Black Box Thinking: Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

by Matthew Syed

Twelve months later, when the Iraq survey group, Blair’s inspectors of choice, couldn’t find the weapons either, he changed tack again. Speaking to the House of Commons Liaison Committee, he said: “I have to accept we haven’t found them and we may never find them, we don’t know what has happened to them . . . They could have been removed, they could have been hidden, they could have been destroyed.” The evidential dance was now at full tilt. The lack of evidence for WMD in Iraq, according to Blair, was no longer because troops had not had enough time to find them, or because of the inadequacy of the inspectors: rather, it was because the Iraqi troops had spirited them out of existence. But this stance, within a few months, became untenable too. As the search continued in a state of near desperation, it became crystal clear that not only were there no WMD, but there were no remnants of them, either. Iraqi troops could not have spirited them away. So Blair parried again. In a set-piece speech at the Labour Party Conference, he finally accepted that Saddam did not have chemical or biological weapons, but argued that the decision to go to war was right anyway. “The problem is that I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can’t, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam,” he said. “The world is a better place with Saddam in prison.”