From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Ousted dictator Saddam Hussein remains in Iraq and will be handed over to a special court being set up by the US-appointed Governing Council to face charges of genocide and invasion of neighbouring countries, US administrator Paul Bremer said in an interview published on Saturday.

”Saddam is in Iraq now, and yes he will be tried publicly by a special Iraqi court when the prerequisites for setting up such a court are completed,” Mr Bremer told the Arabic-language daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

“The Governing Council has started setting up the special court and we have spent some funds on that and he (Saddam) will be tried publicly after bringing charges of mass killing and invading neighbouring countries against him.”

“Saddam will be handed over to the Governing Council after it finishes setting up the court.”

Asked if Saddam was cooperating with investigators, Mr Bremer replied: “He is not cooperating, but he is not a troublemaker either.”

“He has not given us any important or useful information up to now and has not confessed to the whereabouts of his offshore funds, but we know for sure that he has a lot of money outside Iraq.”

While tracking links about the most recent airborne terror concern, I came across this WaPo link to the excerpt from the 2002 National Intelligency Estimate discussing the probabiliites and confidences of WMD in Iraq. It's one of the documents of which so much has been made, and thanks to the link and Adobe Acrobat, you can read the excerpt for yourself. Do so here, and I've posted a screen cap of one key passage below (click to see it full-sized).

Updating a previous post, from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Separate attacks in Iraq have claimed 18 lives, including nine killed in a suicide car bombing in the country's northern city of Mosul.

A powerful car bomb blew up in front of a police station in Mosul, killing two policemen and seven civilians and leaving more than 40 others wounded.

Witnesses say the police station was quickly engulfed in flames and the building was partially destroyed.

In Baghdad, two blasts in the neighbourhood of Baladiyyat killed at least six people and wounded several others, according to witnesses and hospital sources.

The US military said it was aware of the explosions but had no information about them.

Earlier, three US soldiers were killed when their convoy was struck in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

FOX:

Attackers fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the Dutch Embassy in Iraq on Friday, hitting the roof with one and setting it on fire. The blaze was quickly extinguished, and there were no injuries.

Security guards and U.S. soldiers said the projectile detonated on the roof after the embassy had closed for the day. Another missed the building, and two other launchers were found in the garden behind the embassy, guards said.

Guards fired at the attackers' vehicle as they fled, said guard Karim al-Zubaidi.

Two bombings in Iraq on Saturday killed 12 people, including three American soldiers, and wounded at least 45 others, according to the U.S. military and news agency reports.

A car bomb exploded early Saturday, which was payday at a police station in the northern Iraq of Mosul. The blast killed nine people and wounded at least 45 others, according to news agency reports.

And:

A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers Saturday when it ripped through their convoy near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, while a car bomb outside a police station in Mosul left nine people dead and 45 others wounded.

The homemade bomb exploded as a 4th Infantry Division convoy passed by about 25 miles southwest of Kirkuk, killing the three soldiers, the U.S. military said. Their names were not immediately available. Kirkuk, a major oil producing area, is about 60 miles north of Tikrit.

So say WaPo:

Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence officials and congressional officials from both parties.

Why do I not think this is the final word?

This item was forwarded by the folks at Five Star Flags:

Now, Therefore Be It Proclaimed, That for the purpose of honoring our war dead, the United States flag that Carbondale flies at its Town Hall shall be lowered and flown at half staff each and every Monday at 8:00 a.m., beginning January 19, 2004, and raised again each Tuesday at 8:00 a.m.

Be It Further Proclaimed, That Carbondale shall continue to honor our war dead in this manner until the state of war no longer exists.

Carbondale is a town of 5,000 residents.

U.S. Rep Steve Israel of Long Island just returned from visiting Iraq, and sent this note to his constituents:

First, the morale, dedication and professionalism of our troops is extraordinary. As I have said often, in America we have the right to agree with policy to go to war, to disagree or to remain silent. But we have
a profound obligation to support our troops when they are deployed overseas and when they return home.

Second, serious challenges remain. One general told me, “My job is to maintain security, but security is more than just military power. Maintaining security and stability involves governance, rebuilding infrastructure, democratization and economic development. All these things help us maintain security.”

Later, while flying in a Blackhawk helicopter over Tikrit, the general told me how he spends most of his time promoting security by setting up town halls, building police forces, organizing women’s and school groups, and teaching people how to start small businesses. Combat was “hard power.” The general now deploys “soft power.”

To truly accomplish our mission in Iraq, to demonstrate to the world
that the Middle East can engender democracy and not dictatorship,
prosperity and not poverty, education and not indoctrination, we will need to
provide our troops with the resources they need: hard power as well as
soft power.

Israel has posted photos of his trip on his congressional web site.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)

[click for bigger image;Cartoon by TCP regular CERDIP]

Is it chicken roosting time? Here, from MEMRI, is a short list of the countries/people who allegedly benefitted from Saddam's oil vouchers. Yesterday, we posted about the possibility of Saddam bribing Chirac.

