Gordon Brown: UK was 'misled' over Iraq WMDs

In November 2017, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown disclosed in his memoir, My Life, Our Times, that the United States government misled the United Kingdom regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Brown, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the run-up to the war, asserted that the US failed to share a secret intelligence report that could have altered the British government’s decision to participate in the military action.

According to Brown, a 2002 US Defense Department assessment commissioned by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concluded that evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was weak, negligible, and in key areas non-existent. Although this report was leaked the previous year, Brown stated it was entirely withheld from the British government at the time. Instead, British intelligence from 2002, which was shown to Brown and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, suggested that Iraq was capable of producing such weapons. Brown recalled being assured by officials that they knew the exact locations where the weapons were stored, noting he was led to believe they could provide a specific street name and number.

Brown wrote that because Iraq lacked usable chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and posed no immediate threat to the coalition, the criteria for a “just war” were not met. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown’s official capacity was limited to securing funding for the conflict, and he maintained he had no knowledge that American officials already doubted the evidence. The revelations led to renewed public demands for accountability regarding the war, which followed the earlier Chilcot inquiry report that concluded Tony Blair had given a pre-determined commitment to President Bush in July 2002 to join military action.