- A former U.K PM has said that the U.S. misled Britain on Saddam Hussein's weapons capacity prior to the 2003 war
- Gordon Brown suggests that the U.S. defense department knew intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was sketchy
- He claims the information could have "changed the course of events"
- For many in Britain, however, his are empty words
by Rosie Alfatlawi
Former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has claimed that the U.S. knew Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) prior to the 2003 invasion.
Brown, who was Chancellor (Finance Minister) at the time, has said in a new book that “we were not just misinformed but misled on the critical issue of WMDs.”
A U.S. defense department report indicating that evidence for “the existence of WMDs was weak, even negligible and in key areas nonexistent” was not passed to Britain, Brown has alleged. He claims to have learned about it after leaving office.
That Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, and posed an imminent threat to the U.S. and its coalition allies, were the main justifications used for the war.
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The report, which was leaked last year, had been commissioned in 2002 by then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It showed that the majority of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons came from “analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence,” and "forcibly challenged" the view that Iraq had WMDs.
Brown thinks that if the information been shared then it could have “changed the course of events.”
“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.”
In the U.K., few have any sympathy for Brown’s revelation.
We know we were misled ..... this is old news ..... we know #Blair is a war criminal!
— Samaki Wazimu (@Samaki_Wazimu) November 5, 2017
Since 2003, nearly 4,500 U.S. and 180 British troops have died in Iraq. Many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are estimated to have been killed during the invasion and in the years that followed.
Over a million people attended a march against the war in London on Feb. 15 2003. Many Brits felt their views had been ignored when the U.K. invaded Iraq alongside the U.S. only a month later.
The U.S. report was not examined as evidence during the Chilcot public inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war. Published in 2016, the probe found that military action in Iraq had not been “a last resort” and that the war had been “unnecessary.”
Why did he not come forward earlier? Why not when he was PM, and why not to Chilcott? No never now for ££££…gain!
— John B Sheffield (@jaybs) November 5, 2017
