Were the CIA and MI6 told that Iraq had no WMDs? Tony Blair's "too busy" to comment -- how 'bout George and Big Dick?

Why, if it isn't former British PM Tony "Too Busy" Blair! If he wasn't so busy, he might be able to clear up this matter of MI6 having received high-level secret Iraqi information that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs.

"There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages."

-- Lord Butler, "the former [British] cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq"

by Ken

My, how time flies! Here we are already plunging into the festivities celebraing George and Dick's Excellent Adventure in Iraq! I know I should have marked it on my calendar, but somehow it just slipped my mind. I feel as if I ought to be baking a cake. Or at least eating some cake.

(I just researched it and found that the traditional celebratory media for a 10th anniversary are tin, aluminum, and diamond. I'm inclined to just go with the cake.)

I'm a little concerned, though, that according to this Guardian piece, then-U.K. Prime Minster Tony Blair is apparently "too busy" to celebrate. (Tony "Too Busy" Blair is what I think we shall have to call him.) At any rate, he was too busy to comment for BBC's Panorama report that both our intelligence agency and theirs, the CIA and MI6, "were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction."

MI6 and CIA were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD

BBC's Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraqi foreign minister and spy chief

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 March 2013 02.00 EDT

Fresh evidence has been revealed about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein's foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was "active", "growing" and "up and running".

A special BBC Panorama programme aired on Monday night details how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, told the CIA's station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had "virtually nothing" in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was "totally fabricated".

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq's head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri's comments, and that he should have been.

Butler says of the use of intelligence: "There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages."

When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: "Yes, I think they're, they're, they got every reason think that."

The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable.

One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was "being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10".

Another said it was "wishful thinking… [that] promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow".

The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.

It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated.

Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was "too busy".

Understandably, the Guardian report, like the Panorama one it's based on, focuses on British players in this little tragicomedy. Presumably any minute now the U.S. infotainment noozemedia will be picking up on the story and seeking comment from George W. "Chimpy the Prez" Bush and "Big Dick" Cheney from their prison cells. Oh wait, I keep forgetting that none of their trials -- for crimes against international, U.S. federal, and state laws -- have begun yet. Have I missed the announcement of the start dates?

For some time now, though, we've had a pretty good idea how Chimpy and Big Dick spent their time during the run-up to their excellent adventure in the Levant: strong-arming our actual professional intelligence people into ignoring possibly reliable sources in favor of swallowing whole the fables told by every con man and wacko the top guns had gathered unto themselves.

Not to worry, though. I'm sure this will all be thoroughly aired at their trials. Does somebody have those trial start dates handy?

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