British Iraq intelligence was 'seriously flawed,' inquiry says

LONDON (AP) -- An official inquiry into the quality of British intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said today that some sources were "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" but found no evidence of "deliberate distortion or culpable negligence."
Prime Minister Tony Blair said he accepted the conclusions in Lord Butler's report in full, but that "getting rid of Saddam Hussein" was not a mistake.
"Any mistakes made should not be laid at the door of our intelligence and security community," Blair told the House of Commons after the report was released.
"They do a tremendous job for our country. I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made," he said.
Contradictions
Contradicting a central claim made by Blair, Lord Butler's report said that before the war, Iraq "did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment or developed plans for using them."
The report said the government's claim in a September 2002 dossier that Saddam Hussein could use chemical and biological weapons on 45 minutes notice was potentially misleading because it did not explain that it referred to battlefield weapons.
However, the report backed the government's claim that it had intelligence that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, and that the claim was not based on forged documents.
"No one lied, no one made up the intelligence, no one inserted things into dossier against the advice of intelligence services," Blair said.