Saferworld briefing:
Weapons of mass destruction and the Hutton Inquiry - was Iraq a
serious and current threat?
26 January 2004
The Hutton Inquiry Report - to be published on 28 January - will focus on the circumstances
surrounding the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. However, this debate should not
overshadow the fundamental and still outstanding questions surrounding the basis upon
which the UK Government took the country to war in Iraq, and with what legal authority it
acted?
This paper examines some of the evidence relating to the extent of the threat posed by Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) prior to the invasion of that country in March 2003.
The findings illustrate that whilst in public the Government asserted that that Iraq's
WMD posed a "serious and current" threat, its own private pre-war assessment reveals
that this threat was latent rather than extant, of a limited nature, unlikely to be used
unless Iraq was attacked first, and unlikely to substantially affect protected troops
even if it was used.
If Iraq did not pose an imminent threat to the United Kingdom and the Government
knew this, on what basis did the Attorney General provide legal advice for sanctioning
war against Iraq? Only a full judicial inquiry into the UK Government's decision to go to
war with Iraq is likely to address the questions surrounding the fundamental legitimacy
of the conflict.
Main findings

Dr. Kelly believed that immediately prior to the conflict there was only a 30 per cent
probability that Iraq had chemical weapons, that if it had any biological weapons left,
they would not amount to very much, and that its WMD programme was “small”.

The Government believed that Iraq’s WMD capability constituted a latent rather than
an imminent or even an extant threat, yet it still described that threat as “serious and
current”.

The Government knew that the 45-minute claim was derived from a single source
and only referred to small calibre, battlefield chemical (and biological) weapons.

The Government believed that the circumstance in which Saddam was most likely to
use his WMD was if he was first attacked.

The Government believed that even if he did use WMD this would be unlikely to
substantially affect the operational capabilities of US and British troops.

The Joint Intelligence Committee assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime
would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents
finding their way into the hands of terrorists.

