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Parliamentary Committee Clears Blair of Deliberately Exaggerating Intelligence on Iraqi Weapons The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee today ruled that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office did not deliberately exaggerate intelligence that was contained in a September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Sept. 5). The committee did criticize, however, the inclusion of a claim in the report that the Iraqi military could have deployed biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes of being ordered to do so, AP reported. The committee also said that British Defense Minister Geoff Hoon and his ministry had been “unhelpful and potentially misleading” by failing at first to reveal that some ministry analysts had expressed concerns about the dossier (Ed Johnson, Associated Press/Washington Post, Sept. 11). The committee’s inquiry was conducted separately from another parliamentary inquiry into the apparent suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, who was the source for a BBC report that alleged that Blair’s office had “sexed up” prewar intelligence on Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse. Some British newspapers have begun to speculate that Hoon may be forced to resign, AFP reported. “Iraq inquiry leaves Hoon at the precipice,” said a headline in the London Independent (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 11). U.S. Report to Answer Iraq WMD Questions, Rice Says Meanwhile, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Monday that lingering questions surrounding Iraq’s former WMD capabilities would be answered in a report later this month by David Kay, a CIA representative in Iraq coordinating the search for weapons of mass destruction. Kay, a senior official of the Iraq Survey Group, “is doing a thorough job now of putting together documentary evidence,” Rice said. Kay’s work includes interviews with Iraqis and physical evidence to illustrate “a full picture of what has happened” to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s alleged WMD stockpiles and “the state of his (WMD) programs,” she said (U.S. Defense Department release, Sept. 10).
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