Facing Reality of Iraq; War Was Wrong and Increased Nuclear Risk

Summary

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It would be farcical if it were not so deadly serious. Hours before the government moved yesterday to lay the "dodgy dossier" of September 2002 to rest - the one that warned Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes - news had emerged from the United Nations that Iraqis could, in fact, have been building a nuclear weapon. For a prime minister under intense pressure and failing to make a convincing case for going to war since the discrediting of the "dodgy dossier", this news might have seemed as manna from heaven. The trouble is, it punched another hole in the sinking case for war.

George W Bush went to war, supported by Tony Blair, to rid Iraq of WMD (that did not exist) and stop them falling into the wrong hands. It is now clear that, if anything, the war increased the risk of nuclear weapons being built and falling into the wrong hands. The Iraq Survey Group concluded last week that Iraq's WMD were essentially destroyed in 1991. In the same year, it reported that it also ended its nuclear programme. There was no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart it.

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Extract

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Facing Reality of Iraq; War Was Wrong and Increased Nuclear Risk

Yesterday, however, Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency, reported that buildings linked to Iraq's previous...

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