October 06, 2003
Quote Of The Moment #0023
From former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's diary of the months leading up to war:
The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam's arsenal. I told him, "It's clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?"
[Blair replied:] "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use."
There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion.
The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it.
Posted by Eddie Tews at October 6, 2003 03:50 PM
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