Posted on 05/29/2003 9:33:31 AM PDT by Brian S
29 May 2003
Tony Blair stood accused last night of misleading Parliament and the British people over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and his claims that the threat posed by Iraq justified war.
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, seized on a "breathtaking" statement by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that Iraq's weapons may have been destroyed before the war, and anger boiled over among MPs who said the admission undermined the legal and political justification for war.
Mr Blair insisted yesterday he had "absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction".
But Mr Cook said the Prime Minister's claims that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes were patently false. He added that Mr Rumsfeld's statement "blows an enormous gaping hole in the case for war made on both sides of the Atlantic" and called for MPs to hold an investigation.
Meanwhile, Labour rebels threatened to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for the cardinal sin of misleading Parliament - and force him to answer emergency questions in the House.
Mr Rumsfeld ignited the row in a speech in New York, declaring: "It is ... possible that they [Iraq] decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict and I don't know the answer."
Speaking in the Commons before the crucial vote on war, Mr Blair told MPs that it was "palpably absurd" to claim that Saddam had destroyed weapons including 10,000 litres of anthrax, up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tons of mustard gas, sarin, botulinum toxin and "a host of other biological poisons".
But Mr Cook said yesterday: "We were told Saddam had weapons ready for use within 45 minutes. It's now 45 days since the war has finished and we have still not found anything.
"It is plain he did not have that capacity to threaten us, possibly did not have the capacity to threaten even his neighbours, and that is profoundly important. We were, after all, told that those who opposed the resolution that would provide the basis for military action were in the wrong.
"Perhaps we should now admit they were in the right."
Speaking as he flew into Kuwait before a morale-boosting visit to British troops in Iraq today, Mr Blair said: "Rather than speculating, let's just wait until we get the full report back from our people who are interviewing the Iraqi scientists.
"We have already found two trailers that both our and the American security services believe were used for the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons."
He added: "Our priorities in Iraq are less to do with finding weapons of mass destruction, though that is obviously what a team is charged with doing, and they will do it, and more to do with humanitarian and political reconstruction."
Peter Kilfoyle, the anti-war rebel and former Labour defence minister, said he was prepared to report Mr Blair to the Speaker of the Commons for misleading Parliament. Mr Kilfoyle, whose Commons motion calling on Mr Blair to publish the evidence backing up his claims about Saddam's arsenal has been signed by 72 MPs, warned: "This will not go away. The Government ought to publish whatever evidence they have for the claims they made."
Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "No weapons means no threat. Without WMD, the case for war falls apart. It would seem either the intelligence was wrong and we should not rely on it, or, the politicians overplayed the threat. Even British troops who I met in Iraq recently were sceptical about the threat posed by WMD. Their lives were put at risk in order to eliminate this threat - we owe it to our troops to find out if that threat was real."
But Bernard Jenkin, the shadow Defence Secretary, said: "I think it is too early to rush to any conclusions at this stage; we must wait and see what the outcome actually is of these investigations."
Ministers have pointed to finds of chemical protection suits and suspected mobile biological weapons laboratories as evidence of Iraq's chemical and biological capability. But they have also played down the importance of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Earlier this month, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, provoked a storm of protest after claiming weapons finds were "not crucially important".
The Government has quietly watered down its claims, now arguing only that the Iraqi leader had weapons at some time before the war broke out.
Tony Benn, the former Labour minister, told LBC Radio: "I believe the Prime Minister lied to us and lied to us and lied to us. The whole war was built upon falsehood and I think the long-term damage will be to democracy in Britain. If you can't believe what you are told by ministers, the whole democratic process is put at risk. You can't be allowed to get away with telling lies for political purposes."
Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, said MPs "supported war based on a lie". He said: "If it's right Iraq destroyed the weapons prior to the war, then it means Iraq complied with the United Nations resolution 1441."
The former Labour minister Glenda Jackson added: "If the creators of this war are now saying weapons of mass destruction were destroyed before the war began, then all the government ministers who stood on the floor in the House of Commons adamantly speaking of the immediate threat are standing on shaky ground."
The build-up to war: What they said
Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons
George Bush, Us President 18 March, 2003
We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd
Tony Blair, Prime Minister 18 March, 2003
Saddam's removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary 2 April, 2003
Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit
Tony Blair 28 April, 2003
It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy them prior to the conflict
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary 28 May, 2003
You have a source for that whopper? Or is that just "general knowledge"?
