A rchive Date
[ 04-02-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.com/Columnists/stanway.html
Bush and Blair face the music over WMDs
By PAUL STANWAY -- Edmonton Sun
February 4, 2004
U.S. President George Bush and British PM Tony Blair will try to control the outcome of their respective inquiries (announced this week) into the mammoth intelligence failures over Saddam Hussein's vanished weapons of mass destruction.
But both may yet face the ultimate political penalty for putting so much emphasis on the elusive WMDs.
This is the second Iraq-related probe for the British prime minister, and many in politics and the media who oppose U.S. military involvement in Iraq were predicting last week that the first one, by High Court Judge Lord Hutton, would be the end of Blair.
The CBC ran a lengthy, and very odd, report from London the night before the official release of the Hutton inquiry findings, suggesting the British PM was finished. When he clearly wasn't, the next night the national broadcaster was forced to carry another report detailing his Houdini-like escape.
Both reports missed the mark.
The CBC, like so many others, overlooked the fact that Lord Hutton was never asked to judge British political and military support for the invasion of Iraq - and so he didn't. He was asked to look into the circumstances surrounding the suicide of former British weapons inspector David Kelly, and his report comes down heavily on the British Broadcasting Corporation for suggesting that the Prime Minister's Office exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's WMDs.
If you read the Hutton findings, it is quite clear that this is precisely what happened (and Blair's communications guy took the fall for that months ago), but it was the BBC's exaggeration of Kelly's rather naive take on the political shenanigans that led the weapons expert to believe his professional credibility and public reputation was so damaged that death was the only escape. Which is what Hutton says.
The problem with judges (from the media's standpoint anyway) is that they take a literal view of their legal responsibilities. As I warned in this space months ago, Hutton was never asked to judge the broader issue of Britain's involvement in Iraq and would not do so.
For this, some have branded his report a whitewash. What they forget is that the Hutton inquiry laid bare the political manipulation of the Iraqi WMD question - and Blair will pay a stiff price for that at the next election.
That's if he runs, which now seems unlikely. Blair will ride into the sunset, carrying responsibility for an unpopular war with him.
Bush didn't have much choice in calling his own investigation into "U.S. intelligence failures" in Iraq. Not after former chief American weapons inspector David Kay (the guy who has led the search for Saddam's WMDs) said the administration's intelligence was "almost all wrong."
The president would seem to be in a much better position to survive such a probe than is the British PM. Most Americans, unlike most Brits, still support the war in Iraq. They know that the issue was always more than Saddam Hussein and his alleged WMDs, and would much rather fight the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq than in Manhattan.
In addition, Bush himself was much farther removed from the defective intelligence on Iraq than was Blair. He can paint himself as a victim of dodgy CIA reports, which he is in fact already doing.
Most Americans understand that doing nothing was not an option in the wake of 9-11, and so the question is whether they will blame Bush for doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
And the best answer, ironically, may be found in his father's experience. In the wake of the first Gulf campaign, Bush Sr. lost an election after fighting a successful war, with very few U.S. casualties, to an inconclusive end. He was never terribly unpopular, but without much fuss or fanfare the voters dumped him.
If the Democrats come up with a credible candidate, his son might face the same fate.
Letters to the editor should be sent to mailbag@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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