The truth of UK's guilt over Iraq

With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by the then-prime minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

The failure to find any WMD in Iraq, following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops, continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war at that time. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, has been at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.

Among the more compelling testimonies provided to date has been that of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, who served in that capacity during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meyer convincingly portrayed an environment where the decision by the US to invade Iraq, backed by Blair, precluded any process (such as viable UN weapons inspections) that sought to compel Iraq to prove it had no WMD. Rather, Britain and the US were left "scrambling" to find evidence of a "smoking gun" that proved Iraq indeed possessed the WMD it was accused of having.

In short, Saddam Hussain had been found guilty of the crime of possessing WMD and his sentence had been passed down by Washington and London void of any hard evidence that such weapons, or even related programmes, even existed.

President George W. Bush was able to disguise his blatant militarism behind the false sincerity of his ally Blair and his own secretary of state, Colin Powell. The president's task was made far easier given the role of the useful idiot played by much of the mainstream media in the US and Britain, where reporters and editors alike dutifully repeated both the hyped-up charges levied against Iraq and the false pretensions of seeking a diplomatic solution.

The tragic final act of the farce perpetrated by Bush and Blair was the theatre of war justification known as UN weapons inspections. Having played the WMD card so forcefully in an effort to justify war with Iraq, the US (and by extension, Britain) was compelled to once again revisit the issue of disarmament. But the reality was that disarming Iraq was the farthest thing from the mind of either Bush or Blair. The decision to use military force to overthrow Saddam was made by these two leaders independent of any proof that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

The British were left with the role of fabricating legitimacy for an American policy of terminating weapons inspections in Iraq, supplying dated intelligence of questionable veracity about a secret weapons cache being stored in the basement of the Baath party headquarters in Baghdad which was used to trigger an inspection that the US hoped the Iraqis would balk at. When the Iraqis (as hoped) balked, the US ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, leading to the initiation of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign designed to ensure that Iraq would not allow the return of UN inspectors, effectively keeping UN sanctions "frozen" in place.

As of December 1998, both the US and Britain knew there was no "smoking gun" in Iraq that could prove that Saddam's government was retaining or reconstituting a WMD capability. Nothing transpired between that time and when the decision was made in 2002 to invade Iraq which fundamentally altered that basic picture. But having decided on war using WMD as the justification, both the US and Britain began the process of fabricating a case after the fact.

The reintroduction of UN weapons inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 was counterproductive for those who were using WMD as an excuse for war. This was aptly demonstrated when, in the first weeks following their return to Iraq, the inspectors discredited almost all of the intelligence-based charges both the US and Britain had levied against Iraq.

The decision for war had been made independently of any viable intelligence information on Iraqi WMD. As such, the work of the UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq, following their return in November 2002, was not a factor in influencing the lead-up to the actual invasion of Iraq.

The parade of British diplomats and officials appearing before the Chilcot hearings rightly point out the absolute lack of any "smoking gun" concerning Iraq and WMD. But until Chilcot receives testimony from those best positioned to speak about Iraq's WMD programmes, namely the UN weapons inspectors themselves, all the hearings will succeed in doing is sustain the false appearance of well-meaning British officials, stampeded into a war with Iraq by an overbearing American ally, looking in vain for a "smoking gun" that would justify their decision to invade.

The search for truth can be an inconvenient process, especially when it threatens to expose potential illegal activities in the prosecution of an unpopular war. Until he calls upon UN weapons inspectors themselves to deliver testimony before his inquiry, Chilcot perpetuates the perception that Britain simply can't handle the truth when it comes to uncovering the level of official British culpability in the deliberate fabrication of a case for war against Iraq.

- Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998 and is the author of Iraq Confidential.