Sexed up
The British ‘Iraq WMD dossier’: a final judgment
March 20, 2007 7 comments
It has long been clear to anyone who bothered to examine the evidence for themselves that the British government’s notorious Iraq “dossier” of September 2002 was, in fact, “sexed up”, as the BBC had it – ie, deliberately exaggerated in its claims. I gave one example of how this happened, involving a certain A. Campbell, in my post Cynicism of February 2006. Now a British researcher, Chris Ames, has launched a website, Iraq Dossier, bringing together all the documentary evidence currently available, some of which he has uncovered himself by pestering the government with Freedom of Information requests.
I haven’t read the entire site, but something I did find illuminating was Ames’s analysis of how the vocabulary used to express varying levels of confidence about key claims changed through the drafting process. For the spooks there was a simple rule: to say intelligence indicates x or intelligence suggests x was understood to be more tentative, implying less evidence for the claim, than saying intelligence shows x, which was code for high confidence that x was true. Funnily enough, where the original JIC assessments used the lower-confidence language, the published dossier regularly hardened the claims into statements that “intelligence shows” what the intelligence did not, in fact, show, in the special sense of that word. Ames concludes:
Where the JIC said it is possible or intelligence indicates, the dossier said we judge and/or intelligence shows or intelligence confirms. Blair’s claim about the ongoing production of WMD went from being something that intelligence indicated to something that was judged from intelligence to something that intelligence showed to something “established beyond doubt”.
As I wrote last year, this process, in which judgments of possibility were hardened into claims of certain fact, was not merely a matter of “presentation” or “spin” or “strengthening” language – although it’s interesting in itself that admitting “spin” is the best defence available to the perpetrators. But it was not just “spin”: it was a deliberate misrepresentation of what the government actually knew at the time.
And here we come to the sorry topic of lying. Careful people often point out that to say “Bush and Blair lied about the existence of WMD” is not true, because both men likely did believe that there were “WMD” in Iraq. There is no evidence that Bush and Blair knew there were no “WMD” and claimed nonetheless that there were. Unfortunately, this accurate point is often used as if it proves that there was no transatlantic lying going on at all. But of course, there was. Where the lying comes in is in the substantive and unwarranted changes made to the expression of intelligence claims. In the September 2002 “dossier”, the British government persistently claimed that it knew for certain what it did not, in fact, know for certain – and knew that it did not know for certain. ((Cf Donald Rumsfeld, epistemologist.)) So this was – to put it no more delicately than it deserves – a pack of lies.
You can see the process at work in microcosm in the evolution of the title itself, as I noted in Unspeak. The original JIC assessment was headed “Iraqi use of Chemical and Biological Weapons – Possible Scenarios”, which became “Iraq’s Programme for Weapons of Mass Destruction”, which became, in the published version, simply “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Note that even if there had been “WMD” found after the invasion, the government’s claims about the strength of the evidence they had for the existence of such weapons before the invasion would still have been lies. The “dossier” was itself nothing other than a cynically engineered, weaponized salvo of Unspeak, a pamphlet to sell a war.
[…] Sexed up: Careful people often point out that to say “Bush and Blair lied about the existence of WMD” is not true, because both men likely did believe that there were “WMD” in Iraq. There is no evidence that Bush and Blair knew there were no “WMD” and claimed nonetheless that there were. Unfortunately, this accurate point is often used as if it proves that there was no transatlantic lying going on at all. But of course, there was. Where the lying comes in is in the substantive and unwarranted changes made to the expression of intelligence claims. In the September 2002 “dossier”, the British government persistently claimed that it knew for certain what it did not, in fact, know for certain – and knew that it did not know for certain. So this was – to put it no more delicately than it deserves – a pack of lies. […]
The Weapons’ Inspectors started work in Iraq in late November 2002. By the end of February 2003 their work had cast considerable doubt (to say the least) on the information presented in the UK Government’s September 2002 Dossier. Yet oddly enough as doubts increased about the evidence in the Dossier, the language of the UK Government got stronger. “We judge that ….” turned into “We know that Iraq has WMD”. Tony Blair could only get Parliament to vote for the invasion (in the absence of a UN resolution) by saying “We know ….”. The Attorney General’s hocus pocus about the legality of the war (cobbling together bits of different UN resolutions) could only work if Blair was able to say to the AG “We know that Iraq had WMD”. It wasn’t sufficient to say “We think that Iraq has WMD”. But it is totally unclear what evidence the UK Government claimed to have that could justify such certainty. By that time normal discourse on the subject had broken down and had been replaced by references to mysterious “other evidence” (when the evidence about yellowcake from Niger was shown to be forged) or circular arguments about Saddam being a liar so he must have WMD if hwe says he doesn’t. So it is highly likely that the Government misrepresented the certainty of what it knew, especially in the period between the Dossier and the invasion, not only to persuade the public buit also to try to create a figleaf of legality.
