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> Wmd's, new calls for inquiry in Britain
Aon_Daonna 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 04:14 PM
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Number 10 wait and see on weapons
Downing Street has said it will wait and see whether the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) turns up evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The comments came in response to George W Bush saying he wants the facts about why no weapons have been found.

Tony Blair has been urged to admit the intelligence he presented to Parliament on Iraq was "wildly wrong".

"It's getting embarrassing to watch our government still trying to deny reality," said Robin Cook.

The former foreign secretary said Mr Blair should confess that while he believed information on Iraq's weapons "in good faith", it was wrong.

The US president said: "I want to know the facts [about WMD] I want to compare the ISG finds with what we thought."

That came after the White House conceded its intelligence reports on Iraq might have been wrong.

Mr Blair is due to be questioned over intelligence on Iraq's WMD when he makes his regular appearance before the influential Commons liaison committee of select committee chairmen on Tuesday.

False claims?

Condoleezza Rice, the US's national security advisor has given a round of interviews in which she acknowledges possible flaws in pre-war intelligence.

She told NBC television's Today show: "What we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground."


QUOTE
Does Britain now accept, as the US government now seems to believe, that weapons of mass destruction will not be found?
Doug Henderson


Her remarks follow former senior US weapons inspector David Kay's claims that intelligence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons were false.

Mr Cook said: "Now that even the White House has admitted they may have got it wrong, it's embarrassing to watch our government still trying to deny reality. The game is up.

"Even David Kay, recent head of the Iraq Survey Group, has told us that the hunt has been sufficiently intense to conclude that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

"Now that Lord Hutton has cleared Tony Blair of lying, he is in a strong position.

"He will never have a better opportunity to say that he believed in all good faith the intelligence he was given and he gave to Parliament, but that it has turned out to be wildly wrong.

Independent inquiry

Ex-foreign office and defence minister Doug Henderson has urged the government to "clarify its position".


"Does Britain now accept, as the US government now seems to believe, that weapons of mass destruction will not be found?"
Shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram also called on Tony Blair to explain why he still believed the WMD intelligence and pressed for an independent inquiry into the lead up to the Iraq war

"It seems that Tony Blair is the only person still certain that weapons of mass destruction will definitely be found. He must explain why he is the odd man out and produce the evidence as to why," he said.

Wait and see

But the inquiry calls were brushed aside by Mr Blair's official spokesman, who said the Iraq Survey Group should be allowed to complete its work.

He said: "The prime minister has said that he did believe the intelligence was right and he did believe there would be an explanation.

"What Condoleezza Rice actually said was we should wait for the facts. The process hasn't yet been completed. The ISG is still pursuing its work and we should wait for that."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_p...ics/3444105.stm

Published: 2004/01/30 17:27:07 GMT



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Aon_Daonna 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 04:22 PM
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for everyone who didn't follow the recent WMD discussion, the above things reported are in response to this:

QUOTE
The failures of intelligence

By Frank Gardner
BBC Security Correspondent

In Washington this week there was a damning testimony on western intelligence by the man who has been leading the hunt for Iraq's weapons.


Former senior US weapons inspector David Kay told the US Senate Armed Services Committee the original intelligence that Saddam had banned stockpiles was inaccurate.

"It turns out we were all wrong, probably, in my judgement, and that is most disturbing," he said.

Mr Kay's admission is certainly a great embarrassment to both the US and British Governments.

This is, after all, the man who has spent the last few months leading the coalition's search for those banned weapons and is almost uniquely positioned to know the true status of the hunt.

Britain's intelligence service, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), still maintain that most of the information that went into the Iraq dossier of Sept 2002 was correct at the time, including the claim that Saddam had actual WMD.

It should be noted that this was a view shared by many countries at the time, including some of those that opposed the war such as France and Germany, a fact that was pointed out this week by David Kay himself.

But "we probably all got it wrong," he said.

Baffled

The failure to find Saddam's alleged stocks of banned weapons has baffled every major intelligence agency. They nearly all thought he had them, including MI6.

Professor Anthony Glees is the director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies says that British intelligence were clearly not getting things right.

"What British intelligence was telling the government was clearly not properly accurate? WMD, for example, have not been found. And if intelligence is to be used to formulate policy in the future then policy-makers have to be entirely confident that the intelligence is totally accurate," he said.

