David Kay, the head of the ISG has asked for more time to search for evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Isn’t that what Hans Blicks asked for before we went to war?

The ISG has spent millions of US dollars and found next to nothing. They have found no weapons of mass destruction but have found some evidence that Iraq wanted to “resucitate” it’s wmd program.

Tony Blair and the Government told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They did not say that Iraq may have them in the future; no, they said that they could be deployed within 45 minutes of the order to fire being given. You therefore have to draw the conclusion that Tony Blair and the Government was wrong when it told us this.

So who is to blame?

There are two choices: Tony Blair and the Government or the British Intelligence agencies. If we believe Tony Blair’s assertion that the Government didn’t “embellish” or “exaggerate” the intelligence reports, then our intelligence organisations should be investigated for incompetence and those responsible for the faulty reports should be fired.

The Today programme had an item about new laws designed to safeguard children from sexual predators. Apparently they also criminalise two 15 year olds for having a kiss! What really got me was that the Home Office Minister, Paul Goggins, was saying that they couldn’t work out how to phrase it so that this wasn’t possible. I mean come on! What kind of excuse it that? He was going on about having to define what kinds of “sexual acts” would be covered… are our legislators this blinkered? How about going along the lines of if there is age difference of less than 2 years, then any wrong doing isn’t covered using the sexual predator stuff and we let existing laws cover it?

Mr Goggins’ rather poor comment that the police have promised that they won’t use the law against teenagers is equally stupid. We already know that when you give the police powers they will use them. Take the case of the demonstrators at the arms fair who were searched without any reason… Besides, if the law isn’t going to be used against teenagers like that, then phrase it such that it can’t be!

It just annoys me that we can’t even get a relatively simple law to protect children without cocking it up because we can’t think of the right way to word it.

The more I hear about how inaccurate the Government’s case for war with Iraq was, the less trust I have in Tony Blair and his Government. No matter how much the government is now saying that it wasn’t about a current threat of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, it was! They are trying to move the goal posts and tell us that we invaded Iraq because Saddam would have become a bigger threat in the future and that his regime was bad. Those reasons may be good reasons and it may be good that Saddam is gone, but it wasn’t what we were sold prior to the war.

Intrestingly the call for an independant inquiry into the evidence presented to the House of Commons was defeated with a government majority of 98. The government pulled out all the stops to avoid defeat and 25% of the Labour backbenchers voted with the opposition! (the government’s majority is 170). So we now have two parlimentary committees looking into it. These are the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence Committee.

The Intelligence Committee is appointed by Tony Blair and meets in private. When it publishes its report, Tony Blair will have complete editorial control and has the right to remove any parts of the report that he wants to before the report is published. Therefore the investigation by this committee is a waste of time and effort as I certainly (and anyone else who can think) won’t believe its findings anyway. So that just leaves us with the Foreign Affairs committee that has to go cap in hand to the House of Commons everytime it wants to see something that the government doesn’t want it to. Remembering that the government has a 170 majority, we come to the conclusion that the Foreign Affairs committee is going to be hamstrung and no matter how committed they are to the truth, they will only be able to see what the government wants them to see.

Of course, I use the word “government” when I really mean “Tony Blair”. It’s quite clear that Claire Short is right when she says that he is autocratic and believes himself to be more like a president than a prime minister…

Sorry Tony, but I don’t believe a word you say anymore.