Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/671/12049
From The Socialist newspaper, 18 May 2011
Iraq war: Labour's lie machine
A former British senior intelligence officer claims that Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, 'sexed up' the Labour government's 'dodgy dossier' in 2002 to include the bogus threat that the Saddam Hussein regime could launch weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against British interests within 45 minutes.
The dossier, which included an introduction by Blair saying the document established "beyond doubt" that Iraq had WMD, was used to justify war against Iraq the following year.
In January 2010 Campbell told the Chilcot inquiry into the cause of the war that the 'facts' in the dossier hadn't been twisted to justify the ensuing war. However, in evidence to the inquiry, the Director General of Defence Intelligence, major-general Michael Laurie, flatly contradicted Campbell's version of events.
Laurie told the inquiry: "Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used.
"We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence, the wording was developed with care."
Having 'made the facts fit the war', the US-British governments' invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, a bloody sectarian civil war, regional instability, and increased terrorism internationally.
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