Heseltine accuses Blair of war lies

[cal04]

Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine has accused Tony Blair of lying to take Britain into war in Iraq.Lord Heseltine was joined by fellow Conservative veterans Lord Hurd and Kenneth Clarke in a broadside against the Prime Minister's handling of the crisis in the Middle East.

His error of judgment was so grave that he could not be trusted again in a similar situation, he said.The attacks from the three heavyweights of the Thatcher and Major administrations go beyond the official position of Michael Howard's current Conservative front bench. All three opposed the decision to go to war last year.

He linked it to the upcoming Presidential elections in the US, and denounced the commitment to remove the 850 men by Christmas as "militarily extraordinarily ill-judged".Asked whether he regarded Mr Blair as a liar, Lord Heseltine responded: "I think he has lied about the situation in the Middle East. We were told that there was a threat. We were told there were weapons of mass destruction. There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no threat."

Mr Blair's insistence that he honestly believed intelligence that has since turned out to be faulty was dismissed as "semantics" by Lord Heseltine, who said the PM was "trapped" into going to war by his desire to stand by his American allies.


http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/PA_NEWPOLITICSIraqsun01blairlies?source=&ct=5

[joeybee12]

1. Good Lord! And I'm believing them! The Labour-ites better get their

act together. They've been real wimpy in sort of denouncing Blair, and sort of standing by him. He's eventually going down, and they better bring someone up quick so they're not left empty-handed when it does happen.

[AP]

2. Heseltine has great hair for an old guy.

But I don't care one bit for his politics.