Just finished reading, “Yo, Blair” by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. Even though it is a polemic, Wheatcroft cites evidence to indicate that a joint decision to invade Iraq was taken by Bush and Blair, a lot earlier than we have been led to believe by Blair.
Having taken the decision, they then set about constructing the “truth” in a post-modernistic way. The narrative included the “dossier” and, I would suggest, the WMD question.
My point is that it really does not matter if both men believed Saddam had WMD’s or not, they just took a decision and then invented reasons to go to war. I find that scary and even scarier the fact that people would return to the polls and vote such a person back into an “elective dictatorship”?
Jon
It’s not a question of knowing – it’s a question of believing. In July 2003, Bush and Blair gave a press conference that included this gem:
PRESIDENT BUSH: “I believe that we will find the truth. And the truth is, he was developing a program for weapons of mass destruction… we based our decisions on good, sound intelligence. And the — our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
There certainly was no doubt in his mind, back in those glorious days when everything seemed possible, although one wonders if any doubt has crept in since. What strikes me most about this quote is that Bush simultaneously believed that we were going to find the truth – and that the truth would inevitably confirm what he already believed. The parallel with religious faith is almost too obvious.
Almost too obvious, but always worth pointing out.
[Unspeak, pp39-40, incredulous boldface added.]
First, let’s say that Bush and Blair believed Iraq had WMD despite knowing that they lacked the evidence.
Second, let’s review Mike Hulme’s quotation at the Unspeak item on ‘post-normal’:
Now, let’s alter the Hulme quotation a bit:
And there you have it: post-normal intelligence is the reason many were persuaded to support war in Iraq. Let’s hope the climate scientists don’t go post-normal on us.
High stakes, large uncertainties, and urgent decisions call for more honesty, not less.
Re comment no. 5 about beliefs:-
1) By March 2003, Blair was saying “We know Iraq has WMD”, he wasn’t saying “I believe Iraq has WMD”. He could only justify the ending of the weapons’ inspections by saying “We know ….” The legal hocus-pocus with the Attorney General could only work by saying “We know …”. In short, Blair switched between saying “We know …” and “I believe…..” as it suited him.
2) We shouldn’t be taking these urgent, high stakes decisions on the basis of personal beliefs. It reminds me too much of Joan of Arc and her visions.
3) In the quote in comment no. 5, Blair seems to be taking personal responsibility for the assumptions behind the decisions about Iraq. He is implying that the decisions are being taken on the basis of his beliefs. The corrolary of someone taking personal responsibility for an assumption is that they are held accountable when those assumptions are proved to be wrong and there is a bad outcome. However Blair has in practice not accepted any responsibility for being wrong about Iraq and WMD and hasn’t been held accountable.
4) The standard defence of Blair by his supporters is that “Chirac/Putin/Blix/Kelly etc etc thought that Iraq had WMD”. Maybe or maybe not this is true. But this thought didn’t lead these people to say that they knew more than the information coming from weapons’ inspections. They were willing to allow their judgement be tested by information from the ground. Blair wasn’t. Blair is trying to defend his strong position of “We know …” by making parallels with other people’s more cuatious statements “I think …”
Blair and others have been playing games by switching between “know” “believe” and think when it suits them. Is this being post-normal?