Friday 13 March 2009

Secret Memo Reveals Iraq War Predicated on a Lie


The British National Party has called for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity to be laid against Tony Blair and all other Labour Party leaders who deliberately lied to the nation over the reasons for the Iraq war.

Mr Peter Mullins, BNP defence spokesman and an RAF veteran of the Vulcan bomber defence squadron, made the call after it was revealed that the liar Blair and senior members of his cabinet were informed that there was no real case for the so-called weapons of mass destruction.

“Despite this, Mr Blair and his aides specifically ordered the intelligence chiefs to tamper with the evidence to justify going to war with Iraq,” Mr Mullins said.

Documents released under freedom of information laws show Government officials pressed intelligence chiefs to strip out warnings about the reliability of reports on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Agents complained that the Government’s infamous dossier making the case for war suggested Saddam’s biological warfare programme was more advanced than they believed to be the case.

They also privately mocked claims about Iraq’s nuclear programme, joking that atomic specialists which the document claimed Iraq had gathered together must be “Dr Frankenstein” — a dig at the impossibility of the scientific claims being made.

The 2002 dossier, touted by Mr Blair as “evidence” which he then used to justify the war before parliament, contained the now-discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons which could be deployed within 45 minutes.

The documents released yesterday show that spy chief Sir John Scarlett, who compiled the document, was directly instructed to make the conclusions “as firm as possible.”

Dated September 11, 2002, one email was sent to Sir John, now the chief of MI6, by Desmond Bowen, the head of the Cabinet Office defence-secretariat, and copied to Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell, chief of staff Jonathan Powell and foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning.

In it, Mr Bowen says: “In looking at the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] sections, you will clearly want to be as firm and authoritative as you can be.”

He said caveats such as “it is almost certain” would be seized on by opponents. He wrote: “I appreciate that this can increase the authenticity of the document and opponents will add up the number of judgments on which we do not have absolute clarity.”

Another email, written by an unnamed intelligence official, says wearily to a colleague that efforts to moderate the language of similar draft reports had failed but added: “Feel free to try again!”

Others complained of “iffy drafting” and ridiculed the claims made about Iraq’s nuclear programme.

The Cabinet Office, which released the documents following a ruling by the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, would not say which agency the unnamed officials worked for, but confirmed they were in “sensitive posts.”

Mr Mullins said the blood of over 300 British servicemen was now on Blair and the Labour Party’s hands. “Then there is the issue of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have died, all on the basis of a pack of lies.”

Mr Mullins said other war crimes trials had taken place on a lot less evidence and justification. “We must also never forget that the Conservative Party also completely back this war, and in fact called for it to be executed even more quickly,” Mr Mullins said. “They bear an equal responsibility for all the deaths.”

Mr Mullins added that something should also be done to make Mr Blair and others personally liable for the £4.5 billion of taxpayer money spent on the Iraq War so far.

“We will not rest until we see these war criminals put on trial for their treason and deceit,” Mr Mullins said. “Our first duty is of course to support our troops, and the coming BNP government will withdraw them immediately from the Middle East and use them to defend Britain alone.

“It is a disgrace that our military heroes have been lied to and abused by the government, and we must make sure that this never happens again.”

Source.

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