Brit War Chief Defends War Not Cheney

[Heibges]

The main point I took from this article, was the total failure of Intelligence. Hoon says that as far back as 1999, the Intelligence folks looked him square in the eye and told him that Saddam had WMD's.

He also makes allusions to the unexpected influence Cheney had on Bush, but does not really go farther than that.

I would have hated to playd Poker with Saddam, because he must have been the greatest bluffer in the history of the world. Too good for his own sake as it turned out.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...e2751851.shtml

Brit War Chief: We Underestimated Cheney

LONDON, May 2, 2007 (CBS/AP) Britain's defense secretary during the Iraq war says U.K. officials underestimated the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney in White House decision making, and the coalition failed to anticipate the bloody aftermath of the war, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Hoon said the British side had not comprehended Cheney's influence in the U.S. administration.

Even when Blair and President Bush had agreed on some matter, "sometimes... the decision actually came out of a completely different place."

"And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney," Hoon was quoted as saying.

"I've been present at a number of meetings where the intelligence community was fixed, and looked in the eye and asked are you absolutely sure about this? And the answer came back 'Yes, absolutely sure,"' Hoon was quoted as saying.

"I saw intelligence from the first time I came into office, in May 1999 — week in, week out — that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ... I have real difficulty in understanding why it was, over such a long period of time, we were told this and, moreover, why we acted upon it," he was quoted as saying.