The former Dutch military intelligence chief denies allegations by former Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer that intelligence services had failed to inform him that Iraq did not pose a security threat as suggested by the United States.
The former head of the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD), Joop van Reijn, says the foreign minister was briefed on several occasions.
In a newspaper interview, Mr De Hoop Scheffer recently claimed he could not remember that the intelligence services had warned him that his views regarding the security threat posed by Iraq in the run-up to the US-led invasion of 2003 were mistaken.
Mr Van Reijn says his intelligence service voiced strong criticism and informed all relevant ministers in September 2002.
The military intelligence chief says he accepts politicians disregard intelligence assessments. But he strongly rejects suggestions made by several ministers that the intelligence services were trying to "cover themselves".
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
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"he could not remember"
Everyone knows what the actual meaning of this particular piece of newspeak is.
But taken at face value, old Jaap would then either be a youtful fool for believing all the propganda crud on CNN generated prior to 2003 or he is a fool for not reading or accidentally forgetting about the stack of rather important memos lying on his desk.
Now, what's worse?
By the way here is the radio interview (in Dutch) :
http://weblogs.vpro.nl/argos/2010/04/09/10-april-2010-exclusief-intervie...
It fails to surprise anyone, all the more so because it was a public secret in the Netherlands from the beginning that it was understood between the Dutch government and the Bush administration that it was a requirement to get him appointed Nato S.G. He is publicly known as an indecisive sycophant career politician who unsurprisingly always had that tendency to fail upwards.
Geen hoop en een schiffter
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