Blair 'Could Not Be Honest About Iraq War'

Scotsman

The head of MI6 told Prime Minister Tony Blair that the case for war against Iraq was being fixed by the Americans to suit the policy, a BBC documentary claims today.

In a meeting chaired by Mr Blair in July 2003, Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, is on record as saying “the facts and the intelligence” were being “fixed round the policy” by the Bush Administration, according to the programme.

The Panorama documentary claims Foreign Secretary Jack Straw questioned whether former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein posed a sufficient threat to justify invasion. Robin Cook MP also told the programme that Mr Blair was not frank with the British people.

He said: “I think the real dishonesty of the government’s position is that Tony Blair could not be frank with the British people about the real reason why he believed Britain had to be part of an invasion, which was to prove to the United States President that we were his most reliable, most sound ally.

“His problem was, he could not be honest about that with either the British people or Labour MPs, hence the stress on disarmament.” Brian Jones, Defence Intelligence Staff (1987-2003), told the programme MI6 was tasked by the Government to extract as much information as possible from their limited sources in Iraq to build up an intelligence case.

He said: “I recollect that there was an appeal if you like for people to look and think very closely about the evidence that was available.” The former secretary of the Defence Notice Committee, Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson told Panorama “..“...the government perhaps allowed the public to be misled as to the degree of certainty about weapons of mass destruction.”

The programme entitled Iraq: Tony and the Truth will be screened tonight at 10.15pm on BBC1.