Andrew Gililgan vindicated

[godless dave]

The Iraq WMD intelligence dossier really was sexed up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7939726.stm

[funk de fino]

The Iraq WMD intelligence dossier really was sexed up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7939726.stm

Thats not what I read from it. His claim was still wrong.

[godless dave]

He claimed they changed the language under political pressure. That's what happened.

[Brainster]

Quoting from the article:

The Today programme's Andrew Gilligan reported that an unnamed senior official involved in drawing it up had told him parts of it - specifically a claim that Saddam could launch WMD at 45 minutes' notice - had been inserted against the wishes of the intelligence services even though the government "probably knew" the claim was wrong.

(snip)

Lord Hutton's inquiry ruled that Mr Gilligan's report had been wrong because Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett had had ownership of the dossier and had agreed to everything included in it.

Lord Hutton also said the 45-minute claim - which was withdrawn 10 months later - was based on a report received by the intelligence services that they believed at the time to be reliable.

I don't see anything in here that says the 45-minute claim was inserted against the wishes of the intelligence services, even though the government "probably knew" the claim was wrong. Quite the contrary.

[Tin Foil Timothy]

The WMD nonsense was all lies

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Oh did he finally make it off the island... Wait, misread.

[funk de fino]

He claimed they changed the language under political pressure. That's what happened.

The claim he made that he got sacked for is still wrong.

[a_unique_person]

He claimed they changed the language under political pressure. That's what happened.

Exactly the same thing happened in Australia. Read up on Andrew Wilkie. Qualifications such as 'could' 'may' etc, were removed, for example.

Also this CBS story.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml


On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary Powell presented evidence against Saddam:
“The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world."

At the time, Thielmann says that Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to the U.S.: “I think it didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors at the time we went to war.”

And Thielmann says that's what the intelligence really showed. For example, he points to the evidence behind Powell’s charge that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to use in a program to build nuclear weapons.

Powell said: “Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after inspections resumed.”

“This is one of the most disturbing parts of Secretary Powell's speech for us,” says Thielmann.

Intelligence agents intercepted the tubes in 2001, and the CIA said they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium -- fuel for an atom bomb. But Thielmann wasn’t so sure.

Experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the scientists who enriched uranium for American bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program. At about the same time, Thielmann’s office was working on another explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an Iraqi conventional rocket.

“The aluminum was exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery,” recalls Thielmann, who says he sent that word up to the Secretary of State months before.