http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm...ubsection=world
LONDON - In just over an hour of testimony yesterday, Robin Cook took apart the British Government's justification for war in Iraq.
The former Foreign Secretary and Leader of the Commons used the quiet forensic skills which made his name in Opposition to pick away at the evidence used to argue that Saddam Hussein was a clear and immediate threat to his neighbours and the international community.
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Cook told the all-party Commons foreign affairs committee that secret briefings he received immediately before the outbreak of war differed sharply from the rhetoric from Downing St.
He declared that they reflected "word for word" the warning in his resignation speech that "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term; namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target."
He also revealed that concerns about Saddam's arsenal had eased to the extent that Britain had considered "closing the files" on Iraq's nuclear and long-range missile programme in the late 1990s
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"I fear the fundamental problem is, instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a conclusion for a policy, we used intelligence as a basis to justify a policy on which we had already settled."