In Reply To - Iraq and the Butler Report - A letter from Pablo Gonzales to his MP Alan Johnson By Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP.

Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP Hull West and Hessle House of Commons Office - 020 7219 6637/1305 Fax: 020 7219 5856 www.alanjohnson.org

Mr Pablo Luis Gonzalez 29th July 2004. Dear Mr Gonzalez, Thank you for your thoughtful and considered letter of 17th July. I very much respect your opinions and, whilst I am unlikely to change them, I did feel that your letter deserved a similarly considered response. I have thought constantly about the decision I made to vote for this country to go to war on March 18th 2003. It was of course the first time that a decision to go to war had not been made by royal prerogative. In that sense it's not only the Prime Minister that should be held to account. The rest of us have a responsibility as well. I have to say that in the four independent inquiries into Iraq, I could find nothing that made me feel that I should have voted in any other way. You say that the Butler report "has made clear that Mr Blair was openly dishonest". I cannot see how you can reach such a conclusion. Much of the argument in relation to Iraq now seems to centre on the intelligence dossier published in September 2002 which, as Butler says, has assumed an importance after the event that it did not have at the time decisions were made in March 2003. In the whole of the debate in the House of Commons, which lasted for eight hours and which led to the decision to authorise military action against Iraq, there wasn't a single mention by any MP either for or against the war, of the intelligence report or the 45 minute claim. Butler does make a number of criticisms in his very important report but these do not in any way suggest that the Prime Minister was dishonest. One of his most important conclusions was that prior to the war the Iraqi regime "(a) had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons programme when United Nations inspection regimes were relaxed and sanctions were eroded or lifted (b) in support of that goal, was carrying out elicit research and development and procurement activities (c) was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted under relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions". In respect of your reference to oil, a little mentioned aspect of the Butler report was his reference to those widely held conspiracy theories about the war actually being about oil. The report dismisses this completely as a motive for initiating military action. The aspect where I disagree with you most is in relation to Resolution 1441. You say that the legality of the case for war "is looking weaker and weaker with each day that passes". I have seen no evidence whatsoever that the legal basis was anything other than robust. You are quite right in pointing out that the decision to go to war was not based on whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but was quite clearly centred on failure for eleven years to comply with UN Security Council Resolutions, the most recent of which was 1441. This required Saddam to give full and unfettered access to the UN Weapons Inspectors by December 2002. Nobody, including Hans Blix, argues that Saddam complied with that Resolution. The debate in Parliament on March 18th was principally about whether the regime should be given more time to comply with the Weapons Inspectors, not whether compliance had been achieved. Some of the things that have happened since the war concern me as much as they concern you, particularly in respect of the actions of the neo-conservatives in America, but having seen and examined all the information that you have, I come to a different conclusion. Finally I can see no vindication at all for Andrew Gilligan's story. This wasn't that the 45 minute claim could be questionable. What Gilligan said was that Alastair Campbell had specifically insisted that the 45 minute claim was inserted into the intelligence dossier. Lord Hutton (who was a hero when he was appointed but a villain when his conclusions didn't suit certain sections of the media) was withering in dismissing this abysmal piece of journalism. Yours sincerely, Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP

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