UK MPs slam Blair's '45-minute' WMD deployment claim
Reuters, London
The most sensational claim made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to justify waging war on Iraq was criticised by an influential parliamentary committee on Thursday.The now infamous assertion that Iraq could deploy banned weapons at just 45 minutes' notice was used by Blair to steamroller intense public opposition to the US war. But the Intelligence and Security Committee said the 45-minute point lacked context and was "unhelpful to an understanding of the issue" in a report that will further undermine trust in Blair. The committee also criticized embattled Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon, who has been targeted by opponents as a fall guy for the government's troubles over the case it made for war in Iraq. Hoon is widely expected to be the first ministerial casualty of the Iraq crisis: the worst of Blair's six-year premiership and one that has sent his public ratings tumbling. Hoon's Ministry of Defense was "unhelpful and potentially misleading" about its concerns over the government's dossier on Iraq's banned weapons, the committee said in a report. "We regard the initial failure by the MoD to disclose that some staff had put their concerns in writing to their line managers as unhelpful and potentially misleading," the cross-party committee said, fingering Hoon personally. "We are disturbed that after the first evidence session...the defense secretary decided against giving instructions for a letter to be written to us outlining the concerns." The committee's investigation ran in parallel to a judicial inquiry into the suicide of a British weapons expert who was exposed as the source for claims that the government exaggerated the threat from Iraq. Judge Lord Hutton's inquiry has already revealed that at least two Defense Intelligence staff were unhappy with warnings in the dossier. The committee said intelligence chiefs did not know for sure what weapons Iraq had made or in what quantities. "This uncertainty should have been highlighted to give a balanced view of Saddam (Hussein's) chemical and biological capacity," it said. The report also said Blair's outgoing communications chief Alastair Campbell did not "sex up" the dossier But it added claims about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capacity did not give a balanced view.
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