Posted on 05/31/2003 4:38:05 PM PDT by Pokey78
Prime Minister Tony Blair last night insisted he had secret proof that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq in his strongest signal yet that coalition forces believe they may have begun to uncover leads to Iraq's alleged deadly arms cache.
Stung by claims that the Government exaggerated the threat from Saddam, Blair said he was waiting to publish a 'complete picture' of both intelligence gained before the war and 'what we've actually found'.
Asked if he knew things he could not yet reveal, he said: 'I certainly do know some of the stuff that has been already accumulated as a result of interviews and others... which is not yet public, but what we are going to do is assemble that evidence and present it properly.'
His words, in an interview with Sky TV, came as Downing Street moved to halt damaging leaks over its handling of the evidence by heaping praise on the intelligence services. 'The Prime Minister hugely values the work of the intelligence agencies,' his spokesman said in St Petersburg, where heads of state were celebrating the Russian city's tercententary, yesterday.
The pointed comment followed a week of furious rows over whether the intelligence dossier on Iraq published by the Government last September was 'sexed up' to convince a sceptical public that they were in danger from Saddam.
It will fuel speculation that private assurances have been given to the intelligence community that they will not be left to carry the can over the failure to find WMD after a week of briefing against senior Blair officials by intelligence officials over the alleged ramping up of intelligence.
Labour backbenchers, increasingly convinced they were misled, are unlikely to be impressed by Blair's argument that they must trust in proof they cannot see. According to intelligence sources the new leads have been provided by Iraqi scientists and a member of the State Security Organisation who are currently being debriefed by MI6 and the CIA. This follows a week in which Government and intelligence sources appear to have changed their story on the likelihood of finding WMD on an almost daily basis.
One source claimed mid-week that British intelligence suggested Saddam had destroyed his WMD even before UN inspectors visited Iraq, a version of events that had changed by yesterday morning to the claim that chemical weapons may actually have been deployed in the field and then destroyed as American troops advanced.
Yesterday the US announced that another 1,400 experts will join the hunt for banned weapons - a signal that Washington has accepted the political significance of the issue.
In Britain it is thought that Ministers want eventually to publish a checklist of claims made before the war alongside subsequent discoveries which they believe vindicate the warnings. So far the only publicly announced discovery has been that of two trailers thought to have been part of a mobile laboratory system.
Blair said in his interview that claims that the existence of WMD was 'a great big fib got out by the security services' would be proved wrong. He said he had 'absolutely no knowledge' of an alleged meeting between the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell, in a New York hotel to discuss concerns over whether the evidence on WMD would be strong enough. Leaked transcripts suggested Straw had warned the issue could 'explode in our faces'.
The Foreign Office insisted the two men had not met on the date given in February.
Downing Street has been hampered in its argument by repeated suggestions from the Bush administration that WMD may never be found. Paul Wolfowitz, deputy to the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, suggested last week that WMD were a bureaucratic pretext to start a war.
Blair told Sky that WMD were the basis in law for taking military action - but 'that's not the same as saying it's a bureaucratic pretext'.
The Prime Minister was due to leave Russia early this morning for the G8 summit in Evian, France, which is expected to agree new measures to stop WMD falling into the hands of terrorists.
I don't think that's exactly what Wolfowitz said.
The Observer is the Sunday version of the Guardian, and also very leftist.
Like I say--just a weird feeling.
Bush and Blair had a secret plan to win the Iraq war -- and they won the war!
Oh, aye.
High stakes poker doesn't get any better than this.
He's either bluffing or he's holding 4 aces. Could be the Bush/Blair duo are looking to smoke out as many of their detractors as possible. I note that after Robin Cook's incredibly stupid outburst during the war he has been rather silent until a couple of days ago when he brought up the issue of WMD. Some people are just too impatient to keep their powder dry.
I would reckon, if they do know there's proof, Dubya is just waiting to see if he can get any of his potential presidential opponents to start harping about it. If one starts harping and the press gives him mileage, the other candidates are bound to smell the blood and enter the feeding frenzy- hoping to not get left out of the action. Then Dubya shows his cards and wham bam thank you ma'am- all of 'em look like total jackasses.
I really doubt that a Leftist like Tony Blair would go along with such a plan, unless he thinks it's worth his own political gain.
Secret plan? Compared to the UK and US forces, it was like Mike Tyson fighting Tony Snow.
I'm not sure what's going on, but Blair just decided to raise the stakes in the poker game, and I don't know why he would do that unless he held a winning hand.
In the end, we will know.
Bush and Blair had a secret plan to win the Iraq war -- and they won the war!
There wasn't anything secret about their plan to invade Iraq.
You switch context of the word plan to suit your need.
Everybody knew that Nixon had a plan to win the Vietnam War. It was the specifics of the plan that was secret. Likewise everybody knew that Blair and Bush planned to invade Iraq. It was the specifics of the plan that was secret.
Why don't you quit play cute word games and come right out and say that you don't believe Blair and Bush have secret information abount WMD finds in Iraqi?
You too -- see post #19.
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