No WMD Spells Trouble For Tony

By J.F.O. McAllister/London Sunday, June 01, 2003
    • Saddam Hussein has shown it doesn't pay to be the enemy of George W. Bush. Tony Blair may be questioning the virtues of being his friend.

    No matter how many plaudits Bush heaped on Blair for standing "shoulder to shoulder" in the march to Baghdad, the Iraq war was an extremely tough sell for the British Prime Minister. Millions marched against the war in London; two Cabinet ministers resigned over it, and in the crucial House of Commons vote authorizing war, 138 members of Blair's Labour Party voted for an antiwar amendment, the largest rebellion in parliamentary history. Blair's tenacious battle for public opinion rested squarely on the imminent danger posed by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. "I have never put our justification for action as regime change," he told the House of Commons. "We have to act within the terms set out in [U.N.] Resolution 1441," which focused on WMD. "That is our legal base."


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    But a few breezy words by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld last week--"It is also possible that [the Iraqis] decided they would destroy [their WMD] prior to a conflict"--have pulled the rug from under Blair's argument and caused a wave of anti-Blair commentaries. While Bush freely tossed out multiple arguments for war, including alleged Iraqi links with al-Qaeda and the righteousness of changing an "evil" regime, by Blair's tight logic, no WMD meant no war could be legitimate. That could spell trouble for Tony.

    Front-page stories in Britain now routinely question whether Blair lied to make his case, was lied to by the Americans or was the victim of a major intelligence blunder. A parliamentary inquiry is likely. Blair has a reputation for aggressive spinning, and if it's proved that he torqued up WMD evidence to serve his p.r. needs, he might even be pushed toward resignation. An intelligence official told the BBC that a dubious claim in the WMD dossier Blair released last September — that some of Saddam's troops were trained to deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes — was penned in at the last minute by Downing Street aides. Another charge in the dossier, that Iraq was procuring tons of uranium from Africa, was quickly shown to be bogus.

    Blair is fighting back. "The idea that we authorized, or made our intelligence agencies invent, some piece of evidence is completely absurd," he said last week. Senior British intelligence officials have backed him up, so the more probable explanation of why no weapons have materialized is either an overestimation before the war or an incompetent search since. Better for Blair to be a fool than a knave, but not by much; if his judgment was faulty on his casus belli, his leadership will be suspect. Despite the paltry results so far of the search for Iraq's banned weapons, he continues to insist that his prewar WMD claims will be vindicated. "You are just going to have to have a little bit of patience," he said in Warsaw last week. "I have absolutely no doubt at all that evidence will be found."

    Bush's high poll numbers mean he can afford to brush off pesky post-mortems. Blair doesn't have that luxury. Only 42% of British voters approve of his job performance. As always, Blair will reserve any criticisms he may have of Washington for the secure telephone line to the Oval Office. But not even British understatement could keep his aides from venting their regret that Rumsfeld had ever opened his mouth — and from praying that those WMD finally turn up.