A 32-page draft document that was written as part of the general lead up to the war in Iraq was released this week following extensive pushing over the last few years. Written in late 2002 by foreign officer director of communications John Williams, it outlines a case for war in Iraq. Many people are trying to make hay out of its lack of support for the claim that Saddam was able to deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, but that's not necessarily significant. As the British government notes, multiple drafts were made in parallel by different offices.
(Also, whether it takes 45 minutes or two days to deploy chemical or biological weapons is pretty immaterial.)
This language is more interesting:
In the document, written in late 2002, John Williams, director of communications at the foreign office, said: "Saddam remains the only man to have used chemical weapons to wage war on civilians: so far.
"It is not speculative to suggest he would do so again if he could: he has done it. And we know that he is now re-equipping himself with chemical weapons, while seeking to extend the range of the missiles that would carry them."
It may just be Mr. Williams' ignorance on the topic, but Hussein is at least the second authority to use chemical weapons on civilians, the first event of this kind being the use of biochemical agents against the Hmong minority by the Laotian government in the 70s (with presumptive Soviet backing).
Of course, we actually did not know Hussein was re-equipping himself with chemical weapons, bar our poor, single source intelligence that was actually the wild fantasy of an Iraqi student who really wanted to stay in Europe. All we really knew was that Hussein had used chemical weapons in war and on civilians, and that he was stonewalling U.N. inspectors. It was reasonable to presume that he still had an arsenal, but beyond that we knew very little.
The rest of the document shows the kind of "purpose drift" that was integral to selling the war and, more critically, reselling the war once people realized there were no vast arsenals of WMDs. The theoretical core purpose of reducing Iraq's threat to the world was heavily conflated with the idea of liberating its people from oppression. The adoption of that second point is cynical, as we and our allies have not been rushing in to liberate equally oppressed people in, say, China.
If liberation from oppression by force of arms is our aim, we have a lot of fighting to do.