Developing...
Also on the other side of the pond.
Bad day for Blair
Reuters reports that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts to quell the furor over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction have suffered another setback after a former top intelligence official tore apart his government's case for war. The Independent reports that Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of Defense, declared that "not a single defense intelligence expert" backed Mr. Blair's most contentious claims about Iraq's WMD.
Those claims (including the controversial statement that Iraq's WMD could be deployed within 45 minutes to strike British bases in Cyprus) were presented a year ago by Blair's government as part of the Iraq dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of the case for war. Mr. Jones says the dossier was "misleading" concerning Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological capability. Jones added that intelligence experts failed in their efforts to have their views reflected in the final report.
The Guardian reports that Jones and a colleague issued a formal complaint about the Iraq dossier because they feared that they would be made "scapegoats" after the war when no weapons were found. Jones (who was responsible for analyzing all intelligence on nuclear, chemical and biological warfare) and members of his department warned that the Iraq dossier had overstated the case on Iraq's WMD capabilities, but they were overruled. They were also told that Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, had other intelligence to back up the claims but it was considered to be so sensitive that it was "compartmented" and not shown to the other agencies.
"I considered who might have seen this ultra-sensitive intelligence and reached the conclusion that it was extremely doubtful that anyone with a high degree of CW [chemical weapons] and BW [bilogical weapons] expertise was among the exclusive group," Jones said. "It is the intelligence community leadership at the level of the membership of the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] and the upper echelons of the DIS – those who had access to and may have misinterpreted the compartmented intelligence – that had the final say on the assessment presented in the dossier."
The Scotsman reports that Blair tried to dismiss Jones' comments. Blair said Jones' concerns had been considered by the head of defense intelligence, who had decided claims on Iraq's weapons had been presented correctly in the government dossier. Jones' concerns had never even reached his office, Blair said, or the Joint Intelligence Committee, which put together the dossier.
Blair did say Tuesday in the House of Commons, however, that when he made the controversial "45 minute claim" in the Iraq dossier, he was unaware that it referred only to battlefield weapons, and not WMD. Britain's PA News service said Blair's comments are likely to raise further questions about the handling of intelligence in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Tuesday the BBC presented a summary of the comments Blair did make about WMD prior to, and after, the war in Iraq.
The confrontation between Blair and UK intelligence experts could grow. As reported in an earlier Daily Update, the Sunday Herald of Scotland recently heard from dozens of senior members of the intelligence community in Britain who, afraid that politicians will try to blame them, said "they are not prepared to be the whipping boy for the failure to prove the case for war, the death of David Kelly and the quagmire that the government is now in over the lack of WMD in Iraq."
CNN reports that Wednesday antiwar protestors forced the British House of Commons to be suspended as members of Parliament began debating the findings of the Hutton inquiry, which ended last week. It is the first time a Commons sitting has been suspended since 1987. Also, another group of protestors splashed white paint on the prime minister's residence, which they say represented the "whitewash" of the Huton inquiry.
Blair announced Monday that an independent inquiry, headed by Lord Butler will examine the intelligence about Iraq WMD which led Britain to war. Blair is also using the findings of the Hutton inquiry to dismiss all calls for the inquiry to examine the political judgements that led to war with Iraq. As a result, the BBC reports, the opposition Liberal Democrats have refused to be a part of the five-person inquiry.
Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland believe that critics of the war must voice their misgivings about the Butler inquiry's terms of reference – right now. After the Hutton inquiry, they must not "be fooled again," says Mr. Freedland.
The Lib Dems saw through this trick, and are to be applauded for refusing to sanction it with their presence on the committee. But the rest of the personnel are worth looking at. We should not wait till his report to note that Lord Butler was until fairly recently a faithful servant of Blair's; that he defended Whitehall chicanery during the arms-to-Iraq affair ... Above all, this group is allowed to do all its work in secret – which will be mightily convenient to those who have set it up.
The Blair government also disagreed with the findings of two other parliamentary committees this week: the Commons intelligence and security committee's report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; and the Commons foreign affairs committee. Both committees criticized the government's repeated use of the 45-minute claim in the Iraq dossier, a claim that was based on a single, uncorroborated source. But Downing Street said the claim had not "been given undue prominence."
Meanwhile, The Age of Melbourne, Australia reports that US Secretary of State Colin Powell also added to President George W. Bush's WMD problems when he earlier this week he told a meeting of The Washington Post editorial board that he might not have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no WMD.
"I don't know," Mr. Powell said candidly to the Post board, "I don't know because it was the stockpiles that presented the final piece that made it more of a real and present danger." And he said, "The absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus ... . . . The fact of the matter is that we went into this with the understanding that there was a stockpile, and there were weapons."
The Daily Telegraph says Powell's statements, which he has since tried to "clarify," were yet another blow to Blair in a week already raining with such comments. The New York Times reports that White House officials were irritated by Powell's remarks. Repeating a line that Powell had used to describe himself during a dispute with the administration on another topic in 2001, one official said Tuesday that Powell was "a little forward on his skis again."
Finally, the Associated Press reports that a prominent Israeli MP said Tuesday that his country's intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching WMD were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.
"It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," Yossi Sarid, a member of the foreign affairs and defense committee which is investigating the quality of Israeli intelligence on Iraq, told the AP yesterday. "Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have," he said.
On Sunday, the former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, told Y-Net, the website of the Israeli paper Yediot Aharanot, that the Israeli intelligence services reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction. "In the end, if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too," he said.
csmonitor.com
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Unraveling?
lurqer |
