Trump and Iran at a Potential World-Changing Crossroads
U.S., British lies about Iraq WMD haunt Trump claims on Iran’s nuclear, missiles programs
IT MAY HAVE BEEN AMONG THE SCARIER MOMENTS in the run up to the war in Iraq—and one that has taken on eerie new relevance in light of today’s looming military confrontation with Iran.
In September, 2002, the British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair—seeking to help President George W. Bush bolster his case for an invasion—released a white paper making the alarming claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a ballistic missile attack with chemical or biological weapons against the United Kingdom within 45 minutes.
Predictably, the British tabloids went crazy. “He’s got him…Let’s get him,” screamed the headline in The Sun. “45 Minutes from Attack,” declared The Evening Standard over a picture of long-range ballistic missiles.
It was all a fraud, of course: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction—no nuclear bombs, no mobile biological labs, as Bush and his officials claimed—much less ballistic missiles that it could unleash on British or American citizens. In the U.K.’s political folklore, Blair’s white paper came to be known as “the dodgy dossier,” and one of the top intelligence officials who worked on it, David Kelly, conceded to the BBC the document had been “sexed up.” Kelly later took a long walk in the woods and committed suicide, slashing his left wrist with a knife.
