[2004]

As put in an intelligence recruitment brochure, ‘government cannot make the right decisions unless it has the full picture’. Britain went to war against Iraq in the belief that intelligence showed that operational Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) existed, and it now seems that they did not. Our intelligence community costs upwards of £1.5 billion annually, and prides itself on the top-level assessments of its much-admired Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), yet something went wrong in this case. The Review of Lord Butler's Committee of Privy Counsellors now casts light upon it. It is the first report of this kind to concentrate on intelligence, and warrants extended study. What follows is a preliminary comment on it.

The JIC's Error and its Results

Though it deals with varied issues, notably the intelligence ‘dossier’ produced for public consumption, the main focus of the Review is on the JIC's classified reports to government on the Iraqi WMD threat. It is as careful and measured as might be expected from the Privy Counsellors responsible for it and gives credit warmly to the JIC where it is due in this and other, related areas. Nevertheless, it accepts that, on the present evidence, Iraq

and it is critical of the JIC's findings to the contrary. Its formal conclusion is limited: ‘there was a risk of over-cautious or worst case estimates, shorn of their caveats, becoming the prevailing wisdom’. But its text supports the public impression that the cumulative effect of the JIC reports, plus the many oral briefings that accompanied them, was to create or at least buttress the government belief that Iraqi WMD was a current threat, and not a matter of prediction or possibility. It shows that the JIC was cautious in its drafting and drew attention to the paucity of evidence but tipped towards underscoring the threat. Thus it finds that the key assessments on Iraqi biological and chemical warfare (BW and CW)