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Iraq: pre-war warnings disregarded

In the run-up to war, senior British security and intelligence officials as well as diplomats made it clear that they were strongly opposed to the invasion of Iraq — though not clear enough. Why now, why Iraq, they asked; it would merely increase the terrorist threat, as the joint intelligence committee warned Ministers less than a month before British troops and bombers joined the U.S. attack on the country.

Now comes fresh evidence that senior British officials tried to persuade the Bush administration to keep off Iraq and concentrate on Afghanistan, the real source of terrorist violence inspired by Al-Qaeda. On the Brink, the newly p ublished memoirs of Tyler Drumheller — the CIA’s chief of clandestine operations in Europe until 2005 — tells of a meeting on September 12, 2001. The day after Al-Qaeda’s attacks on America, George Tenet, then CIA director, met three British guests — Sir David Manning, then Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser; Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6 (British intelligence); and Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5 (U.K. security service). “I hope we can all agree that we should concentrate on Afghanistan and not be tempted to launch any attacks on Iraq,” Mr. Drumheller quotes the leader of the British delegation as telling Mr. Tenet.

A few days later, a group of diplomats and MI6 officers met their American counterparts at a lunch at the British embassy in Washington. Again MI6 expressed concern that the Bush administration had Iraq in its sights. A senior official (Mr. Drumheller, obeying instructions, does not identify the official or his nationality) went further, inquiring what the CIA was going to do once the U.S. had “hit the mercury with the hammer in Afghanistan and the Al-Qaeda cadre has spread all over the world.” The official asked: “Aren’t you concerned about the potential destabilising effect on Middle Eastern countries?”

Questioned last week about just how far MI6 and other British officials tried to apply pressure on the Americans, Mr. Drumheller told the London-based Guardian newspaper: “I think the British did everything they could to keep the U.S. focussed on Afghanistan. They understood Iraq much better than we did.” One of the things they understood was that there was no link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

(The writer is security affairs editor of the London-based Guardian newspaper)

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