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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (99638)	5/31/2003 12:21:57 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I don't think the people referred to in the article below can be dismissed as a bunch of liberal fruitcakes. It really does look like the administration decided what they wanted to do, and revised the intel to suit that goal, instead of basing a decision on the available intelligence Let's not jump to conclusions. There are a lot of sound reasons to believe a) that Saddam had WMDs (he gave up $200 billion in oil revenues, remember?) and b) for the Bush administration not to want to rely on an argument that would come back to bite them. After all, it was hardly as if WMDs was the ONLY reason to go into Iraq, it was just the lowest common denominator reason. The next question in the public arena, Steven, will be, did the Bush administration falsify the intel on Iraq OR, was the intelligence on Iraqi WMDs just crummy? even more worrying, if true. Now, how do we sort out sincere complaints about intel misuse from the anticipatory butt-covering from the intelligence orgs? Seems to me that the complaints in this article fit equally well in either category.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (99638)	6/1/2003 3:36:24 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

Tonight: Blair Says Iraq Weapons Secrets Will Be Publicized washingtonpost.com Reuters Saturday, May 31, 2003; 7:15 PM washingtonpost.com By Mike Peacock ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted on Sunday that Britain and the United States would unearth evidence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and make it public before long. In an interview with Britain's Sky Television at a Russia-European Union summit, Blair said he had already seen plenty of information that his critics had not, but would in due course. "Over the coming weeks and months we will assemble this evidence and then we will give it to people," he said. "I have no doubt whatever that the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be there." Months before war was launched, Blair produced what he said was intelligence that Saddam Hussein could launch biological or chemical weapons at short notice, in Iraq or at its neighbors. That became London's justification for joining Washington's war in the Gulf. But weeks after the conflict finished, no such weapons have been found. Widespread international cynicism about British and American motives for the war was stoked this week by a BBC report that an intelligence dossier had been altered, at the request of Blair's office, to make it "sexier" by adding that Iraq's weapons could be readied for use within 45 minutes. UNREPENTANT Blair publicly made that assertion as he argued Saddam had to be tackled. But he was unrepentant on Sunday. "Those people who are sitting there saying 'Oh it is all going to be proved to be a great big fib got out by the security services, there will be no weapons of mass destruction', just wait and have a little patience," he said. "I certainly do know some of the stuff that has already been accumulated...which is not yet public but what we are going to do is assemble that evidence and present it properly." Blair has recently raised fresh justifications for toppling Saddam, pointing to his oppressive regime and its documented atrocities. But his political opponents will continue to hound him over the original reason he gave for war. Blair took a big gamble backing a war which was heavily opposed by Britons before it started. Polls later turned in Blair's favor but the issue has the power to return and bite him. The controversy has been fueled by comments from the two top U.S. defense officials that the American decision to stress the threat of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons, and that Iraq may have destroyed them before the war. The UK government on Saturday denied a report that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his U.S. counterpart Colin Powell had serious doubts about the quality of intelligence they received on Iraq's weapons programmes. The Guardian, quoting a diplomatic source, said the pair had met shortly before a crucial U.N. Security Council meeting in February and both expressed their "deep concerns about the intelligence" they were getting on Iraq. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the report was "untrue."