Saturday, August 28, 2004

impeachblair.org

There is a move on, among a few members of the House of Commons, to propose Tony Blair’s impeachment. The aim is a debate. What’s of interest today is a 100-page report available from impeachblair.org. The report, written by Dan Plesch and Glen Rangwala, is titled “A Case to Answer A first report on the potential impeachment of the Prime Minister for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the invasion of Iraq”.

The report is of special merit because it systematically traces the Prime Minister’s statements, comparing them, for example, with evidence available from the Hutton and Butler inquiries. The authors’ judgments, most likely to prompt challenge when they infer from the absence of an action or statement they consider called for under evidenced circumstanes, are plain.

Neither Hutton nor Butler chose to consider whether Blair misled the British public, confining themselves to more narrow questions. [The Hutton inquiry was formally “Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr. David Kelly,” a noted British weapons expert, and Butler “Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction.”] Many critics dismiss the Hutton Report as a whitewash, and the Butler report as rather carefully drawn.

Whatever the strengths of the 9.11 Commission report, it is limited to subjects on which Commission members from the two larger political parties could agree, in the name of unanimity. Since the White House was engaged in an analogous exercise to bring the United States to war, and the claims made in both the United States and Britain sprang from much the same sources, the Plesch-Rangwala report will assist anyone seeking to pinpoint responsibility in Washington. One section addresses the question whether Blair promised Bush, in secret, to go to war.

Bruce 7:34 AM

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