I worked in construction in Iraq in Al Bakr's day. He was the military man and Saddam Hussein the civilian politician. There was never ever the infrastructure to build weapons of mass destruction let alone deliver them. This was blatantly obvious. I drove through the main army camp built by the British on the way to work every day. The nuclear power station was at one end of the camp as was the new nuclear power station being built by the French which was bombed by the Israelis, no problem. The runway ran towards the power station and no Iraqi planes made it into the sky. Because of our historical ties to Iraq, Britain had all the internal intel it needed to know there were no weapons of mass destruction there. No excuse.
Evidence of Iraq's chemical weapons programme (and nuclear aspirations) is publicly available and irrefutable. Indeed there is even a volume of evidence upon its actual use (chemical agents) - against the Kurds for instance. And they certainly had some means of (chemical agent) delivery - aircraft and artillery included. The uncertainty which led to errors of intelligence in 2003 surrounded how much of this infrastructure, capability and scale remained - not at all whether it once existed (because that was without question). Saddam deliberately concealed the details of his past WMD programmes - and that they had been largely deconstructed - in order to retain this potential capability as threat leverage. This in turn led to the Iraqi obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors which resulted in the understandable but false assumption that Saddam was nefariously concealing matters. Admittedly this false supposition likely resulted in confirmation bias regarding the assessment and presentation of the intelligence material made public and now infamously known as the 'Dodgy Dossier'. Saddam paid the price for creating this illusion however. The only question remaining is whether more sanctions and critically more time should have been afforded to support the weapons inspectors efforts - rather than a military intervention at the time it was mounted. The after effects of 9/11 will have contributed to this impetus.
I worked in construction in Iraq in Al Bakr's day. He was the military man and Saddam Hussein the civilian politician. There was never ever the infrastructure to build weapons of mass destruction let alone deliver them. This was blatantly obvious. I drove through the main army camp built by the British on the way to work every day. The nuclear power station was at one end of the camp as was the new nuclear power station being built by the French which was bombed by the Israelis, no problem. The runway ran towards the power station and no Iraqi planes made it into the sky. Because of our historical ties to Iraq, Britain had all the internal intel it needed to know there were no weapons of mass destruction there. No excuse.
Evidence of Iraq's chemical weapons programme (and nuclear aspirations) is publicly available and irrefutable. Indeed there is even a volume of evidence upon its actual use (chemical agents) - against the Kurds for instance. And they certainly had some means of (chemical agent) delivery - aircraft and artillery included.
The uncertainty which led to errors of intelligence in 2003 surrounded how much of this infrastructure, capability and scale remained - not at all whether it once existed (because that was without question).
Saddam deliberately concealed the details of his past WMD programmes - and that they had been largely deconstructed - in order to retain this potential capability as threat leverage.
This in turn led to the Iraqi obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors which resulted in the understandable but false assumption that Saddam was nefariously concealing matters. Admittedly this false supposition likely resulted in confirmation bias regarding the assessment and presentation of the intelligence material made public and now infamously known as the 'Dodgy Dossier'.
Saddam paid the price for creating this illusion however.
The only question remaining is whether more sanctions and critically more time should have been afforded to support the weapons inspectors efforts - rather than a military intervention at the time it was mounted. The after effects of 9/11 will have contributed to this impetus.
Sir David... You go and fight on your own...
The UK civil service is like a Supertanker that takes time to change course, So it’s just like the EU then!
bless
Should have asked if he knows anything about a certain virology lab in Wuhan.
Yes....lets look at Global Affairs! No government ministers this morning Nick?
But nah China...stand up for democracy lol.