45 Minutes of Infamy? Hutton, Blair and the Invasion of Iraq

In 2002 the Labour government joined the US government in invading Iraq. Central to the justification of war was the continuing refusal of the Iraq government to give up its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The British government used two dossiers drawn from intelligence sources to explain or ‘prove’ the grounds for invasion, both of which were criticised for their provenance. When a BBC journalist claimed some of the contents were deliberately included or exaggerated by political rather than intelligence sources, and then a source of that journalist committed suicide, the ensuing row led to an inquiry by Lord Hutton. The conclusion of the inquiry was that the dossiers’ claims were genuine and that the BBC allegations were groundless. Nevertheless continuing concern over the use of intelligence material led to a further inquiry—the Butler inquiry—was much less supportive of the government’s role in the preparation and publication of the dossiers but that no one individual or groups of individuals were to named (or blamed) for the dossiers. The findings of both inquiries are not dissimilar to those into other foreign policy actions by earlier governments, and this government’s decision to invade, as well as to continue to defend its decision to do so, should not be seen as surprising in view of what it considers to be in the interests of the state.