Geoff Hoon - Secretary of State For Defence

Secretary of State For Defence

In a 2003 interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, Hoon asserted that the UK was willing to use nuclear weapons against Iraqi forces "in the right circumstances."

On 23 June 2003, Hoon continued to claim that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile weapons laboratories. This was in spite of the fact that it had been leaked to the press by Dr David Kelly and other weapons inspectors that they were nothing of the sort. The trailers were for filling hydrogen balloons for artillery ranging and were sold to Iraq by a British company, Marconi.

In an April 2004 interview, Hoon said that more could have been done to help David Kelly, who committed suicide on 17 July 2003 after being named as the source of Andrew Gilligan's disputed Today programme contribution.

On 19 January 2010, Hoon gave evidence to the Iraq Inquiry about his time as Defence Secretary.

Read more about this topic:  Geoff Hoon

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