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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (36839)	2/3/2004 6:18:40 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Even if Clinton, France, Germany and others believed right up until the war last year that Saddam still had WMDs, those beliefs were based on intelligence that, rightly, wasn’t solid enough for any of them to support an invasion before more inspections could take place. That is the real crime, the intelligence could have been solid because Saddam was letting inspectors go where they asked and see what they wanted. Bush Jr. just had to be willing to take Yes for an answer. TP

To: lurqer who wrote (36839)	2/3/2004 8:36:50 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

US and UK pressured to widen Iraq inquiries The US and UK governments are facing political pressure to expand the scope of inquiries into the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, with critics saying the investigations must examine the issue of whether the intelligence was politically influenced to build the case for war. The British government said on Tuesday that an independent inquiry would look at the intelligence coverage on mass destruction weapons in all "countries of concern", as well as at the specific question of the information on Iraq's weapons prior to last year's conflict. It will report by this summer, well ahead of the general election expected next year and months before a parallel inquiry in the US is concluded. The US investigation, which has yet to be formally announced by the White House, is expected to have a similarly broad mandate but will not be completed until next year, after the November presidential elections. However, opposition parties in both countries are insisting that the inquiries must consider not only the quality of the intelligence, but also how top government officials used that intelligence in the run-up to the war. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, on Tuesday opened for the first time the question of whether more accurate intelligence on weapons stockpiles might have dissuaded the US from launching the war. In an interview published in the Washington Post, he said the belief that Iraq had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons "presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and the world". Mr Powell added that while he could not "give you the hypothetical [answer] as to what I might have done. . . the absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus". The secretary of state yesterday tried to withdraw those comments, insisting that regardless of the accuracy of the intelligence "the right thing was done". "This was a regime with intent, capability, and it was a risk the president felt strongly we could not take," he said. Mr Powell's comments may bolster the case for a wider US investigation into the interplay between intelligence and the political decisions that led to war. Democratic leaders in the US insisted in a letter late on Monday to President George W. Bush that the inquiry should look not only at intelligence-gathering and analysis but at the "use by policymakers of intelligence on Iraq". Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, insisted on Tuesday that his government had not been pushed into setting up the inquiry by Mr Bush's decision to set up a similar bipartisan investigation. He said the valid questions about the failure to find WMD in Iraq did not undermine the rationale for the conflict. "There is no question whatsoever that the war was justified but I accept there are issues to do with intelligence," Mr Blair said. The Liberal Democrat opposition party claimed the remit set by the government was unacceptably narrow. It has decided to boycott the inquiry, refusing an invitation for one of its MPs to sit on the five-person committee set up by the prime minister. Charles Kennedy, the LibDem leader, attacked the decision to restrict the inquiry to looking at the intelligence on Iraq's WMD, rather than the consequent decision to go to war. However, Mr Blair said it would be a mistake to trawl over the government's use of intelligence to support its case the conflict, not least because the Hutton inquiry had already cleared ministers of acting in bad faith. The committee will be headed by Lord Butler, a former head of the civil service who is seen as a quintessential establishment figure. news.ft.com lurqer