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

To: lurqer who wrote (36997)	2/5/2004 2:37:43 AM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Not going well for Blair. Blair Fields Criticism, and Heckling, as He Defends War In a day of spirited debate and boisterous dissent, Prime Minister Tony Blair defended his decision to go to war in Iraq today, saying that he was ready to take responsibility for his actions before the country while asserting that freedom and democracy in Iraq were more important than any mistaken intelligence. Mr. Blair's presentation in the House of Commons was interrupted by hecklers in the public gallery where shouts of "Murderer!" and "Liar" prompted a suspension of the proceedings for about 15 minutes as the gallery was cleared. As he struggled to be heard, the prime minister quipped, "I somehow feel I'm not being entirely persuasive in certain quarters." Other demonstrators dressed in white wigs and crimson judicial robes threw white paint on the wrought iron gates of No. 10 Downing Street, the prime minister's office, protesting what they said was the "whitewash" of last week's Hutton report. The findings of Lord Hutton cleared Mr. Blair and his aides of any wrongdoing in the production of a September 2002 intelligence "dossier" on Saddam Hussein's dangerous weapons and found that the BBC had erred in stating that the government had "sexed up" the case for going to war. The seven-hour debate today was meant to be the full airing of issues in the wake of Lord Hutton's findings, but the intensity of the exchanges suggested that political recriminations within Mr. Blair's Labor Party and among opposition parties will continue for some months and may not be resolved by the new inquiry under Lord Butler to examine any intelligence failures and review how intelligence was used in the political process. Even as Mr. Blair has sought to draw a line under the political furor, new issues were raised today about what Mr. Blair knew on the eve of war about questionable intelligence findings on which he and his aides had relied heavily in making the case against Mr. Hussein. Mr. Blair started out the day on the defensive, as a senior former British intelligence officer asserted in a newspaper essay that the country's top experts on chemical and biological weapons were uniformly critical of how intelligence was being used to galvanize public opinion before the conflict. Writing in the Independent newspaper, Dr. Brian Jones, the former chief analyst for the Defense Intelligence Staff on biological and chemical weapons, said, "In my view, the expert intelligence analysts" of the defense staff, "were overruled in the preparation of the dossier in September 2002, resulting in a presentation that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities." While Dr. Jones and a colleague submitted a formal memorandum stating their concerns as Britain's "foremost experts in their field," senior British intelligence officials never sought to discuss their concerns nor convey them to Mr. Blair and his aides, according to Dr. Jones and the Hutton findings. Some members of Parliament said they found that disturbing. Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned over the war, appeared to question Mr. Blair's statement today that even as military operations were beginning in March 2003, the prime minister was still not aware that a controversial intelligence report saying Iraqi officials could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes referred to short-range battlefield weapons and not long-range weapons that could threaten the region. Mr. Cook said he was aware of the distinction by March and found Mr. Blair's statement difficult to "reconcile." For his part, Mr. Blair today said he believed it was an "eccentric" view to say that there were significant differences between battlefield and long-range unconventional weapons. And he asserted that it was "hardly of earth-shattering significance" to edit intelligence documents that assert that the evidence "indicates" weapons were present to a harder formulation that the evidence "shows" weapons were present. In making a detailed defense of decisions taken in tandem by Britain and the United States, Mr. Blair appeared to be once again taking the role of barrister for both governments, tying his strategic outlook and political fate closely to that of President Bush, and perhaps testing argumentation that will echo in Washington. "If any part of the intelligence turns out to be wrong," Mr. Blair said, "or it the threat from Saddam was different or changed from what we thought, I will accept this as I should, but let others accept that ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein has made the world not just better but safer." He defended his close alliance with Mr. Bush. "Sometimes people on this side are worried about the alliance we have with the United States of America," he said. "I say this: `if America understands and believes" that the ultimate guarantee of its security is the spread "of freedom and democracy and rule of law, if it no longer takes an isolationist view of the world" then "I for one am proud to be its friend and ally." Tory leader Michael Howard was far less trenchant in his criticism of Mr. Blair today than in parliamentary clashes before Lord Hutton's findings, where he had frequently questioned the prime minister's veracity. But Mr. Howard again refused Labor Party calls today to apologize to Mr. Blair. Instead, he criticized the prime minister for caving in to calls for a new inquiry only after President Bush announced that such an inquiry in the United States was necessary in the wake of testimony from weapons specialist David A. Kay. Dr. Kay resigned from the weapons hunt based in Baghdad and conceded that much of the pre-war intelligence was wrong, though he still supported the war aim of removing Mr. Hussein. Mr. Howard asked Mr. Blair today to declassify the intelligence relating to chemical and biological weapons and the intelligence report that suggested that such weapons could be activated in 45 minutes. With Mr. Hussein out of power, the threat to "sources and methods" was not as great, Mr. Howard said, as the public demand to know the truth. nytimes.com lurqer