Bush hid intelligence on WMDs before Iraq War, Gordon Brown claims

More Lies From The Bush Dynasty

(Independent)  -  Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has claimed that “crucial” US intelligence that cast doubt Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was concealed for the UK in the build-up to the war.

The information, which he says he did not see until after leaving office, would have stopped him from supporting the decision to invade.

Mr Brown said: “When I consider the rush to war in March 2003 – especially in light of what we now know about the absence of weapons of mass destruction – I ask myself over and over whether I could have made more of a difference before that fateful decision was taken.

“We now know from classified American documents, that in the first days of September 2002 a report prepared by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff’s director for intelligence landed on the desk of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

“Commissioned by Rumsfeld to identify gaps in the US intelligence picture, it is now clear how forcibly this report challenged the official view.

“If I am right that somewhere within the American system the truth about Iraq’s lack of weapons was known, then we were not just misinformed but misled on the critical issue of WMDs.

“Given that Iraq had no usable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that it could deploy and was not about to attack the coalition, then two tests of a just war were not met: war could not be justified as a last resort and invasion cannot now be seen as a proportionate response.”

The claims appear in Mr Brown’s memoir My Life, Our Times – published on Tuesday. He says the US Department of Defence document claimed the assessment of Saddam’s capability relied “heavily on analytic assumptions” rather than hard evidence and even refuted the country’s capability to create weapons of mass destruction.

He added: “I was told they knew where the weapons were housed. I remember thinking at the time that it was almost as if they could give me the street name and number where they were located.

“It is astonishing that none of us in the British government ever saw this American report.”

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