LONDON - The war in Iraq has led to a loss of focus on the threat of al-Qaeda, urged al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and helped a generation of terrorists from its soil, the former domestic British spy chief told a British Inquiry race Tuesday.
Making the sharpest criticism to date emitted in the study, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the agency MI5 between 2002 and 2007, said the British government paid little attention to warnings that the war would fuel domestic terrorism.
Manningham-Buller also said that Iraq had little threat to the 2003 US-led invasion, and insisted there was no evidence of a link between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"There was no credible intelligence to make that connection and that was the sentence, I might say, the CIA," she told the inquiry. "It was not a decision that found favor with some parts of the U.S. machine. "
The ex-spy chief said that pushing the case for war in the United States gave undue attention scraps of vague information about possible links between Iraq and the attacks of 2001. She stressed that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"It's the reason why Donald Rumsfeld an alternative intelligence began in the Pentagon to seek an alternative ruling," said Manningham-Buller, who was a regular visitor to the U.S. as MI5 chief.
"Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9 / 11 and I've never seen anything to make me change my mind," she said.
Manningham-Buller also shows MI5 did not agree with the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to be a major justification for the war - Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction of housing.
She said the belief that Iraq is possible that such weapons to use against the West "is not a problem in the short term or medium-term to either my colleagues or myself."
Manningham-Buller, now a member of the House of Lords, was witness to the inquiry panel in London. Convened by the government, the study aims to examine the build-up to the war in Iraq and mistakes made in post-conflict planning.
It will not assign blame or criminal liability for errors, but will report later this year to make recommendations for future operations and military missions.
Manningham-Buller said the focus on Iraq had far-reaching consequences for the global mission to fight terrorism.
"By focusing on Iraq, we focus on the threat of al-Qaida in Afghanistan reduced. I think this is a long time, important and strategic issue," she told the panel.
She acknowledged the Iraq war terror far greater threat to Britain - with its officers fighting for a torrent of home-grown terrorism plots launched by radicals in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to process.
"Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, for lack of a better word, an entire generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - which saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan as a attack on Islam, "she said.
She disclosed the first time around 70-80 British nationals had traveled to Iraq for the insurgency to close. Video messages left by the four suicide bombers who slain 52 commuters in 2005 attacks on the London Underground and bus network had referred to the role of Britain in Iraq.
Manningham-Buller told the five panel members review the decision to invade Iraq was probably a boost to al-Qaida.
"No doubt we gave Osama bin Laden are Iraqi jihad, so he was able to go into Iraq in a way that he did not advance," she said.
The ex-spy chief to testify in public session, said she was asked by the British government after the invasion to U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to convince Iraq to ditch his plan to dissolve the army. She said she found she had "no hope" of changing minds Wolfowitz.
She also acknowledged that the intelligence picture from before the war in Iraq was incomplete. An earlier British study criticizing the war in Iraq faulty intelligence for the invasion.
"The picture was patchy," Manningham-Buller said. "The picture was not complete. The picture on intelligence never."
She said MI5 had requests to supply low-grade intelligence on a government dossier on the case for the war declined sharply criticized a document in the previous survey.
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