*Ø* Blogmanac | PM approves new Iraq inquiry

"Prime Minister John Howard has agreed to set up an independent inquiry into pre-war intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons, as recommended by a parliamentary inquiry.

"The committee has found that Australia's intelligence agencies may have overstated the evidence that Iraq had stocks of banned weapons before the war last year ...

"Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says the report has exposed a number of failings by the government.

"'This report is a catalogue of intelligence failure, it is a catalogue of a government cherry picking the intelligence advice it received to suit its own political objective,' he said.

"The Greens Leader Bob Brown says a new inquiry, headed by a former intelligence expert, is not good enough, and wants a judicial inquiry.

"'It's totally inadequate to have a former spy doing a review of how our spy agencies work ...

"'The question is how did the Prime Minister come to mislead Australia with threats of mammoth death and destruction if Saddam Hussein wasn't put out of action.'" ...
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