Iraq decisions 'based on prejudice and ignorance'

Published on Thursday 5 November 2009 20:56

KEY decisions in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq were made on the basis of "western ignorance and Anglo-Saxon prejudice", the Iraq war inquiry was told yesterday.

In the first of a series of academic seminars, the inquiry received a scathing analysis of British and US policy from Professor George Joffe of Cambridge University.

He accused the UK and US governments of using "misleading and woefully inadequate" intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion.

At times, he said, that intelligence material was "tailored to fit government prejudice".

While he acknowledged the situation did not appear as clear-cut at the time as it does now, much of the evidence was "fallible and often insubstantial".

"Often the problem was not a lack of knowledge so much as a willful refusal to interpret what knowledge there was objectively. And this, in turn, occurred both because of western ignorance and Anglo-Saxon prejudice," he said.

He said the analysis of Westminster and Washington was further hampered by the fact that – unlike most European powers – they had not restored diplomatic relations with Iraq.

"Britain and the United States, however, had no diplomatic eyes there and had to rely on intelligence-led information, which was to prove to be misleading and woefully inadequate, as well as, on occasion, being tailored to fit government prejudice," Prof Joffe said.