Unreasonable lies
"One fact is now clear: before the war, the United States intelligence community told the president, as well as the Congress and the public, that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Well, today we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence." — Pat Roberts, Republican chairperson of the US Senate select committee on intelligence, July 9.
Unrepentant liar
"It is perfectly clear from what we've found out since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime that Saddam Hussein's regime was in clear breach of [United Nations] Security Council resolutions. He had missiles that exceeded the designated United Nations range. It was perfectly clear he had chemical and biological weapons programs." — Foreign minister Alexander Downer, July 10, commenting on the US Senate intelligence committee's findings.
He might unleash Iraq's non-existent WMD
"I think it is very difficult to look at Iraq today, to look at Iraq under Saddam, and say we would be better off, the world would be safer, we would be more secure, if Saddam was still in charge of Iraq." — British PM Tony Blair, July 13.
British non-intelligence
"Yesterday Lord Butler calmly pronounced the intelligence on which the war was launched as hopelessly overheated. His conclusions on this point are so irrefutable that even Tony Blair had to admit that Saddam did not have any WMD ready for use. This must be the most embarrassing failure in the history of British intelligence. Yet according to Lord Butler, no one is to blame. Everyone behaved perfectly properly and nobody made a mistake." — Robin Cook, Blair's former foreign secretary, July 15.
Little Aussie battler battles on
"My position remains that we had strong intelligence to justify our decision, and nothing in the Butler report alters that position." — Prime Menzies John Howard, July 15.
From Green Left Weekly, July 21, 2004.
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