Former MI5 chief blasts Iraq invasion

Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the MI5 between 2002 and 2007, gave a damning testimony in the UK Chilcot Inquiry (also known as the Iraq Inquiry, an ongoing public inquiry into the UK’s role in the 2003 Iraq invasion). The former spy chief said that the attack increased the terrorist threat to Britain by radicalizing a generation of Muslims. Manningham-Buller also said the focus on Iraq detracted from efforts in Afghanistan to quell al-Queda and that resources became stretched too thin. "Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad, so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before," she said.

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