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A former minister in Tony Blair's government said yesterday that the ex-prime minster lied to British officials, lawmakers and citizens about his plans to have the United Kingdom join the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the New York Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 29).
Former International Development Minister Clare Short told an official panel examining the United Kingdom's involvement in the Iraq war that Blair had deceived her and other Cabinet officials regarding the guidence he was receiving from government attorneys who raised questions to the legal rationale of attacking Iraq.
Blair testified before the independent inquiry Friday, defending his reasoning for going to war against Iraq on the grounds that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the calculus surrounding fears over weapons of mass destruction had changed.
Short accused Blair of lying when he said that France was adamant about vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution that gave the go-ahead to use armed force against Iraq. This reportedly gave Blair the cover to say he had pursued all diplomatic avenues for dealing with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, allowing the United Kingdom to join the U.S.-led invasion.
"That was, in my view, a deliberate lie," Short said. 'It was one of the big deceits."
She asserted that then-French President Jacques Chirac could have been brought around to agreeing to support military intervention if the United States and the United Kingdom had been willing to allow U.N. inspectors in Iraq additional time to search for Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"There was no emergency; no one had attacked anyone," said Short, who resigned from the Cabinet in the wake of the invasion.
She added: "There wasn't any new WMD. ... We could have taken the time and got it right" (John Burns, New York Times, Feb. 3).