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.
Oh no, they're misunderestimating him, just like the President says.
From Merriam-Webster OnLine:
Main Entry: mis·un·der·es·ti·mate
Pronunciation: "mis-&n-d&r-'es-t&-"mAt
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: Coined by President George W. Bush at Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
1 : to estimate a person's intelligence as being dramatically less than its actual level
2 : to insist that a person who repeatedly hands you your ass is too stupid to be able to do so
I really hope you are wrong. Bush's appeal seems to be that he constantly and consistently does the right thing and lets the chips fall where they may. Holding back important info on located WMD for political gain is NOT the right thing. Very Clintonesque. Besides that, I think it would be a bad idea politically.
They may be holding back info on WMD for security reasons, but I can't imagine holding it back to make the dem candiates look bad. They look pretty bad already.
For example, what if a lot of that stuff discovered had French and German fingerprints all over it? It would be in our interest to withhold that information for a while in order to see what else those two countries had been up to. If Chirac and Schroeder are wanting to establish a Europe as a counterweight to the US, rather than a partner, it would be advantageous to keep silent until they are ratcheting up their plans, and then lower the boom.
The Eastern European countries would then have the right to question France and German's leadership of the EU.
Remember, W thinks about 4-5 moves ahead of everyone else. The reason the democrats keep stepping in it is that they refuse to understand this.
He's got the proof. If you think the American press is vicious and Bush-hating, well, the UK press will take ANYONE down, left or right, just for the sake of selling more papers, and do it in ways that would make Larry Flint blush. There's no way in hell Blair would make this claim if he doesn't have the data to back it up, because he'd never survive the media onslaught if he didn't.
LOL! Our flat in Glasgow is actually in his district. I've never seen him around here.
What's the rush? I fully support the administration reporting on what they know, but I would also applaud them methodically compiling their findings so they can have something comprehensive to show to the American people at a later date- that as opposed to the gossip style method of reporting each new twig overturned or 'what the guy who has a cousin who has a friend who says...'.
If the opposition doesn't possess the patience to wait- this is their weakness and could be their undoing. You are seeing the political machinations now from their side. Waiting until we have compiled a thorough dossier for the taxpayers is not in any way unethical. If the impatience of the American people goads the liberals into making jackasses of themselves- so much the better.
He flanked Russia by engaging China thereby eliminating the Soviet threat in SE Asia.
History will record the action as a win.
You mean like waiting until June of 2004 just before the Rat Convention.
How unfortunate, monthly revelations beginning in January, drip, drip, drip, like a stalactite, the land slide builds.
holding back information is critical. the goal is to get the 50 or so on the deck of cards. the other goal is to get bin laden. the other goal is to clean out some of the poison in iran and other local countries.
they don't care if the press, the french, the democratic party and the suicidal peace turds get to see the weapons of mass destruction.
the CIA already has highly classified information about neighboring countries that has to be dealt with carefully.
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