Intelligence Showed Saddam Hussein Had Intent to Produce Banned Weapons, Blair Says

British Prime Minister Tony Blair today defended his decision to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying prewar intelligence showed that Iraq posed a threat despite the fact that no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles have been found since the fall of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein (see GSN, July 19).

“It was absolutely clear that he (Hussein) had every intention to carry on developing these weapons, that he was procuring materials to do so and that, for example in respect of ballistic missiles, he was going way beyond what was permitted by the United Nations,” Blair said in an address before the British Parliament.

The British Parliament is set today to begin a debate on the results of an official inquiry conducted on the issue of prewar intelligence on Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse. That inquiry found that while most of the intelligence had been unreliable, Blair and his government did not deliberately exaggerate the information to bolster the case for war (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 20).

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