Lawmakers Attack Blair Over Iraq Warning [Stop sniping, Iain Duncan Smith!]

AP via ABC News ^ | 12 September 2003

[Stultis]

Lawmakers Attack Blair Over Iraq Warning

Lawmakers Attack Blair for Going to War With Iraq Despite Signal It Would Increase Terror Threat

The Associated Press

LONDON Sept. 12 —

Opposition lawmakers and the media attacked Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday for failing to disclose an intelligence warning that said the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime could help terrorists obtain chemical or biological weapons.

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith called on Blair to explain why he chose to go to war despite the warning by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, made a month before the invasion.

"Tony Blair was entitled to make that judgment and to take that decision," said Duncan Smith, who had firmly supported British military action. "But given public concern over the controversy of the September dossier on Iraqi weapons, he should now explain why he did it. The country is entitled to know."

Before the war, Blair repeatedly warned of the dangers of rogue states providing terrorists with illicit weapons.

A parliamentary committee report published Thursday revealed that intelligence chiefs advised on Feb. 10 that there was no evidence Iraq provided chemical or biological materials to al-Qaida or other terrorists or that Saddam's regime planned attacks with the weapons. But the assessment warned that going to war would in fact increase the threat posted by al-Qaida and other terror groups.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said it was "highly questionable" whether the House of Commons would have backed the war if it had known of the warning.

"Before the Iraq war, the Liberal Democrats, and others from all across the political spectrum, warned that unilateral military action against Iraq, without international support, risked stirring up even more terrorism," Kennedy said.

"Intelligence chiefs gave the prime minister exactly the same warning privately, yet Tony Blair chose to overrule them."

The disclosure prompted critical headlines Friday. "Blair rejected terror warning," said The Daily Telegraph. "Blair on rack over Iraq war terror warning," said The Times.

Blair's government defended its decision to join the war against Iraq. Health Secretary John Reid, one of the more combative members of Blair's Cabinet, said the government believed Saddam posed a threat either on his own or as a supporter of terrorism.

"The prime minister exercised his judgment having looked at a range of things ... that justified the decision he took. I think he was right," Reid told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Blair had told the Intelligence and Security Committee that he took the warning into account.

"This is where you've just got to make your judgment and it remains my judgment and I suppose time will tell whether it's true or it's not true," the committee reported quoted Blair as saying.

Coalition forces have come under several attacks that bear the hallmarks of terrorist groups since the end of major combat in May, including suicide bombings. U.S. officials have said foreign terrorists are going to Iraq to attack U.S.-led forces.

Also Friday, a senior appeals judge probing the apparent suicide of a government weapons adviser said he would call the director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp. for questioning next week.

BBC Director-General Greg Dyke was called to testify along with three defense officials in the second round of the inquiry chaired by Lord Hutton. Blair and other top officials have already testified.

Hutton is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, who apparently killed himself after being identified as a possible source of a BBC report that said the government had overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in a September dossier making the case for war. The dispute has become the biggest crisis of Blair's six years in office.

[Stultis]

Why, oh why, do the Conservatives keep piling on with the leftist peaceniks and the Beeb? There's plenty to attack Labour on, and IDS is doing that too, but Duncan Smith pledged, in a major speech, early on in the Iraq affair that he and his party would support Blair where Blair was right. He obviously believes that Blair made the right decision here, so SHUT UP ABOUT IT!

Tories turn on leader (Iain Duncan Smith Wavers On Iraq) ^
			Posted by Stultis On 06/04/2003 10:31 PM CDT with 9 comments The Times (London) ^ | 5 June 2003 | Melissa Kite June 05, 2003 Tories turn on leaderBy Melissa Kite, Political Correspondent IAIN DUNCAN SMITH faced an Iraq backlash of his own last night after changing his position on the war to join the calls for an inquiry. The Tory Leader was accused by his MPs of a misjudgment after he challenged Tony Blair to order a full judicial inquiry. He claimed the credibility of the Prime Minister and the Intelligence services had been called into question. Some Tories were furious at the change of position. They had been pleased with the party position in backing the Government on Iraq, believing...
DUNCAN SMITH PLEDGES PARTY'S SUPPORT FOR BLAIR ^
			Posted by fight_truth_decay On 03/15/2003 12:45 PM CST with 51 comments DailyRecord ^ | Mar 15 2003 | staff Iain Duncan Smith has pledged not to play "political games" over the Iraq crisis. He says he will offer his party's support to Tony Blair as he "does the right thing". But he made clear he reserved the right to criticise the Prime Minister's conduct of any war, warning him that there would be "no blank cheques". Dealing with Saddam was in the interests of the British people and of international peace and security, which must take precedence over party political interests, said Mr Duncan Smith. In an emergency address to the Conservatives' spring conference in Harrogate, Mr Duncan Smith...

