Blair to cooperate in Iraq intelligence probe

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair, under fire from lawmakers over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which so far can't be found, said Wednesday that he will cooperate with a parliamentary probe into his handling of intelligence reports.\nBlair, who made Iraqi weapons of mass destruction the core of his case for war, hotly rejected claims that his government had exaggerated the threat or misused intelligence material. Opposition politicians called for an independent inquiry.\n"The truth is nobody believes a word now that the prime minister is saying," Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith shouted above the jeering of Blair's supporters.\nQuestions have been raised both in Britain and the United States about why coalition forces have not found evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in stock and ready to use. The issue has been particularly acute for Blair because allegations about those weapons were always his leading reason for going to war.\nProof that he or his government lied to Parliament would be fatal to Blair's position, though for now he enjoys broad support from Labor Party lawmakers.\nIn hot-tempered exchanges in the House of Commons, Blair let his exasperation show.\n"In the end, there have been many claims made about the Iraq conflict, that hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, that it was going to be my Vietnam, that the Middle East was going to be in flames and this latest one, that weapons of mass destruction were a complete invention by the British government," Blair said.\n"The truth is, some people resent the fact it was right to go to conflict. We won the conflict thanks to the magnificent contribution of the British troops, and Iraq is now free and we should be proud of that."\nIn Washington, where two U.S. Senate committees were pushing for a similar investigation into intelligence on Iraqi weapons, a senior Pentagon official on Wednesday rebutted reports that he had put a political spin on intelligence about Iraq's links to terrorism in order to build a case for war.\nDoug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, denied news reports that members of a small group of Defense Department officials were directed in 2001 to find evidence of connections between Iraq and the al Qaeda terror group and weapons of mass destruction.\nBritain was the only country to make a major contribution of military forces to the U.S.-led campaign to topple Saddam. The deployment was Britain's biggest since the Falkland Islands war in 1982, and included 26,000 ground troops, an 18-ship naval deployment, a hundred fixed-wing aircraft including fighter-bombers, and 27 helicopters. Thirty-four British military personnel were killed in the conflict.\nBlair's unwavering support of President Bush provoked significant opposition within Britain. Parliament did vote in favor of military action on March 18, but 138 members of Blair's Labor Party voted against him -- the biggest revolt within the party since Blair won power in 1997.\nOn Wednesday, the prime minister announced that the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee had contacted the government early last month to conduct an inquiry into intelligence on Iraq. That investigation, however, may not quiet the controversy.\n"I remind the whole house that the prime minister will only let that committee see the intelligence reports he wants them to see," Duncan Smith said.\n"It reports directly to him, and he can withhold any part or all of its reports. This committee ... is being asked to investigate his role and that of his closest advisers," Duncan Smith said.\nThe probe by the Intelligence and Security Committee is separate from the investigation announced late Tuesday by the influential House of Commons Foreign Relations Committee.\nBlair described as "completely and utterly untrue" a media report that his office had redrafted an intelligence service report to emphasize a claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. He also rejected reports that the claim was based on a single Iraqi defector, saying the information came from an "established and reliable source."\n"I have spoken and conferred with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee: There was no attempt at any time by any official or minister or member of (my) staff to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and their judgments -- including the judgment about the so-called 45 minutes -- was a judgment made by the intelligence committee and by them alone" Blair said.\nRobin Cook, who resigned from the Cabinet to protest the war, challenged Blair to admit that the government had been wrong on the 45-minute claim and in asserting that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa for a weapons program.\nBlair said intelligence supported both claims at the time but that the allegation about Africa might prove to be wrong.\nThe latest controversy about the weapons was fueled by a report on BBC Radio quoting an unidentified "senior British official" as saying intelligence officers were unhappy about the inclusion in the dossier of evidence they regarded as unreliable -- such as the 45-minute claim.\nJohn Reid, a senior member of Blair's Cabinet, on Wednesday said "rogue" elements within the intelligence services were responsible for the BBC report.\n"When I look at who is supposed to be the source of this according to the BBC's own reporter, it is one individual, unnamed, anonymous, uncorroborated official who is in some way connected with the intelligence service," Reid told BBC TV.\n"It amazes me that serious organizations like the BBC should take the word of such obviously rogue isolated individuals"