Iraq Inquiry

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, at last—at long, long last—Chilcot has reported, and it makes bleak reading. I had a ringside seat at the events described, but was never in the position of taking decisions. I am comforted by the fact that neither were members of the inquiry. Although I accept that their conclusions are broadly justified, their judgments are not infallible, and need rigorous questioning.

From 1997 to 2005 I chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee. Once or twice a year over that period we visited Washington and New York, where we met many of the key players in the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense and the CIA, and, of course, our excellent then ambassador in New York, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. In London, after I had argued for containment, the Prime Minister invited me to meet him one to one at No. 10, and thereafter arranged for me to meet Sir John Scarlett, who had briefed him, in both September 2002 and February 2003.

I shall now make some reflections, matching my own experiences with the conclusions of the report. Yes, in 2003 I voted for the war. Would I have done so now, in the light of current knowledge? No. Would I have voted yes, knowing only what I did in 2003? Yes. Why? Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It gives 20:20 vision. Of course, Chilcot had access to contemporaneous documents, but the memories of participants have been coloured by the consequences, and the confident tone of many of the report’s conclusions was matched only by the vaulting confidence of the Prime Minister and his senior advisers, cheered on by the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Daily Express.

We now know that the consequences were overwhelmingly negative. But what would have happened if we had not intervened? Almost certainly Saddam Hussein, or one of his nasty sons, would be ruling Iraq and threatening the region. As the ISG reported in the following year, he might have had to be tackled later, as he would have had the intent and then the capability of acquiring WMD. Increased oil resources would have allowed him to buy kit from AQ Khan, or from North Korea, the arch-proliferator.

Questions remain. Is there sufficient contextual analysis in the report? Did its authors seek to put themselves in the shoes of policymakers at the time? Remember that there was enormous frustration at the dissembling and obstruction by Saddam Hussein. Remember, too, that there was a realisation that sanctions were fraying fast and containment increasingly less credible. Remember also the post-9/11 atmosphere of the terrorist threat.

The Prime Minister made a strategic judgment to stand alongside the US to influence it—a judgment that was only partially realised, but which was at least honest. When briefed by the Prime Minister, I was surprised by an almost starry-eyed admiration for President Bush. When I was briefed by Sir John Scarlett he told me, essentially, what was relayed in the much-criticised dossier of September 2002, drafted by the JIC.

Thus the Prime Minister accepted the advice of our intelligence chiefs. They were wrong, but he honestly conveyed their advice—intelligence that was also accepted by France and Germany, and by our own military. I believe—if my memory is correct—that our soldiers were offered anti-CW kit at the time. Even Saddam Hussein may have believed that he still had WMD. It is difficult for politicians to disregard the advice of intelligence experts, but there should have been more rigorous and sceptical questioning. The establishment of the new security adviser to the Prime Minister should help.

There was a lack of HUMINT, and our sources—such as the Iraqi exile in the US, Chalabi, other exiles, and the BW fraudster—were certainly very suspect and had their own agendas. The report might have covered the position in Washington more thoroughly. I met Richard Perle, the grey eminence of the neocons, on several occasions. He spoke enthusiastically of the likely welcome of liberating forces in Baghdad and the promised democratic renaissance in the Middle East—unaware of the sort of complexities that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, has mentioned. Colin Powell was angered by the briefing behind his speech to the UN. Richard Armitage, his No. 2, spoke to us of the military expertise at the top of the State Department compared with the comparative weakness at the top of the DOD, led by the management experts Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

The inquiry concluded that the post-conflict plan was “wholly insufficient”, but probably failed adequately to reflect the fact that it was not us but the Department of Defense that was in the driving seat—overriding the advice and the plans of the State Department. In retrospect, perhaps, the failure of the Prime Minister was not to make his support more conditional. In Baghdad, visiting the CPA, I saw that the operatives under Bremer were overwhelmingly American. I also visited our rather isolated outpost in Basra. We had little or no influence over the twin disastrous decisions on de-Baathification and the disbandment of the army. Colin Powell—perhaps after visiting a supermarket—said, “If you break it, you own it”, and liberation soon morphed into occupation and intolerant Shia domination under al-Maliki.

My conclusion is this. I confess I have changed my mind following the publication of the report. I had assumed that the delay, and the likely pulling of punches in the report, would lead to great anger among the families of the victims and that, 13 years after the events described, it was likely to be viewed as a historical document, mainly of interest to academic researchers into the processes of British government. It is not holy writ; its own judgments need to be questioned, yet overall it is a massive contribution to our understanding of the events leading to the Iraq war and, of course, the processes of government, and a salutary highlighting of what went wrong and the lessons to be learned. If interventions are contemplated, they should take place only according to just war principles and if the objectives are clear, and after thorough preparation, risk analysis and the provision of sufficient resources. All were lacking in the case of Iraq. Perhaps the Prime Minister—any Prime Minister—should not have on his desk the phrase, “The buck stops here”, but rather the Cromwellian words, “Think, ye may be mistaken”.