Anti-war protestors gather as Lord Butler delivered his report

LONDON, July 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – An official British inquiry into the rationale of the Iraq war lambasted Wednesday, July 14, as unreliable and seriously flawed the kingdom's prewar intelligence, concluding that Iraq most likely possessed no useable weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Lord Robin Butler, the author of the official British report who was appointed to lead the inquiry in February, said that Iraq "did not have significant -- if any -- stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them", reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The reporter found that a government dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons, published in September 2002, should not have included a claim that Iraq could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes.

"The report that (ousted Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes in the form which appeared... in the government dossier was unclear and the Joint Intelligence Committee should not have included it in that form," said Lord Butler, delivering his long-awaited report.

"Since the war the validity of the reporting chain which produced this report [the 45-minute claim] has become doubtful," he added.

Press reports revealed Sunday, July 11, that the British intelligence had withdrawn the basic assessment that Baghdad posed a current and serious threat to the world.

On October 5, 2003, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook said Prime Minister Tony Blair privately admitted  before the US-led invasion of Iraq that Saddam had no WMDs, although he publicly claimed otherwise.

Blair Cleared

The 196-page report, seen crucial to the future of Blair’s premiership, cleared the government of responsibility for intelligence failings.

It did not contain any direct allegations that Blair or his government deliberately exaggerated the case for war.

The government dossier showed "no evidence of deliberate distortion or of culpable negligence", the Butler’s report found.

Much of Britain's intelligence was based on human sources, it said.

"Validation of human intelligence sources after war has thrown doubt on a high proportion of those sources and of their reports; and hence on the quality of the intelligence assessments received by ministers and officials in the period from summer 2002 to the outbreak of hostilities," in March 2003, it concluded.

While the report had some criticisms of Sir John Scarlett, who coordinated intelligence efforts before the war, it recommended that he stay on in his new job as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.

There would likely be calls for Scarlett to step down, the report said, adding: "We greatly hope that he will not do so".

Blair Criticized

But Blair's style of government was criticized, with the report saying that its "informality and circumscribed character" shut much of his cabinet out of the decision-making process.

"We do not suggest that there is or should be an ideal or unchangeable system of collective government, still less that procedures are in aggregate any less effective now than in earlier times," the report said.

"However, we are concerned that the informality and circumscribed character of the government's procedures which we saw in the context of policy-making towards Iraq risks reducing the scope for informed collective political judgment."

Blair's decision to strongly support the war hinged almost entirely on his claim that Saddam's stockpiles of illegal weapons posed an immediate threat to the West.

Last January, Blair was let off the hook when the British judge investigating the death of arms expert David Kelly concluded that the senior inspector took his own life.

Caught in the lethal crossfire over Iraq's alleged WMDs between Downing Street and the BBC, Kelly's body was found  on July 17 five miles from his home.

Less Certain

Accepting "full responsibility" for any errors on the use of British intelligence on Iraq's unfound weapons, Blair said that evidence of Saddam's unfound weapons  was "less certain, less well founded," than he had stated before the war.

"The evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was indeed less certain, less well-founded, than was stated at the time," he told the House of Commons an hour after the Butler report was released.

"I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made," Blair said.

He, however, strongly denied that his government had misled the British public into the war.

"No one lied, no one made up intelligence. No one inserted things into he dossier against the advice of the intelligence services."

"I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."

The Butler’s report came five days after the US Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the CIA’s rationale to invade Iraq was "overstated, misleading  or incorrect".