Senior Blair aide reveals debate over Iraq threat

‘‘The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam (Hussein),’’ Blair’s chief of staff and long-time confidant Jonathan Powell wrote to a senior intelligence official.

‘‘It shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the West,’’ Powell wrote in an e-mail one week before the controversial dossier was published on September 24, 2002, six months ahead of the invasion of Iraq.

Powell’s comments, revealed in an inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, cast doubt on Blair’s own claim in the foreword to the dossier that Iraq’s nuclear and biological weapons posed a ‘‘serious and current threat’’.(Reuters)