Former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has yet to say anything about
Monday’s heinous, nihilistic suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande
concert in Manchester, England. According to current reporting, the
attack has been claimed by ISIS and was carried out by a 22-year-old
man born in Manchester to Libyan refugees.
But
when Blair does speak, we can be certain he won’t mention one key
fact: Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the U.S. and U.K., he
was forcefully and repeatedly warned by Britain’s intelligence
services that it would lead to exactly this type of terrorist attack
— and he concealed these warnings from the British people, instead
claiming the war would reduce the risk of terrorism.
We
know this because of the Chilcot Report, the seven-year-long British
investigation of the Iraq War released in 2016. The report
declassifies numerous internal government documents that illustrate
the yawning chasm between what Blair was being told in private and
his claims in public as he pushed for war.
On
February 10, 2003, one month before the war began, the U.K.’s Joint
Intelligence Committee — the key advisory body for the British
Prime Minister on intelligence matters — issued a white paper
titled “International Terrorism: War With Iraq.”
It
began:
The
threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military
action against Iraq. They will target Coalition forces and other
Western interests in the Middle East. Attacks against Western
interests elsewhere are also likely, especially in the US and UK, for
maximum impact. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist
groups and individuals will increase significantly.
And
it concluded much the same way:
Al
Qaida and associated groups will continue to represent by far the
greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat will
be heightened by military action against Iraq. The broader threat
from Islamist terrorists will also increase in the event of war,
reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim
world, including among Muslim communities in the West.
The
same report concluded that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq “would
aspire to conduct terrorist attacks against Coalition interests”
only in the event of an invasion. Moreover, “authoritative
reporting suggests that Iraqi Intelligence (DGI) has little reach or
[terrorism] capability outside Iraq.”
Specifically
regarding WMD terrorism, the JIC elsewhere judged that Iraq “would
be unlikely to undertake or sponsor such terrorist attacks,”
that the threat of it if Iraq were not invaded was “slight,” and
that there was no “credible evidence of covert transfers of
WMD-related technology and expertise to terrorist groups.”
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