Controversy now rages in Britain over whether Tony Blair misled the House of Commons, his party and the British people on the scale of the military threat posed by Iraq immediately before the US-British invasion of that country, writes Mark Brennock
Mr Blair insisted that Iraq was armed with weapons of mass destruction and capable of major attacks outside its borders. This was why it was necessary to launch a massive invasion of that country and overthrow its leader. Mr Blair is now struggling to justify his pre-war position amid continuing failure to find any of these weapons.
The Taoiseach also gave this assessment of Iraq's military capability, both to the Dáil and more generally to the Irish people.
He put forward the urgent need to disarm Iraq as the justification for allowing the US military use Shannon Airport as part of the war effort.
If it emerges that there was not, after all, an urgent need to disarm Iraq, then the Taoiseach and his Ministers will be seen to have misled the Dáil and the public. If such misleading took place, it was in a sense inadvertent. Ireland did not have its own independent intelligence information concerning Iraq's military capability. The Government clearly relied on information supplied from elsewhere.
However, the Taoiseach sounded as if he had no doubts about the reliability of the information. On February 6th, after a meeting in Lisbon with the Portuguese Prime Minister, he said Colin Powell's report to the UN Security Council - now seen as somewhat dodgy - had provided the world with clear evidence that Iraq had secretly produced weapons of mass destruction and that it was now up to Baghdad to avoid war by disarming.
"I think the report is strong and clear," he said. "I think they now know that time has practically run out. Hopefully the Iraqi regime might listen. I hope they do, they can avoid all this turmoil. That rests in the hands of Saddam Hussein and his colleagues."
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, was also clear that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Speaking in the Dáil on January 29th he said: "War can be averted and is not inevitable, if Iraq finally divests itself of its weapons of mass destruction now."
The previous month in a radio interview he warned that, not only did Iraq have such weapons, but it could use them. "This idea that Mr Hussein is a guy who simply has the capacity to use weapons of mass destruction but never used them. Tell that to the Kurds. Tell that to the people who were gassed."
The Taoiseach even had a count of the weapons Iraq was believed to have. He told the Dáil on January 29th that he would not try to predict "what Saddam Hussein and his corrupt regime will do or what he has done with the 6,500 chemical bombs, the equipment - logged on previous inspections and now missing - and the implements he is known to have and cannot account for".
As the hunt for these weapons continues to yield nothing of significance, US leaders have tried to shift the goalposts. Some have suggested that "regime change" and the removal of weapons of mass destruction are pretty much the same thing. The US military commander in Iraq, Lieut Gen David McKiernan, said this week that the invasion had disposed of "the greatest weapon of mass destruction: Saddam Hussein".
However, the Government here said it did not see this as a legitimate reason for war. On February 18th in the Dáil Mr Ahern agreed: "Resolution 1441 is not about regime change, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs and I have said several times".
The infamous letter in March to the Wall Street Journal from states Donald Rumsfeld liked to call New Europe said: "The Iraqi regime and its weapons of mass destruction represent a clear threat to world security." The letter was signed by Spain, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Portugal.
This was the one the Taoiseach said he would have been happy to sign, had he been asked.
So the discovery of what have been termed mobile laboratories (two of them), or a few containers that once might have contained nasty substances, is not enough. We were told, and the Taoiseach agreed, that Iraq had weapons of the quality and quantity to pose what the "new Europe" letter called a "clear threat to world security".
This was a massive invasion costing billions of dollars, involving the deaths of over 5,000 civilians, thousands more Iraqi troops and perhaps 200 allied troops. It destroyed Iraq's already rusting infrastructure, changed the power balance in the region, risked a further growth in anti-American feeling in the Arab world and created the biggest schism in global politics for decades. Ireland was roped into assisting, through the provision of Shannon.
No, the discovery of a couple of mobile laboratories won't do. The claim was that Iraq was armed with the most dreadful weapons, capable of mass killing, and was set to embark on a path of destruction unless stopped very quickly. It was for this reason that the Taoiseach said it was right to allow Shannon Airport be used as part of the military build-up.
Of course, many of those brutalised by Saddam's regime have been released from prison. Mass graves have been found. The region is rid of a very nasty dictator - although satisfaction at this must await evidence that the replacement will be democratic and benign.
But if it emerges that there were indeed no significant weapons of mass destruction, a fundamental question arises for small states such as Ireland. How can they become more involved in international security - as advocated by larger states - if they cannot trust the information provided by those who claim global leadership?