UK war dossier a sham, say experts

British 'intelligence' lifted from academic articles

Michael White and Brian Whitaker
Friday February 7, 2003
The Guardian

Downing Street was last night plunged into acute international embarrassment after it emerged that large parts of the British government's latest dossier on Iraq - allegedly based on "intelligence material" - were taken from published academic articles, some of them several years old.

Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.

Citing the British dossier, entitled Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation in front of a worldwide television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities." More here








The concealment theory, allegedly constructed by Mr. Wolfowitz, being as follows, read full Institute for Strategic Studies document here:

"Iraq retains the expertise and industrial capability to produce agents quickly and in volume if desired. Moreover, Iraq has had a decade of experience countering intelligence and developing effective concealment methods."

[...]

"The UNSCOM experience demonstrates that no on-site inspections of Iraq's WMD programmes can succeed unless inspectors develop an imaginative and carefully co-ordinated counter-concealment strategy."

[...]

"While there were notable successes in defeating Iraqi concealment efforts, many others failed."

i.e. "We found some illicit material, but everything else we were hoping to find was definitely concealed." Therefore, even though they find no evidence, it's still there. This is what they're trying to suggest, can you belive it? - handy isn't it, "imaginative counter-concealment".