WMD inquiry

last updated 8 January 2015

London

The British government said this week that it would open an investigation into the faulty intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The inquiry will be similar in scope to the one announced this week in the U.S. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said last week’s finding, by senior judge Lord Hutton, that the government had not “sexed up” intelligence had cleared the air and allowed for a rational discussion of Iraqi weapons. Before the war, Blair said that “extensive, detailed, and authoritative” intelligence had concluded that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that could be activated within 45 minutes. He has since come under intense criticism for that claim.