Merde in France says:

It's official, it was all about the oil; and then calls the whole thing a money train:

Blood money. Looks like some of the moolah splashing around French political circles thanks to barrels of Iraqi oil went to pay for hyping the Iraqi regime. Here is a web page covering a presentation organized at the Paris 9th district City Hall in June 2000 called 'Irak: the Forgotten Land' organized by 'L'association Jeunes France-Irak'.

Iraqi blogger Hammoribi chimes in:

These individuals should be followed up not only by the Iraqis but by the UN to investigate the breach of the UN sanction at that stage! This breach is coin with two faces, one is the breach of sanction and the other is the breach of using the money for propagand or things other than the food for the starved Iraqi children!

From another Iraq blogger, Zeyad of Healing Iraq:

Now you know why Iraqis suffered from the UN sanctions. Now you know why hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children had to die during the last ten years. Now you know why those people were vehemently anti-war.

Meanwhile, CNN, Fox and NYT have nothing on their front page in relation to this story. We'll have to watch the Iraqi bloggers for this one.

Update: A word of caution from Tom Maguire.

MEMRI: The following report from MEMRI's Baghdad office is a translation of an article which appeared in the Iraqi daily Al-Mada,(1) which obtained lists of 270 companies, organizations, and individuals awarded allocations (vouchers) of crude oil by Saddam Hussein's regime. The beneficiaries reside in 50 countries: 16 Arab, 17 European, 9 Asian, and the rest from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Only a portion of the 270 recipients are listed and identified.

[ed. note: Read the background MEMRI provides and the other notes, as well as endnotes, with the article]

The List

The following is a partial list and description of individuals and organizations that MEMRI has been able to identify:(2)

Canada: Arthur Millholland, president and CEO of the Calgary-based Oilexco company, received 1 million barrels of oil.

United States: Samir Vincent received 10.5 million barrels. In 2000, Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen who has lived in the U.S. since 1958, organized a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to visit the U.S. and meet with former president Jimmy Carter. Shaker Al-Khafaji, the pro-Saddam chairman of the 17th conference of Iraqi expatriates, received 1 million barrels.

Great Britain: George Galloway received 1 million barrels. Fawwaz Zreiqat received 1 million barrels. Zreiqat also appears in the Jordanian section as having received 6 million barrels. The Mujahideen Khalq(3) in Britain received 1 million barrels.

France: The French-Arab Friendship Association received 15.1 million barrels. Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua received 12 million barrels.(4) Patrick Maugein of the Trafigura company received 25 million barrels. Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, received 17.1 million barrels.

Switzerland: Glenco Re, the largest commodity trader in Switzerland, received 12 million barrels. Taurus, which has been associated with Iraq for 20 years and was the first company to renew its business with Iraq after the fall of Saddam, received 1 million barrels. Petrogas, which is listed under three sub-companies - Petrogas Services, Petrogas Distribution, and Petrogas Resources - and is associated with the Russian company Rosneftegazetroy, received 1 million barrels. Alcon, listed in Lichtenstein and associated with larger oil companies, received 1 million barrels. Finar Holdings, which is listed in Lugano, Switzerland, and is under liquidation, received 1 million barrels.

Italy: The Italian Petrol Union received 1 million barrels. West Petrol, an Italian company that trades crude oil and oil products, received 1 million barrels. Roberto Formigoni, possibly the president of Lombardia, received 1 million barrels. Salvatore Nicotra, a former NATO pilot who became an oil merchant, received 1 million barrels.

Spain: Basem Qaqish, a member of the Spanish Committee for the Defense of the Arab Cause, received 1 million barrels. Ali Ballout, a pro-Saddam Lebanese journalist, received 1 million barrels. Javier Robert received 1 million barrels.

Yugoslavia: Four Yugoslav political parties received vouchers: the Yugoslav Left party received 9.5 million barrels. The Socialist Party received 1 million barrels. The Italian Party received 1 million barrels. Another party, whose name in exact transliteration is “kokstuntsha” - possibly Kostunica's party - received 1 million barrels.

Other political parties: The Romanian Labor Party received 5.5 million barrels. The Party of the Hungarian Interest received 4.7 million barrels. The Bulgarian Socialist Party received 12 million barrels. The Slovakian Communist Party received 1 million barrels.

Austria: The Arab-Austrian Society received 1 million barrels.

Brazil: The 8th of October Movement, a Brazilian Communist group, received 4.5 million barrels. Fuwad Sirhan received 10 million barrels.

Egypt: Khaled Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, son of the late Egyptian president, received 16.6 million barrels. 'Imad Al-Galda, a businessman and a member of the Egyptian parliament from President Mubarak's National Democratic Party, received 14 million barrels. Abd Al-Azim Mannaf,(5) editor of the Sout Al-Arab newspaper, received 6 million barrels. Muhammad Hilmi, editor of the Egyptian paper Sahwat Misr,(6) received an undisclosed number of barrels. The United Arab Company received 6 million barrels. The Nile and Euphrates Company received 3 million barrels. The Al-Multaqa Foundation for Press and Publication received 1 million barrels.(7)

Libya: Prime Minister Shukri Ghanem received 1 million barrels.

