‘US might do in Ukraine something like they did with Iraq in 2003’

There is concern about the US government making decisions based on faulty intelligence, or selected intelligence like it did in the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin incident or the WMD in Iraq, former director at the NSA William Binney told RT.

A group of American intelligence veterans has written a letter German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealing for greater efforts to avoid a war in Ukraine.

“You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the ‘intelligence’ seems to be of the same dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the US-led attack on Iraq,” the letter says.

RT:Why are you so worried about the situation in Ukraine? And why are you appealing to Chancellor Merkel, not President Obama, to intervene?

William Binney: First of all, we, the members of the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity are concerned with our government making decisions based on faulty intelligence, or basically on selected intelligence like they did, for example, to get us into the Vietnam War with the Gulf of Tonkin incident or the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. What we would like to do is to make sure that our government, or any other government, would make decisions based on factual reliable intelligence information.

RT:What do you think is really happening?

WB: There is of course a struggle internally in Kiev, and there is an influence on both sides. From my point of view they need to diplomatically resolve this and cease the conflict.

RT:What is America trying to do here?

WB: We are just concerned that they might do something like they did with Iraq in 2003 when, for example, they trumped up the weapons of mass destruction, everybody said, “We know they have them,” when in fact they didn’t. And if they looked at the intelligence that was available at that time they could clearly see that there was no conclusive evidence that they really had weapons of mass destruction. So we just don’t want that kind of scenario repeated.

RT:So you are worried that this is happening in Ukraine?

WB: Yes, there are a lot of political motives for doing different things. I mean the military and industrial complex will always make money on war. And we need to try to make sure we avoid that kind of thing. President Eisenhower warned us fundamentally on that in 1960.

RT:A bit earlier UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said “Does Russian violence and illegal annexation of Crimea... mean that NATO is finally coming home?” What does this “finally coming home” mean?

WB: I am not quite sure about that, but I can clearly understand, I think we have said and tried to make it clear in our letter, that we can understand how the Russians might be a little uncertain and insecure about the expansion of NATO. So I guess if they are that insecure we should invite them to join NATO too. That way we all will be a part of the same defensive group and no one would have basis to fear one another. So I do not understand why we can’t have diplomatic conversation about that.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.