Australian Ex-PM Howard ‘Embarrassed’ by 2003 Iraq War Dossier

Local Editor

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he was embarrassed that the US intelligence on weapons of mass destruction [WMD] he used to send troops to Iraq in 2003 proved to be unfounded, in an interview on Sunday.

Howard, prime minister from 1996 to 2007, said at the time he decided to send Australian soldiers to Iraq with US and British forces, it was in the belief that Iraq had WMD. No WMD were ever found in Iraq, undermining the basis for the conflict which left thousands of Iraqis dead in the country. 

In an interview with the Seven Network on Sunday, he said, "I was struck by the force of the language in the American national intelligence assessment late in November 2002."

"It brought together all the American intelligence and paragraph after paragraph, they said, we judge Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction and even talked about potential nuclear capacity," he said.

"I felt embarrassed, I did. I couldn’t believe it because I had genuinely believed it," Howard added.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team