There is an article in the ‘Independent‘ regarding the report stating that the case made by HMG for attacking Iraq and deposing the Ba’athist regime was a big fat pack of lies. And, if your primary justification for supporting bringing down Saddam Hussain was the threat of WMDs, then this is probably alarming new (and that was indeed the core of the UK and US government’s case).
If however your reason for supporting the ouster of Saddam Hussain was not the same as Tony Blair or George Bush… who cares? Sure, I bought the logic of Saddam having a WMD programme as his behaviour seems to suggest it, but that was always just one of many reasons to want him gone. Those of us on record as taking a rather different line regarding the main reason to go in (i.e. he is a mass murdering tyrant and deposing him will not start WWIII) are unlikely to lose much sleep over these revelations.
The article says the government lied. Well I’ll be, the government lying? Who’d a thunked it? No, if you supported getting rid of Saddam Hussain because you see deposing tyrants with volunteer armies as a good in and of itself, and would rather see your tax money spent on that rather than all the other crap it gets spent on, do not need to change their position one whole hell of a lot due to this. Really if you did not (and do not) buy the argument that leaving the mass murderer from Tikrit and his psychopathic sons in charge would be ‘okay’ and in the interests of people in Iraq, then the UK and US governments problems are of only incidental interest.
Am I happy about how the post-war insurgency has been handled and the preposterous obsession with imposing ‘democracy’ in a tribalised society? No, not at all, and I am astonished that the US seems to have unlearned so many of the lessons of the Vietnam War… but in the overall scheme of things I am still of the view that the world is better off without Saddam Hussain.
In fact, seeing Tony and Dubya in political difficulties as a consequence of their own mis-judgements is hardly bad news but is perhaps the best of all possible worlds. Saddam gone, the home grown US and UK Big Government administrations in trouble… yeah I can live with that.
Let’s not forget that Saddam *claimed* to have had WMD, which all the justification anyone needs right there. Is the world supposed to think that the psychopath was bluffing?
North Korea deserves the same treatment, but unfortunately, they can kill a lot more innocent people in South Korea (who are getting the hang of democracy) before they go down.
Perry, does this mean that you think foreign policy should be run to benefit people generally, as opposed to protect and promote the interests of the acting country or just that it is $ better spent there than here?
Ampontan,
Saddam could hardly claim not to have WMDs. It was the threat of these that kept the various peoples he oppressed wary of striking back at him. Post-war it is confirmed he was indeed bluffing.
Perry,
It’s considerate of you to want to be rid of Saddam simply because he was a scumbag to his people – and you’re right: such a view can be consistently held throughout with no fear of being called a hypocrite.
But will you apply your generosity to the dozens of other countries that need liberating? Are you willing to spend billions of our pounds and spill gallons of our soldiers’ blood doing it? If you are then you remain consistent. But if you don’t want to be the world’s fairy godmother then one is left wondering why some countries might be the recipients of your concern but not others.
It’s a matter of priorities, of matching a limited number of troops. dollars/pounds, ships, etc. against a seemingly-unlimited list of targets.
I don’t know the UK’s foreign entanglements, other than the ones in which they’ve joined us (I’m in the US), but on our list: Iraq claimed to have WMD’s, and subsidized terror attacks on our allies, and had a previous history of doing
I’m not in love with the judgement call that had us invade them before Iran/NK, but I can follow the logic.
By the same token, we don’t waste blood, toil, sweat, or tears on Venezuela. Chavez is the next Castro, probably, but with even less ability to invade anyone. Forcing his own people deeper into poverty to collectivize agriculture is an evil, but it’s not the same thing. He’s less likely to sponsor the deaths of three thousand of my countrymen in one day, and his country isn’t at the center of any caliphates.
See, Perry, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Thank you!
Gary:
He certainly wasn’t bluffing when he gassed the Kurds, was he?
Really if you did not (and do not) buy the argument that leaving the mass murderer from Tikrit and his psychopathic sons in charge would be ‘okay’ and in the interests of people in Iraq, then the UK and US governments problems are of only incidental interest.
As Gary points out, that is not the case that either anti-war or rational pro-war people made. “Saddam had to be removed was very bad” is the post hoc justification of the war used by the UK and US governments, just as the “WMDs” were the ante hoc.