The rest of the world understands that we are p*$$&d and crazy. They will be happy if it just ends here.
As our advanced nuclear subs roam the oceans off Korea, I think the reasons are obvious why they haven't invaded south Korea with their millions of soldiers, or why the haven't just nuked South Korea.
It's like a bad guys standing in front of your house with 10,000 guns pointed at them from your windows. I would be rather confident that they would stay on the street or move along. Do you really think they would nuke SK, knowing what the response would be?
I don't know any details about these things (particularly the age of the equipment), but it is very possible that these things were old. I wouldn't assume that they were part of a current weapons program.
This would come as a big surprise to the millions of US Service personnel cycled through Germany in the years 1952-92.
No one has said that Iraq may not have had any WMDs. What some may be saying is that we may not find the WMDs which Iraq had and parade them on CNN. There is a difference.
We weren't just claiming that that Iraq once had a WMD program, we claimed that they had (I think) around 30,000 tons of them
No, we claimed that some amount of stuff was unaccounted for. Saddam was required to account for all of this known stuff according to the UN resolution. Therefore he was in violation of the UN resolution, which is all that matters for this discussion.
The weapons (or weapon precursors) we supplied them was over 12 years ago. That isn't evidence of current WMDs,
Yes it is, actually, when combined with Saddam's lack of forthcomingness. In our universe, matter is conserved unless converted to energy or changed into some other macroscopic form. WMDs seldom suddenly and spontaneously transmogrify into, say, a bouquet of flowers. The fact that Iraq had such items in 1991 means that either those items still exist, or they were destroyed. (But they didn't document any such destruction to us.) If they didn't destroy such items, and those items still existed, then either those items existed within the boundaries of what we call "Iraq", or they were transported to some other location. (But Saddam didn't provide any evidence of their transportation/export to us.) As the onus was on Saddam to document these things to us, and he didn't, the presumption had to have been that such items still existed. In any event, if those items didn't still exist at war's onset, it screams for an explanation as to why Saddam didn't simply prove to us that they no longer existed.
An exception to all this is the natural degradation which can occur in some materials. He may have had some kind of chemical/bio weapons which no longer functioned fully as intended, due to degradation, for example. But we couldn't know one way or the other about that, nor be expected to.
I don't think it's unreasonable to have the US and UK substantiate the claims they made prior to the war,
The claims they made prior to the war which triggered war were that Saddam was in violation of one or more UN resolutions. And this is not in dispute; Saddam was. Take, for example, the unmanned aircraft (drone) which was found by Blix's inspectors. Saddam was required to list all such items on the report he was required to give to the UN back in December or so. The drone was not mentioned in that December report, yet it was found by Blix in the subsequent inspections. This put Saddam in violation of Resolution 1441. That's all one needs to know. Boom, case closed.
The war has already been debated. It has already taken place. Nothing anybody can do or say will undo it now. It is the aftermath, at this point, that is important, not the rationale behind the war.
Let's say the Left is totally successful here. They manage to stoke public outrage. The Tories and Labour are voted out. Every Republican in America is either tarred and feathered in the media or they fall on their swords.
What then? The problem of 'Iraq- the Aftermath' is still there. We can still not simply pull up stakes and leave. We must still stay in the country and make the ole democracy thing work. Can the Left do this better than the Right? Personally, I think they would make a hash out of it and the world would be an even more dangerous place than it was before we got started.
Saddam was an evil f**ker. He had to go. That whole nest of snakes over there is going to have to be dragged out into the light and have their heads lopped off. The whole region needs to be reordered. I know some people would prefer to not do this for a variety of reasons, but I'm more of a hands-on kind of guy when it comes to some problems. Wishful thinking won't get rid of a schoolyard bully and appeasement won't make this world a safer place.
That's just me though. I'm glad Saddam's gone. That's my bottom line. If the President were to ask me for a list of other despots to topple- I could provide him with one as long as my arm and I wouldn't sweat the finer points of the international legality for taking each one down...
Was that cease-fire agreement signed with the U.S., or with the U.N.?
The US has repeatedly placed thousands of personnel in close proximity to nations known to possess WMD (the most obvious example being Western Europe during the Cold War and South Korea from the Korean War onwards). Try another argument.
At the hands of Iraq????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.