Nothing we didn't really know but it's becoming official...
LONDON: The former United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" in intelligence dossiers used to justify the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Dr Blix, who led the UN search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until June 2003, said a later discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programs had deliberately embellished the case for war.
"I do think they exercised spin. They put exclamation marks instead of question marks," Dr Blix said in an interview with Britain's Sky News yesterday.
"I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected," Dr Blix said, referring to the period immediately before the invasion.
He said that intelligence officials would likely have drawn the eventual conclusion that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and that their sources were providing poor quality information.
Associated Press
Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, March 13, 2007
By Associated Press
LONDON: The former United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has said the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" in intelligence dossiers used to justify the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Dr Blix, who led the UN search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until June 2003, said a later discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programs had deliberately embellished the case for war.
Blair's Government published a dossier before the invasion which claimed Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and could deploy some within 45 minutes.
"I do think they exercised spin. They put exclamation marks instead of question marks," Dr Blix said in an interview with Britain's Sky News yesterday.
"I think if they'd allowed us to carry on the inspections a couple of months more then we would have been able to go to all the sites suspected," Dr Blix said, referring to the period immediately before the invasion.
He said that intelligence officials would likely have drawn the eventual conclusion that Iraq had no weapons stockpiles and that their sources were providing poor quality information.
Associated Press
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