Baroness Manningham-Buller Truth! No Connection Between Iraq, Saddam, 9/11

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection [between 9/11 and Saddam]. That was the judgment of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour in some parts of the American machine," she said.'
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Baroness Manningham-Buller said the UK's involvement in Iraq gave "fresh impetus" to "home-grown" terrorists who saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as an attack on Islam.

"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," she said.

She repeatedly warned ministers of the increased threat and was forced to ask for the MI5 budget to be doubled as a consequence, she told the inquiry.

"We were very overburdened with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things that we needed to pursue," she said.

Pressed on what direct access she had been given to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, she revealed she had no one-to-one meetings with him on the subject.

"I believe the head of the SIS [MI6: the UK's foreign intelligence agency] saw him much more frequently than I did, for understandable reasons," she said.

Previous witnesses have told the Inquiry that the 9/11 attacks prompted a steep change in American policy towards Iraq.

The threshold of what constituted a threat to their national security changed.

Containing Saddam's apparent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was no longer an option for them.

Baroness Manningham-Buller visited Washington on a number of occasions after the Twin Tower attacks.

She told the Inquiry she detected a split in opinion within US government departments.

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection [between 9/11 and Saddam]. 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 [US defence secretary] Donald Rumsfeld started an alternative intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

She added she was asked to try to influence her US colleagues both prior to the invasion and following it.

Asked whether she had any success, she replied: "Not a hope."

Despite there being no link before the invasion between Saddam, al Qaeda and 9/11, Baroness Manningham-Buller claimed the toppling of the Iraqi leader allowed al Qaeda to establish a foothold in the country.

"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," she said.

Concluding her evidence, she reflected that the Government's analysis of a possible increased terror threat to the UK turned out to be correct.

But she said the justification for the invasion in the first place - namely that Saddam had WMD and therefore posed a threat - was entirely wrong.

Baroness Manningham-Buller was Director General of MI5 from 2002 until her retirement in 2007.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100720/tuk-ex-mi5-chief-we-gave-bin-laden-his-j-...

http://countusout.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/baroness-manningham-buller-was-dir...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• 9/11
• Lied into war
• reports sexed up
• mi5 director

[foxfly23]

@urbeinghunted You're probably right because if she was anything else, she wouldn't have be in her position. However, she's actually stating the obvious and not educating the masses on anything nor blowing any whistles. This is most likely a situation where she's going to be used as manufactured opposition to be used in some hegalian dialectic in the future. She's a 'truth teller' after all so why would she be lying re: (topic to be filled in as needed in the future).

[urbeinghunted]

Ive just been watching a docu.and my resulting assessment of this human being is that she, to me, appears to be a liar, based on my perception and understanding from her answers and facial expression during her interview on BBC2. As a person i have a right to make these assumptions based on my thoughts To me she appears a career person with no regard to human life as a whole. I think its about time that this country was governed by compitent learned people, and not idealistic snobs.