Campbell stands firm on 45-minute claim

Alastair Campbell today revealed that the controversial claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes was already in the intelligence document when it first came to him.
Downing Street's director of communications has always vigorously denied he "sexed up" the dossier by including the claim and today went on record in the Hutton inquiry to protest his innocence again.

In the first detailed account of his involvement with the intelligence documents the government used to justify going to war against Iraq, Mr Campbell said he did not know where the 45-minute claim had come from and had made no attempt to check it out.

"I knew it had come from the JIC but I wasn't aware either of the raw information it was based on, or the sourcing," he told the Hutton inquiry.

More: http://media.guardian.co.uk/huttoninquiry/story/0,13812,1021708,00.html

keep it from being bullcrap!
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

Looks like Campbell is trying to pass the blame onto the intelligence services now!

Here is the BBC's point by point.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3162735.stm

Campbell for all his faults is not a stupid man. He is playing a clever game and people are falling for it. The 45 minute claim is important but not critical to the rest of the dossier. By concentrating everyones attention on this point the government hope to avoid being exposed in respect of the rest of it.

the more I'm beginning to think that our intelligence was totally wrong.

If Blair acted on the back of faulty/erroneous intelligence then the investigation should be asking why. Did we get it mostly from the US or is MI6 totally incompetent?

Then "new" labour should admit that it was wrong to take us into this invasion of Iraq based on it. Sadly, I don't see that happening.

Remember folks, Blair claimed that Saddam posed a clear & present danger and that we were going to war to disarm Saddam of WMD's. No use trying to claim otherwise now, that was the basis for war that the British public was sold.

and the adherence to it, is beginning to sound like the statements made by the Iraqui information minister prior to the invasion of Baghdad.

it could be quite the show. Good call.

For several months now, there has been virtually no impediment to "intelligence" agencies obtaining far more reliable and unbiased data regarding Iraq's capabilities and recent history.

Yet all we're seeing is CYA instead of CIA.

Instead of updated and unbiased assessments we're seeing an all-out attempt to defend pretenses based on far less accurate data than is now available. Instead of an updated 'dossier' incorporating the results of far greater access, we're seeing efforts that're solely designed to substantiate flawed and incomplete perceptions of the past.

Could anything be clearer? :eyes: