The Butler Report

I just finished reading the Butler Report, which has been in the news quite a lot recently. It's interesting, and its conclusions in some respects are quite harsh. Nonetheless, overall it is a wheedling exercise in blame avoidance. Nobody did anything wrong, and everyone acted with the best possible intentions. It's too harsh to dismiss it entirely as a whitewash, although Teflon Tony is certainly more cheerful now that it's been published. On the other hand, it's too forgiving to refer to it as fair and balanced. It falls somewhere in the middle.

At this point, calling for another inquiry to correct the deficits of the previous inquiries seems like a case of sour grapes - I suspect that certain elements of the media, the opposition, and the public are going to holler until they get an inquiry that says 'Yes, Tony is to blame. He should resign'. That's never going to happen... what the Butler report outlines most succinctly is the failure of intelligence that led up to the spurious case for war. It's too much to expect that the Prime Minister can personally validate every piece of information that crosses his desk - he has to trust in his officials.

The Butler Report clears the government of any attempt to deceive or mislead the public over Iraq. However, the transition from the official intelligence reports to the official dossier released to the public shows a very clear hardening of the language used, as well as a much reduced emphasis on highlighting the limitations of the intelligence sources. The effect is that the case for Iraqi proliferation was sold without all the appropriate caveats - caveats that Blair would have been very aware of since they had all been previously published in internal intelligence reports. The fact Blair took a single vague assertion about '45 minutes to deployment' and emphasised it during his public statements and in the foreword to the public dossier shows a reliance on unsubstantiated intelligence that is not simply a case of trust in his officials.

Blair later claimed that he didn't realise the 45 minute claim only related to potential battlefield munitions - the fact that there was ambiguity at all (and there was, as is clearly documented in the Butler report) meant that he had an obligation to ensure that the information was being used in the appropriate context. Considering that one of the primary conclusions of the Butler report concerns the informal policy making machine at Number Ten indicates that Butler himself disapproved of the 'laissez fair' approach taken to major governmental initiatives.

One of the most interesting paragraphs (to my mind) of the Butler report is Paragraph 427:

'But there was no recent intelligence that would itself have given rise to a conclusion that Iraq was of more immediate concern than the activities of some other countries.'

North Korea's role as potential aggressor *and* source of proliferation is discussed in one of the preceding chapters. The justifications for the war in Iraq are documented as the historical context in which Iraq operates, as well as a requirement to ensure the credibility of the United Nations. As Noam Chomsky points out, if you want a definition of what credibility means in this kind of context, you just need to ask your local Mafia don to explain it.

Other interesting conclusions of the Butler report are:

• Many of the sources used to justify the intelligence on Iraq were unreliable... in many cases, these were ex-Iraqi officers/emigres who had potentially hidden agendas for ensuring that Saddam was deposed. However, the Butler Inquiry notes there is no evidence that motivations were a factor in the later debunking of certain sources.
  


• There was no precedent in International Law for a Regime Change, and there was no credible evidence of Iraqi complicity with international terrorism. This invalidated the 'self defence against terrorism' argument.
  


• The JIC left out certain pieces of information that conflicted the prevailing wisdom about Iraq's capacity and willingness to deploy WMD.
  


• Warnings and caveats that were present in internal information reports were either omitted or softened for the dossier that was made available to the public.
  


• The context of certain pieces of information was not present in the case made to the public - for example, that Saddam would be unwilling to use any of his alleged WMD unless he was actually attacked.
  


• The reliability of sources as far as certain pieces of information went meant that they were more likely to be accepted as reliable sources even when reporting outside of their proven area of expertise.
  


• The quality control process which should have been applied to Iraqi information sources was sometimes lacking due to a reorganisation in the structure of the SIS, as well as an emphasis on less experienced officers staffing the appropriate desks.
  


• Existing sanctions and inspections had ensured that the lid had been kept on Saddam's desires to obtain WMD capabilities, and that it was only in the event of these sanctions being softened that any credible capability in WMD deployment would be possible.
  


• The sources quoted regarding Iraqi weapon stockpiles generally did not have first-hand knowledge of the programmes. One of the major sources is identified as largely passing on what was 'common knowledge' amongst high-ranking Iraqi military officials.
  


• There was no credible evidence of co-operation between Iraq and Al-Queda.
  

There is some damning criticism in the report, even if it is couched in the most diplomatic language - but the fact that those responsible have not been censured is the primary failing of the inquiry. There is too much of a willingness to take people at face value, when all the evidence (both in the report and outside it) points to the contrary.

Anyway, that's my capsule review! Read it for yourself, it's worth taking the time for.