Confirmation that a key group of US inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been withdrawn after a fruitless search came yesterday with publication of an authoritative and devastating report in Washington saying intelligence on such weapons was systematically politicised and distorted by the Bush administration leading up to the war. It was a bad day for the credibility of those who argued a war was necessary to remove this threat.
The other main plank of the war party - that Iraq was co-operating with, and transferring weapons to, the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group, al-Qaeda - is found to be equally unsubstantiated by the report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. While it acknowledges that Saddam Hussein's regime did pose a long-term threat which could not be ignored, it argues that it did not "pose an immediate threat to the US, to the region or to long-term global security". The report goes on to say sanctions were working to contain the regime. This bears out the views of United Nations arms inspectors, who concluded there was little real evidence to bear out the allegations about weapons of mass destruction. The Washington Post now reports that most of them were probably destroyed in 1991.
Conservative supporters of the war in the US will claim this report comes from a tainted liberal source; but it is based on a thorough analysis of available documentary sources and extensive interviews with intelligence professionals. Its clear-cut conclusions about the dangers of politically distorting intelligence reports are well taken, as is the proposal that US intelligence be professionalised rather like the office of the Federal Reserve. Otherwise future threats, based on real information, will not be as readily believed either by a sceptical US public or its international allies.
Few mourn the passing of Saddam Hussein and his regime as a result of the war. A different set of problems confronts Iraqis and the occupying coalition forces now that he is gone. Reconstruction and the re-establishment of Iraqi sovereignty under democratic auspices are the major challenges - and they cannot be easily achieved in the short term. A new United Nations mandate is needed to allow for a wider range of international forces.
These developments underline the continuing debate on how best to tackle such threats in an uncertain world. In Dublin yesterday the European Union's foreign policy representative, Mr Javier Solana, set out the agreed principles underlying the EU's new security strategy. Multilateralism, preventive engagement to head off developing threats and a willingness to use all methods, including diplomatic, political, economic and aid pressure, and military means if necessary, are given a central place in it. But political will and determination will be needed to put it into practice. There is a large gap between EU capacities and the public expectations aroused by such objectives, which are rightly seen as an alternative approach to that of the Bush administration.