Sir John Chilcot launching the Iraq Inquiry. Matt Dunham /Press Association. All rights reserved. On September 24, 2002, the UK government published a fifty page dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction which was discussed in Parliament on the same day. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood before a cramped House of Commons and claimed that the ‘…intelligence picture that [the dossier paints] is one accumulated over the last four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative. It concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes...’ Tony Blair had penned a foreword to that dossier in which he claimed that he believed the intelligence had ‘established beyond doubt’ that Saddam had continued to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Facing a disbelieving public, the PM went on a public charm offensive by doing a series of TV interviews and shows speaking directly to members of the audience.
Tony Blair eventually secured the votes to take the UK to war alongside the US and other coalition partners. Hundreds of thousands of lives and many more displaced families later, no WMD were found. The obvious failure of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capability and that of the UK government’s decision-making process was subjected to numerous public inquiries. Chilcot was the most recent, lasting seven years and running into a 12 volume report. Even the executive summary, from which I have pulled a number of quotes, spans 150 pages. Public inquiries are supposed to provide valuable lessons for future UK governments; nowhere do they say they can’t illuminate the thinking of foreign governments as well. Different country and context no doubt, but I believe Chilcot has something important to say about Turkey’s recent obsession with Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric recently blamed as being behind Turkey’s failed coup. I also believe that we are beyond the considerations of framing caused by inadvertently analogizing between one set of actors and another.
Among its many conclusions, Chilcot’s most important finding is that at no point was the ‘basic assumption’ challenged, that is that Iraq had WMD, either by the intelligence or policy community of the UK. It was taken for granted and all else was interpreted on that basis (329, p 45). The large number of intelligence reports about Iraq’s activities were interpreted from the perspective that Iraq’s objectives were to conceal its programmes. Even Iraq’s constant denial was taken as ‘proof’ of duplicity and deceit by the UK (564, p76). In presenting the report to the press, Sir John Chilcot, the head of the inquiry, said ‘[i]t is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged, and should have been.’
