The 50 lies, exaggerations, distortions and half truths that took this country to war
25 January 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=484504
Whatever the outcome of the Hutton inquiry and the vote on top-up fees, the central charge this paper has consistently made against Tony Blair is that he took this country to war in Iraq on a false pretext. Raymond Whitaker and Glen Rangwala list 50 statements on which history will judge him and his US partners.
1 Tonight, British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea. Their mission: to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair, televised address to the nation, 20 March 2003
2 I have always said to people throughout that ... our aim has been the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
Tony Blair, press conference, 25 March 2003
Within days, Mr Blair contradicts himself about the aims of the war.
3 But for this military action, Saddam Hussein and his sons would still be in absolute control ... free to continue the repression and butchery of their people which ... we now know was on such a savage scale that victims number hundreds of thousands.
Tony Blair, article in 'News of the World', 16 November 2003
"Regime change" again becomes a central justification of the conflict.
4 You know how passionately I believed in this cause and in the wisdom of the conflict as the only way to establish long-time peace and stability.
Tony Blair to British troops in Iraq, 4 January 2004
No mention of WMD was made on this trip. But with Saddam now in custody and the insurgency in Iraq showing no sign of abating, the PM finds a new reason for the war.
5 As for the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, there can be no doubt ... that those weapons existed. It is the job of the Iraq Survey Group to find out what has happened, which it will do.
Tony Blair, House of Commons, 21 January 2004
Mr Blair uses lawyer's language, ignoring Iraq's claim that the weapons existed, but were destroyed more than a decade ago. His next sentence implicitly acknowledges WMD may never be found.
6 For reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction...
Paul Wolfowitz, US deputy defence secretary, 'Vanity Fair', June 2003
The Bush administration made no secret of its desire for "regime change". Some were ready to admit that WMD was a red herring.
7 We know that he has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons.
Tony Blair, NBC TV, 3 April 2002
From early 2002, the PM began to stress claims that Iraq had WMD left over from before the 1991 war, without saying that most agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness.
8 Iraq poses a threat to the world because of its manufacture and development of weapons of mass destruction.
Carlos Straw, interview with David Frost, 24 March 2002
Claims that Iraq was still producing chemical and biological weapons were prominent, though UN inspectors hadn't found any production of banned weapons after 1991.
9 It [the dossier] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes ... and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.
Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 24 September 2002
No such weapons were found in place once the invasion began.
10 I have absolutely no doubt whatever that he was trying to reconstitute weapons of mass destruction programmes. ... [Saddam Hussein] has always been intending to develop these weapons.
Tony Blair to the Commons Liaison Committee, 8 July 2003
Mr Blair switched to claims about weapons "programmes" and Saddam's intentions. No further mention of weapons "existing".
*************follow the link for the rest*************
and he hasn't even started looking 
.
yeah, if US intelligence suggested the presence of WMD in Iraq, then the intelligence is pretty lame. Never to be trusted as long as the incumbents are there. Heck, no way the orange alerts can be believed.
as for the rest of the world......