Blair Must Take Blame

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A former top British spy has told Tony Blair that he alone should shoulder responsibility for intelligence failings on Iraq. Western secret services were blamed for errors over Iraq's arsenal in the build-up to last year's war in a scathing US senate report.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that "systematic failure" within British agencies did not excuse the Prime Minister. "The buck stops there and I don't think that the political layer in any country can escape the consequences of a systemic failure," she said.

She did not say whether Mr Blair should resign but she added: "He is making a distinction between what he genuinely believed and what turns out to be the case so he is at least open to the accusation of incompetence." "I think there is a trust issue now and I think we already see this the trust issue.

"That's one of the reasons why it's important, first of all, the Prime Minister does acknowledge he actually got it wrong." Mr Blair is bracing himself for next week's Butler report on the use of intelligence over Iraq and is expected to face heavy criticism.
The future of the CIA was called into question by the devastating conclusions of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was "flawed" or overstated, the report concluded. However, there was no evidence of political pressure from President George Bush's administration.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1142486,00.html