Asia-Pacific

Ex-M15 spy chief: No link between Iraq and 9/11

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-07-20 22:38

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, 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, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam," she said.

Manningham-Buller acknowledged that she had not held any one-to-one discussions with Britain's then-prime minister, Tony Blair, to discuss the likely impact invading Iraq would have on the terrorist threat to the UK.

Video messages left by the four suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters in the 2005 attacks on London's subway and bus network referred to Britain's role in Iraq.

The Iraq war had "undoubtedly increased the threat, and by 2004 we were pretty well swamped," Manningham-Buller said.

She told the five-member inquiry panel, appointed by Britain's government, that the decision to invade Iraq had also likely provided an impetus to al-Qaida.

"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.

The ex-spy chief, giving evidence in a public session, said she had been asked by the British government in the aftermath of the invasion to persuade deputy US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to ditch his plan to disband Iraq's army.

But she found she had "not a hope" of changing Wolfowitz's mind, Manningham-Buller said.

She also acknowledged that the intelligence picture before the Iraq war was incomplete. A previous British inquiry into the Iraq war criticized flawed intelligence before the invasion.

"The picture was fragmentary," Manningham-Buller said. "The picture was not complete. The picture on intelligence never is."

She said MI5 had refused requests to supply some "low-grade" intelligence for a government dossier on the case for war, a document sharply criticized in the previous inquiry. "We refused because we didn't think it was reliable," Manningham-Buller said.

The Joint Intelligence Committee - which drafted the dossier - had been patchy on Iraq and had "an aura about it that is undeserved," she told the panel.

Other ex-intelligence chiefs have given evidence to the inquiry in private sessions. The inquiry was convened to examine the build-up to the Iraq war, and errors made on post-conflict planning.

It won't apportion blame or assign criminal liability for mistakes made, but will issue a report later this year with recommendations for future operations and military missions.