Both are lies. They don’t look the same sort of lie because the factual premise of the existence of “WMDs” was dubitable and turned out wrong, whereas the extreme nastiness of Saddam has been well established for years. The lie in each case, however, has been about government motivation for its actions. Saddam was just as nasty in the 1970s and 1980s – when he had UK and US government support and assistance. He was maintained in power when he could have been deposed at the beginning of the 1990s, and in fact was aided in his nastiness by the allies (a bit like the Soviets hanging back from Warsaw) failing to support the Shia they had encouraged to rise.
Where the Stop-the-War lefties are so wrong is in their own narrow economism (sans economic insight) that sees the ‘real’ motivation of the war as commercial plunder. And that is why they harp on about lying beforehand. They think it confirms their own views about the motivations and inherent wickedness of America.
Guy,
Do you not think, just possibly, we didn’t back the Shites in Iraq in ’91 because we were ever so slightly concerned that the end result – a shia state would become a fiefdom of those fun-loving nutcases in Tehran.
The more I see of Moqtada Al-Sadr (and his Mehdi Army) the more I think Bush Snr, Jim Baker and Gen. Powell made the right call.
I’ve said it before on Samizdata and I’ll say it again. We, the civilised world, should not be in the business of deposing tyrants to replace them with theocracies.
Of course, tell that to the Khazi (and Bungdit Din).
The more I see of the godawful mess the ‘stan and Iraq are in the less I feel it has been worth 300 billion dollars and the lives of three thousand men and women. Saddam and the Taleban were true pieces of work, no denying that but are the assorted nutcases, Islamists and morons we have freed from the jackboot worth such an extravagant sacrifice?
I will support our boys and girls (and the Yanks, and the whole rest of NATO, and any bugger else who lends a hand) with the last breath in my body but we have absolutely screwed the pooch on this one. The War on Terror has so far been an unmitigated disaster and it has been ever since Dubya changed the name of the ‘stan operation from “Infinite Justice” to “Enduring Freedom” so as not to offend the Koranimals.
Somehow I fail to recall Churchill or Roosevelt bending over backwards to not offend Nazis.
Are we doing anything to prevent that fruitloop in Iran getting nukes? Are we doing anything to help Pakistan get a half-way decent government? I.e. someone who isn’t an Islamic nut-job but is a little more legitimate than a military dictator (and confirmed rug-artiste) Are we doing a damn thing to prevent the Saudis (our bestest mates in all the world) spreading Wahabism around the globe? Nah, course we’re not. Instead we’re selling those ululating goat-fuckers 72 BAE Typhoons! If I was Richard Littlejohn, I would have said “You couldn’t make it up” by now. Fortunately, I’m not RL (otherwise my wife wouldn’t have sex with me) but for fuck’s sake!
We are targeting the “bad” muslims and allowing the Saudis, Pakistanis and Iranians to run amok.
A mate of mine once called me “Mercutio” which was a bit of a play on my surname and slightly wittier than it sounds. Well, to misquote the character, “a plague on all your houses”.
Our real enemy isn’t the likes of Saddam. It isn’t even muslims per-se it is simply all those who wish to impose Sharia by force onto the rest of us. As someone who has committed innumerable stoning offences I object to that most strongly.
Do you not think, just possibly, we didn’t back the Shites in Iraq in ’91 because we were ever so slightly concerned that the end result – a shia state would become a fiefdom of those fun-loving nutcases in Tehran.
No. I think it was just another case of sucking up to the Saudis, which you rightly condemn.
Nick M you pretty well sum up my own view too.
Over the years I have read with interest Perry’s views on the Iraq war and, on this issue, I cannot agree with him.
The anger that we all felt about 9/11 allowed us to be pushed, by various factions, into a rash course of action which has done nothing to get rid of terrorists.
From the report, words of it’s author, Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN (a diplomat):
‘”There was, moreover, no intelligence or assessment during my time in the job that Iraq had any intention to launch an attack against its neighbours or the UK or the US,” he added.’
Well, you see, Saddam hasn’t started two major wars against his neighbours, causing a million deaths. So the British foreign service had no “assesment” that he might start another one….