The official view at the Secret Intelligence Service is that most of the intelligence that went into the Iraq dossier will eventually be proved correct.

But that includes the assessment that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction just before the war.

Since those weapons have still not been found there is likely to be growing pressure for an investigation into whether the intelligence service gave the government accurate information.

Difficult task

Under Saddam's dictatorship intelligence gathering was extremely difficult, as shown by the poverty of real intelligence that came out while he was in power.

In a totalitarian regime intelligence agencies need human spies on the ground and defectors, but they also need to be scrupulous in assessing the accuarcy of whats being told to them.


If the intelligence agencies were to undergo some sort of internal evaluation of their work from Iraq, they will want it to be kept as far out of the public eye as possible.

The natural candidate for carrying out such a review in the UK would be the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) headed by Anne Taylor MP.

The work of the intelligence agencies may have had more public attention than normal with the debate raging about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the reason for going to war in the first place.

The intelligence agenices are there to serve the government of the day, and they have almost no contact with the public.

If the government and the overseeing body, in Britain's case, the ISC are satisfied they are doing a good job that is likely to be more important to them than maintaining any kind of public image.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_p...ics/3442313.stm

Published: 2004/01/29 17:09:29 GMT

© BBC MMIV

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3442313.stm

I dunno, this sort of seems to me that they only just get what many people have said before... =/
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scottish2 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 06:02 PM
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As far as I'm concerned Bush needs to be tried for sending the world to War. I seriously doubt he knew nothing I mean he'd had to be both dumb and clueless to not have known.
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Aon_Daonna 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 06:04 PM
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it's very offtopic but:

ONLY 49 TO GO!!!!
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scottish2 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 07:01 PM
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Nope 46 laugh.gif Gonna make it no sweat before I leave all I have to do is 23 posts a day and will probably do a post or two more before bed so count will even be less by bedtime.
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High Plains Drifter 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 07:57 PM
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Just one correction to the BBC story. They imply that G.W.Bush has resigned himself to the fact that there are no WMD to be found, if you follow the story closely, that is not the case. He is still trying to tell the American public that they must be there someplace. In his State of the Union Address, Bush was telling us about all the WMD related activities that Kay was finding in Iraq. Three days later Kay resigns stating that he can find no evidence of WMD. It seems that everyday the man comes across as dumber or he thinks that we are completely clueless and will believe anything he says.

In the name of fighting terrorism, he has invaded two Islamic countries,(afghanistan may have been justified as it was actually harboring terrorists). Iraq on the other hand, had nothing to do with terrorism but with GWB's ego. If pressured enough, intelligence gathering organizations anywhere can eventually come up with something to please the powers that be especially if those powers refuse to accept opposing points of view.

If the President was serious about fighting terrorism, he would do something to improve our image in Islamic world like taking a hard stand with both sides in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, he would stop putting conditions on our aid to third world people, he would stop alienating our friends around the world by insisting that things be done his way, he would seek the advice of those in the Arab world instead of bullying them. That is what we need to do to fight terrorism because it will not stop as long as we ignore the ideas and feelings of those outside our own little cliche. Just because a person believes something different than us, it doesn't make them wrong!!!


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Aon_Daonna 
Posted: 30-Jan-2004, 10:10 PM
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hehe sorry dear but I was just posting what I read... you'd have to tell that to the BBC journalist who wrote it (there is an on going discussion on that particular part of the news so you can just butt your comment in on their page)

but if I was any of the high government officials I would slowly start sweating about them WMD's simply because the way they talked before it started WMD's were an imminent threat and they still haven't found anything... embarrassing... wink.gif
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scottish2 
Posted: 31-Jan-2004, 06:06 AM
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It is an embarrasment bag.gif
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Aon_Daonna 
Posted: 31-Jan-2004, 08:56 AM
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yeah.. it is
they were reporting about the changing political climate over the pond and that it seems to be changing towards ppl wanting to know about the WMD's.

Would be really embarrassing if they didn't...
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scottish2 
Posted: 31-Jan-2004, 08:59 AM
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Sad part is Bush cried wolf and now next time it happens and is for real whose going to believe us??? sad.gif
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