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| Alastair Campbell rejects claim WMD dossier was 'sexed up' Letters raised prospect of British military backing for US, Tony Blair's former director of communications tells Chilcot inquiryTony Blair wrote a series of private letters to George Bush in 2002 assuring him "we are absolutely with you" in making sure Iraq disarmed and raising the prospect of British military backing, Alastair Campbell said today.But the former Downing Street director of communications, giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war, said that the then-prime minister was hopeful of a peaceful resolution until the eve of the 2003 invasion.The Blair-Bush letters have not been published.Campbell also rejected any suggestion that the government had "sexed up" the 2002 dossier that claimed Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.In almost five hours of evidence – two more than scheduled – to the Iraq inquiry, Tony Blair's former director of communications mounted a typically robust defence of his own role and that of the ex-prime minister in a war that he insisted Britain ought to be "proud" of.But faced by some sceptical questioning from the panel, Campbell struggled at times to explain the unequivocal nature of claims made about Saddam Hussein's weapons arsenal in the run-up to the war.Campbell told the inquiry that he would defend "every single word" of the dossier, which he described as "conservative". He furthermore said that the intelligence was presented to parliament by the then-prime minister in a "cautious" manner, but the media had jumped on the "45 minutes" claim."At no point did anyone from the prime minister down say to the intelligence services: 'You have got to tailor it to fit that argument,'" said Campbell.Of the "45 minutes" claim, Campbell, who described his role as offering "presentational advice", said: "I don't think we were ever saying: 'Saddam's got these weapons and he can whack them over to Cyprus in 45 minutes.'"But he was less assured when panel member Sir Roderic Lyne asked him about the claim in the foreword to the dossier by Blair that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" and suggested that the claim seemed difficult to justify in the light of all the evidence.Campbell said the phrase was accurate before seeking to play down its importance, arguing that two words did not materially affect the strength of the dossier.Lyne also pressed Campbell on the basis on which Blair had said Iraq's WMD programme was "growing" when presenting the dossier to parliament despite the description "growing" not being used in the report. Asked a number of times about the evidence for the claim, Campbell repeatedly said it reflected the intelligence given to the then-prime minister and was implied in the report, if not explicit.He denied that Sir John Scarlett, the chief of the security services, would have felt under pressure, consciously or subconsciously, to unduly strengthen the dossier and rejected the idea that the joint intelligence committee (JIC) "would have overstated the case to any degree ... that would hit its credibility".He also said he felt it was "never in doubt" that WMDs would be found in Iraq within a "relatively short timescale" of the invasion and when he was told by Scarlett on 28 April 2003 that there might not be any it was a shock.Referring to the row with the BBC that resulted in the suicide of the government weapons scientist David Kelly, Campbell said the controversy surrounding the dossier "was in large part caused by a piece of dishonest journalism". He acknowledged that the London Evening Standard had published a misleading headline with respect to the "45 minutes" claim but said it was not his job to correct the story.Asked about the shortening of the time in which it was alleged Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in the final dossier as opposed to the draft, Campbell said it was nothing to do with him, and would have been a matter for Scarlett.While he said he would defend the September dossier "till the end of my days", Campbell held his hands up with respect to the "dodgy dossier" published in February 2003, which included large chunks lifted wholesale from an academic paper, blaming it on a "mistake" by a member of the Coalition Information Committee.Campbell also said today that there had been no "significant shift" in Blair's attitude towards regime change in Iraq during his April 2002 meeting with George Bush in Crawford, despite earlier evidence to the contrary.The inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, was previously told by Sir Christopher Meyer, the then-British ambassador to the US, that Blair shifted his position at Crawford. A leaked memo that Meyer sent to London about a lunch he had with Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy US defence secretary, in March 2002, said: "We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."But Campbell described Meyer's evidence to the inquiry as "overstated" and said that the former ambassador to the US had been "churlish" in refusing to accept that Blair had subsequently persuaded Bush to involve the UN.Iraq war inquiryAlastair CampbellPolitics and IraqIraqPolitics pastTony BlairForeign policyHutton reportHutton & the BBCBBCAndrew SparrowHaroon Siddiqueguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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