NO ONE TO BLAME –THE FINAL INSULT

 

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How Blair sexed down the Report that laid blame for Iraq fiasco at No10’s door.

by

David Hughes-Political Editor.

 

Daily Mail, Monday, July 19, 2004.

 

Downing Street succeeded in toning down direct criticism of Tony Blair in last week’s report by Lord Butler on intelligence failings over Iraq, it emerged yesterday.

 

In a remarkable tit-for-tat move, Lord Butler was ready to cut the Prime Minister adrift by refusing to back him if he was asked by reporters if Mr Blair should quit.

 

The extraordinary new twist to last week’s explosive report will raise fresh questions about Mr Blair’s trustworthiness.

 

After receiving a draft copy of the Butler Report, Number10 asked for changes in a key passage which highlighted the gulf between the Intelligence Assessment of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and what Blair told MP’s in September 2002.

 

After intense discussions the five-member Butler Committee did what Downing Street asked.

 

In one of the few passages that directly criticised the Prime Minister, Butler reported that the September dossier left readers with the impression that there was ‘fuller and firmer intelligence’ behind the dossier than was the case.

 

Butler went on: “The Prime Minister’s description, in his statement to the House of Commons on the day of publication of the dossier, of the picture painted by the Intelligence Services in the dossier as extensive, detailed and authoritative”, may have reinforced this impression.

The original draft was much tougher and placed responsibility for this misleading impression on the Prime Minister.

 

It also appears that Lord Butler was ready to balance this concession by making no attempt to come to Mr Blair’s defence.

 

While his report specifically said that John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee should not resign, despite criticism of what he did, Lord Butler was prepared to offer no support to the Prime Minister.

 

According to sources close to the Inquiry

He had resolved to say nothing in support of Mr Blair if asked at his press conference whether the Prime Minister should resign.

 

In the event, he was not asked the question.

 

Nevertheless, one member of the Inquiry team told the Sunday Telegraph that Blair was not out of the woods yet.

 

‘The whole thing points straight to the man in charge…absolutely to where responsibility belongs, which is the Prime Minister, which is what we could not say.’

 

Despite Downing Street’s hopes of at last drawing a line under the Iraq affair, anti-war Labour MP’s are calling for another Inquiry-the fifth-into the conflict. They want the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to look into the way crucial intelligence was withdrawn as unsound by M16 last July-yet Lord Hutton’s Inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly, was kept in the dark about it.

 

Eric Illsley, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said this information should have been made available.

‘It would suggest that the Committee, Parliament and Lord Hutton were misled and in these circumstances we are justified in taking a fresh look at it,’ he said.

 

His Labour chairman Donald Anderson has ruled out a new Inquiry but Mr Illsley insisted:

‘This is a matter for the Committee to decide. If a majority of members vote for a fresh Inquiry –then it will take place’.

 

At the same David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, was delivering a devastating verdict on the reports by Lord Butler and by the Senate Intelligence Committee in America.

 

‘I think they are a scathing indictment,’ he told ITV’s Jonathan Dimbleby programme.

 

‘I think they are a picture of a broken system on both sides of the Atlantic, for collecting intelligence, for analysing it and finally for sending it forward to policy makers and to the public.’

 

He said that Mr Blair and Mr Bush should both have realised that the intelligence they were being presented with did not support the claims that Iraq actually had weapons.              [Font size adjusted]

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Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU

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VOTE

MAY -2007

 

TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE

TO SET YOU

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THE

UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY

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TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER

BUT

SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES.

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ONLY

PRO-PORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

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HOME RULE for ENGLAND

 

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MAY/07

 

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THE QUESTION THAT THE VOTER MUST ANSWER

 

‘DO YOU WISH TO BE GOVERNED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE, LAW AND CUSTOM OR BY THE CORRUPT ,EXPENSIVE UNACCOUNTABLE AND ALIEN BUSYBODY BRUSSELS’

 

-SIMPLE IS IT NOT?