BY ROHAN PEARCE
An opinion poll, conducted August 7-8 by YouGov on behalf of the Mail on Sunday, confirmed that support for the ruling British Labour Party is continuing to plummet as the lies spun by Prime Minister Tony Blair's government to justify participation in the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq unravel.
Thirty-eight per cent of respondents indicated they would vote for the opposition Conservative Party; only 34% intended to vote for Labour. A YouGov poll conducted April 23-24 had placed Labour ahead of the Tories, with 40% of poll participants indicating they would vote for Labour. In early June, support for Labour and the Conservatives was neck and neck (Labour having a 1% edge at 37%). But since then, support for Blair's government has steadily, albeit gradually, dropped.
Further blows to Labour's public credibility have been dealt by the Hutton inquiry. Named after its chairperson, James Hutton (a former lord chief justice in Northern Ireland), the inquiry began on August 11. The inquiry's terms of reference, set by the Blair government, are to "urgently to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr [David] Kelly".
The Kelly controversy centres on reports by the BBC's Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts that, according to an anonymous defence ministry official (later revealed to be Kelly), Blair's September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had been "sexed up". The accusations were levelled in particular at Blair's director of communications, Alistair Campbell.
Evidence tendered to the inquiry so far has proved that the dossier was indeed rewritten. An email sent to Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, on September 5 on behalf of Campbell stated: "'Re dossier, substantial rewrite ... which JS [John Scarlett, the chairperson of the House of Commons' joint intelligence committee] will take to US next Friday, and be in shape Monday thereafter. Structure as per TB's [Tony Blair's] discussion. Agreement that there has to be real intelligence material in their presentation as such."
Even rewritten, however, the dossier wasn't considered by Campbell as good enough to make the case for a war against Iraq. An email from Powell to Scarlett on September 17 (with copies sent to Campbell and Blair's foreign policy adviser David Manning) stated that, while the "dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced", it "does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam".
It added: "In other words it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the West. We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat. The case we are making is that he has continued to develop WMD since 1998, and is in breach of UN resolutions."
The email warned that "if I was Saddam I would take a party of Western journalists to the Ibn Sina factory or one of the others pictured in the document to demonstrate there is nothing there. How do we close off that avenue to him in advance?" (The final version of the dossier included the claim: "Other dual-use facilities, which are capable of being used to support the production of chemical agent and precursors have been rebuilt and re-equipped. New chemical facilities have been built, some with illegal foreign assistance, and are probably fully in operation or ready for production. These include the Ibn Sina Company..." Unsurprisingly, UN inspections of the facility on December 11, 2002, and on January 4 and 11 of this year found no evidence of WMD-related activities.) The dossier was changed again between September 19, when it was titled Iraq's Programme for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and when it was released on September 24, under the title Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
On the day it was released, Blair told parliament that Saddam Hussein's WMD "program is active, detailed and growing", adding: "The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction program is not shut down; it is up and running now." Only a week before, Powell's email on the dossier had said that it "does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam"!
Testimony before the Hutton inquiry has confirmed that Downing Street and the top levels of the defence ministry were involved in the decision to release Kelly's name to the media (through dropping hints as to the identity of Gilligan's source and confirming his identity if journalists guessed correctly).
The exposure of Kelly's identity is widely regarded as a key factor in his apparent suicide.
Central to the Kelly controversy was the claim of the dossier that Iraq's "military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them". Gilligan had reported on May 29 that according to his anonymous source (Kelly) the dossier "was transformed in the week before it was published, to make it sexier. The classic example was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes."
The inquiry has shown that the claim was not in the original draft of the dossier, being inserted some time around September 10.
Other evidence submitted to the inquiry has shown that the defence ministry's intelligence staff had expressed concerns in July of this year that "the language in the dossier was too strong on the continued production of chemical and biological agents".
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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