The BBC’s political editor Andrew Marr has reported that “senior Government sources” believed that weapons of mass destruction would never be found in Iraq.
Oh dear.
Now let me state my position. I was all for the war against Iraq, and still believe the UK took the right decision to go in, with our US allies, to remove its disgraceful socialist dictatorship. But spare a thought for poor old Tony. He had to convince all of those Guardian readers, and all of those who marched against his policy, as well as those of us who’d already decided the rules changed, when two hijacked planes flew into the twin towers.
So Tony spiced things up, a bit. And thereby hoisted himself on the petard of WMD. And now he’s beginning to twist on it, ever so slightly, in the wind. In the last two days, in a subtle, nay, almost undetectable, change of emphasis, he’s abandoned the line of saying the weapons will be found. He is now saying, quite categorically, that evidence of the weapons will be found.
Now weapons of mass destruction are one thing — a bit of plutonium here, a bit of uranium centrifuge there — but evidence? What constitutes evidence? An old copy of the Cairo Times, with a handwritten Arabic scrawl on the back, saying ‘The Fist of God is in place, Sire’. Will that do? I suppose that depends on either how many people in GCHQ can write Arabic, or whether you’re a fan of Frederik Forsyth.
But the interesting thing is this. Did you spot the change of emphasis, when Blair switched to it on Tuesday? I must fess up, and say I didn’t. He’s a slippery devil.
But those nice kind clever people, at the BBC, did, bless them. Isn’t self-inflicted fratricide, between lefties, simply excellent entertainment.
The question is, though, is Tony running scared and reacting too soon to fears that weapons will not be found (which could be stupid and premature); or is he acting on knowledge that they will most likely not be found?
If it’s the former, and he’s acting rashly, and then if WMDs do get found, he will look like a serious vacillator.
I appreciate Tony backing us up on this whole Iraq deal, but for the sake of Britain I hope he (and New Labour) go down in flames. Bigtime.
Heh. I agree.
I’m so torn on this one, at least Tony had the cohones to do the right thing, but now he’s on the rack because of it… well, I should be calling “Mercy” from the crowds, but I want him gone for his other socialist misdemeanours.
so wait wait… let me get this straight… neither of you have a problem with him having potentially duped the public, & taken the country to war on false pretenses per se?
so wait wait… let me get this straight… neither of you have a problem with him having potentially duped the public, & taken the country to war on false pretenses per se?
Well, I think he was justified to go to war anyway, so as far as this voter is concerned, he didn’t need any false pretences.
I think he was foolish to mislead Parliament, if he did so. But then, I think it’s sad the backbenches are filled with CND activists, socialists and Saddam sympathisers, not to mention the potentially treasonous activities of George Galloway, if that turns out to be true. And Blair misleads Parliament all the time, when he announces the wonderful success his government has had at
cooking the books and lyingmeeting all their election pledges and targets.I am unable to support Blair as he languishes on the rack for lots of reasons. I dont think the Ends justifies the Means is a good enough reason to let him off the hook, for sure.
On the other hand, I think it’s great. End result is, what needed to be done is done, and as a delicious side effect, Tony is screwed, and the old socialists who belong to a time when Roy Hattersley was an MP are coming out of the woodwork in all their glory. A Toryboy couldn’t ask for much more. 🙂
I do admit to feeling a pang of sadness for his plight though, despite him being the Enemy. Whatever else can be said about the man, he seemed willing to politically martyr himself over Iraq, and a political martyr is a rare thing.
Folks – Not into the Britpol thingy, and let’s not forget the job the boys are doing in SIraq, either. I admire his Iraqi stance, and despise Socialism in all its cookedup varieties, so if you say he’s gotta go, he should probably go. He gotta clean billohealth on that ‘sexed-up’ WMDthingy, and he deserves more than just the damned bill. Like, maybe an apology might be good.
Nowhere in the torrid discussion about those WMDs is the question raised, this far down the road, about the well-founded suspicions that most of the really good stuff went to Syria just days prior to the first aerial attack on Baghdad; and whatever happened to the “mystery ship” that was going round in circles in the ME region?! A sudden ‘fog of war’ descended over those two items interest.
Might be ‘verrrrry interesting’ to get some answers to the above-mentioned questions!
WMDs weren’t the only lie we heard:
Remember that Iraqi “children’s prison” that was “liberated” a few months back? Turns out it was actually an orphanage….
A-t: the mass graves and all the other ghastly crimes against humanity were justification enough for deposing Saddam.
And always were. I always believed the WMD evidence to be tenuous, but of the “better safe than sorry” type. But there were always multiple reasons to take him down. The only shame was that it took twelve years instead of finishing the job when it should have been done – in 1991.
So wait wait… let me get this straight… so you don’t have a problem with a regime that routinely engaged in mass murder, mass torture and kept its population in a state of terror for 3 decades?
Figures.
Scott: lie != mistake. On the other hand, it is interesting to consider why those kids were in the orpahage in the first place (OTOH, it is interesting to consider the source, the NYT, which has its own problems the truth).
W H E R E A R E T H E W M D s ? ? ?
Blair’s problem is that he lacked enough faith in himself or enough faith in the public to explain this war as a logical necessity and instead insisted on emotive and dramatic comments such as WMD’s being ready for launch in 45 minutes.
