View From The House - 9th September 2004

Reprinted From The Lichfield Mercury

Impeach Blair?

As Parliament returns after the August break MPs will have to consider the question of impeachment. A Plaid Cymru (National Party of Wales) MP, Adam Price, is arguing Blair should be impeached over the war in Iraq. He doesn’t argue that the Prime Minister should be impeached because he took us into war, but because he mislead the House of Commons and the nation over the reasons why he took us into war.

A dossier has been prepared by two academics: one is a lecturer at Cambridge and the other is a research fellow of London and Keele universities. Among other things, this is what they say.

In April 2002, Tony Blair told NBC in the US “We know that he (Saddam Hussein) has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons”. He said similar in the UK. But only in the previous month, March 2002, we now know that Blair was informed by his own Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) made up of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other Government security agencies: “Intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is sporadic and patchy. From the evidence available to us, we believe Iraq retains some production equipment and some small stocks of chemical warfare agent precursors and may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons”. A major difference. A year later on 18th March 2003 when we debated war with Iraq in the House of Commons, the deceit continued. In the Government resolution tabled by Blair it said: “This House recognises that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and its continuing non-compliance with Security Council Resolutions, pose a threat to international peace and security”. But Government advice to its own ministers at the time based on JIC advice to the PM was “Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbours. Saddam has used WMD in the past and could do so again if his regime was under threat”; no mention of using WMD unless he was attacked first. Another major discrepancy.

In September 2002 Blair told the House of Commons that Saddam’s WMD programme was “active, detailed and growing” whereas he had been advised that the weapons programme had been “frozen or hindered”. And Blair went on to say in the Commons “I am aware of course that people are going to have to take elements of this on the good faith of the intelligence services. But this is what they are telling me, the British Prime Minister, and my senior colleagues. The intelligence picture they paint is extensive detailed and authoritative”. But now we know it wasn’t. Just two weeks earlier the Chief of MI6 met with the PM and told him of the sources they had in Iraq on which they were basing their intelligence. Lord Butler was privy to this material and said “We were struck by the relative thinness of the intelligence base supporting the greater firmness of the JIC’s judgements (on WMD)”. So where was this “extensive detailed and authoritative” picture that Blair had talked about? And there are many other examples in the dossier which can be found at www.impeachblair.org/

Now, Tony Blair defends his actions by saying that it was right to rid the world of a corrupt and murderous regime. I agree. But what is not right is to lie to the British people and to Parliament. It is not right for the ends to justify the means.

There are rotten and murderous regimes in Burma and Zimbabwe. Nuclear weapons are being made in Iran and North Korea by their rogue regimes. Blair latest argument for the invasion of Iraq would also justify our liberating Zimbabwe. Some would say that would be right. But the reasons for any future intervention must be honestly declared.

The evidence in Adam Price’s dossier apears damning. Either Tony Blair in his enthusiasm is a stranger to the truth or he deliberately mislead Parliament. Can there be another explanation? Either way, there has to be a reckoning otherwise future Prime Ministers will also see no need for honesty in great affairs of state. The time may come when Parliament may have to decide: to impeach or not.