Blair Was Told No WMDs Before War

In March 2003, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. However, new testimony from Parliament’s inquiry into the war reveals that, 10 days before the invasion, Blair was told Saddam had dismantled his chemical weapons. "We did, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam had not yet ordered their assembly,” said Sir William Ehrman, then the director of international security at the Foreign Office. “There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents." Ehrman said, however, that the intelligence made no difference. "From the counter-proliferation point of view it just proved that he had been lying and that he had prohibited items."