Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Not so much.
British people happy? Not so much.
Tony Blair popular? Not so much.
Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken major popularity beatings for his stance in Iraq over the past three months. The drop started with the apparent suicide of government weapons expert David Kelly in July. It continues to drop due to the failure of any government to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite his plummeting popularity, Blair stands by his support of the Iraq war.
In July, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released an anonymous allegation that Britain’s 2002 dossier on Iraq’s weapons program had been “sexed up.” The allegation claimed that the British government hyped the assertion that Iraq could launch biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of an order from Saddam Hussein.
At the time Blair said: “I stand 100 percent by it and I think our intelligence services gave us the correct intelligence and information at the time,” according to the BBC.
Then David Kelly committed suicide. In the Hutton inquiry that followed, investigators found that the government may have planned to release Hutton’s name to the public as the anonymous informer.
“The family invite the inquiry to find that the government made a deliberate decision to use Dr. Kelly as part of its strategy in its battle with the BBC,” said the family’s lawyer Jeremy Gompertz to the inquiry panel, according to CNN.
The entire investigation damaged confidence in the government, as the information it had released came under scrutiny. For instance, the head of MI6, the British intelligence agency, discredited the 45 minute launch estimate given in the 2002 dossier.
This month, U.S. and U.K. media agencies added more fuel to the fire. They reported that the Iraq Survey Group will publish their report in October saying that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. This hurts Blair because he made the elimination of those weapons one of the primary reasons for supporting the invasion.
“The fact that so far it’s been difficult to obtain physical evidence … does not mean that the evidence is not there,” said British Foreign secretary Jack Straw in a CNN interview.
The British public does not seem to agree.
On Saturday Sept. 27, over 10,000 people marched through the streets of London to protest England’s continued involvement in Iraq.
“It was all lies,” protester Peter Mason, 45, told CNN. “The millions who demonstrated before the war were right.”
Eighty people counter-protested in favor of war in Iraq.
A poll for the Sunday Times put Blair’s labor party at only 30% popularity, three points behind Britain’s Conservative party, and tied with its Liberal Democrats.
Blair remains defiant in the face of this criticism.
“What we have delivered in [Iraq] is freedom, and for all the difficulties, let’s not ignore that but actually be proud of what we have done.” Blair told the BBC on Sunday, Sept. 28.
Since the British received information from the United States, President Bush remains open to similar attacks from protesters and his rivals for the presidency in the next election.