Brits officially admit intel bogus...

lobezno

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Tuesday October 12, 2004 · 6:35 PM PDT

2004/10/12 · 18:35

The Independent has it here....

The 45-minute claim was false

After two years, one war and at least 16,000 deaths, the Government finally admits it

By Marie Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent

13 October 2004

Tony Blair's claim that Iraq was within 45 minutes of launching weapons of mass destruction a central plank of his case for war fell apart yesterday as the Foreign Secretary formally withdrew the infamous claim and revealed MI6 had abandoned its source for the bogus intelligence.

In a humiliating climbdown, Jack Straw told MPs in a special Commons statement that MI6 has severed ties with the sources for both the 45-minute claim and intelligence that Saddam Hussein had produced a biological weapons agent in 2000.

The decision to lay to rest the most notorious intelligence claim in the case for war increased pressure from Labour and opposition MPs for the Prime Minister to make a full personal apology for the decision to invade Iraq "on a false premise"....

... the unanswered questions remain: Where did the intel originate, and why are the Brits stepping back from it so explicitly now?

Update:... this was the claim that made the Brits rush to war, not the Nigerian yellowcake item Bush cited in SOU speech... according to the BBC, the Blair admin is still standing by it's assesment re:yellowcake, claiming intel they can't share with the US...

... Since then, the US has backed off this assertion and the Iraq Survey Group report stated that it "has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991". However, even now British intelligence still stands by this claim, emphasising, as it has done all along, that it has access to information that it has not been able to share with the US government or the Iraq Survey Group. As a result, it sees no reason to withdraw this piece of intelligence....

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