20 July 2010
Iraq inquiry: Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat
The invasion of Iraq "substantially" increased the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has said.
Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller said the action had radicalised "a few among a generation".
As a result, she said she was not "surprised" that UK nationals were involved in the 7/7 bombings in London.
She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.
Document to Home Office in 2002
Baroness Manningham-Buller said she had advised officials a year before the war that the threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited", and she believed that assessment had "turned out to be the right judgement".
Describing the intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat as "fragmentary", she said: "If you are going to go to war, you need to have a pretty high threshold to decide on that."
Ex-MI5 boss says war raised terror threat
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