Former MI6 chief says Britain was ‘dragged’ into Iraq war

May 4, 2009 by Infowars Ireland

Britain was “dragged into a war in Iraq which was always against out better judgment” the former deputy head of MI6 has claimed, in a remark that will reignite the debate over political interference in the war.

British troops leave Iraq this week after the contentious six-year mission

The comments, made by Nigel Inkster, who was deputy director of MI6 at the time, make clear there were reservations over the war at a very senior level within the Secret Intelligence Service.

MI6 was blamed for the failure of intelligence that took Britain to war after helping produce a dossier in which Tony Blair claimed that Iraq was ready to use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
The dossier, said to have been “sexed up” by Downing Street, also mentioned controversial intelligence that Saddam Hussain was seeking uranium from Niger.

In a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research, Mr Inkster blamed weakness at the Foreign Office for allowing Britain to get dragged into a war over which officials had serious doubts.

“The Foreign Office no longer does foreign policy,” Mr Inkster said. “It acts as a platform for a multiplicity of UK departments and the lack of a clearly articulated sense of our strategic location in the world explains how we got dragged into a war with Iraq which was always against our better judgment.”

His views on Iraq, expressed for the first time in public, may also explain why he was passed over as the head of MI6 in favour of Sir John Scarlett, who took responsibility for the dossier during the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.

Sir John, the current director of MI6, was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the start of the war and was criticised for being too close to Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, and Alastair Campbell, his spin doctor.
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