Posted on 09/15/2003 3:43:02 PM PDT by Brian S
Mon September 15, 2003 05:00 PM ET By Dominic Evans
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's secretive intelligence chief conceded Monday that criticism of a dossier setting out Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war with Iraq was valid because its most sensational warning was "misinterpreted."
Breaking with precedent, MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove testified via audio-link to the judicial inquiry into the suicide of a weapons expert, which has raised questions about Blair's reasons for war and sent his trust ratings plunging.
Dearlove said he stood by the intelligence in the September 2002 dossier but added that a contentious assertion that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons at 45 minutes' notice was only meant to refer to short-range arms.
"Given the misinterpretation placed on the 45-minutes intelligence, with the benefit of hindsight you could say that was valid criticism," said Dearlove, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known as MI6.
"The original (intelligence) report referred ... to battlefield weapons. What subsequently happened in the reporting was it was taken that the 45 minutes applied to weapons of a longer range," he said.
The 45-minute claim was the most dramatic element of the dossier that Blair used to counter widespread public opposition to joining a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein.
Blair's team denies it "sexed up" the dossier on the threat posed by Iraq. But five months after Saddam's overthrow, no banned weapons have been found in Iraq.
Dearlove, his disembodied voice echoing in the courtroom during 40 minutes of testimony, insisted the 45-minutes' claim was "a well-sourced piece of intelligence."
Scientist David Kelly killed himself in July after he was exposed as the source of a BBC report accusing the government of hyping up the case for war to win over skeptical Britons.
Blair's public trust ratings have since evaporated. Although he will not have to testify again, his Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and outgoing communications chief Alastair Campbell are recalled to be grilled by judge Lord Hutton next week.
Hoon, Kelly's ultimate boss, has been portrayed as a potential fall guy lined up to take the rap and protect Blair.
He faces questions over why he overruled advice to protect Kelly from a hostile public grilling just days before the scientist's death, and why concerns among defense intelligence staff over language in the dossier were not acted on.
Fresh evidence of that concern emerged Monday when the inquiry was shown a letter from the Defense Intelligence Staff, sent just one week before Blair's Iraq dossier was published, saying some of its claims were put too forcefully.
The judgment that Iraq had continued producing chemical and biological weapons was "too strong," the letter said. It also described the 45-minute warning as "rather strong since it is based on a single source."
The government was rocked further at the weekend when a new book claimed that just days before Iraq was invaded, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw begged Blair not to go to war.
Blair's spokesman said Straw was merely outlining a "Plan B" if parliament had voted against war, which it did not. "That is entirely different to expressing policy differences," he said.
But author John Kampfner, an experienced political journalist, said his work was sourced to interviews with 40 key government figures and was confident about its authenticity.
His report follows a revelation last week that Blair ignored warnings from spy chiefs that war would raise the risk of militants like al Qaeda acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Yep, this is the most plausible explanation if he destroyed the WMD but didn't prove it. In which case, again, all I can say is: he sure fooled us. Good one, Saddam!
Not only odd, it's down right astonishing. Manufacturing materials and equipment, workers, delivery systems, buildings, contaminated areas, the chems and bios themselves -- all vanished. A clean sweep. Maybe they had David Cooperfield on the payroll.
There is no delusion like self-delusion.
Richard W.
Bummer for him.
What's your point?
Saddam didn't fool anyone but someone surely did. Now who could that be?
Richard W.
Yes he did. He made the leadership of USA and Great Britain, among others, think that he had WMDs, when in fact (as you've demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt with mathematical certainty in this thread) he had destroyed all of them without documenting this destruction. That's who he fooled.
I, for one, always assumed that the 45 min. figure referred to battlefield weapons.
That's ridiculous. That would imply that he wanted to be attacked and lose power. Forget all the posturing and mind games that may have been taking place, the US and the Britts claimed that he had them and the Britts were so eager to make the point they even produced false documents. Okay, we went to war based on, what would have to be rock solid evidence because we are talking about going to war, and so the question just hangs out there -- where are the WMD? Keep in mind that we were so sure that we couldn't even let the UN inspectors finish their job. Couldn't be that we already knew that the UN wouldn't find anything now would it?
Richard W.
Or that he thought this would deter attack. Or that he was just delusional.
the Britts were so eager to make the point they even produced false documents
Source? Andrew Gilligan?
Okay, we went to war based on, what would have to be rock solid evidence because we are talking about going to war,
For the record, I don't agree that one has to go to war only based on evidence which is "rock solid".
so the question just hangs out there -- where are the WMD?
That's true. We may find out the answer to this question eventually. I can wait. The internet makes people impatient and jumpy, but really, I can wait.
Couldn't be that we already knew that the UN wouldn't find anything now would it?
Actually, I think it's precisely because we knew that the UN wouldn't find anything that we had to give up the whole charade.
You see the hopeless position of your case. You argue that even though WMD was the excuse for war, Saddam was delusional enough to think that they would prevent an attack. GW was going to have his war and invade Iraq one way or the other. It was a done deal and the excuses were made up to fit -- and there sure hasn't been any shortage of excuses from the "liberation" excuse to the "working with AQ" excuse and everything in between.
Richard W.
What "case"? I'm agreeing w/you: Saddam got rid of WMD & tricked us into thinking he didn't, so we ousted him. Oopsy daisy. Good one Saddam! You sure played us for fools.
How is that making a "case" for anything?
You argue that even though WMD was the excuse for war, Saddam was delusional enough to think that they would prevent an attack.
I'm saying that's a possibility.
GW was going to have his war and invade Iraq one way or the other.
I agree.
Your point?
This particular rope-a-dope game Saddam is playing is very high risk, though. He has already lost two of his most vicious children, and he needs the American people to be stupid enough to vote for an anti-war Democrat for President for the strategy to succeed (or for the Democrats to pull off voter fraud on a scale never before seen).
It is a high-risk strategy, but not necessarily doomed to failure.
And, of course, you know with absolute certainty that this is not happening, right?
The United States has found evidence of an active programme to make weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, including "truly amazing" testimony from Iraqis ordered to dupe United Nations inspectors before the war...[more] telegraph.co.uk - 8/1/2003
You were saying?
Where are the WMD?
Richard W.
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