Well done, Adam Price MP

Adam Price is not the MP for my constituency, but if he was I would be glad to vote for him. Today he was forced to leave the Commons chamber, because he said that Blair "misled" the house. In Commons protocol, it is not permissible to accuse another MP of lying, even if the truth is staring you in the face. Paddy Tipping MP doesn't think that Blair lied - in response to a letter from me, he wrote "I don't believe that Parliament was misled but I have no doubt that serious mistakes took place"

The dictionary defines mislead as transitive verb : to lead into a mistaken action or belief : to cause to have a false impression

On the 10 April 2002, Blair told the Commons:

"there is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat not just to the region, but to the wider world. […] He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."

Not only was Blair completely wrong, and therefore the statement was false and misleading, but intelligence assessments in March 2002 said:

"Intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programmes is sporadic and patchy. [...] From the evidence available to us, we believe Iraq retains some production equipment, and some small stocks of CW agent precursors, and may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons."

So, not only was it incorrect to say Iraq had WMDs, but intelligence assessments at the time merely stated that he might have had small quantities of WMDs. They also concluded that he was unlikely to be a threat, even to his neighbours, unless attacked. If Blair had read the intelligence assessments then he lied, if he didn't then he was implausibly negligent. Which is it?

Here's another nice summary of what Blair had to say on Iraq from the BBC. Misleading statement after misleading statement is indeed compelling evidence that he is a deliberate liar