiming that British bases in Cyprus were at risk from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, no one in the Government did anything whatever to correct them.

Mr Blair's determination to confront Saddam Hussein was admirable and right, but New Labour's addiction to spin, and an inability to tell the truth without embellishing it, meant that, in making the case for war, he misrepresented to the public the intelligence that he had been given. Dr David Kelly conveyed, albeit in a somewhat mangled and self-serving form, the concern of some members of the intelligence world about that misrepresentation to the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan. The Prime Minister then insisted to Parliament that the BBC had been completely wrong to suggest that there was any unhappiness within the intelligence community about the Government's interpretation of the information given to them about Iraq's WMD capability: but as was revealed during the Hutton Inquiry, there was in fact considerable unhappiness on precisely that point.

Mr Blair's exaggerations and misrepresentations were unnecessary, because there is no doubt that, in the context of the global war on terror, and of al-Qaeda's determination to obtain weapons of mass destruction with which to terrorise the West, Saddam posed a clear threat. Contrary to the claims of those who said it was "inconceivable" that religious fanatics from al-Qaeda could ever make common cause with Saddam and his supporters, precisely that has happened since the Americans liberated Iraq from his grip. There were good reasons for going to war with Iraq. But protecting British bases or cities from missiles launched by Saddam Hussein was not one of them.

"For the preparation of the dossier we had a real concern not to exaggerate the intelligence that we had received," the Prime Minister told Parliament on September 24. Yet he did exaggerate that intelligence. If Lord Hutton cuts to the heart of the matter, Mr Blair will pay a heavy political price for it.

[festus]

If this guy speaks truth and if GW is actually having the military keep a lid on this till we think its all nailed down there will be no contest in November.

It would make sense to disclose nothing while we are still interrogating and searching and destroying.

From what I've heard the press mainly hangs out at the hotel in Baghdad and wouldn't know if the stuff was being stored right across the street from them.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

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