Wars Of Convenience

The decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for “bureaucratic reasons”, according to the US deputy defence secretary … Picking weapons of mass destruction was “the one reason everyone could agree on”, he says in the interview.

A dossier compiled by the government on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction was rewritten to make it “sexier” … “The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes. That information was not in the original draft. It was included in the dossier against our wishes because it wasn’t reliable.”

The Baghdad bunker which the United States said it bombed on the opening night of the Iraq war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein never existed … “When we came out here, the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility, or bodies, forensics, and basically, what they saw was giant holes created. No underground facilities, no bodies,” Col. Tim Madere said.