With the final addendum to its final report now published, the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is over. It was clear beyond reasonable doubt where all this was heading when David Kay, the US-led group's first chief inspector, resigned in January 2004 and told the US Senate "we were almost all wrong". A year later, his successor, Charles Duelfer, gave up the hunt and returned to America.
The 92 pages of new material don't reveal much that is new (still no weapons, in case you were wondering) but there are a couple of interesting areas. First, that while the ISG cannot "rule out" the suggestion that Saddam moved his stockpiles to Syria "no information from the debriefing of Iraqis in custody supports this possibility". Second, that the ISG admits to "shortcomings" in its debriefings and staff management.
The constant rotation of ISG personnel had negative consequences. Many detainees had as many as four different debriefers and were debriefed dozens of times, often by new, inexperienced and uninformed debriefers [… ] This had two unfortunate results. First, the detainees became quite familiar with the information we wanted and, as a result, developed a "party line". Second, they failed to develop, or lost, respect for the debriefers.
You can almost feel the frustration. While not a whitewashing of the Saddam regime (the main ISG report said the former Iraqi leader intended to re-start weapons programmes when sanctions were lifted), it, once again, affirms just how far off western governments and intelligence agencies were in their assessment of the danger from Iraq. The ISG expects some chemical weapons to be found, but degraded shells Iraq "mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991" rather than a modern WMD-tipped arsenal.
