Blair knew

The judicial inquiry into the Blair administration's
case for war hit the mother lode, with evidence Blair knew Iraq was no threat.

In a message that goes to the heart of the government's case for war, the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, raised serious doubts about the nature of September's Downing Street dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.

"We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat," Mr Powell wrote on September 17, a week before the document was finally published [...]

Downing Street also faced severe embarrassment yesterday when the Hutton inquiry was told the prime minister's official spokesman in an email had described the government's battles with the BBC as a "game of chicken".

The email revealed how senior Downing Street officials - and on occasion Mr Blair himself - became intimately involved in the events which led to the death of the government scientist David Kelly.

I recall in the runup to war how many liberals said, "I don't trust Bush, but I do trust Tony. If he says Iraq is a threat, then I believe him." Indeed, Blair's unfailing support for Bush was key to his (Bush's) ability to get his war on.

But Blair's case for war was as flawed as Bush's, which leads to one inoxorable conclusion: don't wear ideological blinders when being led to war. War is far too serious a course of action to trust to anyone, whether a Republican or Tory, or Democrat or Labour. Or anything else.

Posted August 19, 2003 08:52 AM | Comments (77)