Hussein Must Go, Blair Says

Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday began to make the case for backing a U.S. preemptive war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, although the British leader called military action “a last resort.”

Resuming the role of chief U.S. ally and advocate that he played ahead of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Blair laid out the reasons he believes Hussein presents a threat to the international community and promised to publish within a few weeks evidence of Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“I do believe that the threat posed by the current Iraqi regime is real,” Blair told a news conference in his parliamentary district of Sedgefield, in northeastern England. “This isn’t just an issue for the U.S., it is an issue for Britain, it is an issue for the wider world.

“America shouldn’t have to face this issue alone--we should face it together,” he added.

Harking back to the U.S.-led military campaigns in Afghanistan and Kosovo, Blair stated his belief that “there is no such thing now as a regional conflict that stays regional.”

Blair fielded questions for more than an hour and a half, during which time he repeatedly echoed the Bush administration’s arguments for ousting the Iraqi leader. He said Hussein was “without any question” still trying to develop Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capability.

“We’re dealing with a regime that routinely tortures and executes its political opponents, was probably responsible for up to 100,000 Kurdish people dying in a brutal campaign, that was responsible for a million people dying in the Iran-Iraq war, the annexation of Kuwait and that we know ... is trying to develop these appalling weapons and, indeed, has actually used these weapons against their own people,” Blair said.

“Either the regime functions in an entirely different way, or the regime has to change.”

Blair argued for the return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq and vowed that Britain would not “rush in with preemptory action without thinking it through. We didn’t in Kosovo, we didn’t in Afghanistan, we won’t do it this time.”

But while promising a full public debate ahead of any British military participation, he stressed his intention to support the Bush administration, which increasingly appears headed toward a war against Hussein.

“If the 11th of September teaches us anything, it teaches us the importance of not waiting for the threat to materialize, but ... dealing with it,” Blair said. “How we deal with it is an open question, but that we have to deal with it isn’t.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Blair dedicated himself to making the moral and legal case against the suspected mastermind of the assaults, Osama bin Laden. The prime minister called a special session of Parliament to present the first dossier of evidence against Bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan--much as he now appears ready to do against Iraq’s Hussein.

Blair and members of his Cabinet traveled the globe to shore up international support for a U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, in which Britain later provided more support than any other nation.

Blair has remained one of the staunchest backers of the Bush administration’s declared war on terrorism. He argues that Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network could just as easily have attacked London and Paris as New York and Washington and that it is the responsibility of the international community to face down the threat.

Blair could well turn out to be the Bush administration’s prime source of public support internationally for a war in Iraq. France, Germany, Russia and most of the Arab world have come out against a campaign to oust Hussein, and several Republicans inside and outside the Bush administration have expressed reservations about the need to take military action.

A majority of the U.S. public supports a Bush-led war, while 70% of Britons are opposed to such action.

Blair’s remarks were met with criticism Tuesday from members of Parliament who oppose a war. Labor Party lawmaker George Galloway said that Britons were “deeply anxious about being driven this close to a cliff by a president like Mr. Bush” and that Blair had failed to reassure them.

“The prime minister has thrown in his lot with the most right-wing faction of the Republican administration in Washington, betraying even the Colin Powell wing, which had been looking for a way out short of invasion and war,” Galloway said.

Facing such criticism at home and dissent within his own Labor Party over the prospect of British participation in a U.S.-led war, Blair asserted that his continued support for the United States was not out of “blind loyalty.”

“The reason why I supported the United States of America after the 11th of September was because it was the right thing to do. International terrorism executed its worst atrocity on the streets of America, and that was an attack on the whole of the free and civilized world, and America should not have to face these problems alone,” Blair said.

He suggested that once Britons saw the details of Hussein’s weapons programs and a specific U.S. plan of action, opinion was likely to swing toward support for the mission. Asked why he had yet to present the evidence, he said public debate had overtaken his plans.

“Originally I had the intention that we wouldn’t get round to publishing the dossier until we had actually taken the key decisions, but I think it is probably a better idea to bring that forward,” he said. “There needs to be some more work and some more checking done, but I think the best thing to do is publish that within the next few weeks.”

Blair acknowledged that the Arab world viewed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main problem in the region and that “we have a responsibility also to deal with that situation.... There should be a just solution in the Middle East, and we should deal with weapons of mass destruction.”

He countered arguments that a war against Hussein would be perceived as a war on Islam by saying that the people who are oppressed in Iraq are Muslims.

Blair argued that he hates war as much as anyone. “But if Iraq should develop and use weapons of mass destruction ... and I thought back and could have done something about it, then that would be something on my conscience too,” he said.