Former UK Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott admits doubts regarding intelligence of WMDs in Iraq in 2003

LONDON (BNO NEWS) – Lord Prescott, former British deputy prime minister, on Friday admitted that he had doubts regarding the intelligence that reported that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapon capabilities, which eventually prompted the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Guardian reported.

While giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, an ongoing British public inquiry into the role of the UK in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former deputy prime minister said that the intelligence reports about the Iraqi threat were “tittle-tattle”, and said that the former attorney general at the time was “not a happy bunny” in the run-up to the war.

Prescott, who was twice asked to slow down by the Inquiry so they could keep up with his evidence, said that he believed the war was legal but identified tensions between the U.S. and Britain over the approach to take in relation to the United Nations. He said that former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney believed that Iraq was “unfinished business” and was determined to press on with the invasion and let the cards fall where they will. “You can’t convince him of anything,” Prescott said regarding Cheney.

He informed the inquiry that he and Prime Minister Tony Blair were both determined to get a UN resolution before the invasion of Iraq. He said that former attorney general Lord Goldsmith was under pressure to give a clear opinion on the legality of the invasion. “He had the weight on his shoulders about having to give a legal opinion […] it was not an easy judgment to make.”

Prescott told the inquiry he had the feeling about intelligence revealing Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction not being very substantial. He said that the conclusions in reports on Iraq prepared by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) made assumptions beyond the evidence available.

He blatantly said that former MI5 director general Baroness Manningham-Buller was using the threat of Iraq to try to obtain additional funding for MI5. “She was always on about the threat of terrorism. Along with it came ‘please give me more money’,” he said.

He did admit that the French were likely unfairly blamed for the breakdown of talks with the UN, saying that “I think the poor old French got blamed for a lot of it. You can make a judgment by what Chirac meant by his comments,” Lord Prescott said. “The French easily come to mind in the Brtis’ mind when we want to blame people. There is a lot of history for that.”

Prescott is the last witness to give evidence in the second round of public hearings that have taken place since the inquiry was launched over a year ago. Over 140 witnesses have spoken and given formal evidence, including Blair, Brown, Goldsmith, and a plethora of other former ministers who were serving at the time.

Chilcot said that the evidence given in both public and private has given an “emerging picture” of the UK’s involvement in Iraq between 2001 and 2009. The final report will include a recommendation about the way matters would be handled in the future and would seek to declassify any information that would help readers see how they reached their conclusions.

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