Sub-Saharan Africa: Chad's foreign minister received 1 million barrels.(8) Four South Africans are listed: Tokyo Saxville received 4 million barrels. Montega received 4 million barrels. Both are associated with the African National Party.

Palestinians: The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) received 4 million barrels. The PLO Political Bureau received 5 million barrels. Abu Al-Abbas received 11.5 million barrels. Abdallah Al-Horani received 8 million barrels. The PFLP received 5 million barrels. Wafa Tawfiq Al-Sayegh received 4 million barrels.

Oman: The Al-Shanfari group received 5 million barrels.

Syria: Farras Mustafa Tlass, the son of Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, received 6 million barrels. 'Audh Amourah received 18 million barrels. Ghassan Zakariya received 6 million barrels. Anwar Al-Aqqad received 2 million barrels. Hamida Na'Na', the owner of the Al-Wafaq Al-Arabi periodical, received 1 million barrels.

Lebanon: The son of Lebanese President Emil Lahoud received 4.5 million barrels. Former MP Najjah Wakim received 3 million barrels. Nasserist Party head Osama M'arouf received 3 million barrels. National Arabic Club Chairman Faisal Darnika received 3 million barrels.

Jordan: Former Islamist MP and head of the Engineers Union Leith Shbeilat(9) received 15.5 million barrels. Former MP and Jordanian Writers Union head Fakhri Qi'war received 6 million barrels.(10) Former Jordanian chief of staff Mashhour Haditha received 1 million barrels. Former MP Toujan Al-Faisal received 3 million barrels.(11) The Jordanian Ministry of Energy received 5 million barrels. Muhammad Saleh Al-Horani, the Amman Stock Exchange head and former Minister of Supplies, received 4 million barrels. Lawyer Wamidth Hussein Al-Majali received 6 million barrels.(12)

Qatar: Qatari Horseracing Association Chairman Hamad bin Ali Aal Thani received 14 million barrels. Gulf Petroleum received 2 million barrels.

The Indian Congress Party received 1 million barrels.

Indonesia: Indonesian President Megawati received 1 million barrels as “the daughter of President Sukarno,” and 1 million barrels as Megawati.

Myanmar: Myanmar's Forestry Minister received 1 million barrels.

Ukraine: The Social Democratic Party received 1 million barrels. The Communist Party received 6 million barrels. The Socialist Party received 1 million barrels. The FTD oil company received 1 million barrels, as did other Ukrainian companies.

Belarus: The Liberal Party received 1 million barrels. The Communist Party received 1 ton [sic] of oil. The director of the Belarussian president's office received 1 million barrels.

Russia: The Russian state itself received 1,366,000,000 barrels. The list also included the following:

Companies belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party received 79.8 million barrels - the list notes the name of party president Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The Russian Communist Party received 1 million barrels. The Lukoil company received 63 million barrels. The Russneft company received 35.5 million barrels. Vladimir Putin's Peace and Unity Party received 34 million barrels - the list notes the name of party chairwoman Saji Umalatova. The Gazprom company received 26 million barrels. The Soyuzneftgaz company received 25.5 million barrels - the list notes the name Shafrannik. The Moscow Oil Company received 25.1 million barrels. The Onako company received 22.2 million barrels. The Sidanco company received 21.2 million barrels. The Russian Association for Solidarity with Iraq received 12.5 million barrels. The Ural Invest company received 8.5 million barrels. Russneft Gazexport received 12.5 million barrels. The Transneft company received 9 million barrels. The Sibneft company received 8.1 million barrels. The Stroyneftgaz company received 6 million barrels. The Russian Committee for Solidarity with the People of Iraq received 6.5 million barrels - the list notes the name of committee chairman Rudasev. The Russian Orthodox Church received 5 million barrels. The Moscow Science Academy received 3.5 million barrels. The Chechnya Administration received 2 million barrels. The National Democratic Party received 2 million barrels. The Nordwest group received 2 million barrels. The Yukos company received 2 million barrels. One Russian company which phonetically reads as Zarabsneft received 174.5 million barrels. Vouchers were also granted to the Russian foreign ministry, one under the name of Al-Fayko for 1 million barrels, and one to Yetumin for 30.1 million barrels. The Mashinoimport Company received 1 million barrels. The Slavneft Company received 1 million barrels. The Caspian Invest Company (Kalika) received 1 million barrels. The Tatneft Tatarstan company received 1 million barrels. The Surgutneft company received 1 million barrels. Siberia's oil and gas company received 1 million barrels.

In addition, the son of the former Russian Ambassador to Iraq received 19.7 million barrels. Nikolay Ryjkov, a former prime minister of the USSR, received 13 million barrels. The Russian President's office director received 5 million barrels.

Reuters

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari said Thursday Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had been carefully hidden, but he was confident they could be discovered.

“I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward,” Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, told a news conference in Sofia. “They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated.”

The United States and Britain cited Iraq's possession of chemical and biological arms as their main reason for invading the country in March and toppling Saddam. But no such weapons have so far come to light despite intensive searches.

Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said Wednesday “we were almost all wrong” about the issue and it was “highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons” in Iraq.

But Zebari, on a visit to Bulgaria, said: “We as Iraqis have seen Saddam Hussein develop, manufacture and use these weapons of mass destruction against us. He hasn't denied that.”

Via Drudge comes a report in the Washington Times that the Iraqi Governing Council has evidence showing that “top French officials” were bribed by Saddam with oil:

Oddly, the article is entitled Iraqi govt. papers: Saddam bribed Chirac, but the body of the article never mentions Jacques Chirac personally receiving any improper payments, and this article in the Independent (which appears to be the Times' source) never points the finger directly at Chirac. So take this for what it's worth - if the IGC really has the goods on top French officials, whether or not they go as high as Chirac, we should see more on this in the near future.

The following is the statement former U.S. Weapons Inspector David Kay made to the Senate committee before questioning:

KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [Iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.

A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think … it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.

But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war — certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

The Germans certainly — the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.

It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [U.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities — one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

I think the aim — and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving — is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never — not in a single case — was the explanation, “I was pressured to do this.” The explanation was very often, “The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it.”

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, “inappropriate command influence” that led them to take that position.

It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had — the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion.

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that.

We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.

And like I say, I think we've got other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.

And let me really wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [Iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.

A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq — the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. “It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable.”

I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

The result is — document destruction — we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.

But I do think the survey group — and I think Charlie Duelfer is a great leader. I have the utmost confidence in Charles. I think you will get as full an answer as you can possibly get.

And let me just conclude by my own personal tribute, both to the president and to [CIA Director] George Tenet, for having the courage to select me to do this, and my successor, Charlie Duelfer, as well.

Both of us are known for probably at times regrettable streak of independence. I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. I have had absolutely no pressure prior, during the course of the work at the [Iraq Survey Group], or after I left to do anything otherwise.

I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this. But it is really up to you and your staff, on behalf of the American people, to take on that challenge. It's not something that anyone from the outside can do. So I look forward to these hearings and other hearings at how you will get to the conclusions.

I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimates. But you have more public service — certainly many of you — than I have ever had, and you recognize that this is not unusual.

I told Sen. [John] Warner [chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee] earlier that I've been drawn back as a result of recent film of reminding me of something. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the combined estimate was unanimity in the intelligence service that there were no Soviet warheads in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and [then-Attorney General] Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.

So that by the end of the Johnson administration, the intelligence community had a capability to do what it had not been able to do at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

I think you face a similar responsibility in ensuring that the community is able to do a better job in the future than it has done in the past.

Sky News:

The chairman of the BBC board of governors has resigned following criticism in the Hutton Report.

The BBC suffered its first casualty, Gavyn Davies, as the corporation's director general, Greg Dyke, “apologised” for “certain key allegations” made by reporter Andrew Gilligan which were false.

Mr Davies offered his resignation at a meeting of the BBC board of governors, which it had accepted with immediate effect.

In a statement, he said there was an “honourable tradition in British public life” of those at the top of an organistion accepting responsibility for what took place within in it.

The development followed criticism for the BBC and Mr Gilligan in Lord Hutton's report for an “unfounded” story that the Government had lied in its 45 minutes claim about Iraq's weapons capability.

More:

• Oxblog has plenty of links, as does Glenn Reynolds.

• Telegraph story

• Plenty of stories at the Guardian

• Independent has a series of articles

From TimesOnline

BBC and Andrew Gilligan

Andrew Gilligan's claim that the 45-minutes claim was “sexed up” was unfounded.

BBC management and governors should have made more detailed investigation of Mr Gilligan's notes

BBC should have seen and approved Mr Gilligan's script before it was used in broadcast

The BBC was right to protect its independence but its procedure for dealing with the Government's complaints was “defective”.

Dr David Kelly

Dr Kelly did not tell Mr Gilligan that the Government probably knew or suspected that the 45-minutes claim was wrong before it was inserted into the dossier.

Dr Kelly killed himself after “severe loss of self esteem”
and no third party was involved.

No one involved in the inquiry was to know that Dr Kelly would kill himself.

Dr Kelly's meeting with Mr Gilligan was unauthorised and his discussion of intelligence was in breach of Civil Service rules.

Dr Kelly may have said more to Mr Gilligan than he intended to and did not realise the gravity of the situation he was creating.

Dr Kelly told his wife that he knew it was inevitable that his identity would become public

Government and MoD

No underhand strategy within the Government to identify Dr Kelly to the media.

MoD at fault for not informing Dr Kelly that its press office would confirm his name if it was stated by journalists.

MoD failed Dr Kelly in allowing an hour and a half to pass before informing him that the press office had confirmed his name to the press.

Tony Blair did not lie to journalists on a flight to Hong Kong when he said he did not name Kelly.

The Joint Intelligence Committee did not act inappropriately in considering the changes proposed by Downing Street.

Other

The debate on whether the dossier falsely made the case for war does not come under the terms of reference for his inquiry.

