UK intelligence 'laughing stock'

[emad]

London - BBC News reports that former Labour Foreign Secretary Lord Owen has rubbished British intelligence, saying millions of people felt 'deceived':


<Snip>

The way the government presented its case for war with Iraq has corrupted the Whitehall body responsible for assessing intelligence, according to Lord Owen. The former Labour foreign secretary said it could be decades before the joint intelligence committee (JIC) recovered from the damage it had suffered. Lord Owen argued that British intelligence agencies had been turned into a "laughing stock" by the government's dodgy dossier, which was later found to be based on a PhD thesis posted on the internet.

And the SDP founder criticised JIC chairman John Scarlett for allowing Tony Blair's communications chief, Alastair Campbell and Number 10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell to make changes to the earlier September dossier. Speaking ahead of the results of the judicial inquiry into the death of government weapons expert Dr David Kelly being conducted by Lord Hutton, he said that although he did not feel duped over the way the case for war was presented, millions did feel "deceived".

Speaking at the London School of Economics, Lord Owen said: "I do not need to await Lord Hutton's verdict to judge that the joint intelligence committee machinery, which I have known well and respected, was corrupted in the run up to that war in a way which will leave damage for decades to come. "It is impossible to believe that Sir Anthony Duff, Sir Percy Craddock or Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, to name but three heads of the JIC with whom I have worked, would ever have conducted themselves as John Scarlett did with Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell over amending the statement on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "The other so-called 'dodgy' dossier on which Alastair Campbell has already apologised left our joint intelligence services a laughing stock.

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More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3176958.stm

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Isn't it interesting? ....

...how the same bad intelligence is being received in two different countries? Tony Blair is getting blasted for acting upon bad intelligence by their media and officials; while Bush and his officials are allowed to go fabricating lies that it was enough to justify a war.

[emad]

2. Maybe the UK has woken up to the idea that Blair swallowed

a load of counter intelligence and said 'it tastes good'

Whereas Bushco wouldn't know counter intelligence if it jumped out of the Potomac and hit them in the face......

Last time the US caught major spies - Bob Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, it was through the strategic placement of counter intelligence threads: plausible rubbish that provided the links to a deception machine in the security/intelligence community.

What's the betting that the 'yellow cake uranium from Niger' story leads to......'fruitcake in the White house'?????

[0007]

3. I agree

....and when the folks here can get away from FOX News and the other two networks long enough, they'll see and understand they've been deceived. And yes, the 'yellow cake uranium' will make the fruitcakes in the White House the laughing stock of the world.

The only difference between David Kelly & Joe Wilson is that one is a live and one is dead.

[Briar]

5. Don't get your hopes up

Blair can ignore all this. He has a massive parliamentary majority still, and then there's that reputation he has gained for believing every word he says. He may be wrong, but not a liar, they'll say (and soon Hutton will provide a fig leaf by proclaiming the government did not "sex up" the dossier, and Kelly's death is all the BBC's fault for reporting that he said they did). David Owen supported the war, and there's no sign in this story that he regrets that or considers himself misled. That'll be the position Bliar is counting on. "The war was justified, so I was justified, and the end justifies the means." Meanwhile, all the great British public cares about is the upcoming world cup qualifier against Turkey, and persecuting asylum seekers.

[emad]

9. Blair is a cunningly bankrolled impostor who cannot disprove

the DNA evidence held against him, his financiers or the historical documentation that proves the case against his perfidy.

He thought he had the whole Prime Ministerial authority and world leadership game sewn up when he did a deal with the IRA - the so-called Good Friday Agreement - which has now blown up in his face. Now it's all coming unravelled because you can't ignore the obvious - like the body of Dr Kelly, found according to his own prediction "dead by the bushes"...

The critical melt-down points have already been reached: massive intelligence failure of 9-11 (or deliberate cover up leading to mass murder) and the push into Iraq on the basis of Saddam's sabre-rattling game of poker.

Blair took up the bluff and now can't account for it.

He's still bluffing that he can hang on because a) huge majority
b) unelectable Tory opposition c) no one has YET published the evidence against him and his cohorts.

Just which domino has to tumle first to bring down the entire set? The UK media has been called the only true political opposition that exists in the UK - and they are hardly Tory supporters or Lib Dems.

That first domino looks like it's teetering on the verge of one big fall.

[AP]

6. In US and UK, the response is designed to get RW'ers to win next election

that's why the response is so different.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Is there any such thing

as good intelligence? Seems we waste a lot of time, money on lives supporting our intelligence services and all we get are civil wars, dictatorships and WMD's spreading like a fungus. Are we any safer or less safe because of them?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. British Intell is getting the same beating given to American Intell...

...until the CIA pushed back and pointed out the fabricated sixteen words in the Dancing Chimp's State of the Union Address.

I recall something similar happening to the data supplied by British Intell to the Blairites. That "adjusted" information was the data used in the Dancing Chimp's State of the Union Address, and Powell's address to the UN.

[kclown]

8. Niger documents were FORGED

Not only was the intel false, it was conceived as a deception.
 Who did it? Why?

I am annoyed that this has not received any attention.

[emad]

10. Check out post 2

???