Yesterday’s edition of the British newspaper, The Guardian, cited documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act to write:
The senior intelligence official responsible for Tony Blair’s notorious dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction proposed using the document to mislead the public about the significance of Iraq’s banned weapons. Sir John Scarlett, who as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee was placed “in charge” of writing the September 2002 dossier, sent a memo to Blair’s foreign affairs adviser referring to “the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional.”
While such duplicity would be of concern in and of itself, the Iraq war adds to the pre-existing regional chaos, thereby increasing the risk of a nuclear disaster: Iran shares a border with Iraq, making American troops in Iraq as threatening to Tehran as Iranian troops in Mexico would be to us. And, the more Iran feels threatened, the more likely it is to emphasize the weapons-related aspects of its nuclear program.
Defusing the Nuclear Threat 