WMD: A non-issue

The dispute over the elusive hunt for weapons of mass deceit (as the New York Times has called them) could perhaps cost Tony Blair his job. In the CR, it's a non- issue. Two of the politicians most vulnerable to attack are already out of office, ex-Defense Minister Jaroslav Tvrdík and ex-President Václav Havel. Tvrdík had said he had seen proof of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and Havel, of course, signed the pro-U.S. "letter of eight." Of remaining politicians, Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda is the main one who used WMD to push the CR toward war. But only a few articles have called him to task for this. Martin Hekrdla of Právo, one of the few critics, said it would be unusual for a high- ranking Czech official to be forced out of office because he fell for someone else's propaganda. Usually, he said, much less important things are the reason.