‘Duped’ by the ‘speed’ of WMD – Short
Former International Development Secretary Clare Short came forward on Sunday to claim the British people were misled or ‘duped’ by Downing Street over Iraq’s capacity and readiness to use chemical and biological weapons.
Mrs. Short, who resigned from Cabinet following the war after she claimed the Prime Minister and Jack Straw backtracked on a pledge to grant the UN a greater humanitarian role in the aftermath of the US-led Iraq war, said she believed the Prime Minister ‘secretly’ decided to go to war in September 2002 after a meeting at Camp David with US President George W. Bush.
In a startling claim, she said the PM allowed intelligence material to be ‘spun’ to give the appearance that Iraq posed a more pressing threat.
Speaking on BBC One’s ‘The Politics Show’, Mrs Short said: ‘Where the spin came was the suggestion that it was all weaponised, ready to go, immediately dangerous, likely to get into the hands of Al Qaeda, and therefore things were very, very urgent.
‘We were duped by the speed.’
She suggested ‘truth’ would win out in the end on the question of the severity of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime.
‘The question of, were we duped, was there a better way that wouldn’t have lost all those lives, and shouldn’t we have tried for the better way before we exhausted the possibilities, is such a big historical question that we need to get to the truth.’
Robin Cook agreed. He told Channel Four News that intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programme had been ‘exaggerated’ by the Prime Minister to push the case for military action.
‘We have now been in Iraq since the war ended for over 45 days and we have not found a single chemical shell. It is obvious that that statement was wrong.
‘What we can I think say now with some certitude is it is beginning to look as if the Government’s committed a monumental blunder.
The PM, for his part urged the public to be patient and await forthcoming evidence of WMD.
‘There is no doubt at all that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and has used weapons of mass destruction. There’s a reason why we had 12 years of UN resolutions.
‘And I have no doubt whatever that the evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be there. Absolutely.’
A YouGov poll for the Mail on Sunday found 63% of respondents believed Mr. Blair had ‘misled’ the public on the issue of Iraq’s WMD capacity.
