Quotes by Carne Ross

I was First Secretary in the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York from December 1997 until June 2002. I was responsible for Iraq policy in the mission, including policy on sanctions, weapons inspections and liaison with UNSCOM and later UNMOVIC...

During my posting, at no time did HMG assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests. On the contrary, it was the commonly-held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained. I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed). (At the same time, we would frequently argue, when the US raised the subject, that “régime change” was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.)

Any assessment of threat has to include both capabilities and intent. Iraq’s capabilities in WMD were moot: many of the UN’s weapons inspectors (who, contrary to popular depiction, were impressive and professional) would tell me that they believed Iraq had no significant matèriel. With the exception of some unaccounted-for Scud missiles, there was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW, BW or nuclear material...

Iraq’s ability to launch a WMD or any form of attack was very limited. There were approx 12 or so unaccounted-for Scud missiles; Iraq’s airforce was depleted to the point of total ineffectiveness; its army was but a pale shadow of its earlier might; there was no evidence of any connection between Iraq and any terrorist organisation that might have planned an attack using Iraqi WMD (I do not recall any occasion when the question of a terrorist connection was even raised in UK/US discussions or UK internal debates).

There was moreover no intelligence or assessment during my time in the job that Iraq had any intention to launch an attack against its neighbours or the UK or US. I had many conversations with diplomats representing Iraq’s neighbours. With the exception of the Israelis, none expressed any concern that they might be attacked...

I quizzed my colleagues in the FCO and MOD working on Iraq on several occasions about the threat assessment in the run-up to the war. None told me that any new evidence had emerged to change our assessment; what had changed was the government’s determination to present available evidence in a different light. I discussed this at some length with David Kelly in late 2002, who agreed that the Number 10 WMD dossier was overstated.

Ross was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK Mission to the United Nations 1997-2002, responsible for liaison with the UN weapons inspectors

20. In all the policy documents I reviewed in preparation for this testimony, there is no mention prior to 9/11 of any increase in the threat assessment for Iraq. Instead, these documents discuss the difficulty in maintaining support for sanctions in the absence of clear evidence of WMD violations by Iraq. Post 9/11, the prevailing FCO view is summed up in a minute from the Political Director to the Foreign Secretary on 22 March 2002 to the effect that the assessment of Iraq’s WMD capability had not changed over recent years, but that the UK reaction to that assessment had changed. This minute explains that there had been “not much” advance in Iraq’s WMD programmes over recent years and that they had not been stepped up. The minute adds that there was no evidence whatsoever of any connection between Al Qaida terrorists and the Saddam Hussein regime. This judgement is repeated in many different documents during this period.

21. What changed however was the presentation of that evidence, notably in the WMD dossier published in September 2002. In these public documents, of which here were several, the nuanced judgements contained in the internal JIC assessments, for instance, were massaged into more robust and frightening statements about Iraq’s WMD capability. For instance, in all the years of my work on Iraq, it was the UK assessment that Iraq might have a “handful” or up to 12 dismantled Scud missiles remaining of its originally many hundreds of imported Scud missiles. This estimate was based on a careful accounting, corroborated with UNSCOM and Iraqi records, of the numbers of missiles imported, minus those expended in warfare or destroyed by UNSCOM’s inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War. In the September dossier, up to 12 Scuds became up to 20 Al-Hussain variant extended range Scud missiles, a significant increase, for which there was no corresponding basis in the intelligence data. These Scud missiles were apparently the basis for the government’s claim that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes, although the dossier offered no explanation for the 45 minute claim. This claim also had no basis in firm intelligence. There were in fact no dismantled Scud missiles, of any variant, found in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

22. In another illustration of this process of deliberate public exaggeration, in March 2002, a paper on Iraq’s WMD was sent to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) which included the claim that “if Iraq’s weapons programmes remain unchecked, Iraq could develop a crude nuclear device in about five years”. This was not and had not been the government’s assessment hitherto which was instead more or less the opposite, that “if controls [ie sanctions] are lifted, then Iraq could develop a crude nuclear device in about five years”. In other words, it had been the government’s assessment that sanctions were effectively preventing Iraq from developing a nuclear capability. The head of Non-Proliferation Department sent a minute to the Foreign Secretary’s Special [Political] Adviser of 13 March 2002 drawing attention to this discrepancy (the Head of NPD had not been consulted on the preparation of the PLP paper) which pointed out that the UK’s public formulation (“if controls were lifted..”) was based on JIC assessments. The minute was apparently ignored; the PLP paper was not corrected: indeed, it was later circulated as briefing for the Cabinet... The September ‘02 dossier uses an even starker formulation, namely that,

“if Iraq obtained fissile material and other essential components from foreign sources the timeline for production of a nuclear weapon would be shortened and Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years.”

This statement is purely hypothetical, and was as true in 1991 as it was in 2002; there was no evidence at either point that Iraq was close to obtaining the necessary material. On the contrary, it remained the UK assessment in 2002 that sanctions had successfully prevented this possibility.

23. Notably, the WMD dossier and other public statements on the alleged threat said very little about the means of delivery of WMD, apart from dubious and exaggerated statements like that about the alleged number of Scud missiles. Yet any coherent threat assessment would include such, as no WMD can be delivered except by missile, aircraft, rocket or artillery shell (unless by terrorists and there was no evidence of Iraqi collusion with such). In fact, Iraq’s conventional military capabilities, in terms of armies, air force and naval forces, were far less than they had been at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. In particular, Iraq’s air force was reduced to the point of almost total ineffectiveness and presented no plausible match for allied air assets based in the region, as allied activity in the NFZs had amply demonstrated over many years. Thus, short of the alleged Scud missiles, Iraq had scant available means to deliver any WMD against its neighbours or anyone else. It is striking that this crucial element of the overall assessment was absent in the dossier and other public statements about the alleged threat.

24. This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty. But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies.

Ross was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK Mission to the United Nations 1997-2002, responsible for liaison with the UN weapons inspectors

17. It remains my view that the internal government assessment of Iraq’s capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public government documents during 2002 and 2003. Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq’s WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat. At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings: most of the unanswered questions derived from discrepancies in Iraq’s accounting for its past stocks and the destruction of these stocks.

18. The UK believed that the Iraqi threat had been effectively contained. Indeed, at many of the UK/US FCO/State Department bilateral discussions of Iraq policy which I attended between 1998-2002, discussion would often begin with an
overall assessment of whether containment was working or not. Invariably, the conclusion, shared by both the US and UK, was positive. The last of these discussions that I attended took place in June 2002.

19. Before I took the New York post in late 1997, I was briefed by relevant departments in the FCO. At Non-Proliferation Department (NPD), which was responsible for the Iraq disarmament issue, I was told that the UK did not believe that Iraq possessed any substantial stocks of CW, BW or nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them. None of the intelligence I saw subsequently in the 4 ½ years that I covered the issue, where I read on most days a thick folder of “humint” and “sigint” relating to Iraq, or the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments, during this period, substantially changed this assessment.