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John Scarlett |
LONDON – Sir John Scarlett, the former MI6 chief in the United Kingdom, has told close friends in the intelligence world that he expects to be branded "the fall guy" during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War, an investigation opening in London, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
To prepare for his examination by Sir John Chilcot and the four other members of his committee, Scarlett has seen hundreds of pages of secret government reports that establish his role in Tony Blair's Iraq War cabinet.
Then prime minister, Blair had given Scarlett, at the time head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, a seat in his cabinet. Blair, the documents show, had seized upon every word of Scarlett's to support his own belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
The documents show that the intelligence chief's view enabled Blair to persuade parliament and the British public, as well as then–CIA chief George Tenet, that the former prime minister's objective was "disarmament not regime change and there had been no planning for a military action."
It has now emerged that Scarlett had been a key adviser in British military planning for a full invasion of Iraq months before the war started.
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Whitehall sources now say that Scarlett's role contributed to Tony Blair being rejected as the European Union's first president last week.
The mood in Brussels was that the relationship between the former intelligence chief and Blair had made him unsuitable to preside over the European Union and its 27 nations.
Scarlett still may have to explain to Lord Chilcot why, for instance, one document which bears his mark details that some British soldiers had to travel to war by British charter flights normally used by vacationers "and were forced by airline security to divest themselves of anything that could be used as weapon on board. When some of the troops went into battle they were issued only with five bullets a piece – due to inadequate planning."
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