British press tars Blair for changing tune over WMD

A member of a civic group hold a picture of British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a demonstration in front of the British Embassy in Tokyo on Friday to denounce Blair's role in the Iraq war hours before his arrival for talks with Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi. Photo: AFP

"Blair moves the goalposts" headlined the right-wing tabloid Daily Mail, adding in its editorial that "this was Blair the brilliant contortionist trying to have it both ways."

In a speech Thursday to a joint session of the US Congress Blair said: "If we are wrong (and weapons of mass destruction are not found), we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."

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He went on: "If we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership.

"That is something history will not forgive," Blair said to a huge round of applause.

Opposition politicians and critics of the war joined the press in raising concerns over Blair's speech.

Liberal Democrat peer and former Labour minister Shirley Williams said Blair's comments put the legal justification for Britain's involvement in the war in doubt.

"I wish that it had been made clearer, when he walked away from the WMD argument, that that, of course, for the UK at least, undermines the legal basis on which we went to war," Williams said.