The first draft dodgy dossier has been released. You can find it here:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/wmd_jul_2002.pdf
No wonder John Williams tried to pre-empt the release with a series of platitudes in the Guardian. It's staggering. It really is. It's just full of lies without any sources. If this were an undergraduate essay it would fail.
The 'best' part is the bit about Halabja. John Williams writes as a comment in the draft:
"can I have more background on Halabja - what happend and why? Just enough to tell the story in one long paragraph, for people who don't know about it" (p. 9)
What credentials did he have to be chosen to write the dossier? What a candid admission: 'I don't really know what's going on, but I'll make it sound like I'm morally outraged'. He then mentions Hitler and Stalin to get the juices going.
Later on he asks about Halabja in a side comment to the reviewers:
"what does the chemical do to the body - how does it kill? Sorry to be grisly, but this will have real impact on real people, not journalists who take it all as read" (p. 9)
Yes, indeed, how does one sex up this dossier in order to make people support an illegal war. However, now Williams claims not to have wanted a war. How utterly despicable.
He makes claims about Iraq's plan to conceal chemical weapons, yet admits he has no source to back this up(p. 12).
His four main conclusions (p. 30) are all wrong. And yet he is happy to write for the Guardian, run a business that specialises in 'marketing' (check it's website; it's both sad and amusing), and deflect any responsibility for a unresearched blank cheque for war. I can find hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who may have appreciated a bit more research, a bit more effort, a bit more honesty.
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