Flawed, overstated, misleading

Key points

• Butler report attacks Blair's case for war

• Intelligence findings 'flawed'

• Blair accepts findings

Key quote

"No single individual is to blame. This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we have identified, but there was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead." - Lord Butler

Story in full TONY Blair’s case for war with Iraq was torn apart by Lord Butler yesterday, as his report into pre-war intelligence found that the Prime Minister’s Iraq dossier stretched the truth to its "outer limits".

In a damning indictment, the Butler Report found British intelligence flawed, Mr Blair’s case overstated and key warnings omitted from the dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction used by the Prime Minister to justify war.

Mr Blair accepted the findings immediately, and admitted in the Commons that "at the time of invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy".

Lord Butler, a former civil service chief, took the unprecedented step of releasing internal reports presented to Mr Blair by the joint intelligence committee (JIC), when he presented his findings yesterday.

They showed that intelligence reports on Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological capability were riddled with doubt. None of the doubts, warnings or caveats was passed on to the public, Lord Butler concluded.

Worse, by failing to pass on the qualifications, but emphasising the central role that intelligence played in the government’s decisions, ministers may have led voters into believing that reports of the Iraqi threat were more credible than was actually the case.

In particular, Lord Butler singled out Mr Blair’s description of the dossier as "extensive, detailed and authoritative" as potentially creating a false impression among the public.

Ministers were told that Iraq’s nuclear programme was "unclear", that its number of missiles was "unknown" and that there were uncertainties over the condition of missiles that did exist.

Lord Butler found that none of these doubts was incorporated into Downing Street’s notorious September 2002 dossier, in which Mr Blair wrote that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce weapons of mass destruction.

The decision to issue the dossier in the name of the JIC was "mistaken", as it had meant that "more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could actually bear", he said.

Lord Butler’s 198-page report also found that MI6 relied on hearsay for some of its intelligence, that it knew several of its informants were dubious and that solid facts were mixed with doubtful assertions.

It also said the claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was probably "unsubstantiated" and should not have been included in the dossier.

Lord Butler refused to name any individuals yesterday, and stressed that neither the Prime Minister nor any of his aides should be held responsible for the series of failings that his report had uncovered.

"No single individual is to blame. This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we have identified, but there was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead," he told a news conference.

Nor will John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC who took "ownership" of the September dossier, face any recrimination. Lord Butler backed him and recommended he take up his new job as head of MI6 next month.

Instead, the process that produced the dossier, with political officials effectively editing the findings of the intelligence services, was condemned. Lord Butler recommended that no such project ever take place again, and called for a stronger boundary between the political and intelligence spheres.

While Lord Butler couched many of his findings on the dossier in bureaucratic verbiage, Lord Inge, a member of his committee and a former chief of the defence staff, delivered a blunt warning: "Intelligence and public relations should be kept separate."

There was also implied criticism of the way Mr Blair runs the government. Lord Butler found that key decisions on the war were made not by the full cabinet but by a "small circle" of ministers and advisers, often in informal meetings in Mr Blair’s Downing Street "den" and with no minutes taken.

There was some comfort for the Prime Minister, as Lord Butler backed British claims, disputed by US intelligence, that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger. And the inquiry did not question the government’s insistence that military action against Iraq was justified in international law.

In the Commons, Mr Blair surprised many of his own back-benchers by accepting that he had probably been mistaken in arguing that Saddam had weapons which were ready for use.

But Lord Butler, he said, had found that his government had all acted in good faith.

"No-one lied. No-one made up the intelligence," he said.

"For any mistakes made, as the report finds, in good faith, I of course take full responsibility, but I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all."

In a searing Commons attack, Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, said Mr Blair had misrepresented the nuanced assessments of the intelligence.

"Their qualified judgments became his unqualified certainties," he said.

Lord Butler, Mr Howard said, had destroyed Mr Blair’s credibility on national security.

"I hope that we will not face another war in the foreseeable future," he said. "But if we did and this Prime Minister identified the threat, would people believe him?"

Mr Blair rallied the Labour benches with a vigorous counter-attack on Mr Howard and his record of supporting military action.

The first test of public reaction to Lord Butler’s report will come today in Leicester and Birmingham, where Labour is defending two former safe seats in by-elections.

The Liberal Democrats were last night predicting confidently that Lord Butler’s damning analysis of the case for war could give them the final push that they need to claim both seats.

While losses would be a blow for the Prime Minister, it would not be a fatal one. Most Labour MPs are already reconciled to bad news from the by-elections, and are taking comfort from the fact that the challenge to Labour comes from the Lib Dems, rather than from the Conservatives.

And perhaps more significantly for the Prime Minister, allies of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, concluded that Lord Butler had not done enough harm to Mr Blair’s standing to put his job at risk, and accepted that Mr Blair’s strong Commons riposte to Mr Howard had rallied many Labour MPs behind his leadership.

"It’s all over for the summer," one friend of the Chancellor said last night. "He’s safe, for now."