ive heard that the US wasnt the only country with intelligence saying all that stuff about Iraq, I read somewhere(cant remember where) that the French and the Brits had the same stuff, were just the only ones that acted on it
I believe MI6 was responsible for the forged (incredibly badly forged) Niger Yellowcake uranium documents, but I'm pretty sure they also told the PM they were bollocks at some point and they were still used.
There's evidence the little evidence there was, was 'sexed up' (see
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/07/14/butler.blair/, also
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1592724,00.html and of course the Hutton affair). Most of this can be put down to the PM wanting to support the Americans (due to the 'special relationship' type affair, which presumably means we get to send target practice for National Guard A-10s.....), and needing to create the correct political context. which he never acheived, of course; about 70-77% were against war without a firm UN resolution approving it at the time it started.
Of course, let's not forget that there were
UN weapons inspectors in Iraq before the war; the US, UK and other nations had an opportunity and indeed a responsibility to provide intelligence that would allow the location of such weapons by UNMOVIC. So either they (UK, US) had no intelligence to give, or they purposely withheld it to provide a context for war. (indeed, some of the intelligence presented by Powell to the UN proved to be wrong; offhand, a site claimed to be a chemical weapons factory from sat photos was visited and verified to only contain water tankers, etc, and also the claimed 'mobile CBW labs' were found post war and determined to be - as the Iraqis had claimed - for filling hydrogen air baloons.)
The WMD and terrorism 'reasons' have been pretty much shown to be nonsense reasons given by a US government hungry for either revenge (nee finishing Daddys' work), oil or a new strategic base outside Saudi Arabia. In fact, Iraq has unquestionably worsened terrorism; it's provided a focal point for Islamic fundamentalists to recruit both for regional and international terrorism, given a pretext to terrorist actions such as the July 7th bombings, and is even threatening to become a regional base for 'exporting' terrorism. Not to mention that as it stands the Iraqi Shia government will be very friendly to Iran, which is even worse for the US' plans for that region.
