Apparently, it wasn’t only the U.S. government that kept information/intelligence on Iraq from lawmakers and from the people before the attack on that country.
A Dutch commentator describes in the NRC Handelsblad how The Netherlands was sucked into the Iraq war, even thought the Dutch intelligence agencies had better information than the U.S. on Iraq’s WMDs:
The Balkenende government has been constantly extremely frugal when it comes to providing Parliament with intelligence about national war policy. We still do not know how we ended up getting involved in the attack on Iraq. Saddam Hussein did not want to obey Security Council Resolution 1441 and thus had to be punished. Because of that, we supported the United States, while the U.N. weapons inspections led by Hans Blix were making progress and our MIVD [Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service] and AIVD [Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service] had doubts as to whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In an interview with ABC Television, President Bush has now expressed his regret. The U.S. intelligence agencies had made a mistake. The Dutch apparently not, or a lesser one. Bush would have been better off to listen to our MIVD. Isn’t it high time to award our investigators their deserved honor?
The Dutch are now demanding answers to questions about how and why The Netherlands got involved in Iraq.
The commentator, H. J. Hofland, is concerned that even today the Dutch government is keeping intelligence on the Afghanistan conflict from Parliament, and that the Netherlands will again be sucked into a wider conflict in Afghanistan, and—in view of the Mumbai attack—into an even wider conflict in the subcontinent.
Read “Mumbai Close To The Hague” at WatchingAmerica.com.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.