posted on 24/9/2022 11:3430 years ago today - Gramsci.

“They selected for inclusion only the scraps of intelligence that fitted the government’s case and gave them a harder edge than was justifiable. The net result was a gross distortion” - Robin Cook.

In his foreword to the September dossier, Tony Blair asserted Saddam Hussein was “a current and serious threat”.

Yet one week earlier, at the document's previous iteration, Blair is minuted by his Chief of Staff, Jonathen Powell, “the document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam”.

 A week later, the document claimed chemical weapons plans and facilities previously destroyed by Iraq had been resumed.  Yet Hans-Christof von Sponeck, chief of the weapons inspectors said "They [the facilities] are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all”.

Former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson: "I have little choice to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat"

The 2016 Chilcot Report concluded that the Blair Government deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq:  “The judgments about Iraq’s capabilities ... were presented with a certainty that was not justified.”

Blair got the war he wanted.

- “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - George Orwell -