Under mounting pressure, US President George W. Bush said on Monday he would appoint an independent commission to investigate whether the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq was flawed.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair followed the US lead yesterday, announcing he had appointed a commission to investigate flaws in the intelligence he cited in going to war with Iraq.
Bush had previously opposed an independent probe of pre-war intelligence, but was under strong pressure from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to call an investigation.
"I want to know all the facts," Bush told reporters on Monday. He said he would soon meet with David Kay, the former chief US weapons hunter in Iraq, who told a congressional hearing last week that much of the intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was wrong.
The failure to find chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq in months of searching has become a major political issue in a year when Bush must seek re-election.
Blair used a scheduled appearance before a parliamentary committee yesterday morning to announce the official inquiry. The announcement came just days after a senior judge cleared the British government of allegations that it distorted what it knew about Iraq's weapons programs to build a case for war.
Both men justified going to war by saying former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons that posed an immediate threat to international security.
Blair's spokesman would not provide details about the probe and declined to say whether Blair would support calls for an inquiry committee of legislators from both houses of parliament, with an independent chairman.
The British government had also previously rejected calls for an inquiry. But on Monday, Blair's spokesman said last week's ruling by senior judge Lord Hutton that the government had not "sexed up" intelligence had cleared the air and allowed for a rational discussion of Iraqi weapons.
The Blair spokesman said that British officials had "been talking with the Bush administration and were keeping in close touch with their thinking on how to approach this issue."
The threat posed by Iraq's alleged nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was Blair's main argument for war.
No such weapons have been found, and David Kay, the former head of the US-led Iraq Survey Group, has said he doesn't believe they ever will be. Kay, who quit last month, told the US Congress last week that "it turns out we were all wrong, probably" about the Iraqi threat.
On Monday, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said the failure to find Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "has damaged the credibility of the US and the United Kingdom in their conduct of the war against terrorism."
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