Report of the Iraq Inquiry — House of Commons, 2016-07-14
Topic: Mixed Topics
John MacKenzie Nicolson (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman remembers well. We did indeed sit together in television studios, because we journalists called in experts to ask them for their evidence. It was relatively easy, even as a journalist, to pick apart many of the absurd claims Of course, some journalists were screaming for war. The Sun ran the absurd headline "Brits 45mins from doom" about a supposed threat to troops in Cyprus. The Star wrote "Mad Saddam ready to attack: 45 minutes from a chemical war". It was all nonsense. The journalists who wrote it knew that, but it was terrifying for some Members In January 2003, United Nations weapons inspectors reported that they had found no indication whatever that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons or an active programme of chemical weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency at the time found "no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said at the time that it "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction" However, US Vice-President Dick Cheney retorted that he believed that Saddam Hussein "has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei"— the director general of the IAEA at the time— "frankly is wrong." Who were parliamentarians to believe—the chemical weapons experts, the missiles experts, the IAEA, or Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the neo-cons? The House had to make up its mind In the run up to the Iraq war, I was working as a journalist, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out. Among other things, I was presenting a three-hour daily radio news programme. We had access to experts, as any news journalists do. We called them in and asked them to outline their evidence. Now, I am not a pacifist. I supported NATO action in Bosnia and Kosovo due to the imminent threat to life and the need to save civilians; in fact, I was on the flight back from Iraq—mentioned earlier—with the returning hostages who had fled from Saddam Hussein. However, during interviews with experts and academics in the run-up to the House’s vote, I saw clearly that the case for war was built on exaggeration and deceit. It was blindingly obvious Tony Blair frequently told this House and the British people that he was working towards disarming Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. He repeatedly told the House that his aim was not regime change. The House could have been under no illusion about what it was being asked to vote on. Mr Blair said that Saddam was a "very brutal and repressive" leader but that the aim was "disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, it is not regime change." Regime change was not the basis for war. The challenge for the House on the day of the debate was clear. Mr Blair was asking Members to vote on one basis and one basis alone: the imminent danger posed by Saddam’s weaponry What if all the experts talking in public were wrong? Was there an elevated group of experts—an inner core with extraordinary knowledge that was unavailable to the ordinary expert? As Members will recall, Tony Blair often said, "If only you could see what crosses my desk, you’d never doubt the danger that we are in and the pressing case for immediate action."