October 2003: Former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook Reveals Deception by Prime Minister Blair over Iraqi WMDs

Robin Cook (see March 17-18, 2003) publishes portions of a diary he had kept when he was Tony Blair’s foreign minister. The published memoirs reveal—among other things—that Blair had intentionally misled the British population. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] The diary reveals how before the war intelligence provided to Cook by British intelligence chief John Scarlett indicated that Saddam Hussein probably did not have weapons of mass destruction that could be used to attack the US or Britain. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] Cook’s entries also show that before the war, Blair did not believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be used to attack the US or Britain. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] Additionally, the diary shows that Tony Blair ignored the “large number of ministers who spoke up against the war.” He says that the officials in the foreign ministry were consistently opposed to the invasion of Iraq. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004]