Guardian: 'Bin Laden wanted invasion'

"Britain and the US have guaranteed that the west will face a decade-long war with the forces of Osama bin Laden after the "strategic blunder" of invading Iraq, Robin Cook told the Commons.
MPs sat in silence as the former foreign secretary said: "My deep worry is that when Osama bin Laden struck the twin towers he wanted to send a message that the only possible relationship between the west and Islam is one of violent confrontation.
"I fear that by invading Iraq we have responded in precisely the way Osama bin Laden wanted and as a consequence we and the west will have to live with the violent consequences of this strategic blunder for a decade to come."
Mr Cook attacked Tony Blair for abandoning the policy of "containment" towards Iraq, which was dropped after George Bush arrived in the White House.
Citing a passage in the Butler report, which said there was no new intelligence at the time the policy changed, he said: "The change that precipitated the movement away from containment to invasion was not a change in Iraq, it was the regime change in Washington and the election of the Bush administration with a commitment to invasion."
Mr Cook expressed astonishment at the way in which intelligence was presented in such a "dogmatic" way by the government. Recalling the Downing Street dossier of September 2002, which claimed Iraq could launch a banned weapons attack within 45 minutes, Mr Cook said that "doubt and intelligence assessments go hand in hand".
"What you are trying to do is guess what somebody is trying to keep a secret from you.
"It therefore inevitably follows that you are carrying out a task which is even worse than that the Israelites: in that you are trying to make bricks out of straws in the wind.
"The agencies were always frank about the degree of limitation of their knowledge. That is why I frankly was astonished by the September dossier." "