Posted 4:48 AM by Dil
Hutton and Elliot on euro
http://politicstalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?50@@.4a913ec5

Posted 4:17 AM by Dil
Hugo Young - Blair intended all along
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,969046,00.html

Posted 5:16 AM by Dil
Anthony Howard Times
That does not, however, automatically imply that he is right. Anthony Eden all-too-evidently felt equally strongly about Colonel Nasser and the Suez Canal in 1956, but that did not stop him leading this country to shame and humiliation in the “Edibras Furioso” expedition of that year. There is, though, a crucial difference between then and now. Eden — who did, in fact, enjoy some success in turning public opinion around between September and November 1956 — embarked on the 72-hour war against Egypt suffering from a fatal flaw. His whole policy in the run-up to it was, as The Observer said at the time, based on “crookedness”. The then Prime Minister never told the truth to the British public about the deceitful collusion which lay behind the Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt, and he was still lying about it when he made his last appearance in the House of Commons just before Christmas that same year. By contrast I know of no one, even among his opponents, who doubts that, however wrong he may be, the present Prime Minister comes before the court of public opinion on this occasion with entirely clean hands.

That is not by any means the same thing as saying that he has avoided all mistakes. It was undeniably a serious one for Blair, on last Sunday night’s BBC Two programme Hot Line to the President, even to appear to acquiesce in Robert McNamara’s charge that Britain had failed to “pay the blood price” over Vietnam. That phrase “the blood price” will now hang around the Prime Minister’s neck just as that rash message “Wanted — Dead or Alive” (about Osama bin Laden) continues to girdle the collar of the President. Lurid or even demotic language nearly always comes back to haunt any political leader reckless enough to use it at times of crisis.

To be fair, though, there was an element of justice in McNamara’s accusation when it was originally made. The trouble with the Wilson Government’s attitude to the Vietnam War was that it appeared ready to give LBJ and the US Administration every form of support except for the one it needed most — practical military help. It was not a particularly creditable or even honourable posture, and it is hard to fault Blair’s logic when he insists that he is not prepared to do that kind of thing again.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3463-409992,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk_politics/2239887.stm

Posted 4:18 PM by Dil
Revealed: How Blair used discredited WMD 'evidence'
UK intelligence chiefs warned claim that Iraq could activate banned weapons in 45 minutes came from unreliable defector
By Raymond Whitaker, Paul Lashmar and Andy McSmith
01 June 2003


Tony Blair's sensational pre-war claim that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "could be activated within 45 minutes" was based on information from a single Iraqi defector of dubious reliability, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

British intelligence sources said the defector, recruited by Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, told his story to American officials. It was passed on to London as part of regular information-sharing with Washington, but British intelligence chiefs considered the "45 minutes" claim to be unreliable and uncorroborated by any other evidence. How it came to be included as the most dramatic element in the Government's "intelligence dossier" last September, making the case for war, is now the subject of a furious row in Whitehall and abroad.