A full judicial inquiry is necessary in order to establish how and why Britain went to
war on the basis of urgently having to eradicate a threat that subsequently turned out
not to exist.
1
Introduction
In order to justify the invasion of Iraq, the Prime Minister told the British people that Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a “serious and current threat” - as described in
his foreword to the Government’s dossier ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The
Assessment of the British Government’, published in September 2002. This briefing
considers the reality of that proposition.
1. What does “serious and current” mean?
“Serious” suggests that Iraq’s weaponry could inflict significant casualties. “Current” suggests
that Iraq already has those capabilities and that Saddam had the intention readily to use them
against our interests.
Yet, in a number of respects this terminology appears to be stretching the truth of how the
British Government itself was calibrating the threat from Iraqi WMD. During the course of the
Hutton Inquiry a series of pertinent questions arose in respect of the nature of the capability
the Government believed Iraq to possess, what types of WMD it was talking about, and to
what extent such capability was weaponised. Furthermore, was the danger imminent,
emerging or longer term? Was the danger now more acute than it had been previously or
was it more of a low level, yet latent, worry?
2. WMD - a misleading term
The misleading term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ was scrutinised early on in the Hutton
Inquiry. Robin Cook had already highlighted the importance of establishing a common
understanding of what the term meant when he claimed that:
“Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood
sense of the term – namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a
strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical
munitions…”. 1
This was a telling statement in itself, coming as it did from a member of the British Cabinet
and a former Foreign Secretary, who had responsibility for dealing with Iraq between 1997
and 2001. But it also demonstrated a problem in the debate.
In common parlance the term WMD does span anywhere between an artillery shell filled with
mustard gas for use on the battlefield with a range of a few kilometres to a nuclear warhead
on a missile that can travel many thousands of kilometres. This point was acknowledged by
Martin Howard, the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, in response to a question from Lord
Hutton.2 Yet, in terms of effect, it is clear that some types and usages of chemical and
biological weapons would not constitute weapons of mass destruction, a point accepted by a
former head of the scientific branch of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff, Dr Brian
Jones.3 No-one claimed that they believed that Iraq had already developed nuclear
weapons. The better terminology to describe the weaponry Iraq was thought to possess,
therefore, would have been chemical and biological weapons (CBW).
3. Weaponised capability or just programmes?
The other important factor here is the degree to which the Iraqis were able to efficiently and
effectively weaponise their CBW agents. A clear distinction has to be made between actual
weapons and weapons programmes. Research and development of chemical and biological
agents in the laboratory, which is relatively straightforward, can be referred to as ‘weapons
1
Hansard, March 17, 2003, Col.727.
Evidence to Hutton Inquiry, August 11, 2003.
3
Evidence to Hutton Inquiry, September 3, 2003, paras. 66-67.
2
2
programmes’. Honing those agents into a form that can be delivered effectively to their target
by means of artillery shell, air-launched bomb or missile warhead – thereby constituting actual
weapons – is the next stage and a far more challenging proposition.
It came to light during the Hutton inquiry that one of the earlier drafts of the Government’s
September dossier had referred to Iraq’s WMD “programmes”, but the word was erased by
the time of final publication with the clear implication that the Iraqis had actual weapons.
It was far from clear that Iraq was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons as
the dossier claimed. Although the assessment was that production had taken place British
intelligence did not know what had been produced and in what quantities. This claim worried
Dr Brian Jones to the extent that he wrote a formal minute to complain:
“We had not seen the weapons being produced. We had no evidence of any recent
testing or field trials and things like that.” 4
The dossier’s claim that Iraq continued to work on its nuclear weapons programme and had
sought to acquire uranium from Niger to contribute to that development also proved
controversial. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that the documents that it
had received relating to the claim were forgeries. Evidence from the US has also shown the
story was not credible and should not have been used to back up claims of Iraq’s capability. 5
4. The 45-minute claim
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the government’s September Dossier was the
assertion that some of Iraq’s WMD were deployable within 45 minutes. When he launched
the dossier in the House of Commons the Prime Minister said:
“It [the dossier] 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…”. 6
This figure seemed to support the contention that Iraq posed an immediate threat and
certainly caught the media’s eye. Dr Kelly privately expressed his fear to Susan Watts of
BBC’s Newsnight that the emphasis placed on that element of the intelligence - based on a
single source - in the foreword to the dossier went too far and that it turned the possible
capability into an imminent threat and a critical part of the government’s case for war and so it
proved.7
The conjunction of this piece of information with another of the dossier’s claims that Iraq was
constructing a “new engine test stand for the development of missiles capable of reaching the
UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus” created a headline in the London Evening Standard on
the day of the dossier’s publication “45 minutes from attack”. During the Hutton inquiry an