The final submissions of the parties involved in the inquiry, will be published on the inquiry's website today.

Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay is testifying before the Senate in regards to finding weapons of mass destrution in Iraq.

It's being aired live on both Fox, C-Span and CNN. You can also watch it on the C-Span website.

We will print partial transcripts as soon as we get them.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has made a statement following the publication of Lord Hutton's report into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly.

- Watch the PM's statement (windows media player)

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement following Lord Hutton's report into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly.

I am immensely grateful to Lord Hutton, his team and inquiry staff for the work they have carried out. The report itself is an extraordinarily thorough, detailed and clear document. It leaves no room for doubt or interpretation. We accept it in full.

Lord Hutton has just finished reading the summary of his findings. Before coming to those I want to echo one thing Lord Hutton said about Dr Kelly himself. Lord Hutton makes his findings about Dr Kelly's conduct in respect of the matters at issue here, but as he says, nothing should detract from Dr Kelly's fine record of public service to this country. He was respected here and abroad. I am sorry that as a result of the gravity of the allegations made it was necessary to have this inquiry and that the Kelly family have had to go through reliving this tragedy over the past months. I hope now it is over, they will be allowed to grieve in peace.

Lord Hutton has given a most comprehensive account of the facts. It is unnecessary for me to repeat them. But let me emphasise why I believed it right to establish such an inquiry. Over the past six or more months, allegations have been made that go to the heart of the integrity of government, our intelligence services and me personally as Prime Minister. There are issues, of course, as to how the case of Dr Kelly was handled in personnel terms; and I shall come to those.

But these have not sustained the media, public and parliamentary interest over all this time. What has sustained and fuelled that interest has been, to put it bluntly, a claim of lying, of deceit, of duplicity on my part personally and that of the Government. That claim consists of two allegations: first that I lied over the intelligence that formed part of the Government's case in respect of Iraq and WMD published on 24 September 2002; the second that I lied or was duplicitous in respect of the naming of Dr Kelly, leaking his name to the press when it should have remained confidential.

Lord Hutton finds the following:

1. Contrary to the claim by the BBC that intelligence was put in the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services; the dossier of 24 September was published with the full approval of the JIC, including the intelligence about Saddam's readiness to use some WMD within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

2. That the allegation by the BBC that the Government deliberately inserted this 45 minute claim probably knowing it was wrong was “unfounded”.

3. That the allegation by the BBC that the reason for it not being in the original draft of the dossier was because the intelligence agencies didn't believe it to be true, was also “unfounded”.

4. That no-one, either in the JIC or Downing Street acted improperly in relation to the dossier.

5. That the BBC claim that it was “sexed up” in the sense of being embellished with intelligence known or believed to be false was also “unfounded”.

6. That Mr Gilligan's key allegations repeated by the BBC were never in fact said even by Dr Kelly himself.

7. That there was “no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the Government covertly to leak Dr Kelly's name to the media”.

8. That on the contrary it was reasonable for the Government to conclude that there was no practical possibility of keeping his name secret and that the Government behaved properly in relation to naming him.

9. That the suggestion that either I or Sir Kevin Tebbit in our evidence were in conflict with each other or that one of us was lying was “incorrect and not supported by the evidence”.

10. And for good measure, he also dismisses the allegations surrounding what I said on a plane to journalists in these terms.

“Some commentators have referred to answers by the Prime Minister to questions from members of the press travelling with him on an aeroplane to Hong Kong on 22 July and I have read the transcript of that press briefing. As I have stated, I am satisfied that there was not a dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy on the part of the Prime Minister and officials to leak Dr Kelly's name covertly, and I am further satisfied that the decision that was taken by the Prime Minister and his officials in 10 Downing Street on 8 July was confined to issuing a statement that an un-named civil servant had come forward and that the Question and Answer material was prepared and approved in the MOD and not in 10 Downing Street.”

Let me now return to the two central allegations.

On 29 May 2003, following the end of the conflict in Iraq, the BBC Today programme broadcast a story by its Defence Correspondent, Andrew Gilligan. It dominated the morning bulletins and reverberates to this day. It alleged that part of the September 2002 dossier - that Saddam could use WMD within 45 minutes of an order to do so - had been inserted into it by Downing Street, contrary to the wishes of the intelligence services and that moreover we “probably knew it was wrong even before we decided to put it in”. There could not be a more serious charge. The source for this extraordinary allegation was said by the BBC to be “a senior official in charge of drawing up that dossier” and an “intelligence service source” implying a member of the JIC or assessments staff who would be in a position to know. If true, it would have meant that I had misled this House on 24 September and the country; that I had done so deliberately; and I had behaved wholly improperly in respect of the intelligence services.

From that day, 29 May onwards, that story in one form or another has been replayed many times in the UK, and all over the world.

It dominated my Press Conference in Poland on 30 May; and PMQs when I returned. It led that week to the Foreign Affairs Committee deciding to conduct an Inquiry into the issue. In particular, on the Sunday following the story, Mr Gilligan wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday, not merely standing by the story but naming Alastair Campbell as the person responsible in Downing Street. The headline read:

“I asked my intelligence source why Blair misled us all over Saddam's weapons. His reply? One word…..CAMPBELL”

This again, was completely untrue; and not merely stood up but further inflamed the original allegation of deceit.

