Gordon Brown says Pentagon misled UK over case for Iraq invasion

[sandensea]

The US Defence Department knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction but kept Britain in the dark, according to an explosive new claim from Gordon Brown.

In an extraordinary allegation, the former prime minister states that a secret US intelligence report into Iraqs military capabilities was never passed to Britain and could have changed the course of events. The revelation leads Brown to conclude that the war could not be justified as a last resort and invasion cannot now be seen as a proportionate response.

He adds that the evidence in question was never examined by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, which concluded that Britain chose to join the invasion before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Browns intervention will reopen the debate about Britains decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair used the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to argue that Britain needed to join the military action.

Brown makes the claim in his new book, My Life, Our Times, published this week. He writes that there was a rush to war in March 2003, adding that he asks himself over and over whether I could have made more of a difference before that fateful decision was taken.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/05/iraq-weapons-mass-destruction-america-misled-britain-gordon-brown