They probably also had “no intelligence or assessment ” before he started the two wars, either.
One thing is true, though. Whatever “intelligence or assessment ” they had, it was worthless, so indeed, Blair, as far as he based his decisions on their “assesments” acted on unreliable information.
My analysis of the one unequivocally good thing that Blair has achieved during his premiership.
TB became convinced that the removal of Saddam was a good and necessary act, but also knew that he could not persuade his cabinet colleagues, MP’s and probably the wider public of its importance.
So he devised the strategy of talking up the WMD threat. In fact, the whole spectre of the imminence of the threat from Iraq’s WMD emerged from the British government, only later being (perhaps reluctantly) confirmed by a US government, not wishing to alienate its key ally.
Yes, Blair lied about WMD, he overplayed dubious and unverified Intelligence reports, and he browbeat his Law officers. But I am prepared to applaud him for taking an unpopular action that he knew to be correct (evidence of ‘leadership’ rather than ‘followership’), while at the same time critical of the way he sought to persuade the his colleagues and country by way of mendacity and spin rather than the strength of argument.
Now all you need to do is remember that completely off-topic comments get deleted and you ain’t an editor of this blog.
If I am going to be taxed in the manner I am, it does less damage to spend that money overthrowing tyrants (and does more good) than distorting domestic markets and regulating the hell out of things. Sure in an ideal world things would be different but we have to play the cards currently being dealt.
Nick M has it right here. Like Perry, I am glad that Saddam has gone and ceased to be menace to his neighbours, to the Kurds, the Shiites, the Iranians, the Kuwaitis, Israel, etc. He did – contrary to what the anti-invasion folk claim – have links to terror groups, including radical islamists. The idea that Saddam was a purely secular guy with no ideological agenda is unwarranted. And Perry is right to remind us of Saddam’s disgusting sons.
The problem of Iraq, I think, was trying to identify the least-bad option. Unlike the Justin Raimondos of the extreme libertarian isolationist bent, I don’t think it is in our self interest to turn a blind eye or just wait on events, as Bush said. Sometimes, it is better to pre-emptively act. The problem, however, is that this has to be done on a case-by-case basis. There may be many cases for adopting the “leave well alone” approach. It may be, for instance, that we have no option but to just put up with mad-dog Kim in North Korea and rely on old-style nuke deterrence.
I still think that Blair and Bush have been guilty of near-criminal negligence in the lack of post-invasion planning, though.
Hmmm. I don’t normally pollute my brain by reading the Independent, but just for you guys, I made an exception this time.
What does Mr Ross actually say? That HMG didn’t assess Iraq’s WMD capability to pose a threat to the UK or its interests. They leap from this statement to the conclusion that this makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known there were no WMDs. How does that logic work exactly?
(And does anyone really believe the original statement is speaking in anything other than a very restricted sense?)
It was a commonly held view that Saddam was ‘contained’? Common, yes, in the Foreign Office. We already knew that. There’s a reason they’re called the Camel Corps.
Bringing down the regime would cause chaos? Not really a revelation, is it? I’m sure Churchill was told the same. The question is, would it be irrecoverable chaos, or temporary? More to the point, would it be greater chaos than allowing the sanctions to collapse, revealing the UN to be a paper tiger (as if anyone didn’t know), having Saddam rebuild his arsenal and go nuclear, die (he was known to be old and unwell) and then have a nine-way succession bunfight between Saddam’s psychopathic serial-killer sons, various Baathist generals, Shia, Kurd, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and al Qaida with nukes in the mix and everyone playing the more-Islamic-than-thou card, with the West and Israel forced to look on uninvolved and hope that whoever came out on top would be a nice and reasonable person who would be friends with them…
Not to mention maybe decades more of torment for the Iraqis.
No, the Independent’s agenda is clear (if ever a paper was misnamed… ‘Ministry of Truth’, indeed) and so is Mr Ross’s. I don’t mind that; what’s really depressing is that their lies and distortions are still so commonly believed.
