British officials saw no Iraqi threat

This item from the Independent does not seem to have attracted much attention in conservative regions of the blogosphere. (For the Telegraph's version, see here.) It was revealed a few days ago that Carne Ross, former top British diplomat at the UN, gave secret testimony to a Commons committee in 2004 that the consensus in the British government, prior to the invasion of Iraq, was that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein had already been contained. "During my posting, at no time did [the Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests", Ross said. Before the war there was no intelligence evidence that Iraq held significant quantities of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, and no intelligence or assessment that Saddam was planning to attack anyone. This contradicts claims made by Tony Blair. Moreover, British diplomats repeatedly warned their American counterparts of the likelihood of Iraq collapsing into chaos following a régime change—and the Americans agreed(!) with this view. Ross also believed that there was insufficient attention given by the UK to stricter enforcement of the existing sanctions against Iraq, an approach which might have provided an alternative to war. Ross says that he resigned his position because of his misgivings about the legality of the invasion.

I came across the above via the usually high-quality libertarian blog Samizdata, whose attitude to the report was, however, dismaying. In effect, Samizdata responded with a "who cares?" to the Independent's assessment that Tony Blair had dragged Britain into a war by lying to his public. Samizdata does not appear to grasp that democracies cannot be sustained when clear and essential factual statements by their leaders cannot be trusted by their own peoples. What happens the next time a British Prime Minister, or American President, appeals to his citizens to back him in a struggle to defend the national interest? Why should anyone believe him when he points to vague intelligence which cannot, for reasons of national security, be fully divulged? But there are no other good sources of information available to ordinary citizens. Such moral failure on the part of leaders can be accepted with equanimity only by those who are under the delusion that we are immune from history, that never again will there be occasions when we genuinely must take up arms on behalf of our nations if they are to survive.

See also: U.S. wargames predicted Iraq mess