Quote:
"People say the decision was already taken. The decision was not already taken." Blair said he was "a bit astonished" at the intensive U.S. media coverage about the memos, which included minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Blair and top officials at his Downing Street office.
According to the minutes of the meeting, Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of Britain's intelligence service, said the White House viewed military action against Saddam Hussein as inevitable following the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush "wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (weapons of mass destruction), read the memo, seen by the AP. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
In the interview, Blair said raising such concerns was a natural part of any examination of the cause for war.
"The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document," he said. "It would be absolutely weird if, when the Iraq issue was on the agenda, you were not constantly raising issues, trying to work them out, get them in the right place," he said.
Blair suggested that ensuring victory in Iraq was now more important than debating the case for invasion.
"The most important thing we can do in Iraq is concentrate on the fact ... that what is happening there is a monumental battle that affects our own security," he said. "You've got every bad element in the whole of the Middle East in Iraq trying to stop that country (from getting) on its feet and (becoming) a democracy."
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Forgive me for saying it, but just because Blair counters a condemning piece of evidence does not mean it did not happen.
This is the same person who stood in front of us and stated "Iraq has WMD" and "Britain could be attacked within 45 minutes."
I don't see anywhere where he refutes the fact that the memo is correct, he simply says it was "taken out of context."