Iraq Inquiry: "the Dossier was precisely to make a case for war"?

16 May 2011 by Rod McLaren

Friend of Mobbu Mick Laurie was in the papers on Friday because his evidence given last year to the Chilcot inquiry on the Iraq war has just been published.

Some of the coverage: Guardian (“His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier”), Politics Home, Daily Mail (“crucially, Downing Street had made that clear at the time”), Independent, Telegraph, BBC.

From his letter to the inquiry in January 2010:

we knew at the time that the purpose of the Dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care. The question that needs to be asked is, if there had been no remit to draft the “Dossier”, would the JIC in their normal process have produced papers that would have come to the same assessment as the Dossier?

From the transcript of his evidence in June 2010:

[page 6] SIR MARTIN GILBERT: You told us in your submission that the February/March 2002 dossier—I think your words were, “was rejected because it did not make a strong enough case”. I really have two questions on that. First of all, given the evidence that was in the dossier, what case did you feel it did make and who was it who rejected it?

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL LAURIE: Yes. I mean, I don’t know because I wasn’t conscious of the production of that. It was something that was being put together. What I do know is that people—I mean Joe French came back from some JIC meeting and said, you know, that dossier which was the four country dossier did not make a case for war and we are going to be doing this all again and we need to collect more information. So over the summer the pressure sort of built up and up to try to collect more.

SIR MARTIN GILBERT: So already in February/March there was this case for war?

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL LAURIE: Yes, I mean we were quite clear on that. I’m not saying that was good or bad, it was just the fact: the purpose of this thing was to make a case for war.

There’s also some meaty stuff on pages 13-14, page 15 (“there is one implication in that: the suggestion that the real intelligence was better than in the dossier, when in fact it wasn’t quite as good as in the dossier”), and 18-19. And then:

[pages 20-21] SIR RODERIC LYNE: Perhaps I can just come back on one point on the dossier before we move on. The sentence in the foreword that Sir John alluded to, can I just read it to you and then ask you as an intelligence professional to say how you would characterise it? This is from the Prime Minister’s foreword: “What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.” Now, was that a justifiable encapsulation?

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL LAURIE: No, because I don’t believe it was beyond doubt. [...]

SIR RODERIC LYNE: So “continuing production of chemical and biological, continuing efforts to develop nuclear”; now if you had been the chairman of the JIC and this had been shown to you in draft, would you have queried that sentence? [...]

MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL LAURIE: Yes, I mean one has to have courage and stand up and say “I can’t sign up to that”, yes.

And in concluding on pages 29-30 and 32 his view is that whilst there was no intelligence case, there was a strategic case for action in Iraq.

Alistair Campbell’s response on Friday:

To restate the contents of the tweet I sent yesterday – I was, and remain, absolutely clear about the purpose of the dossier at the time, which was not to make the case for war, but set out the reasons why the Prime Minister and the government were becoming more not less concerned about Iraq and WMD. Also, I was and remain clear that at no time did I or anyone in Downing Street put pressure on the Joint Intelligence Committee.

‘Witness says same thing as he has been saying for years’ may not be deemed newsworthy, but I can say to those journalists outside the house, and those calling and emailing, that it is all I am saying, other than to restate that I have never met Major General Laurie.

I’d guess the best account of the political-psychological background to the dossier is in Rawnsley’s The End of the Party.

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