Reply #24: He went back to Iraq in early June 2003

[muriel_volestrangler]

and was probably talking to American inspectors he had worked with before then, who would have been in Iraq by May. Perhaps they were already saying, off the record, "there's absolutely nothing here - Saddam hadn't managed to hide anything" by that stage.

I don't think it was a '180', so much as a realisation that so many of the 'sources' that had been claimed by western intelligence were crap. He'd been more cautious and measured than some analysts before the war - I think you can see that in the Observer piece - but he may not have realised just how much the 'facts' had been 'fixed around the policy' - he had thought the government was interested in a truthful appraisal, not an excuse for war. He had been used to being an inspector, where he found out facts for himself, or had colleagues who did the same; he didn't realise intelligence agencies and governments fed so much bullshit even to their own analysts like him.