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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (534865)	2/3/2004 2:24:41 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

BLAIR pulling another fast one....learning from the master of SECRETS and LIES... W Opponents cry foul as Blair calls inquiry By Mike Peacock and Katherine Baldwin LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair has bowed to pressure for an inquiry into the quality of intelligence on banned Iraqi weapons, but his opponents say its terms are so narrow it will let the government off the hook. The Liberal Democrats said they would take no part in the investigation after Blair refused to allow it to probe the politics behind the decision to wage war. Instead, it will focus exclusively on problems with the information gleaned by spies. "I think it is right...that we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it was accurate or not," Blair told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. "We do not in my view need an inquiry into the political decision to go to war." Until now, Blair has firmly resisted calls for an inquiry. But pressure has increased relentlessly as nearly 10 months after Saddam Hussein was toppled, no biological or chemical weapons -- the reasons Blair gave for war -- have been found. Prior to the war, he said Iraq posed a "serious and current" threat and that it had continued to produce banned weapons. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament the inquiry, headed by former chief civil servant Lord Butler, would report by July, well before next year's expected election. It will hear from witnesses in private and investigate the accuracy of intelligence on Iraq's weapons and examine any discrepancies between it and what has been discovered since the end of the conflict. The government line, until now, that evidence of banned weapons could yet be found had proved increasingly hard to sustain since chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay quit his post, saying he believed Iraq had no stockpiles of illicit weapons. "The government recognises there are...entirely legitimate concerns about the reliability of the original intelligence which have been heightened by Dr Kay's evidence," Straw said. President George W. Bush's decision on Monday to set up an independent commission on U.S. intelligence turned up the heat on Blair to do the same, although the prime minister denied being wrong-footed by Washington. Conservative foreign affairs spokesman Michael Ancram said Blair had performed a "spectacular U-turn". NO END TO BLAIR'S IRAQ TROUBLES The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has dealt a major blow to Blair's credibility with the public. The new inquiry will frustrate his attempts to draw a line under the most torrid period of his nearly seven years in power but appears unlikely to unearth further damaging facts for him. Critics say the government is preparing to heap blame on its intelligence services but that it would cut no ice with sceptical Britons. "There is now widespread public disbelief about the stated reasons for our participation in the war in Iraq. That disbelief is undermining public trust in the office of the prime minister," Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said. "The way to re-establish trust would be to have an inquiry which addresses the key questions directly and openly. It does not seem to me that this inquiry will be able to do that." His party's refusal to take part will embarrass a government seeking a cross-party probe. Last week, the prime minister was exonerated by judge Lord Hutton's report on the suicide of a weapons expert, who was outed as the source of a report that Blair exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify war. Blair said Hutton had cleared the government of acting improperly in the run-up to war, so the new inquiry should not return to that question. CC