Day two of the Iraq War Inquiry led by Sir John Chilcot will focus on weapons of mass destruction and how the US/UK coalition shifted from “containment” policies to regime change, writes the Channel 4 News Iraq Inquiry Blogger.
Welcome to day two of the Iraq Inquiry at the QEII conference centre in London. Today’s official subject matter on the inquiry’s updated witness list is weapons of mass destruction, the issue that lies at the heart of how and why the US/UK coalition shifted from “containment” policies to regime change.
Witnesses are being asked about UK government policy on Iraq and WMD all the way from the end of the first Gulf war to the end of the Iraq Survey Group’s hunt for them after the second conflict.
That means we’ll be covering some ground the Butler Inquiry which reported in July 2004 wasn’t around to hear.
As the inquiry heard on Tuesday, the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought about a ground-shift in how Washington viewed so-called rogue states and intelligence that suggested they were attempting to develop or procure WMD.
In no time at all primacy for America’s Iraq policy passed from Colin Powell and the State Department to the hawks at the Pentagon. Nowhere was this better demonstrated than in President Bush’s memorable “axis of evil” State of the Union address four months later.
To quote the president, the US stance changed from “if it feels good, do it” to the regime change doctrine of “let’s roll” .
As I said on Tuesday night, both the latest witnesses are of senior FCO stock and between them have backgrounds in security, defence and intelligence and weapons counter-proliferation.
Sir William Ehrman has since worked as Our Man in China but he also served a post-Iraq war stint as chairman of the JIC between 2004-05.
Besides his counter-proliferation work the name Tim Dowse also features a couple of times in the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.
Purely out of interest it is worth noting he’s also the sole person on the inquiry’s initial witness list not to have a gong or similar set of initials after his name, bar the intriguingly-named Dominick Chilcott (just one letter out).
Sir John Chilcot did warn that today could get quite technical, so bear with me. Live updates throughout the day on our Twitter site and video on the inquiry website.