It is quite true that no WMD stockpiles were found in Iraq, and that this was a surprise to the Intelligence community (although a small one – Intelligence is always uncertain). What is a lie is to claim or imply that it has been shown there were no stockpiles at the time the statements were made, or that no violations of the UN resolutions were found, or that no WMD capability was found, or that no chemical weapons at all were found, or that they didn’t subsequently remove 1.7 tons of enriched Uranium from Iraq, or that the UN didn’t complain to the Americans about all that nuke-making equipment going missing (they trusted Saddam to guard it, but immediately suspected the US of having taken it), or that the belief Saddam was contained turned out to be true, or that he was found to have had no intentions contrary to British interests. Quite the reverse.
Or, for that matter, that the 45 minute claim had the relevance claimed (or even has been found to be untrue), or that WMD stockpiles were the basis on which we went to war, and that regime change was a post-hoc justification. I could go on. There have been many lies told in this sorry affair, and I won’t claim that Tony and George haven’t told any, but those throwing stones at them live in glass houses.
I, like Perry, believe that while our armed forces are not repelling immediate attacks on the homeland they would be well-used helping others achieve liberty, even if it costs us blood. It is both a moral imperative and in our own longer-term interests. I also believe the same obligation lies on all other free nations. The Westphalian non-interventionist approach is a practical necessity, not a moral one.
But the greater fight is here at home, the fight for people’s attitudes to liberty. Many seem to only believe in doing good if it doesn’t cost us anything, and otherwise walk by on the other side of the road. They point to the costs, the risks, the lack of short-term gains as if they were an unanswerable justification for doing nothing. Yes, of course it’s risky. Sometimes the most worthwhile things are expensive, and take a long time to achieve. They’re worth it all the same.
Perry,
“In fact, seeing Tony and Dubya in political difficulties as a consequence of their own mis-judgements is hardly bad news but is perhaps the best of all possible worlds.”
That was a little mean spirited.
The nice thing would be to wish Tony and George good luck, as their goals (in this case) are worthy.
The correct thing is to wish some stable regime to take hold in Iraq, one that isn’t adventurous, and it does not matter if it’s democratic or not. Something like in Jordan, or even Lybia. (And I can hardly believe that I’m ofering Gadaffi as an example worth emulating….).
As PA stated, toppling Saddam was a good thing, no matter what happens next in Iraq; I don’t buy the “collosal failure” doctrine – I don’t know if any other outcome was possible, I don;t think so. Toppling Saddam was good, and I wish all bad guys in the world would fear being taken down and hanged. I would recommend making this practice routine…
In the summer of 2000, I spent some time in Texas, fundraising for Bush. I’m an Orthodox Christian and one of my chief interests was in the condition of my co-religionists in south east Turkey. As such, most of my fundraising saw me going round Armenian Orthodox and Jacobite households and talking to them about the liberation of Iraq.
Although the targeting of those households was on the basis that they’d be particularly interested in the safety of North Iraq (and, sure enough, the fighting in SE Turkey quietened down a lot shortly after the invasion), that wasn’t the chief topic of conversation. Rather, sanctions were.
In 2000, Saddam was one of the ugliest dictators in power. I don’t think anyone here would say he wasn’t in the top 10. To my mind, and to a lot of the people I spoke to in 2000, the big difference with Iraq was that we (The US/ UK etc) were complicit in the suffering. We maintained expensive sanctions that had killed a couple of million Iraqis. They were too unpopular, too evil, to maintain for much longer. The status quo was very fragile indeed. If we had not been discussing invading, I find it hard to believe the sanctions would still be in place. There was too much death and squalor. It genuinely was a time that “something had to be done” and better to knock Saddam down than to make him a god.
I’m a little confused. Iraq’s army was armed with Kalashnikov rifles, MiG aircraft, tanks made in Chelyabinsk, and a relative few Mirage aircraft.
Now, a very, very few AK-pattern rifles are made in the USA, but those are largely for the domestic civilian market, and the companies involved didn’t exist in the 1970’s. None of the rest are made here either.
I don’t recall any of the above items being made in the UK either.
They were, on the other hand, made in massive quantities for export in the USSR (since turned into Russia) and the PRC. Except for the Mirage: So far as I know, made only in France. (Hmmmm….how does this tie into the conspiracy theory thread?)
So, who armed Saddam Hussein, again?
