WTF Is It Now?!?

Alarmist Iraq hype backfires
Gordon Barthos writes in the Star's editorial page:

Prime Minister Tony Blair is paying a fierce price for torquing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Blair's tireless leghumping cheerleading for George Bush's drive for "regime change" now looks like folly.

The PM's postwar "Baghdad bounce" in popularity has become a dead cat bounce, with his Labour party slumping to 38 per cent, its worst showing in a decade, to the Tories' 34 per cent.

The British media are howling that Blair's staff "sexed up" evidence of banned weapons, falsely said Saddam could launch them on 45 minutes' notice and published a "dodgy dossier" to spook the country. Yesterday, Blair's top spin doctor admitted "a mistake."

Bush, too, is beginning to see his credibility head south. He claimed Saddam had active ties to Al Qaeda, held horror weapons, was trying to purchase nuclear materiel and had mobile germ labs.

None of it has proved true.

Saddam posed no imminent threat to the U.S., and Bush's suggestions to the contrary were deliberately alarmist.

Most Americans remain persuaded that the war and 8,000 Iraqi deaths were justified, to topple an America-hating, murderous despot.

But nearly one American in two now believes Bush intentionally misled them about Saddam's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Bush's credibility would be lower still, except that a sturdy core of invincibly ignorant people — one American in three — is convinced that these weapons already have been found. Not so.

Ho ho!