Press TV
A top former British intelligence official had misled the public about the former Iraqi regime's weapons program to pave the way for war, it is now revealed.
The then Prime Minister Tony Blair had assigned Sir John Scarlett to write the notorious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on September 2002.
But, Scarlett, who was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, sent a memo to Blair's foreign affairs adviser referring to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional".
Joint Intelligence Committee was duty-bound to give impartial intelligence-based advice to ministers, but in this case, intelligence has been misrepresented to make the case for war.
The former intelligence official Michael Laurie had told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war that it was widely understood that the dossier was intended to make a case for war and misrepresented intelligence to this particular end. Now, Laurie's claimed are evidenced by the disclosure.
Later, it was found that Scarlett had willfully made up the intelligence to look as credible as possible and render a war on Iraq as certain. He was awarded by Tony Blair the post of foreign intelligence agency's chief in spite of all this...[Full Article]
