Did Blair lie to us?

The PM's warning that Iraq could strike in 45 minutes now looks bogus, and we may never trust him again

Polly Toynbee
Friday May 30, 2003
The Guardian

Among the tragedies of the Iraq war this one might seem trivial - the end of Tony Blair as the great persuader. His phenomenal ability to convince people of almost anything is done for, dead in the filthy water of the Baghdad streets. That spillage is a sorry waste of irrecoverable political credibility that should have been saved for other things.

He squandered it on September 24 last year as he spoke to a mesmerised House of Commons, presenting his dossier of intelligence information on Saddam's weapons. It was a bravura performance, spellbinding in its quiet solemnity, reasoning the arguments one by one, blending conviction with eerie threats. Forty-five minutes! Good God! You could see the MPs' hairs standing up on end, calculating how far this holocaust might reach. That precise timing resonated with a generation that grew up discussing what to do in the four-minute nuclear warning - run a mile, boil an egg, have sex... In that speech he over-egged it and he must have known it. Whether Downing Street demanded the fateful "45 minutes" or not, he knew - and it is there in cold print - that the chilling words ran far beyond what anyone knew for sure.

Reading his introduction to the dossier, it is careful in its caveats, filled with "probably", "appears" and "almost certainly". "Intelligence is not always right" and "gathering intelligence inside Iraq is not easy" pepper the text. But between these come the deadly shockers - one-and-a-half tonnes of VX nerve agent, 26,000 litres of anthrax spores, 30,000 special munitions of delivery - and then that killer 45 minutes. "Our purpose is disarmament," he said. "The whole purpose" was "a proper process of disarmament".

http://www.guardian.co.uk