The BBC has never clearly and visibly withdrawn this allegation. This has allowed others to say repeatedly I lied and misled Parliament over the

24 September dossier.

Let me make it plain: it is absolutely right that people can question whether the intelligence received was right; and why we have not yet found WMD. There is an entirely legitimate argument about the wisdom of the conflict. I happen to believe now as I did in March that removing Saddam has made the world a safer and better place. But others are entirely entitled to disagree.

However, all of this is of a completely different order from a charge of deception, of duplicity, of deceit, a charge that I or anyone else deliberately falsified intelligence.

The truth about that charge is now found. No intelligence was inserted into the dossier by Downing Street; nothing was put in it against the wishes of the intelligence services; no-one, either in Downing Street or the JIC, put any intelligence into it, “probably knowing it was wrong”; and no such claim to the BBC was made by anyone “in charge of drawing up the dossier”. Indeed, Lord Hutton's findings go further. The claim was not even made by Dr Kelly himself.

The allegation that I or anyone else lied to this House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence on WMD is itself the real lie. And I simply ask that those that made it and those who have repeated it over all these months, now withdraw it, fully, openly and clearly.

Furthermore, Lord Hutton deals with the issue of the 45 minute claim. Instead of this being disputed by the intelligence services and inserted into the dossier at the behest of Alastair Campbell or Downing Street; the true position was that a concern about how it was phrased in the dossier was raised by a

Dr Jones in DIS, was rejected by the Head of Defence Intelligence and never actually came to the attention of the Chairman of the JIC let alone Downing Street.

In any event, Dr Jones did not say it should have been omitted from the dossier. On the contrary Dr Jones thought it should be included as it was “important intelligence”. Dr Jones told the Inquiry that Dr Kelly thought the dossier was “good” and Mr A, from the Counter Proliferation Arms Control Department said of himself and Dr Kelly “Both of us believed that if you took the dossier as a whole it was a reasonable and accurate reflection of the intelligence that we had available to us at that time.”

Lord Hutton does fairly comment: “However I consider that the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that the desire of the Prime Minister to have a dossier which, whilst consistent with the available intelligence, was as strong as possible in relation to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's WMD, may have sub-consciously influenced Mr Scarlett and other members of the JIC to make the wording of the dossier somewhat stronger than it would have been if it had been contained in a normal JIC assessment.”. However he goes on to say: “although this possibility cannot be completely ruled out, I am satisfied that Mr Scarlett, the other members of the JIC, and the members of the Assessments Staff engaged in the drafting of the dossier were concerned to ensure that the contents of the dossier were consistent with the intelligence available to the JIC.”

Lord Hutton also says, in terms, that Mr Scarlett “only accepted those suggestions which were consistent with the intelligence known to the JIC and he rejected those suggestions which were not consistent with such intelligence.”

I hope that from now on the wholly unjustified attacks on the Chairman of the JIC John Scarlett and the JIC will cease. These people are people dedicated to this country and its wellbeing. The publication of intelligence by Government - which we did, let me remind the House, because of the clamour for it - was a unique exercise never done before, and difficult for all our Agencies. But in the interests of openly sharing intelligence with people, they worked hard in good faith to release it properly. And let me also remind the House that when this dossier was published it was routinely described at the time as “low key” and by Mr Gilligan, no less, on 24 September 2002 as “sensibly cautious and measured”; and actually moved public opinion hardly at all. Only in retrospect was it elevated into the single thing that conclusively persuaded a reluctant country to war.

The dossier reflected independent reports such as that of the IISS on 9 September. It reflected precisely that evidence which led the UN Security Council unanimously in November 2002 to agree Saddam and his weapons posed a threat to the world. The 45 minute claim was in fact mentioned once by me in my statement in this House on 24 September and not mentioned by me again in any debate, not even in the debate on 18 March or indeed by anyone else in that debate. Only again in retrospect, has history been rewritten to establish it as the one crucial claim that marched the nation into conflict.

Lord Hutton establishes clearly why the 45 minutes was put in the dossier, what its provenance was - and whether or not subsequently it turned out to be correct or not - finds it was put into the dossier entirely in good faith by the JIC.

So much for the first charge of dishonesty over the dossier. The second charge was over the naming of Dr Kelly. Again throughout these past six months, the context in which this has been debated has largely been that Dr Kelly's name should not have been revealed, it should have remained confidential and therefore anyone, including myself, who discussed or acted upon the issue was acting improperly.

In hindsight, of course, the name of Dr Kelly and his evidence to the FAC has taken on a different and altogether more tragic aspect. Rightly Lord Hutton puts it back into its proper contemporary context.

The truth is that by early July the FAC was actively engaged in examining the truth of the Gilligan allegations and due to report on 7 July. The ISC was about to begin its deliberations the same week. Evidence had already been given by the Government to the FAC and all of us, myself included were due to give evidence to the ISC beginning with the Chairman of the JIC on 9 July.

