Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
In Saturday's edition of the Australian newspaper The Age, Mark Forbes writes:
Intelligence agencies told the Federal Government in the weeks before the Iraq war that some of the Bush Administration's claims justifying an invasion were exaggerated, according to one of Australia's most senior intelligence officials.
Assessments provided to Prime Minister John Howard stated that US Secretary of State Colin Powell's prewar address to the United Nations "went beyond the available evidence" in at least two areas, the official said.
It is believed these included claims of mobile biological weapons laboratories and alleged links between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The official - who spoke on condition of anonymity - said the Government was told before the war that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction did not pose an immediate threat. Iraq's chemical and biological warfare capabilities were largely latent, they said.
"The head of the Defence Intelligence Organisation, Frank Lewincamp, has told a Senate committee he was the principal source for a report in Saturday's Age on assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," Brendan Nicholson writes in tomorrow's edition of The Age. "...Mr Lewincamp told a Senate committee last night that he recognised some of his statements in The Age's story. He said he did not make all the statements in the article."
A little later in the story:
Mr Lewincamp said he did not make and would never make some of the statements attributed to the official in the report.
"For example, I have never said the Bush Administration's claims justifying an invasion were exaggerated," he said. "Nor have I said that the Government was told that Iraq WMD did not pose an immediate threat."
It be interesting to know what the U.S. government told Australia.