email was revealed in which the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell actually
asked Alastair Campbell 'What will be the headline in the Standard on the day of publication?'
No reply was forthcoming but it was indeed the contentious 45 minute claim that the media
picked up on. A helpful headline was generated that suggested that British bases were less
than an hour away from being attacked.
Yet this was based on an extrapolation of what Iraq might eventually be able to deploy by way
of longer-range ballistic missile conflated with very shaky intelligence in relation to the 45Cited by Paul Waugh and Kim Sengupta, ‘Intelligence Officers vindicated in worries over dossier’, The Independent,
12 September 2003, p.4.
4
5
The CIA acknowledged that President Bush should not have claimed in his January State of the Union address that
Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme. (Washington Post, 8/07/03)
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced in October 2002 and entirely classified at the time contained an
annex in which the State Department's intelligence arm (INR) noted that, "(T)he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural
uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious."
6
Hansard, September 24, 2002, col.3.
Susan Watts memoranda, evidence submitted to Hutton Inquiry. Can be found at http://www.the-huttoninquiry.org.uk/content/evidence-lists/evidence-sjw.htm. Referred to during her oral evidence on 12/13 August 2003.
7
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minute claim. It became obvious from the Hutton Inquiry hearings that the threat was far from
as imminent or as significant as the headlines had suggested.
5. A latent rather than imminent threat
Indeed, this reality was acknowledged inside Government. No lesser official than the Prime
Minister’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, concluded that the September Dossier included
“…nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam”. 8
And that he went on to stress to the Prime Minister that:
“We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we
have evidence that he is an imminent threat.” 9
The Prime Minister took heed and instead of referring to an ‘imminent’ threat, described it as
“serious and current”. The wordsmiths inside Downing Street were trying to find words that
implied immediacy but that were also consistent with the Government’s own analysis that the
threat was more latent than extant. The government’s case for taking action against Saddam
rested more on what he might be capable of in the future than what he was capable of doing
at the time. As Powell said in another of his emails:
“In the penultimate para you need to make it clear Saddam could not attack us at the
moment. The thesis is he could be a threat to the UK in the future if we do not check
him.” 10
This distinction was not just a matter of semantics. The Prime Minister and the rest of
Whitehall were extremely sensitive to the possibility that Britain might undertake an illegal
invasion of Iraq. They were well aware that whereas international law makes provision for
states to act pre-emptively in self-defence, to act on the basis of preventing a possible future
threat is far more questionable. Dr Kelly himself alluded to this:
“That was a real concern – not so much what they had now, but what they would have
in the future. But that unfortunately was not expressed strongly in the dossier,
because that takes the case away for war – to a certain extent.” 11
It was in the Government’s interests therefore to attempt to play up the urgency of meeting
the threat whilst not actually describing it as imminent because it knew that description to be
too strong. As a result, the Government not only attempted to instil the greatest degree of
immediacy that it could, it also sought to remove references that downplayed the extent of the
threat. For example, the September 10/11 draft of the Prime Minister’s foreword to the
Dossier read:
“The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on London or any
other part of the UK (he could not)”. 12
This draft also included mention that reports that Iraq could produce smallpox were
“uncorroborated” and that Saddam abandoned work on a radiological bomb after failing to
make progress beyond the “research stage”. 13 Yet all of these three points were excised
during the drafting process and failed to appear in the final copy. This led to charges that the
Government was guilty of making the final dossier “sexier by omission”.
8
Cabinet Office memoranda, e-mail from Jonathan Powell to John Scarlett, evidence
submitted to Hutton Inquiry, 17 September 2002, found at: http://www.the-huttoninquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0069.pdf
9
Ibid.
10
Jonathan Powell to Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications, and Sir David Manning,
the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser, referring to the revised foreword to the Dossier, September 17, 2002.
11
See written memoranda submitted by Susan Watts to Hutton Inquiry, op.cit.
12
Quoted by Nigel Morris in The Independent, August 25, 2003, p.6.
13
Ibid.
4
On August 26, the Head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), John Scarlett, further
detracted from the scale of the threat by revealing to Lord Hutton that the weapons being
referred to in the context of this 45 minute claim were:
“...related to munitions, which we had interpreted to mean battlefield mortar shells or
small calibre weaponry, quite different from missiles.” 14
Some months after the war, Robin Cook revealed that on 5th March 2003 he had asked the
Prime Minister if he was concerned that Saddam might use chemical munitions against
British troops. According to Cook, Blair's response was:
“Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to
assemble them quickly for use.”
This led Cook to conclude that although Blair may have believed that Iraq had weapons
ready for use within 45 minutes when he published the dossier the previous September, he
no longer believed this to be true in Spring 2003. This left Cook feeling “deeply troubled”. 15
So, what this intelligence amounted to was that Iraq may have had plans in place to use
