Intelligence experts had doubts about Iraq intelligence

LONDON -- Interrupted by shouts and heckles, Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday defended his decision to launch an inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq but not to examine whether the war was justified.

"That is a question for the government first, then for parliament and finally for the people to decide. ... There will carry on being a debate about whether the war was justified or not. That is democracy. We don't need a committee to tell us that."

Blair spoke at the opening of a parliamentary debate on the reasons for war in Iraq and the conclusions of an investigation by Lord Hutton into the death of a government weapons scientist.

Shouts from anti-war demonstrators in the public gallery drowned out the prime minister five times during his statement, forcing the speaker to clear the gallery and adjourn the proceedings for 10 minutes.

"Murderer!" shouted one protester. "Whitewash!" yelled another.

"I somehow feel we're not being entirely persuasive in certain quarters," Blair quipped after one of the interruptions, drawing a laugh from legislators.

Before the break, Blair defended Hutton's report, which cleared his government of allegations that it "sexed up" an intelligence dossier to justify war and mistreated adviser David Kelly before his July suicide.

Hutton found that the British Broadcasting Corp. had wrongly reported that Blair's office overrode objections from intelligence officials to claim that Iraq could deploy biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes, and that the BBC reporter was also wrong in saying the government "probably knew" that claim was wrong.

"Not a single shred of evidence was presented to his inquiry that would have justified an alternative finding," Blair said.

The prime minister had to ask one lawmaker to repeat a question about the report after the hecklers drowned him out.

Hutton's report has been met with skepticism by some Britons and many of Blair's political opponents, who have derided it as a "whitewash" that was too easy on the government on too harsh on the BBC.

Pressing that theme, several protesters splashed white paint on the gates of Downing Street, home to the prime minister's official residence. Police said five people were arrested.

The May BBC report at the center of the debate quoted an anonymous official -- later identified as Kelly -- as claiming Blair's office exaggerated intelligence on Iraqi weapons. Hutton last week called the report "unfounded" and the broadcaster's editorial processes "defective," prompting the BBC's board chairman and its chief executive to resign, along with journalist Andrew Gilligan, who reported the piece.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and on Tuesday Blair announced an inquiry into the quality of prewar intelligence.

During his statement, Blair was challenged by Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, whose party -- the third-largest in Parliament -- has refused to back Blair's inquiry because it will examine only the government's use of intelligence and not the justification for going to war.

While he defended the decision to bar that panel from examining whether he made the right decision in going to war, Blair conceded that it made sense to examine the intelligence on which he based his decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Pressure for an inquiry grew after David Kay, the former CIA weapons inspector in Iraq, said he doubted that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in recent years.

"I accept (the inspectors) have not found what I and many others including Dr. Kay confidently expected they would -- actual weapons ready for immediate use," Blair said.

"But let others accept that what they have found are laboratories, technology, diagrams, documents, teams of scientists told to conceal their work on biological, nuclear and chemical weapons capability, that in sum amounts to breaches of the United Nations resolution," he said.

Blair derided those who have criticized the mandate of the new inquiry and the findings of Hutton's investigation.

"Some who were opposed to the war will not rest until one inquiry succeeds another until finally an inquiry concludes it was all a mistake or even better a conspiracy," Blair said. "I have given up trying to please that audience."