False intelligence, terror and red faces in Whitehall - 200 years ago

[LiberalFighter]

False intelligence, terror and red faces in Whitehall - 200 years ago Guardian Unlimited -Martin Wainwright

Dodgy intelligence, fake weapons of mass destruction and red faces in Whitehall are exposed today by a leading academic in a political scandal which predates the invasion of Iraq by 200 years.
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The story of spies and credulous government ministers has been unearthed in the papers of Napoleon and the British foreign minister George Canning, who authorised attacks by cannon and newly developed rockets on civilian areas of Copenhagen in 1807.

Famous as the scene of Admiral Lord Nelson's dictum "I see no ships," when he put a telescope to his blind eye at the Battle of Copenhagen six year earlier, the Danish capital came under an attack which was justified against virulent opposition - including cartoons by Gillray and others - by the publishing of three alleged plots.

All involved the Danish navy, a WMD of the day, which had been temporarily ruled out of European conflict by Nelson. By 1807, Canning claimed, 20 battleships were being re-rigged for conflict, the Danes were going to invade northern Ireland in Napoleon's name, and the French were about to attack Dublin.