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Found on Iraq Inquiry - written by mycena, edited by Humberto (Plastic) September 07, 2010 -- Once upon a time, a certain Tony Blair made the argument that the British Army had to join the US Army in invading Iraq, because his intelligence services (hum-hum) had told him Saddam could be arming terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.That lie was effectively blown to pieces on July 20, in a hearing (transcript, pdf) before the UK government's Chilcot Inquiry. In that hearing, Lady Manningham-Buller, Director General of the UK Security Service from 2002 until 2007, told the investigators that Mr Blair's fears over Saddam arming terrorists were a mere "hypothetical theory", and certainly "not a concern in the short term or medium term to my colleagues or myself" — the information available was simply not "substantial enough". The security services were "relaxed" about the threat posed by Saddam -- which was explicitly stated in a letter to the Home Office in March 2002 (declassified, pdf), shortly before a critical meeting of Mr Blair and Mr Bush. That letter explicitly stated that "Saddam is only likely to order terrorist attacks if he perceives that the survival of his regime is threatened". Even limited military action, like the firing of cruise missiles on Iraq after a botched car bomb attack on Bush senior in Kuwait in 1993, would be unlikely to prompt such a response, the letter noted. Iraq planning terrorist attacks with chemical and biological weapons were a "media scare", nor was there "convincing intelligence" that Saddam's regime was cooperating with Al-Qaeda.The [former] British prime minister was also warned by the security services that invading Iraq would substantially increase the terror threat to the UK. "It undoubtedly increased the threat and by 2004 we were...very overburdened by intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty much more than we could cope with...What Iraq did was produce a fresh impetus of people prepared to engage in terrorism." Next to that, it risked hampering the Afghan war effort, where allied troops were really fighting Al-Qaeda. "By focusing on Iraq we...reduced the focus on the al-Qaeda threat in Afghanistan. I think that was a long-term, major strategic problem."
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