Blair Aide Warned Against Saying Iraq Was Imminent Threat

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA5RZASJJD.html

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director, a key figure in a controversy over the government's case for war in Iraq, said Tuesday that it was Blair who decided to publish a contentious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Alastair Campbell told an inquiry into the death of a government weapons inspector that Blair wanted to make the information public last September as a way of informing people about the threat posed by Iraq while calming fears that a military attack was imminent.

He said Blair "was seeing all this intelligence material coming in which made him more and more concerned about Iraq as a threat and he wanted to put some of that into the public domain."

A May 29 British Broadcasting Corp. report, which is at the heart of the inquiry, quoted an unidentified source as claiming that the September dossier was "transformed" in the weeks before publication to strengthen the allegations of an Iraqi threat.

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[dfong63]

1. the jig is up, tony

Alastair Campbell told an inquiry into the death of a government weapons inspector that Blair wanted to make the information public last September as a way of informing people about the threat posed by Iraq while calming fears that a military attack was imminent.

in other words, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

exposed as a liar and manipulator on all fronts.

[T_i_B]

2. Campbell is Blair's lying machine

And I really can't see why Campbell would stab Blair in the back as Blair is in many respects a creation of Alistair Campbell.

From what I have seen Blair wanted the information to sell the public and if Campbell is to be belived the intelligence services were simply providing Blair with what he had requested. Mind you, Campbell appears to be trying to blame everyone he can over this sad sorry mess except Downing Street. Every time a memo or an e-mail was presented which conveyed doubts about the dossier Campbell seemingly denied all knowlege. Here is the BBC's point by point bit. Make of all this what you will.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3162735.stm

Mr Campbell said an original version of the dossier on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been dropped as it "wasn't a terribly good document overall" to put in the public domain.

Mr Campbell confirmed that a meeting on 5 September decided the Iraq dossier had to be "revelatory, new and informative".

He said he did not know if the document considered at the meeting on 5 September referred to the 45 minute claim