London and Washington Used Plot to Strengthen Iraq War Push

[chlamor]

London and Washington used plot to strengthen Iraq war push

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday April 14, 2005
The Guardian

Claims that a terrorist cell was planning a lethal ricin attack in Britain were used by the British and American governments in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Tony Blair, David Blunkett, then home secretary, and Britain's most senior police officers, all seized on the arrests to emphasise the threat from what they called a new and highly dangerous kind of terrorist. To further press the case for war, politicians implied there was a clear link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida, and terrorists planning chemical or biological attacks on targets in the west, including London.

The ricin claims were seized on most strikingly by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, in his dramatic but now discredited speech on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programme to the UN security council on February 5 2003, five weeks before the invasion.

Insisting "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources", Mr Powell spoke of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network".

He said that according to a detainee named Abuwatia, Musab al-Zarqawi, the Islamist linked to al-Qaida and recently self-proclaimed perpetrator of atrocities in Iraq, ordered "North African extremists" to travel to Europe to conduct "poison and explosive attacks". Mr Powell referred to arrests in France.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1459211,00.html