Jonathan Freedland (Guardian Utd): Last of the believers

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday January 28

Last of the believers
Only Blair now insists there were Iraqi WMDs. But even claiming an honest mistake will no longer wash
By Jonathan Freedland

It's getting embarrassing. Anybody who's anybody now admits that there are no, and were no, weapons of mass destruction worth the name in Iraq. The roll-call of converts to what used to be the exclusive position of the anti-war camp gets more impressive by the day.
David Kay, President Bush's handpicked arms inspector and the former chief weapons monitor of the CIA - hardly a limp-wristed European peacenik - quit his post at the head of the Iraq Survey Group last week, concluding that there are no Iraqi WMD to be found: "I don't think they existed," he said bluntly. Forty eight hours later, Colin Powell, the US secretary of state who a year ago was holding the UN security council rapt with his slide show on Saddam's weapons' concealment, complete with scary satellite shots of secret arms factories, admitted that such weapons may never be found. Even the president himself seems to have got the message. In his state of the union address last week, Bush knew better than to bang the tired drum of 2003. In a phrase so qualified as to be comic, he spoke only of "weapons of mass destruction-related programme activities".
This is one verdict we do not need to hear from Lord Hutton at lunchtime today. Everyone gets it already - there were no weapons of mass destruction; everyone, that is, but the British government . . . .
So why does Blair not just come clean and admit he got it wrong? One factor could be the Hutton inquiry itself. Downing Street might have calculated that such an admission would have weakened its position, or at least confused things, during the long wait for today. Better to see what his lordship decides, and then concede what has to be conceded. Hutton apart, a recognition that the WMD do not exist would force a painful choice. Blair would have to admit either that he knew they were not there - and that he exaggerated or lied when he said they were - or that he made an honest mistake.

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