Free Thought Manifesto: We Knew Iraq Dismantled Weapons

UK Spy Chief

By Ruth Barnett
7:28pm UK, Tuesday December 08, 2009
Courtesy Of SKY News Online

The UK knew Iraq had dismantled its long-range missile before the war, an intelligence chief has told an official inquiry into the invasion.

Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee when the conflict began, said Iraq had taken apart a weapon capable of reaching Israel by 2003.

A weapon with that reach could have posed a threat to British military bases in Cyprus.

To reassemble it would have taken one or two days, he told the public hearing.

Sir John, who went on to head MI6, was responsible for the September 2002 report which became popularly known as the "dodgy dossier".

He denied he faced political pressure over the language used in the report but distanced himself from the words the then Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the foreword.

The intelligence dossier suggested Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons which he could launch in 45 minutes. Mr Blair's introduction said the danger was "beyond doubt".

Sir John conceded it would have been better if had been "spelled out in the dossier that the word was munitions, not weapons".

There was "no conscious intention to manipulate the language," he insisted.

Sir John said the foreward was a separate matter as it was a "political statement" penned by the Prime Minister.

Sky News' foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said the panel "never really got going" and could have pressed Sir John further on whether he was "personally comfortable" about the contents of the dossier he oversaw.

The former spy chief was the latest witness to appear at the official inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilcot.

Earlier, the five-person panel heard from Sir Suma Chakrabarti, who was a top civil servant at the Department for International Development in 2003.

Sir Suma claimed his staff were not allowed to work effectively in Iraq before the war as there was a "ban from Downing Street ... in case we revealed that there were options looking at invasion".

He also said the then Secretary of State Clare Short had a "schizophrenic" approach to preparing for the aftermath of the invasion.

&lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;altcast_code=a2ebf0f7ca"&gt;&lt;b&gt;Iraq Inquiry: Live Updates And Analysis&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

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