[A-List] Fwd: Former MI5 chief delivers damning verdict on Iraq invasion -- no reportage on this in North America

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

And thousands of solders are still there, will remain there, ensuring that
the response to their presence increases, or excabberates in Lady Buller's
words, the level of UK involvement in protecting the young of
Islam, by joining movements to free them from eternal occupation and
constant humiliations, deprivations and assasinations.

As has been written, Hilary Clinton was just sent to the Middle East and to
Korea in order to raise the level of tensions, which she did.  Which is why
this analysis by the former head of M15 to the invasion of Iraq will not to
be reported in North America.

The bombing of Iran looks as if it has been long carefully planned with
Israel.   Over many years.  Maybe even informing the reason an U.S. diplomat
was finally sent to the commemoration of the Nagisaki and Hiroshima criminal
deaths and destruction.  In fact that is much like the massive release of
newly made Holocaust films (6) from Hollywood just before tha NATO takeover
of Europe through signatories with the European Union, the final ones being
in 2008 or 2009.

The mili-second trading platforms, fully automatic, enabled setting the
floor of forced complaince with the US/Israel by using the "File-Sharing
Agreement between the E.U. and the U.S." to plumb privileged information so
that the rating agencies could bankrupt a country in five or ten minutes as
was done to Greece.   The battleground for Europe's power was set to be
fiscal austerity of awesome proporations.   New beaurocratic structures
were, are, to be erected as quickly as is possible.  The draconian austerity
packages are to facilitate that restructuring.  Although the speculation
that the plane that held 96 heads of state and leaders all crashing to death
may have helped this planned structural transformation is an abhorent
thought, it may be correct.  Poland is being planned as the new center of
the reformed Europe under U.S./Israei domination.

Both Hilary and Bill Clinton have been to the Bilderberg Conferences, both
are privy to the inner corridors of power.  It was not by happenstance that
both of them separately threatened the life of the not-yet-elected
Presidential hopeful, Barack Obama.  He caught those and, victorious or
pre-chosen moved his extended family into the White House.

He also has been fully compliant to the U.S. Military/Industrial Complex.
He will remain so.  M15 will not.  The E.U. must not.

Suzanne




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sid Shniad <shniad at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:30 PM
Subject: Former MI5 chief delivers damning verdict on Iraq invasion -- no
reportage on this in North America
To:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/20/chilcot-mi5-boss-iraq-war

The
Guardian
                       20 July 2010
 Former MI5 chief delivers damning verdict on Iraq invasion

*Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller tells Chilcot that invasion increased
terrorist threat and radicalised young British Muslims*
 [image: Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, former Director-General of MI5]
* Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, former director-general of MI5. She told
Chilcot that, after the
invasion of Iraq, she was not surprised that the 7/7 suicide bombers in
London were British.
 Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images*

The former head of MI5 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/mi5> delivered a
devastating critique of the invasion of
Iraq<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq>today, saying it
substantially increased the threat of terrorist attacks in
Britain and was a significant factor behind the radicalisation of young
Muslims in the UK.

Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry into the UK's role in
Iraq: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a
whole generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a
generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an
attack upon Islam."

Asked by Sir Roderic Lyne, a member of the inquiry, to what extent the
conflict exacerbated the threat from international terrorism facing Britain,
she replied: "Substantially."

She was not surprised, she said, that UK citizens were behind the 7/7
attacks in London nor that increasing number of Britons were "attracted to
the ideology of Osama bin
Laden<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/osamabinladen>and saw the
attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their
co-religionists and the Muslim world".

Invading Iraq and toppling Saddam
Hussein<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/saddam-hussein>allowed
al-Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq which it had never
previously managed. "Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so
that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before,"
Manningham-Buller told the inquiry.

She referred to assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, of which
she was a member, warning ministers that an invasion of Iraq would increase
the terrorist threat to Britain. If they read the reports, she said,
ministers would have been in no doubt over the threat.

The former MI5 chief said she did not have individual discussions at the
time with Tony Blair <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/tonyblair> about
the effect invading Iraq would have on the terrorist threat to Britain. She
referred to Sir Richard Dearlove, head of SIS, the Secret Intelligence
Service or MI6, which provided intelligence for the infamous Iraqi weapons
dossier. "I believe the head of the SIS saw him [Blair] much more frequently
than I did, for understandable reasons".

Manningham-Buller also mentioned Sir David Omand, the government's security
and intelligence co-ordinator in 2003, who told Chilcot earlier this year
that MI6 had "over-promised and under-delivered" on Iraq. She said that in
March 2002, a year before the invasion, MI5 had advised the Home Office that
Iraqi intelligence agents in the UK would pose little threat in the event of
war. "We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low," she said.

"We did think that Saddam Hussein might resort to terrorism in the theatre
if he thought his regime was being toppled, but we didn't believe he had the
capability to do anything in the UK. That turned out to be the right
judgment," she continued. MI5 was concerned about the threat from al-Qaida
before the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, she said. She dismissed claims
made by elements in the Bush administration that Iraq had been involved.
"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection. That was the
judgment of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour in some parts
of the American machine," she said. "It is why [former US defence secretary]
Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to
seek an alternative judgment."

She was asked about an interview with the Guardian last year in which she
first set out her concerns about an invasion of Iraq. As US and UK forces
were preparing to invade, she had asked her superiors, "Why now?" She said
it "as explicitly as I could. I said something like, 'The threat to us would
increase because of Iraq,' " she told the Guardian.

By focusing on Iraq, the government was diverted from the continuing threat
posed by al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Manningham-Buller said today.

Her remark was picked up by Admiral Lord West, then head of the navy and
subsequently appointed security minister in the Labour government. "My own
personal view is that it is actually a very bad idea to invade people," he
told BBC Radio 4's The World at One. "I was never a supporter, I have to
say, of going into Iraq. I think it was a foolhardy thing to do when we were
already engaged in Afghanistan."

Asked what lessons MI5 had learned from the invasion of Iraq,
Manningham-Buller said: "The danger of over-reliance on fragmentary
intelligence in deciding whether or not to go to war. Very few would argue
that the intelligence was substantial enough to make that decision."

She also said MI5 did not fully appreciate the degree to which British
citizens would be involved in terror plots. In 2004, she wrote to the Home
Office saying the government needed to think more about the effects of
foreign policy on domestic policy.
*In her own words*

*Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller to the Chilcot inquiry:*

"We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low"

"Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad"

"Substantially" – when asked to what extent the conflict in Iraq exacerbated
the overall threat facing Britain's security from international terrorism

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole
generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a
generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an
attack on Islam"

"It is fair to say that we did not foresee the degree to which British
citizens would become involved …"

"Very few would argue that the intelligence was substantial enough to make
that decision [go to war]"

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection [between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida]. That was the judgment of the CIA. It was not a
judgment that found favour in some parts of the American machine"
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