Blair accused of ‘duping’ cabinet on war

A FORMER member of British prime minister Tony Blair’s Cabinet reportedly accused him yesterday of spinning intelligence to justify the war on Iraq and said he had “duped” his colleagues about alleged weapons of mass destruction.

“I have concluded that the prime minister had decided to go to war in August sometime and he duped us all along,” The Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted former International Development Secretary Clare Short as saying. “He had decided for reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to create this sense of urgency and drive it. The way the intelligence was spun was part of that drive.”

Short resigned last month, angrily accusing Blair of breaking his promise to give the United Nations a central role in the post-war reconstruction and administration of Iraq. She had called his handling of the crisis “deeply reckless” before the war began and threatened to quit, but stayed in her Cabinet job through the conflict.