|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Blair, Bush Deny Manipulating WMD Intelligence
U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday denied allegations in a recently disclosed British government memorandum that U.S. intelligence on pre-war Iraq’s WMD programs was being “fixed” to support an invasion, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 6). “There’s nothing farther from the truth,” said Bush. “Look, both of us didn’t want to use our military,” Bush added. “Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It’s the last option.” Bush also said he believed the memo was made public last month to hurt Blair’s re-election bid. “They dropped it out in the middle of his race,” said Bush. Blair also denied the allegations. “No, the facts were not being fixed in any shape or form at all,” said Blair. First disclosed by the Sunday Times of London on May 1 and written by top Blair aide Matthew Rycroft, the memo records the minutes of a meeting of Blair’s senior policy advisers some six months before the war began. According to the memo, British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove, recently returned from meetings in Washington, told other senior British officials that Bush “wanted to remove” Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein “through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” Dearlove was quoted in the memo as saying (Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, June 8).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
