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>"When you go to Iraq and talk to people there and see the freedom they have, you realize why it was emphatically the right thing to do,"< Blair, who made the above statement, sneaked into Basrah on Thursday morning, was not received with "roses" and music but with complaints and disappointment, and the only place he visited was a primary school. I wonder what people he is talking about.. Blair was shown on TV with small children giving him flowers and one kissing him: something Saddam Hussein often did!! Except, of course, when Saddam did that he was compared to Hitler.. How can the British vote a liar like Blair as PM?? HZ ----------------------------------------- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2850966 Angry Blair Says UK Did Not Invent WMD Evidence Fri May 30, 2003 07:20 AM ET By Mike Peacock WARSAW (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday his government did not fabricate evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to justify the war on Iraq. But Blair, facing a domestic storm over the issue, did not specifically address the allegation that his office hyped up intelligence reports to strengthen its case for war. "The idea that we authorized or made our intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd," a visibly indignant Blair said in Poland. "Saddam's history of weapons of mass destruction is not some invention of the British security services." Widespread international cynicism about British and American justification for war was stoked this week by a BBC report that an intelligence dossier had been altered on the request of Blair's office to make it "sexier" by adding that Saddam's weapons could be readied for use within 45 minutes. The controversy has also been fueled by comments from the two top U.S. defense officials that the American decision to stress the weapons' threat was taken for "bureaucratic" reasons and that Iraq may have anyway destroyed them before the war. No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq despite repeated assertions by Blair and President Bush before the March 20 invasion that the threat posed by Saddam's stocks warranted a war to eliminate them. Blair, in comments dominating a news conference with Polish Premier Leszek Miller, said he had no doubt of Saddam's weapons. "The evidence that we had of weapons of mass destruction was evidence drawn up and accepted by the Joint Intelligence Committee. That evidence...is evidence the truth of which I have absolutely no doubt about at all," he said. The British leader said there was well documented U.N. evidence of Saddam's weapons programs, and fresh evidence should soon be uncovered if people showed a bit of "patience." Blair said new probes of alleged sites had only just begun but "we have found two trailers, both of which we believe were used to produce biological and chemical weapons." "You have just got to have a little bit of patience. Blair, who staked his premiership on backing the U.S.-led war against Saddam despite initial majority opposition among Britons, said the anti-war movement was clearly gunning for him. "When you go to Iraq and talk to people there and see the freedom they have, you realize why it was emphatically the right thing to do," said Blair, who paid a lightning visit to British-controlled southern Iraq on Thursday. In Britain, newspaper headlines like "Sex it Up!" and "Lies, Lies, Lies" piled the pressure on the government to prove that it did not mislead parliament or the public. More than 70 disgruntled members of parliament (MPs) have signed up to a motion urging the government to give evidence to parliament on Saddam's weapons and its motives for going to war. "The time has come when the British government needs to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam was a threat to our national interests," Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary who resigned from the government in protest at the Iraq war, wrote in The Independent newspaper. "We went to war for reasons of U.S. foreign policy and Republican domestic politics." __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk