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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (457)	2/5/2004 8:33:26 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 173976

Howard: Blair should resign over WMD claim Tom Happold, Matthew Tempest and agencies Thursday February 5, 2004 Michael Howard today called on Tony Blair to resign, accusing him of failing to ask basic questions before committing Britain to war. The Tory leader's comments come after Mr Blair revealed to MPs yesterday that he was unaware that the intelligence that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes referred only to battlefield munitions, not any missile capability. Speaking in Portsmouth, Mr Howard said: "I am accepting what the prime minister told us at face value. He said he never knew, he never bothered to ask this question. "If I were prime minister and I had failed to ask that basic question before committing our country to war I would be seriously considering my position." Mr Howard's comments shift the debate over the pre-war intelligence about WMD from questions about Mr Blair's integrity to ones about his competence. This morning, Mr Blair's spokesman and the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, both played down the significance of the so-called 45-minute claim, which appeared in the government's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons capacity. Appearing before the defence select committee Mr Hoon said that the claim "was not a big issue at the time", and it was "only after unfounded claims by the Today programme" that it became one. He also said that he did not see wildly inaccurate headlines about the 45-minute claim in the Sun and Evening Standard because he been in Ukraine and Poland at the time. The Sun and the Evening Standard both carried banner headlines on the 45-minute claim, but Mr Hoon insisted he had not even had access to press cuttings while away on Nato business for two days during the furore. He added: "I didn't know they were misleading because I didn't see them at the time because I was out of the country". He said he had "hugely sensitive" meetings with the leader of the Ukraine and in Warsaw from 9am on September 24 until 6pm on the 26th and "my concentration was on that." Under questioning Mr Hoon said: "I can't say precisely when I was aware such stories were written." Mr Hoon was grilled by MPs, as he was by the Hutton inquiry, as to why neither he nor the Ministry of Defence had tried to correct the misleading assumption that the 45-minute claim, now widely discredited anyway, applied to strategic missiles rather than battlefield munitions. He did reveal that he thought "battlefield" munitions could, in any case, travel 40km. Mr Hoon's comments were echoed at this morning's lobby briefing, where Downing Street warned against exaggerating the importance of the 45-minute claim. Mr Blair's spokesman told reporters: "The 45-minute point played little part subsequent to the dossier in the discussion about Iraq. There were two questions in 38,000 written parliamentary questions about it. "The prime minister did not draw attention to it in his statement to the house in March. "We never claimed that Saddam Hussein could attack the UK in 45 minutes or within any time scale. "The prime minister and the government believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was able to deploy them both in a tactical and strategic way. We never claimed in the dossier that the 45 minutes referred to ballistic missiles in this way." The spokesman went on: "The dossier did not say that Iraq could deliver ballistic missiles within 45 minutes. "We are in danger of making this 45-minute point some sort of totemic trigger for military action which it never was." Earlier in the questioning, Mr Hoon admitted "more widespread and serious than expected" equipment shortages among British troops during the Iraq war. He conceded to MPs that the "system struggled to cope", and that the logistics broke down tracking pieces of equipment through the theatre of war. And he volunteered that the well-known shortage of boots, in particular, had had "an impact on morale". But he warned that a change in balance between "holding" stores of equipment, and "generating" supplies during warfare would have "major resource implications". politics.guardian.co.uk

To: CalculatedRisk who wrote (457)	2/5/2004 10:30:52 AM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 173976

Here is a James Webb quote, regarding Bush's Guard Service. Webb was secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. From CNN's Aaron Brown last night: cnn.com WEBB: And George Bush did none of those things, George W. In fact, he did nothing. I mean he apparently was able to get his father's political influence in order to get him in to the Texas National Guard in 1968 at the height of the war at a time when being in the National Guard virtually guaranteed that you wouldn't have to go into combat. He later transferred over into the Alabama National Guard. As you mentioned there is some question about his attendance records. The White House has responded in a rather confusing way by saying that these records have been lost. I can tell you having spent three years as assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs in charge of the guard and the reserve programs it would be very unusual to lose these records. They are important for monitoring pay, also for the credit that you get for drill that goes against satisfactory performance in the guard and these sorts of things, so there are a lot of questions out there. And, at the same time, this is taking place against the backdrop of a war that a lot of the people who served in have sons and daughters serving in now and view as unnecessary.