Straw: 'haunted' by Iraq 45-minute claim
Updated on 21 January 2010
Justice Secretary Jack Straw tells the Iraq inquiry the confusion over the claim that Saddam could use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was an “error” that had “haunted us ever since”.
It should have been made clear that the intelligence linked the now-totemic claim to battlefield weapons rather than missiles, the former foreign secretary said.
“It's an error that's haunted us ever since, without any question,” he told the official inquiry into the Iraq war.
However, the intelligence was just one part of the decision to go to war, said Straw, as it went “with the grain” of what was known about Saddam.
The decision to go to war
Straw, who was foreign secretary in 2003, said the decision to go to war in Iraq “was the most difficult decision I have ever faced in my life”.
“The moral as well as political dilemma were profoundly difficult,” he said in a 26-page written submission to the inquiry.
“I was also fully aware that my support for military action was critical,” he said. “If I had refused that, the UK’s participation in the military action would not in practice have been possible. There almost certainly would have been no majority either in cabinet or in the Commons."
He acknowledged the failure to find WMD has "undermined trust" and said he "deeply regret[ted]" the loss of life caused by the war. However, he said he had never “backed away” from his decision.
"I believed at the time, and I still believe, that we made the best judgements we could have done in the circumstances; we did so assiduously and on the best evidence we had available at the time," he said.
Regime change and Blair
Straw stressed the differences between the US, where regime change had been a foreign policy objective since 1998, and the UK, where it was "off the agenda".
"A foreign policy objective of regime change I regarded as improper and also self-evidently unlawful," he said.
Straw was questioned by inquiry panel member Sir Roderic Lyne on whether Blair had shared this view. "I think the best way to find that out is to ask him," said Straw. "We are two different people."
Sir Roderic pressed: "But one government. I am trying to find out what the government's policy is."
Straw said: "It is no great surprise to know that people at senior levels in government hold different views and debate those. What I had to offer the prime minister was my best judgement and my loyalty."
Straw also said he believed he had seen all of Blair's important private communications to George W Bush, but reminded the inquiry that his brief as foreign secretary often took him out the country.
Aftermath
Straw criticised the US for the lack of post-invasion planning, and described uncertainty around how long the military phase would take.
"There was certainly anxiety, which I expressed to the prime minister from time to time, about what the situation would be and how we would manage the situation," he said.
"I think a significant number of problems that we faced at end of the, as it turned out, short military phase could have been avoided by better planning and co-ordination, above all in Washington," he said.
Straw said he and then-secretary of state Colin Powell were of similar viewpoints, and described the US government as consisting of both neo-cons and people he considered to be "more sensible".
"They are not our natural intellectual and political allies, but we had to work with them,” he said.
Conversations that, in Britain, would have gone in private were now played out on Fox News or in the pages of the Washington Post.
Axis of evil
Straw also described his concern at Bush's description of an "axis of evil".
"The president had publicly and formally surfaced his concerns in the axis of evil speech... I was concerned too about the way he had sought to link these three very different problems together."
This linking of Iraq, Iran and North Korea made it harder to handle Iran, which the west had tried to reach out to after September 11th, the former foreign secretary said.
Cabinet
Straw's advice to Tony Blair during the final phase of discussions was not shared with the cabinet because of fears it would be leaked to the press.
"Was there a cabinet committee where my alternatives to the PM were discussed? No," Straw said. "It is an eternal verity that members of the cabinet natter to their friends in the press."
Responsibilities
Straw said he would not have been able to continue in his job, had the decision to go to war not been approved in a parliamentary vote.
"Did I ever think I'm going to resign over this, no I didn't, we all have our bottom lines,” said Straw. “Did I understand the natures of the responsibilities on me – yes I did, for sure, and weigh them very heavily."
"In the event I came to my decisions that I came to, and did so very reluctantly, but I did so on what what I judged to the be best evidence available at the time," he said.
