Blair Visits Troops in Iraq, Calls War 'Defining Moment of Our Century'

Blair said that the Iraq war would be "one of the defining moments of our century" and thanked the forces for their efforts.

"People back home are incredibly proud of what you've done," he said in an address broadcast on British radio. "You've made our whole country hold their heads up high."

He acknowledged that the British public had been divided on the war but told about 400 soldiers that "there is absolutely no dispute in Britain at all about your professionalism and your courage and your dedication."

The prime minister said the toppling of Saddam Hussein had created a "completely different atmosphere" in the Middle East, one in which the Israeli-Palestinian peace process could be moved forward and belligerence by Syria and Iran could be halted.

As he traveled to Basra, however, the prime minister was facing questions about the motives of the war and allegations that his office twisted the truth in a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction released shortly before the start of hostilities.

BBC, quoting a senior official, said the dossier was rewritten to make it "sexier." Specifically, a clause was added saying that Iraq had the capability to launch biological or chemical attacks within 45 minutes, according to the source.

BBC's source said that portion of the dossier wasn't in the original draft compiled by intelligence services and that it was added by the prime minister's office.

Blair's office flatly denied the claims. "Not one word of the dossier was not entirely the work of the intelligence agencies," Downing Street said.

Speculation in the British press was fueled earlier this week by comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who suggested that Iraq may have destroyed its weapons of mass destruction before the war.

On Tuesday, Rumsfeld said that it would take time to find the weapons but "it is also possible that they [the Iraqis] decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict."

Blair later said that he had "absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction" inside the country.

The prime minister, who is on a weeklong foreign tour, also visited a school in Basra before traveling to Poland later today. He will then visit Russia before the Group of Eight (G8) summit in France this weekend.

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