some of its dispersed CBW at short notice on the battlefield. There was no intelligence to
suggest that Iraq was about to activate those plans, simply that they may have had the
capacity to do so. The important question is then under what circumstances might Iraq use
any CBW in its possession?
6. Did Saddam have the intent to use his CBW?
If we accept that Iraq did have a certain CBW capability before the invasion - or at least that
the Government believed that it did - in order for that to translate into a “serious and current”
threat requires an intention to use such capability. So, what intent did Saddam have to use
his CBW? Was Saddam mad enough to provoke the certainty of devastating US retaliation by
using his CBW in a first strike against his vastly superior adversary? The historical evidence
does not suggest so.
Saddam’s use of CW against Iran and the Kurds was enacted in the knowledge that neither
had the capacity to topple him from power as a consequence. When confronting the Allies
over Kuwait in 1991 he had not deployed these weapons, presumably because he calculated
that by doing so he would have legitimised an extension of the Allies’ war aim beyond that of
liberating Kuwait to include destroying him and his regime. This demonstrated a degree of
rationality that he appears to have maintained since. Why, therefore, would Saddam start
threatening to use his CBW in an aggressive manner? Jonathan Powell could not find the
answer in the British Government’s dossier:
“… it did not demonstrate that he had a motive.” 16
The most likely circumstance in which the Iraqi dictator would use CBW would be if the
country was invaded first and the future of the regime was threatened; in other words, in the
very scenario being pursued by the Bush/Blair Governments. When an early draft of the
dossier pointed in this direction Powell described it as a:
“… bit of a problem” because it suggested that the threat would only manifest itself …
if we attack him”. 17
The text was changed.
7. Limited threat to protected troops
But what if Saddam had used his CBW? Against unprotected populations their use could
indeed have been devastating. If poisons and diseases are effectively and efficiently
weaponised they are capable of killing many thousands of people. We only have to recall the
14
Evidence to Hutton Inquiry, August 26, 2003 (afternoon), para.144.
Robin Cook, Point of Departure, (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003). p.310
Jonathan Powell, see footnote number 9.
17
Ibid.
15
16
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horrors of the massacre of Kurds at Halabja in 1988. But, unlike nuclear weaponry, the
impact of CBW against properly protected armed forces would be more as an inconvenience
than a lethal threat. As Dr. Kelly said:
The threat from Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons is, however, unlikely to
substantially affect the operational capabilities of US and British troops. 18
8. Terrorists and Iraq’s CBW
Another important aspect of the Prime Minister’s case for disarming Iraq was the fear that its
WMD capability might one day fall into the hands of terrorist groups hostile to the UK.
Undoubtedly, this was a genuine concern. But there was also a counter argument that the
JIC put to the Prime Minister in February 2003, namely:
“The JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of
chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands
of terrorists, not necessarily al-Qa’ida”. 19
The Prime Minister failed to make public this piece of JIC assessment although he had
publicly disclosed other assessments that were more supportive of the case for taking military
action.
9. Conclusion
Dr. Kelly believed that immediately prior to the conflict there was only a 30 per cent
probability that Iraq had chemical weapons and, if it had had any biological weapons left, they
would not amount to very much.20 Dr. Kelly described Iraq’s WMD programme as “small”. In
the aftermath of war this assessment now looks to have been far more accurate than that put
forward by the US and UK governments.
The evidence arising from the Hutton Inquiry and elsewhere indicates that the Government
knew that Iraq’s WMD capability was limited and latent rather than as it tried to portray significant and extant.
Ultimately, because the Government did believe that the threat would manifest itself
eventually and because its closest ally was about to invade Iraq in any event, it seems that it
concluded that Britain could not stand aside. According to Robin Cook:
“… the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons
inspections”. 21
In light of:
a) The complete failure to discover any CBW in Iraq since the occupation of the country,
let alone any weapons of mass destruction that posed a serious and current threat to
this country’s interests.
b) The fact that this country went to war on the basis of having to eradicate this threat as
a matter of urgency i.e. we could not allow the UN weapons inspectors any more
time.
There now needs to be a full judicial inquiry into how and why this country went to war on a
false prospectus. The wider lesson is that the UK should now reject unilateralism and the
doctrine of preventive war and instead return to pursuing its foreign and security policy
according to the principles of multilateralism and international law.
This paper was written by Dr Stephen Pullinger, Senior Advisor on WMD at Saferworld.
For further information please contact:
Stephen Pullinger: 01273 269238 (H), 07880 617656 (M), 020 7324 4646 (W) or
Vanessa Haines at Saferworld: 020 7324 4646 (W), 07879 648 957 (M)
‘Only Regime Change will Avert the Threat’, The Observer, 31 August, 2003, p.9.
This quote appeared in the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Report on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Intelligence and Assessments, which can be found at
http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/news/2003/030911_iraqi.asp
20
Dr. Kelly to Mr. Broucher when he met him in February 2003 in Geneva, cited by Mr. Broucher during his evidence
to Hutton Inquiry on August 21, 2003.
21
Robin Cook, Point of Departure, p. 310.
18
19
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