Suddenly in late June, Dr Kelly came forward and said to his managers he believed he may have been at least part of the source for the Gilligan story. That information was given to me personally on 3 July. By Monday 7 July it was apparent that in all likelihood he was indeed the source of the Gilligan story.

The dilemma we were in, therefore, as Lord Hutton accepts, was how we could possibly keep this information secret not just from the FAC, who had just taken evidence on this very point; but also from the ISC who were about to interview us all about the intelligence relating to Iraq, with the first session on the morning of Wednesday 9 July.

The evidence, very frankly given, of both my RHF, the Chairman of the FAC, and at least one of the Committee's members, was that if they had been told that the MOD knew the source and had interviewed him, the FAC would have wanted to do the same. As, of course, they did. Indeed, they told the Inquiry that they would have liked to have been told sooner.

The context therefore for the meetings on 7/8 July which I chaired was how to act properly in relation to these two committees where we were in possession of information plainly relevant to their inquiries and when one committee was on the point of publication and another about to begin proceedings.

The evidence of Sir David Omand was that it would be “improper” to keep this information secret and that we were under a duty to reveal it to Parliament. So as Lord Hutton accepts the whole basis of the claim that somehow Dr Kelly should never been been named or that his name was leaked in breach of a duty of confidentiality, is based on a false premise. On the contrary our duty was to disclose his name to the Committees and allow them to interview him if they so wished; and Lord Hutton finds that our concern, at being accused of misleading those Committees was “well-founded”.

In any event, again as Lord Hutton finds, no-one in fact “leaked” his name. Not myself, not the Secretary of State, not the officials. As Lord Hutton finds, the decision by the MOD to confirm Dr Kelly's name, if the correct name was put to it by a journalist, was based on the view that in a matter of such intense public and media interest it would not be sensible to try to conceal it.

There was no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy to name Dr Kelly. He was named for the reason we gave. And again I ask that those that have repeatedly claimed that I lied over this issue or that Sir Kevin Tebbit did, now withdraw that allegation also, unequivocally and in full.

Lord Hutton does however find that the MOD were at fault in not telling Dr Kelly clearly and immediately that his name would be confirmed to the press if it was put to the MOD. The MOD accepts these findings. However Lord Hutton goes on to say:

” However these criticisms are subject to the mitigating circumstances that (1) Dr Kelly's exposure to press attention and intrusion, whilst obviously very stressful, was only one of the factors placing him under greater stress; (2) individual officials in the MOD did try to help and support him in the ways which I have described in paragraphs 430 and 431; and (3) because of his intensely private nature, Dr Kelly was not an easy man to help or to whom to give advice.”

I believe that the civil servants concerned were acting in good faith doing their best in difficult and unusual circumstances. Lord Hutton has not criticised any individuals in the MOD. Some have been subject to trenchant media criticisms far beyond what they ever should have had to bear. Sir Kevin Tebbit has, as has my RHF the Secretary of State. Both are cleared of any allegations of impropriety. My RHF in particular has been subject to a constant barrage of such claims as parts of the media have alternated between wanting his scalp or mine.

I hope that these attacks on him over this issue also cease.

I come to the final issue: the cause of Dr Kelly's death; in effect, why he took his own life, since it is now beyond doubt that he did.

Lord Hutton finds that no-one could have foreseen that Dr Kelly would commit suicide. He finds further that in all probability, he did not decide to do so until the day of his death. He finds that the reason he did so was not for any reason of conspiracy or dark motives. The truth is that Dr Kelly did speak to Mr Gilligan and whatever the distortion, it was an unauthorised meeting, as was his conversation with Susan Watts, the Newsnight journalist; and he was surprised to be asked about this at the FAC. Lord Hutton finds that the existence of a note of that conversation must have weighed heavily on his mind. Finally, on the day of his death he received notice of a series of Parliamentary Questions about his contacts which he was going to have to answer.

Dr Kelly was a decent man, whose very decency made him feel wretched about the situation in which he found himself.

No-one wished this tragedy to happen. All of us felt, and feel still, desperately sorry for Mrs Kelly and her family. None of us could have foreseen it because none of us, at that time, knew what Dr Kelly knew.

Lord Hutton puts it in this way at paragraph 15 of his report:

“I also consider it to be important to state in this early part of the report that I am satisfied that none of the persons whose decisions and actions I later describe ever contemplated that Dr Kelly might take his own life. I am further satisfied that none of those persons was at fault in not contemplating that Dr Kelly might take his own life. Whatever pressures and strains Dr Kelly was subject to by the decisions and actions taken in the weeks before his death, I am satisfied that no-one realised or should have realised that those pressures and strains might drive him to take his own life or contribute to his decision to do so.”

In conclusion I repeat what Lord Hutton said in his Summary, at page 322.

“The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media.”

That is how this began: with an accusation that was false then and is false now.

We can have the debate about the war; about WMD; about intelligence. But we do not need to conduct it by accusations of lies and deceit. We can respect each other's motives and integrity even when in disagreement.

