Probably the incident that set my mind against the war in Iraq was a day I watched Colin Powell have a stand up row with Hans Blix in the Security Council chamber. Hans Blix, for all I know a public servant who had few if any vested interest in anything other than peace, the great commission of the UN, was explaining how Saddam's ability to create weaponised bioldogical or chemical weapons had been virtually destroyed and that the constituent ingredients he may have had his hands on ten years previously would by then be next to useless.

In reply, Colon Peril insisted in some detail that Saddam had mobile weapons plants and the huge extent of the international threat he now posed. This despite himself having gone before the world just two short years previously alongside Ms Rice to explain that Saddam had no capability in 2001 even to project conventional force against his regional neighbours let alone produce biological or chemical weapons.

It sticks in my mind because it was an ugly and, frankly, undignified display by the old soldier. Blix had years of UN inspections on the ground to back up his calculations and Powell had, well, dodgy dossiers and bluster. One might have suspected at the time that Powell was putting his thin arguments almost under protest to fit the agenda.

So, it is with some grave concern that I read today:

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | US Iran report branded dishonest:

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran's nuclear programme, calling it "erroneous" and "misleading".
In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency's own findings on Iran's nuclear activity.

The IAEA also took "strong exception" to claims made over the removal of a senior safeguards inspector.

Apparently you can read the congressional report here and the UN letter here. I haven't done so yet, but the story is enough to give me the heebie-geebies. I have no doubt that we have to be wary of Iran's intentions, though on balance personally I do believe at the moment they are for civil nuclear technology. But one wonders whether the Great Satan has learned anything out of the shambles in Iraq and how they got there through what now seem like a tissue of lies and distortions.

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