[bernie_g]

Have a look at the poll reports here http://www.yougov.com/

They suggest strongly that it's Blair's weakest point, and the one that produces the biggest reaction. Blair is very vulnerable on Iraq, look at the polling data on his trustworthiness since all the WMD questions started. So IDS would be failing his party if he didn't go for the jugular, should it be presented by further WMD revelations. Only 22% of Britons believe that Blair is trustworthy now as opposed to 56% in 2001. So it's natural for IDS to smell blood. We're getting stuff coming out daily that makes things worse for Blair. Latest issue today is that his own equivalent of the NSC (in Britian the JIC) apparently told him that attacking Iraq would increase the risk of terrorists getting any WMD that Iraq had, rather than reducing it. Since this is more or less the opposite of what he told the public, it's another of those daily blows.

StoryTfrom the Financial Times website: http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479761290&p=1012571727102

[Stultis]

So IDS would be failing his party if he didn't go for the jugular

Except that this is exactly what he pledged NOT to do. He promised his party, that on the Iraq issue, he would lead by principle, not by polls. Instead he's adopted the poll driven "principles" of Clintonism. This is extremely short-sighted, and will NOT be good for the Conservatives in the long run.

[bernie_g]

You're very likely right. Unfortunately it's the only shot we have at Blair. If you look at the polls around the time of Dr Kelly's suicide, you'll see the Tories sneak ahead for the first time in more than a decade. How can IDS sit back? It's fair enough expecting him not to criticise the government during a war and he didn't. Expecting him not to react when the public is, as those polls show, having a massive reaction to this issue and increasingly thinks that Blair was lying his head off to get us into a largely unpopular war, would be unrealistic IMHO. He's got to take his shot, it's the only one he's going to get at winning.

[alpowolf]

Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith called on Blair to explain why he chose to go to war despite the warning by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, made a month before the invasion.

Sounds like a fair question to me.

[Dilbert56]

Um, did anyone notice the alternative was trusting Saddam not to pass them out?

[alpowolf]

It wasn't the only alternative...but that isn't my point. My point is, I would like to hear Mr. Blair's response to the question. If the answer is simple he should have no trouble with it, right?

[bernie_g]

Blair has lots of questions to answer and his party conference is coming up. The only way to start a leadership challenge to Blair, is for his increasing number of internal opponents to win a vote at this conference, so he's got to be very careful in the next few days. If something really bad comes out, a vote may be called. Meanwhile, all kinds of embarrassing stuff is coming out daily and most of the press, not just the Guardian and the Independent, is having a field day. The revelations are getting progressively more serious. I'm old enough to remember Watergate, and this is starting to have that feel.

Take a look at this summary in the Independent for an idea of what the UK public is hearing daily about all of this stuff and bear in mind that the polls above are showing that they don't trust Blair one bit on these issues.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=442522

[Stultis]

Watergate? Oh, please. Even in the link you gave, it's all hype, quibbling or matters of marginal interpretation. An over-excited British press blaring in headlines (but failing to nail down in the actual stories) that Blair "lied," is not the same as documenting a specific instance of lying. In Watergate there was a "smoking gun". In Blair/Iraq-gate there is, so far, nothing but overheated rhetoric, muck and mud. Conservatives need to get out of the mud.

[bernie_g]

You may well be right, but what counts in a UK general election is who gets the votes. So whether the accusations in the press are empty or not, matters less in electoral terms than how they influence UK voting intentions. Look at those polling figures I posted earlier, Iraq is quite a serious problem for Blair. Whatever the greater moral dimensions may be, that's the current political reality in the UK and if IDS is going to be a successful leader, that's likely to be the reality when we contest a general election. He's only going to get one election and if he fails he'll be replaced. If he doesn't take his shots at Blair over Iraq he may well be replaced before the next election.

[alpowolf]

Yes, he has lots of questions to answer. This seems to infuriate the Bushbots and the Wargasm crowd, but the leader of any country where the leaders are elected by the citizens has to answer the voters' questions to their satisfaction. If he can't or won't the voters are entitled to withhold their vote; that's just the way it is.