Page "Eliza Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller" Paragraph 18

Baroness Manningham-Buller giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry in July 2010 said the decision to go to war meant that " Our involvement in Iraq, for want of a better word, radicalised a whole generation of young people, some of them British citizens who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam ," she said, before immediately correcting herself by adding " not a whole generation, a few among a generation ".

As a result, she said she was not " surprised " that UK nationals were involved in the 7 July 2005 bombings in central London.

She said she believed the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not " substantial enough " to justify the action.

A year after the invasion, she said MI5 was " swamped " by leads about terrorist threats to the UK.