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Blair accused of exaggerating { May 30 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55636-2003May29.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55636-2003May29.html
Blair Accused of Exaggerating Claims About Iraqi Weapons
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 30, 2003; Page A18
LONDON, May 29 -- On a day when he basked in triumph on his first visit to postwar Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced a round of criticism back home over allegations that his office hyped intelligence claims that then-President Saddam Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Antiwar politicians, some of them prominent members of Blair's ruling Labor Party, expressed strong concerns today, as did major newspapers, in a controversy triggered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's remarks in New York earlier this week. Rumsfeld said that U.S. forces had failed to locate such weapons because the Iraqis may have destroyed them before American and British troops invaded the country two months ago. "We don't know what happened," Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.
BBC radio fueled the debate today with a report that British intelligence officials were displeased with a dossier, published by the prime minister's Downing Street office last September, that asserted Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready for use within 45 minutes. Citing unnamed sources, the BBC said intelligence agencies were skeptical about that claim, which they described as coming from a dubious informant, and said they had opposed inserting it into the dossier.
By the BBC's account, the original draft of the report did not include the claim, but the draft was "transformed" on orders from Downing Street. The published version included a preface by Blair that made the claim, one of several that were added against the wishes of intelligence officials, according to the BBC report.
Officials in London would not comment on the BBC report. But one official, who insisted on anonymity, acknowledged there had been what he described as "pressured and superheated debates at the time" between Downing Street officials and intelligence officials over the contents of the dossier.
In the months leading to the war, Blair often took the lead over the White House in making the case to the world against Hussein. At times, British allegations exceeded those coming from Washington.
A spokesman for Blair said today that "every word" in the dossier was provided by the intelligence services. On his flight to the Persian Gulf region, Blair told reporters he was certain weapons would be discovered in the end. "Rather than speculating, let's just wait until we get the full report back from our people who are interviewing the Iraqi scientists," Blair said.
During a visit to British troops in Iraq, Blair alluded to continuing controversy over the war. "I know there were a lot of disagreements in the country over the wisdom of my decision to order the action," he told troops at a former Hussein palace, the Reuters news service reported. But he said that "I can assure you of one thing -- there's absolutely no dispute in Britain at all about your professionalism, your courage."
Public opposition to military action was stronger in Britain than in the United States, and Blair cited weapons of mass destruction as the key reason for attacking Iraq. The intelligence dossier was one of the tools he used to help convince a skeptical public that Iraq posed a direct and imminent threat to Britain. In an unusual step, the report cited as its main source the Joint Intelligence Committee, Britain's highly secret intelligence clearinghouse.
The official in London who spoke on condition of anonymity said that British intelligence agencies were unhappy to see their work being quoted in the dossier. "People at the JIC take pride at their independence and objectivity," the official said.
"The fact is that on both sides of the Atlantic, the intelligence services were under huge pressure to produce the goods for their political masters," said Garth Whitty, a defense specialist with the Royal United Services Institute here, a nonprofit defense research organization. "There was great discomfort over the kind of information that was being disseminated to the public."
Whitty said he had found the 45-minute claim unbelievable. "There are many more powerful nations in the world who could not launch a weapon of mass destruction in that amount of time," he said. "It was, frankly, an incredible claim."
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons in protest against the war, said Rumsfeld's remarks vindicated his stance that Iraq had posed no direct threat. Cook was one of several lawmakers of the ruling party who called this week for a parliamentary inquiry to determine whether Blair lied to lawmakers about weapons of mass destruction.
"It matters immensely," Cook told the Associated Press, "because the basis on which the war was sold to the British House of Commons, to the British people, was that Saddam represented a serious threat." Members of the Liberal Democrats have also joined in criticizing Blair.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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