Butler spreads the blame

[CHIMO]

Lord Robin Butler



In the run-up to last year's war against Iraq, the United Kingdom's political leadership and intelligence community failed collectively in their analysis regarding the alleged presence and effectiveness of weapons of mass destruction in that country. That is one of the main conclusions reached by the investigative inquiry led by Lord Robin Butler.

Following the presentation of the report, British Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately accepted responsibility for the errors, but maintained that he still stood behind the decision to take military action against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Reaction from abroad


In an initial reaction, Dutch intelligence expert Dr Cees Wiebes of the University of Amsterdam described the Butler report as far from complete. In his opinion, it focuses too much on the role played by the British foreign intelligence service – the Secret Intelligence Service, better known by its former name: MI6 – and too little on the role of the government monitoring service (GCHQ), the military intelligence service and, for example, the level and standard of liaison with foreign intelligence agencies.

Dr Wiebes also believes the report is "weak" as regards its failure to name any guilty parties for the series of blunders made in the run-up to the war. As he puts it: "There were clearly two camps: MI6, which took Mr Blair's side, and military intelligence, which stated time and time again that the information passed to 10 Downing Street and the Joint Intelligence Committee was extremely flimsy". With that in mind, he concludes: "you can't really speak about a collective failure; that's not the case at all."


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