Reply #7: Blair led Britain into it [View All]

[dave_p]

Nobody in government, intelligence or the military on either side of the Atlantic believed the Niger story or the claim that Iraq had a credible WMD capability. Bush & Blair both had to bully their intelligence services into falsifying the case, becasue there was no evidence.

Washington's fabrications didn't influence high-level British failure except as a figleaf for their own groundless warmongering. British ministers were quite capable of coming up with lies of their own to sway public opinion through their own toothless US-style media.

Don't accept the "we fell for the lies" defense from any of the perpetrators. These people knew, and they lied deliberately. Intelligence was twisted from the start, when both governments had been told by inspectors as early as 1996 that Iraq's WMD program was dead.