LONDON,
June 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Appearing as the first
witness at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee's probe into
whether the threat posed by Iraq was exaggerated, former British
minister Robin Cook on Tuesday, June 17, accused Prime Minister Tony
Blair’s government of "not presenting the whole picture" in
the run-up to the Iraq war.
Cook
told the MPs he had "no doubt about the good faith of the prime
minister," but said the "burning sincerity and conviction of
those involved in exercise" was a "problem," the BBC
News Online reported.
This
conviction, he added, had led to intelligence material being carefully
selected to back up their case for war - rather than being used as a
basis for assessing whether or not the Iraqi regime posed a threat.
"The
dossier is a spectacular own goal... There is very little in that
document to suggest a new or alarming threat," said Cook.
Asked
by the BBC if intelligence had been embellished to back
the decision to go to war, Cook said: "I think there was a
selection of evidence to support the conclusion."
He
asserted he was "disappointed" by the quality of the
intelligence in the September dossier.
Britain
went to war against Iraq with information on Iraq's alleged WMDs that
was "highly suggestible," Cook charged.
The
former minister restated his belief that Iraq probably had no weapons of
mass destruction.
"Such
weapons require substantial industrial plant and a large workforce. It
is inconceivable that both could have been kept concealed for the two
months we have been in occupation of Iraq.
"I
have never ruled out the possibility that we may unearth some old stock
of biological toxins or chemical agents and it is possible that we may
yet find some battlefield shells," the BBC quoted him
as saying.
"Nevertheless,
this would not constitute weapons of mass destruction and would not
justify the claim before the war that Iraq posed what the prime minister
described as a 'current and serious threat'," Cook said.
'Honorable
Deception'
 |
|
"I
still don't think he (Saddam) was an immediate threat," said
Short
|
Fellow
ex-minister Clare Short followed, accusing Blair of a "series of
half truths, exaggerations, reassurances that weren't the case" in
the run-up to war, the BBC said.
Short
testified that the prime minister was guilty of "honorable
deception" in the run-up to the war.
She
recalling being informed by MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency,
that while Iraq was hiding the work of its weapons scientists, "the
risk of use (of such weapons) was less."
MI6
believed Iraqi scientists were still working on chemical and biological
weapons programs, but that the public was led to believe that Saddam had
weapons ready to use, Short added.
"I
think that is where the falsity lies….The exaggeration of immediacy
means you cannot do things properly and action has to be
immediate," AFP quoted Short as saying.
Referring
to Saddam, the ex-minister said: "I still don't think he was an
immediate threat."
Short
recalled that the U.S. and U.K. decided in summer 2002 that there should
be a war against Iraq in early 2003.
She
said this timetable prompted the exaggeration of the threat allegedly
posed by Iraq and "false" links with al-Qaeda.
It
also, added the ex-minister, led to abandoning efforts for a second U.N.
resolution with the blame wrongly placed on France and curtailing the
mission of the U.N. inspection regime.
Cook
and Short were the first to testify in the foreign affairs committee
probe.
Both
Blair and his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, have
refused to appear before the committee, which takes evidence in public
and publishes its reports.
