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Allies 'planned' Iraq war despite denials

The United States, Australia and Britain started to plan the invasion of Iraq months before the conflict, according to a report Wednesday quoting a leaked Pentagon document.

Senior British and US commanders met at a war-planning session in June 2002 and orders to prepare actual military operations were given on October 7, 2002, more than a month before a UN resolution giving a final warning to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the London Evening Standard reported.

Full battle plans were issued on October 31, 2002, eight days before UN Resolution 1441 called for the resumption of arms inspections in Iraq and warned Saddam of 'serious consequences' if he were still seeking weapons of mass destruction, the paper said.

The document quoted in the report is a Pentagon chronology used by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in an August 2003 presentation on the 'strategic lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom'. [story continues]

Food for thought.