Joe Conason's Journal: Our allies change their tune on WMD...

Our allies change their tune on WMD -- while our leaders prepare a fall guy.

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July 10, 2003 | What they say -- but no longer believe
Everyone in the White House and Downing Street still proclaims that those weapons of mass destruction will be found somewhere, somehow, someday in Iraq. But today, BBC political editor Andrew Marr reports that at the highest levels of the British government, such statements are for public consumption only. Tony Blair himself is backing away from his previous predictions that coalition teams would find a forbidden arsenal. Instead, as of yesterday, the prime minister changed his emphasis to the likelihood of finding evidence of weapons programs, rather than actual weapons.

So far, very little evidence of either kind has turned up (despite the diligent efforts of U.S. and British army specialists, Fox News and Judith Miller). But Blair's shift is another sign that the pressures of public and press scrutiny are taking a severe toll on his credibility. Among the political figures in Britain who have demanded an "independent inquiry" into the Blair government's justification for war is former P.M. John Major -- a close friend of the Bush family and currently an associate of the president's father in the Carlyle Group. If their Tories want an independent probe, why are our Republicans so resistant?

Apparently they would rather just hang the blame on CIA director George Tenet, as a "senior administration official" did in anonymous comments to the Washington Post:

"If Tenet had called up and said, 'Take it out,' we would have taken it out. When it was signed off on at highest level, it was not brought into question by those who would know or those who were tasked to know at the agency."

Joe Conason's Journal

so the bloodletting and scapegoating now begins in the US...

And people are still talking about those absent weapons! It's a damn shame that this story, now in its sixth week, doesn't have any legs.

Keep pounding the drum, folks! This issue is easy to understand, and the pile of bodies just keeps getting larger. Bush lied about the reasons for the invasion of Iraq. Thousands have died as a direct consequence. And we are no safer and probably in quite a bit more danger than before this ill-considered bit of imperialism was launched. From the A to the B to the C.

To the I? Impeachment?