Blair under renewed pressure to deliver exit strategy from Iraq

[cal04]

Tony Blair is facing renewed and angry demands to set out a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in the wake of yesterday's deaths in Basra.

MPs from across the political spectrum will attempt to force the Government to disclose its exit strategy in the Commons next week.

They are furious that Mr Blair, who gives evidence tomorrow to the Iraq Study Group reassessing US policy, has so far failed to provide any details of plans to pull British soldiers out.

Doug Henderson, a former Armed Forces Minister, said: "The quicker we get out, the fewer soldiers are going to be killed or injured.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1963595.ece

[Greeby]

1. The Independent's cover for Monday

[malaise]

2. I love The Independent

Great front page. Blait is a pretentious hypocrite.

[wreckhead]

3. will he discuss this....?

Forgive me if this has already been posted but I think it is HUGH!!11 as some would say....

If this has not been discussed here yet could someone with a sufficient post-count post it in LBN please, I think this should have as wide an audience as possible!

Iraq: the new cover-up

Exclusive: A secret first full draft of the Iraq WMD dossier, which shows how Tony Blair persuaded parliament of the case for war, is being concealed by the government. This draft was not written by the intelligence services, as Whitehall claims, but by a Foreign Office spin-doctor. Our political editor, Martin Bright reports

The government is withholding a secret draft of the Iraq WMD dossier that was never disclosed to the Hutton inquiry, the New Statesman can reveal. In a development that will stoke demands for a full parliamentary inquiry into the events that led up to the war, we can confirm that the draft was written not by the intelligence services, which had responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained in the dossier, but by a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office press officer, whose name has previously featured only on the fringes of the controversy over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. It raises the possibility that the dossier originated with the government's spin machine rather than the intelligence services. This secret draft may even turn out to be the foundation of the government's ill-fated presentation of the threat from Saddam's WMD, which Tony Blair used to persuade parliament of the case for war.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200611130062