Let me repeat the words of Lord Hutton:

“False accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others … should not be made”.

Let those that made them now withdraw them.

A bit of editorializing on my part:

Brilliant.

The Guardian was blogging the statement live.

Jeff Jarvis has a lot more on this.

From The Australian :

US authorities today prepared to demolish Saddam Hussein's five palatial homes in the village where he was born, having stripped them of expensive marbles, tiles and valuable furniture.

The 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, based in Tikrit, received permission from coalition authorities yesterday to go ahead with the demolition in Uja village, said the commander, Lt Col Steve Russell.

For the past couple of months, contractors hired by the US forces have been removing valuable materials from the homes including hand-cut Italian bricks and polished marble tiles, Russell told reporters taken on a tour of the ousted dictator's home.

“I see a lot of the abuse typical of Third World dictators who use their country's money and use it for their own personal gains, not for the people,” said Maj Bryan Luke.
[…]
Russell said that once the homes are levelled the property would be returned to the owner, Sheik Mahmoud Nassiri, from whom Saddam had seized the land. He did not say when the demolition will begin or how long it will last.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A powerful suicide car bomb tore off the front of a hotel occupied by a government minister and destroyed a police station in the centre of Baghdad early Wednesday, killing at least three people.

The explosion hit the the Shahine hotel, frequently used by foreign businessmen, in the city's upmarket Karrada district and a small police station across the street shortly after 6:30am (local time), punching out windows.

“There are at least three dead,” said Lieutenant Ahmed Abdul Karim, shortly after the 6:30am (local time) blast.

A large portion of the hotel is occupied by Iraq's interim minister for labour Sami Azara al-Majun, according to security officials.

“The minister was praying when the blast happened, he is safe, all of the second floor was occupied by the minister and his security,” said Uday Nuri, one of the minister's guards

Lieutenant Hussein Ali, the chief of police patrols in Karrada, said the bomb was concealed inside an ambulance which drove up to the hotel at high speed.

“According to testimonies we received, an ambulance arrived very quickly in front of the hotel,” he said.

Hotel guard Salem Jabbar, who was manning a barrier protecting the hotel, said a suicide bomber was responsible for the blast.

“I was in front of the barrier when an ambulance arrived at high speed. We opened fire but it succeeded in getting past us, exploding in front of the hotel,” Mr Jabbar said.

via Glenn Reynolds, this is the Google translation of a Le Monde article that published a list of politicians paid off by Saddam.

“million oil barrels was offered to individuals who have nothing to do with the oil activities”

Read the whole awkwardly translated article.

This just in:

27 January 2004; 1500 EST: At approximately 0200 this morning, a second assassination attempt was made against US Ambassador Paul Bremmer as he was traveling in an armored vehicle in the vicinity of the Baghdad airport. His convoy attacked was although there were no known injuries to any coalition members. —Analyst Laura Manfield

No link yet, but word is Northeast Intell Network is reporting the same.

The Stryker brigade's nuclear, chemical and biological reconnaissance platoon detected high levels of radiation on four trucks attempting to cross the Iraq-Turkey border, officials said Monday.

The trucks emitted radiation signatures of more than 100 centigrade per hour, which could be dangerous depending on how the measurement was taken.

Brigade officials said the platoon, from the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, was sent to the Habur Gate border crossing Monday after Turkish authorities called for U.S. military assistance. Officials said they had no information about why the Turks were suspicious of the vehicles.

[Full story]

CNN:

Two CNN employees were killed, and a third was lightly wounded Tuesday afternoon when the cars they were traveling in came under fire.

The employees were returning to Baghdad in a two-car convoy from an assignment in the southern city of Hillah, when they were ambushed on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Translator and producer Duraid Isa Mohammed, 27, and driver Yasser Khatab, 25, died from multiple gunshot wounds. Cameraman Scott McWhinnie, traveling in another vehicle, was grazed in the head by a bullet.

CNN:

A roadside bomb west of Baghdad killed three U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi Tuesday, a U.S. military spokesman said. One U.S. soldier and three Iraqis were wounded in the blast, the spokesman said.

The explosion was in Khaldiyah, which is between Fallujah and Ramadi, in the volatile Sunni Triangle.

The military is investigating the blast, which took place at 1:30 p.m.

Outside the Beltway recently posted an item on David Kay's conclusion that “components of Saddam's WMD programme … went to Syria.”

Specifically, David Kay indicated this in the January 25 edition of the Telegraph:

- - - - - - -

- - - - - - -

It is important to note in supporting Kay's claim (and in response to the chorus of “no WMD” claims - including, oddly from Kay) that the strong international consensus as late as 2001 was that Iraq had WMD. See, e.g., pages 7 - 10 of this 2001 NATO Report - in which, e.g., Defense Secretary Les Aspin of the Clinton Administration warns about the dangers of WMD proliferation by Iraq and other Middle Eastern and Southern Asian nations.

Note: there's more discussion on this topic (and especially the discrepancies between the NPR and Telegraph reports) at Instapundit and