What can one say?
This is pretty devastating stuff. Blair may have won on the narrow grounds of the committee inquirty and probably will do the same in Hutton's, but on a more general question of trust and integrity he's pretty well finished."Yet just over five weeks before the American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr Blair was told secretly by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) that there was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Crucially, the JIC "assessed that al-Qa'ida and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests and that threat would be heightened by military action".
The assessment, dated 10 February 2003 and titled "International Terrorism: War with Iraq", warned that the fall of Saddam would risk aiding the transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. "The JIC assessed that any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists,"
posted by Matthew @ 9/12/2003 01:12:00 PM
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