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

To: JohnM who wrote (109550)	8/2/2003 7:45:59 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Milt Bearden's book. Glad to hear it. I have it on reserve.

To: JohnM who wrote (109550)	8/3/2003 4:32:52 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Blair deeper in political bog than Bush _________________________________ By MARIANNE MEANS SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Friday, August 1, 2003 DUBLIN, Ireland -- The British are likely to get to the bottom of government fakery exaggerating the supposed imminent danger posed by Iraq sooner than we are. Prime Minister Tony Blair, our most visible ally in the intelligence game, is being pounded in the British media -- and practically everywhere here in Europe -- and pressed harder by political opponents than President Bush has been thus far. The two are in this together -- although Blair's defensive "spin" fell apart faster, complicated by public outrage over the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly. Kelly had been fingered as the source of a BBC news story questioning the official statements justifying the rush to war against Iraq. Like Bush, Blair initially tried to duck responsibility for claims about Iraqi weapons and al-Qaida ties that have not proven to be true. The Blair government's charge that the BBC lied in its report and then irresponsibly leaked Kelly's name, driving him to take his life, also was discredited. The BBC has Kelly on tape confirming his concerns. It was the Blair government that exposed Kelly and has Kelly's blood on its hands. Blair was forced by Parliament to authorize a judicial inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Kelly's death, which will include the scientist's misgivings about the rationale for war. The hearing will run throughout August, mostly in public. And shortly thereafter Blair's chief spinmeister, Alistair Campbell -- who is Britain's version of Karl Rove -- will abandon his boss for private life at a perilous moment when the Labor Party suddenly trails the Tories in the polls. Blair's popularity is falling through the floor. The polls show that a majority neither believes nor trusts him. He was a big hit before the U.S. Congress on July 17, but some good this has done him at home. And Bush's embrace means little -- the Brits think he's a clumsy cowboy, didn't approve of the war and just plain don't like him. Bush is not yet as deep into the political bog as Blair, but the uproar will not go away over a discredited claim, made last January in the president's State of the Union address, that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa. Ari Fleischer, who recently departed as Bush's spokesman, said it was wrong to have used the claim but insisted the administration did not learn until after the address that the allegation was based on fake documents. It quickly developed, however, that the White House had battled the CIA over including the claim in a presidential speech months earlier. CIA director George Tenet said he accepted responsibility for not preventing its inclusion after the White House blamed the CIA for the mistake. Tenet carefully did not say the CIA approved of its inclusion. Meanwhile, deputy national security adviser Steve Hadley reluctantly conceded that he had indeed been warned by the CIA about the misinformation but forgot when it came time to draft the president's speech. He blamed the inclusion on an unnamed speechwriter. Forgot! What a lame excuse. And no anonymous speechwriter would have the authority to bandy about crucial intelligence in such an unauthorized way. This smells like a coverup. Someone high up on the war planning team wanted to make the threat from Iraq really scary and could not produce anything else as chilling as the purported purchase of material for nuclear weapons. That someone could only be one of four people, or all of them -- national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and the president himself. The president has not directly accepted responsibility for misleading the public. His White House spokesmen repeatedly have ducked questions trying to get him to apologize or explain the mistake. He has not demonstrated any interest in finding out what happened, a difficult position to understand unless of course he already knows what happened. Bush apologists ridicule this as an overblown fuss over a mere 16 words in a speech. But the episode has gone through so many flimsy explanations that it has raised serious doubts about Bush's credibility. Democratic presidential candidates have stepped up their criticism of his handling of the buildup to war. The administration has responded with a coordinated counter-attack, citing the importance of freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. But the uncomfortable facts remain. No massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been unearthed. No known ties between Iraq and al-Qaida have been proven. There is no evidence that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program that posed an imminent threat. We went to war because Bush, Blair and their hawkish advisers wanted to. ______________________________ Marianne Means is a Washington, D.C., columnist with Hearst Newspapers. Copyright 2003 Hearst Newspapers. She can be reached at 202-298-6920 or means@hearstdc.com ______________________________ seattlepi.nwsource.com