Jack Straw's Forked Tongue On Iraq War

On May 14 2003, Britain's well articulated and strongly opinionated Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has now back tracked and said " it was not crucially important" if weapons of mass destruction are NOT found in Iraq, in an interview on BBC's Radio 4.

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, UK

His present argument for Britain's support for US is now " We went to war on the basis of the evidence which was fully available to the international community." But during the course of the UN's weapons inspectors' time in Iraq, and before the war started, no incriminating evidence was found. Jack Straw is bending the truth.

Mr Straw argued yesterday that the discovery of mass graves at the site of ancient Babylon provided a moral justification for the war. "You see these pictures in newspapers about the discovery of 15,000 or so mass graves," he said. "Anybody who had any doubt about the rightness of our actions should just draw to their own attention the venality of the Saddam regime, which thankfully has now been removed."

But what about the crucial argument for going to war in the first place?

How could Jack Straw be so wrong to take an unequivocal stand with the White House to go to war in Iraq ? Has he misled or being genuinely wrong about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?


These were Jack Straw's public statements to the British public and to the international community BEFORE the war:

Jack Straw's Address at the UN Security Council, 14 February 2003

" Mr. President, the issue before us could not be graver....We said then that Iraq's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of long-range missiles and its noncompliance with Council resolutions was a threat to international peace and security....Now, we all know that they've had these weapons. That's why we said that Iraq had them, why all five permanent members, all 10 elected members, said the same thing. We knew that the issue was not whether Iraq had them, but whether Iraq was actively cooperating to get rid of them."

Jack Straw's Address to the UN Security Council , 5 February 2003

"When will Iraq account for the 6,500 bombs which could carry up to 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent? How will Iraq justify having a prohibited chemical precursor for mustard gas?....We had slipped slowly down a slope, never noticing how far we had gone until it was too late. Mr President, we owe it to our history as well as to our future not to make the same mistake again."

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's article in The Times, 5 March 2002

"Since then, evidence has been building up that the threat from Iraq's weapons programmes is growing once more. Many of the facilities damaged in 1998 by the US and UK strikes in Operation Desert Fox have been repaired. Iraq has persisted with its chemical and biological weapons programmes, and is developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons to targets beyond the 150 kilometre limit imposed by the UN.

This would allow it to hit countries as far away as the United Arab Emirates and Israel.....It angers me when well-meaning people are taken in by these lies.....and I hope they will achieve our aim of removing the threat which Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose to humanity. But if he refuses to open his weapons programmes to proper international inspection, he will have to live with the consequences."

Read here the full text of Jack Straw's speech to Chatham House, February 21 2003

On 28 September, 2002, President Bush in his radio address to the American people mentioned:

"...The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given."

Nicholas Watt of The Guardian UK reports:

The Labour MP for Halifax, Alice Mahon, said: "The whole basis of the war is based on an untruth. The whole world can see that ministers are backing away from their claims. People genuinely believed what the prime minister said about Iraq's weapons programme and its ability to launch an at tack in 45 minutes. This is making the war even more illegal."

Government backbenchers who had opposed the war will step up pressure on the government by tabling a motion in Parliament to demand evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Ministers have struggled to offer a plausible explanation for the failure to find banned weapons.

Following the UK Foreign Secretary's back tracking, British correspondent, Ben Russell reported the following in his headlined article, " So, Mr Straw, why did we go to war?" .

The legal and political basis for the war in Iraq was thrown into doubt yesterday when Jack Straw declared that uncovering Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was "not crucially important". The Foreign Secretary's comments added to the confusion over the capacity of Saddam Hussein to unleash chemical or biological weapons. Yet in the weeks before the Allied invasion, these WMDs had been declared an imminent threat to Britain and the West.

Mr Straw was accused of rewriting history after he appeared to undermine the Government's confident claim that Saddam had up to 10,000 litres of anthrax. On BBC Radio 4, he said: "It certainly did exist. There is no question about that, and the Blix report suggested that it still existed." Mr Straw used the past tense.

Challenged on the importance of a fresh weapons find, he said: "It's not crucially important for this reason ... The evidence in respect of Iraq was so strong that the Security Council on the 8th of November said unanimously that Iraq's proliferation and possession of the weapons of mass destruction and unlawful missile systems, as well as its defiance of the United Nations, pose – and I quote – 'a threat to international peace and security'."

Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, said: "Jack Straw is trying to reinvent history. All these claims about WMD are built on sand. If they do not find these weapons, it takes away the only conceivable justification for conducting this war. It shows the real reasons for this war: the superpower flexing its muscles and looking after resources, in this case petroleum."

Mr Straw's comments were the latest in a series of shifting statements from cabinet ministers about the whereabouts of Saddam's weaponry, the alleged threat from which provided the legal and political justification for the war.

MPs and watching journalists were left with the impression, unchallenged by senior Foreign Office officials, that Britain was no longer completely confident that the elusive weapons would ever be found.

The Foreign Secretary's comments raised deep concerns in the ranks of Labour MPs already unhappy with the decision to take Britain to war.

Doug Henderson, a former armed services minister, said: "I think it's pretty essential if any legitimacy is to be maintained that the reason for embarking on this process is proven. If it's not, people will ask what are the motives for war."

In Washington, similar back tracking is also taking place. The national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last week that the US was pinning its hope on finding incriminating documents rather than actual weapons.

Read what President Bush said at his 2003 State of the Union Address on Iraq's WMDs

Was this a Coalition of the Willing To Lie for the Iraq War?

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