Discredited Claim that Saddam Hussein Could Unleash Weapons of Mass Destruction Within 45 Minutes Came from Taxi Driver
December 8th, 2009Via: Guardian:
An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.
Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi military commanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.
The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.
After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.
Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.
“[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border,” said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.
“He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East.”
Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.
According to the Mail, Holloway says in his report: “Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all.
“In the [MI6] analysts’ footnote to their report, it flagged up that part of the report describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. The missiles verifiably did not exist.
“The footnote said it in black and white. Despite this the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier.”
Holloway claims that MI6 was not to blame for the fact that the footnote was ignored. “It seems that someone, perhaps in Downing Street, found it rather inconvenient and ignored it lest it interfere with our reasons for going to war,” his report says.
Why should anyone be surprised. In a similar vein Neel Kashkari
of “No Banker Left Behind” Bailout fame, pretty much made up the 700 billion dollar number presented to Congress.
I highly suggest the following blog post.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2009/12/they-were-making-it-up-as-they-went.html
This should really read, UK intel operatives allege that they heard about the alleged WMD capabilities from alleged Iraq intel operatives through an alleged cab driver.
It has been known for some time that Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMD because he wanted to deter invasions, not invite them, and to project a regional presence of strength.
They could just as easily claim they heard it from the street ramblings of a crazed homeless man.