Spies on attack as Blair fights for his survival

[CHIMO]

The private war between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will reach its public climax this week as the Prime Minister battles to survive the criticisms of the Butler Inquiry and two by-elections that threaten his hold on the Labour leadership.

Even before facing these tough hurdles, Blair will tonight be accused of misleading MPs and the Hutton Inquiry. The accusations ? which highlight a serious attempt to manipulate and politicise intelligence on Iraq ? will be shown in a BBC Panorama programme.

In the crucial pre-war Commons debate on Iraq, Blair said that the threat from Iraq was serious and current. John Morrison, the former deputy chief of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS, part of the Ministry of Defence) says he ?could almost hear the collective raspberry going up around Whitehall? when Blair made his comments.

Morrison also said Blair?s public statements on Iraq, prior to the war, went beyond what professional analysts would have concluded from the evidence.


http://www.sundayherald.com/43342

[young_at_heart]

1. Over and over we ask..............What was Tony Blair thinking?

Every time he backs up Bush he loses more credibility and yet he keeps on going with this stupidity. He obviously knew that the threat from Iraq wasn't serious and current, so what could his motive have possibly been?

[cal04]

2. Brian Jones: What weapons dossier should have said

Brian Jones: What weapons dossier should have said, and what that would have meant for war
Dr Brian Jones, a retired official with the Defence Intelligence Service who says that he "couldn't relate" to Mr Blair's evidence to the Hutton inquiry.

I told Panorama last night that I was confused when Mr Blair told Lord Hutton about the "tremendous amount" of related information and evidence that had been crossing his desk in the period before the dossier was written. We had no sight of large qualities of significant intelligence of that sort.

Most of our concerns were raised in comments made by DIS expert analysts over the three weeks in which the dossier was drafted. I recounted some to Lord Hutton's inquiry but was constrained by the specific questions of counsel.

To offer a fuller explanation. I have revisited the executive summary of the September dossier, John Scarlett's two-page précis of the 40-odd pages of the main text. The latter is so dense and complex that the summary would inevitably achieve much greater impact. Unfortunately, it did not paint quite the same picture. What was uncertain and poorly defined suddenly became clearer and "presentationally" more acceptable. Intelligence no longer indicated what might be and suddenly, without substantiation, showed what was.


I have tried to illustrate below what I would have preferred some important parts of it to have said. This is not a case of being wise after the event or of using hindsight. It is what the dossier should have said based on the state of intelligence at that time. My revisions do not represent a wholly accurate assessment in the light of what we know now, which makes the case for war even weaker. The original or "actual" paragraphs of the dossier are also shown for ease of comparison. The words shown in italics in the "preferred" version mark my additions or changes to the words approved by the JIC.


http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=540084