I think the war was the right decision, for a broad range of reasons but my view is that the Government tried to sell the British public a war, using all their usual spin and bluster, rather than explaining the reason they felt it was necessary.
Now the public have removed the shiny packaging and found something inside that’s different to what was pictured on the box and their reacting, the BBC et al are just using this as another stick to beat the Government.
This cause of his current problem is exactly the reason that I also hope Blair goes down in flames. All his policies are like this, marketing initiatives designed to sell the concept of new labour, there is no content and no results, except more bureaucrats, less freedom and an ever more frantic search for ‘the next big idea’.
Ah, this is such a tough one. I want to see Blair go down in flames, but I don’t want him shot down for this. He’s a poll-driven, shallow socialist incompetent who should be hounded out of office for making a raft of promises he couldn’t keep. Or for herding the UK into a wholly unsuitable EU. But to see him get it because he took a real political risk and stood up for my country? Ewwwwww. Not comfy with that.
Particularly if it gets into the British political psyche that helping the US is career suicide.
If someone rushes something into print that agrees w/ them w/o doing the necessary verification, and then buries the fact that the claim turns out to be false, that crosses into dishonesty, just like the Bush administration not bothering until now to admit that they weren’t right about the uranium thing.
W H E R E A R E T H E W M D s ? ? ?
I DONT KNOW KODIAK MAYBE THEY ARE IN FRANCE
Felonius… no, i never said i wasn’t bothered by saddam’s torturing & murdering. Had Blair said from the start “Saddam’s a murderous bastard… we’ve supported him in the past, but now we’ve turned over a new leaf, & we want to free the Iraqis from his tyranny”, then yes, i might well have been onside. As was, hey… that argument only got wheeled out once various scaremongering tactics had failed, so I suspect it may not have been the primary motivation behind the invasion. If it’s not the primary motive, will the Iraqis freedom be important in years to come? Hmm… i suspect perhaps not.
And if we want to embark on a worldwide “free the people from the nasty dictators” campaign, i’m quite up for it, but let’s present it honestly shall we? Just make sure the UK population’s up for freeing the world before we go about it. Would seem kinda just, given that we’re supposed to be a democracy.
As I say, I don’t believe that the freedom of the Iraqi people was particularly important to those who initiated this war… i’m not entirely sure what was, but either way, in a democracy it’s a f**ed up thing for the government to have to fabricate a direct threat in order to get the people behind it’s ‘moral mission’.
And to those who didn’t believe the WMD argument but supported the action anyway, why did you do so then? And further, would you support an invasion of Zimbabwe too? China? Burma? If so, why are you not lobbying for such things right now?
A_t, they claim singling out Iraq is justified because Iraq failed to prove (to the War Party’s satisfaction, and they never would have been satisfied) the negative that they didn’t have WMDs, and it is still justified to have singled them out despite our finding no WMDs.
The War is a government program, and all government programs are justified with the same logic and arguments. In this case, its socialist lie #4: “lies are fine because us smart people know this is right and the peons would have made the wrong decision w/ all the facts.”
Scott – you had best be very careful setting up a standard where any mistaken utterance is a “lie.” First, of course, the day will come when you are hoist on that petard. Second, also of course, the day will come when accusations of “lying” have been so utterly debased by conflation with errors that you won’t have a good word to nail someone who really is intentionally and knowingly misrepresenting the truth.
The orphanage story seems to have been an honest mistake. I don’t know that it was put about by the Bush administration, either, so I don’t know that they have an obligation to correct it. For example, in this Time story we have Scott Ritter, hardly a Bush spokesman, discussing children’s prisons in Iraq, apparently referring to some other than the one that turned out to be an orphanage.
I didn’t say a mistake is a lie – I said carelessness, followed by ignoring the fact you turned out to be wrong can be a lie (if you know what you mistakenly said earlier is false, but keep quiet, that’s a lie by omission).
Lies like 170K artifacts were stolen.
There are millions upon millions of pages to go thru.
There was also an alleged Iraqi spy picked up yesterday in greater Chicagoland. Found him by papers in Iraq. He’s been here 10 years. We’ll see if this pans out. NBC5.com has the story.
Anyone get to read the 2001 paper on how to fool the UN inspectors which was recently discovered?
Sandy, “pages” do not qualify as WMDs that can hit us in 45 minutes. The govt is backing off weapons and trying to slide back to weapons programs hoping nobody notices.
Here we go again. The anti-war libertarians out there are right to point out that liberating Iraq from Saddam does seem to have become the post-facto justification used by hawks particularly now that no WMDs of any serious consequence have been found. I personally am very troubled at the idea that the rich nations of the West are being expected to invade every nation in the planet that gives us a dirty look.
Having said all that, I still think the Iraq war was justified, because Saddam had a proven track record of trying to get and indeed using, WMDs; sanctions were not working, and indeed proving increasingly porous; it is unlikely containment could have worked without utterly destroying Iraq, which surely must bear in the humanitariain equation, and deterrence, such as worked in the Cold War, may not have done so with Saddam.
Not to mention the countless violations of the ceasefire agreement of 1991, the flouting of UN resolutions about WMDs, etc.
But the anti-war folk have a point when they berate Blair for juicing up the threat Saddam posed. He has become a victim of his own spin. Could not happen to a nicer guy.