"Iraq posed no threat to the UK" Says former MI5 Director General

Danthus

Danthus

Danthus

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14702644

Iraq posed no threat to the UK when then prime minister Tony Blair took Britain to war in 2003, former MI5 boss Baroness Manningham-Buller has said.

In a Radio Times interview, Baroness Manningham-Buller said the service advised war was likely to increase the domestic threat and was a "distraction" from the pursuit of al-Qaeda.

But she said it was "for others to decide" whether the war was a mistake.

She also said she "assumed" there would be another terrorist attack on Britain.

'Intelligence'
Baroness Manningham-Buller, who was director-general of MI5 from October 2002 until her retirement in April 2007, will deliver the 2011 BBC Reith Lectures later this week.

She told the Radio Times: "Iraq did not present a threat to the UK.

"The service advised that it was likely to increase the domestic threat and that it was a distraction from the pursuit of al-Qaeda. I understood the need to focus on Afghanistan. Iraq was a distraction."

But she added: "Intelligence isn't complete without the full picture and the full picture is all about doubt."
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Is she telling us when many thought already? I will be honest, I was duped back then, I believed the lies we were told.
 
OldCoals said:
Judi Dench plays quite a good part if you ask me.
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Judith Dench as M. said:
If you don't think I don't have the balls to send a man to die, your instincts are dead wrong. I've no compunction about sending you to your death but I won't do it on a whim, even with your cavalier attitude to life.
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Top line. Giver her the job as the next SIS Dg.
 
Or is Iraq still a very dangerous country which doesn't hit the headlines as much as it did, especially with the concentration being on Afghanistan ?

Perhaps some ex military here can confirm but Iraqi forces have been trained up to a decent standard but Afghan forces are pretty much woeful I hear.
 
genan said:
You forgot about the thousands of Iraqi civilians. What is your point? That they died a hero protecting their homeland? I'm sorry but I don't feel that way.
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Aye, all our fault that.... a man walked into a mosque in baghdad the other day and blew himself up.

I heard Tony Blair told him to do it.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
Or is Iraq still a very dangerous country which doesn't hit the headlines as much as it did, especially with the concentration being on Afghanistan ?

Perhaps some ex military here can confirm but Iraqi forces have been trained up to a decent standard but Afghan forces are pretty much woeful I hear.
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Iraq is largely a modern country with good, albeit damaged, infrastructure and had a pool of trained police and military personnel who were able to fill security positions with minimal training and guidance.

The biggest and most idiotic mistake the US administration done was to disband the Iraqi Army, they should have tasked it under the new interim Govt to police and secure Iraqi borders and protect essential infrastructure and civilian populations, instead they created a free for all and relied on their 'green zone' nonsense which only isolated large parts of the Iraqi population and created the situation into which a concerted insurgency could recruit and grow. The issues in Iraq are not with the invasion itself, but the stupidity shown by the US Govt afterward whereby they were seen as invaders by the population at large and not liberators. Retasking and redeploying the Iraqi Army would have gone a long way to negate that impression.

Afghanistan is none of those things, it is tribal, little or no infrastructure, damaged or otherwise and the security forces are woefully inadequate, undertrained and liable to corruption and infiltration. Basically Iraq was a country which needed rebuilding, Afghanistan is a country that needs creating, and that is the problem, countries are usually created out of blood and war, Afghanistan is folly and the sooner we realise what countless other leaders have concluded the better. Afghanistan doesn't want to be anything other than what it alway has been and we would be better served to Police it's borders and help it's neighbours rather than try to create a modern country by force.
 
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When talking about a threat to the UK - in what context? If the question is would Iraq have been able to directly assault Britain then no, if it is whether the World is a better place without Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq then it's almost certainly a yes although of course any point where transition in leadership comes is the most problematic.

As for whether there will be another terrorist attack on Britain - sadly I think that's almost a given, hopefully I'm wrong and even if it does come that it's more like the attack on Glasgow Airport than the Tube Bombings in London but realistically there is only so much you can or should do in attempts to prevent attacks. If the only way to prevent attacks is to give up all freedoms that we currently enjoy then the terrorists have already won without even making the attack.
 
I can't believe anyone at the time believed any of the stories about iraq.

It was down to oil and it will always be because of oil from here on in.

If you want to sit in your house and use cheap energy, get used to war.
 
OldCoals said:
Is she telling us when many thought already? I will be honest, I was duped back then, I believed the lies we were told.
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I'll be honest, I got duped too. There's increasing amounts of evidence that Blair's clique knew Iraq was no threat and didn't have WMD yet sent us in anyway i.e. it wasn't an intelligence failure and therefore a horrible mistake. Either way, it's disgraceful imo that a PM can take the decision to go to war and not face any consequences if they lied to parliament and the British public. Not only that, but Blair got given the Middle-East Peace Envoy gig after retiring - it beggars belief.
 
semi-pro waster said:
When talking about a threat to the UK - in what context? If the question is would Iraq have been able to directly assault Britain then no, if it is whether the World is a better place without Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq then it's almost certainly a yes although of course any point where transition in leadership comes is the most problematic.

P
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this and he should have been removed from power a lot sooner than he was. I still maintain that Iraq will be a better country, but changes take time.

It's just stupid the lies they told as well as the total lack of planning and resources for what to do with Iraq once it was captured. They should have listened to the experts and generals. Which told them they would need huge resources (far more than the initial invasion force) to maintain security in the interim period.
Exactly same interim period mistakes we have made in Afghanistan.
Invading such a county is easy, securing it in the transitional period, requires huge number of personel and resources.

But then I also think UN should have more balls and actually go after all leaders, genocide and other areas. Can't do it all at the same time and same tactics can't be used everywhere. But UN should be far more involved and have far more teeth than they actually have.
 
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