Whose Head Will The Butler Serve Up?

[CHIMO]

IF the former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook is anything to go by then the entire Cabinet and the whole upper echelon of British intelligence should be roasted on a spit by the Butler Inquiry, which is due to report on Wednesday.
Cook says that John Scarlett told him before the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not have any weapons of mass destruction that could be fired over long distances at strategic cities. Scarlett is the former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) which wrote the infamous dossier laying out the government?s case for war ? and the man who is now to take over MI6 ? and Cook?s recollection of his comments is in direct contradiction to the dossier?s claim that Saddam could hit UK assets with WMD within 45 minutes.

If Cook knew this, Scarlett must have told other senior government figures including Tony Blair and Scarlett?s ?mate? Alastair Campbell, then Blair?s director of communications. ?I still find it perplexing,? says Cook, ?why Number 10 came to a different conclusion.

?The government had made up their mind that Saddam had weapons and must be a threat; they had made up their mind they were going to war. The intelligence agencies were then left in a position of having to find evidence to support a conclusion.?


http://www.sundayherald.com/43327