Does anyone really buy the no blame bit?

by Scott Stinson

In its conclusions, the committee faulted “over-reliance” on questionable human intelligence sources, arguing that the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) failed to appropriately scrutinize and validate reports from human intelligence sources. The committee also criticized British officials for not clarifying the limitations and caveats of intelligence included in the dossier.

In one of the more politically charged conclusions, the committee criticized the claim included in the 2002 dossier that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. The committee commented that the 45-minute claim should not have been included without significant clarification. As it was written in the dossier, the claim “later led to suspicions that it had been included because of its eye-catching character,” the committee said. The 45-minute claim took center stage in the controversy surrounding the suicide of David Kelly, an arms expert drafting the dossier who reportedly told the BBC he had been ordered to include the 45-minute claim by an aide to Blair.

The committee found “no evidence of deliberate distortion” of JIC reports by government officials but did criticize the process by which the 2002 dossier was drafted. It questioned whether the JIC should have had responsibility for producing the document.

“More weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear,” the committee stated.