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US rubbishes Blair's WMD claim
"Massive evidence of laboratories" dismissed as red herring

TONY Blair is facing severe embarrassment after the US official running Iraq dismissed his claims that "massive evidence" of weapons programmes had been found in the country as a "red herring".

Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, has recorded an interview for broadcast this morning, in which he was unaware the claims were from the Prime Minister, when he described them as unfounded and the work of someone trying to undermine the US-led coalition in Iraq....

...Bremer’s comments have been recorded for ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme to be broadcast this morning. The presenter put to the US administrator the claim that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories". The claim went on to say that Saddam Hussein had attempted to "conceal weapons".

That was in Blair’s Christmas message to British troops in Iraq. But without being told whose claim it was, Bremer responded that the claim was not true and did not square with the survey reports he had seen. "I don’t know where those words come from but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said," said Bremer. "It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me. It sounds like someone who doesn’t agree with the policy sets up a red herring, then knocks it down."...