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I see that the phrase “sex up” has made it into an Oxford mini-dictionary of words and phrases. The book defines it as “to enhance something to give it greater appeal or impact”.
With this definition I don’t understand how the government and its supporters can claim that the Iraq dossier was not “sexed up”. My MP claims this, and points out that the intelligence and security committee report published in September stated that “the [Iraq dossier of September 2002] was not ‘sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell or anyone else”.
Yet in the same report the intelligence committee also notes that the threat from Saddam Hussein was distorted in the dossier, by making claims out of context, by stating as fact matters which were uncertain (eg production of chemical weapons), and in particular not stating that the claim that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be used with 45 minutes of an order was not certain and applied only to battlefield weapons and not, as the reader was left to assume, to missiles which could be used to attack another country. A sentence in the draft dossier that Saddam did not pose a threat to the UK was dropped from the final version.
The Hutton Inquiry has also given us unique view of evidence and material which would normally remain secret for many years (an indictment of a government which supported freedom of information until it came into power in 1997). There are many emails, copies of minutes, notes etc. which we would never have seen had it not been for the Hutton Inquiry. The Hutton Inquiry has heard:
- Dr Kelly described as the UK’s expert on weapons of mass destruction. He had already told the foreign affairs select committee that he thought there was a only a 30% chance that Iraq had WMD, and that the 45 minute claim was “extremely unlikely”.
- Dr. Brian Jones, deeply involved in production of the dossier, say that the government over-egged the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
- “Mr A” say there were serious problems with the dossier, including the 45 minute claim.
- The head of MI6 say that the 45 minute claim was “misinterpreted” in the dossier in that it was not made clear that this only applied to battlefield weapons
In the Guardian (24 September) Jonathan Friedland writes:
“[Alastair] Campbell's 15-point memo to [Joint Intelligence Committee Chair John] Scarlett, attached to a list of comments from Blair himself, with its suggested rewrites to the September dossier is proof that No 10's political advisers were leaning on the spooks to harden up the JIC assessment. Constantly, Campbell is asking for ‘weak’ statements to be replaced by ‘stronger’ ones, for ‘may’ and ‘might’ to become ‘are’ and ‘will’. Even when he calls for some language to be cooled down, it is only for stylistic effect, knowing that a sober intelligence report will always have greater power than florid rhetoric. What was this but political pressure to beef up the dossier?”.
Richard Norton Taylor also writes in the Guardian (October 1st):
“Under Scarlett's control, drafters of the dossier put things in at Downing Street's suggestion. They also took things out – most strikingly when Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, saw the final version of the much-redrafted dossier, and sent Campbell an urgent email. ‘What will be the headline in the Standard on the day of publication? What do we want it to be?’ he asked, referring to London's evening newspaper. He said the dossier's comment that Saddam would use chemical or biological weapons only if he believed his regime was under threat posed ‘a bit of a problem’. The passage should be redrafted, said Powell. All reference to Saddam's defensive use of such weapons was taken out, leaving the impression that Britain was 45 minutes from an attack.”
It seems clear from all this evidence that the September dossier was not a balanced assesment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but that, in the dossier, that threat was ‘enhanced to give it greater appeal or impact’ – ie it was “sexed up”!
Mark Ramsey
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