Iraq WMD Claim Not Sexed Up - Blair

Iraq WMD Claim Not Sexed Up - Blair

Blair Questions Credibility of BBC Report

LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair told an inquiry Thursday that his office did not exaggerate estimates of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and said that he would have had to resign if it had.

Facing the worst crisis of his six years in office, Blair questioned the credibility of a British Broadcasting Corp. report that his government distorted the threat presented by Saddam to bolster the case for an Iraq war.
'It was an extraordinary allegation to make and an extremely serious one,' he told an inquiry into the death of a government weapons expert who was caught up in a political storm over the government's Iraq policy.
'This was an absolutely fundamental charge ... this was an allegation that we had behaved in a way that, were it true ... would have warranted my resignation,' he added.