I think Nick M called this one nicely above. The Shia might have established Jeffersonian Democracy, translated “Walden” and “Five Acres and Independence” into Arabic or Farsi, and sat underneath their vines and fig trees and not been afraid. Or they might have established a UK-style parliament and worked out their stress by having the PM and the Opposition politely verbally abuse each other on television every week at Question Time. They might have even established Swiss-style democracy, stashed a machine gun in each bedroom closet, voted every week, and exported chocolate and clocks to the whole world.
One must ask, though: what’s the most likely outcome? I’m going to have to go with “D, they become an Iranian satellite state if they don’t annex to Iran entirely, and thereby continue to pose a threat to the rest of the damn region, only this time the threat is religiously-motivated rather than a by combination of pan-Arab fascism and dictatorial egomania.”
Okay, it’s more Saudi Arabia than Iraq, but my Congressman may be the only one in the US who understands that.
Jacob,
Amen to that. There are many solid reasons to disagree with Tony and George, but I consider this to be one thing they went the right way on. For Tony in particular, I believe he went in to this choosing (as he believed it) to do the right thing, knowing very well that it might bring about his own destruction. Too often we criticise politicians for being populist and lacking principles beyond their own political self-interest. I think that for George, speaking post-911, things were different, but there is no doubt Tony knew going in that it was really unpopular with a large slice of his electorate and party, and likely to get worse. George even offered to let him off, and he refused. A politician with principles – who would have thought it?
James,
Agreed. You remind me of the wording of article 42 of the UN charter. After setting out the options for sanctions in article 41, it says:
“Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action…”
This is the article authorising military intervention. The Charter does not give legal authority for indefinitely extended crippling sanctions or include any mandate for a policy of ‘containment’; if 40 and 41 do not bring about compliance in short order, then it calls for enforcement. At what point could we have said the sanctions had “proved to be inadequate” for restoring international security? 12 years on?
All member nations are legally obliged under article 1 “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace” and under article 2 item 5 to “refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action”.
I therefore ask a question that too rarely gets asked – was opposition to the war legal?
Interesting how much disinformation this war has created – I opposed the invasion of Iraq not because I thought it was a war for oil, or because I believed Saddam didn’t really possess those damned WMDs, but because it stunk too much of a badly cooked-up phd thesis paper on how to spread democracy from the top down. In the world of technocrats like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq was a laboratory to experiment in. They should have left their intellectual exercises on paper, where they belong.
Who cares if the government gets the country into a war by issuing false accusations about the opponent? Allow me to spell it out. Such a government will no longer be trusted by its own people. When there is a genuine threat and the government again sounds the alarm, the people will be inclined to assume that the government is merely trying to manipulate them, and may well refuse to support a war which may be indispensable to their security. The habit of lying about important matters tends to produce undesirable results like that.
“They should have left their intellectual exercises on paper, where they belong.”
Marvellous idea! And if the likes of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Hume, Paine, Hobbes, Burke, and Jefferson hadn’t put their intellectual exercises down on paper, we wouldn’t have had “experiments” by the likes of Cromwell, Robespierre, or Washington trying to overturn feudal monarchies and institute popular liberty from the top down, either. They made a bit of a mess of things too, if I remember my history correctly.
Where do people get these sort of ideas?!
There is no manual you can buy or course you can attend on creating a free and tolerant nation. There is no easy path of painless steps, no “experts” to call, no “approved process” to follow. Nations are too complex and intricate for nationbuilding to be anything other than the most primitive surgery – if the gangrene is incurable, you amputate the rotten parts fast and you jam all the remaining bits into roughly the right place and hold them there, and then you hope the patient survives long enough to start healing on their own.
Today, of course, medics have no stomach for all that blood and screaming, and rather than risk a lawsuit for malpractice, they would watch the patient putrefy before their eyes and infect their neighbours. Shaking their heads sadly, but assured of the most important thing, that they are clearly not responsible. The terrified patient may demand the surgery needed to save their life all they like – but the wise doctors know better than to meddle. “Believe me, slow death from putrefaction is better than the mess an amputation would make. It will all come out the same in the end, anyway.” Maybe it will with Iraq. It’s too early to tell yet. But whatever the outcome it appears the surgeon has lost his nerve, and all the other patients will be pleading in vain.
We should not fail to be good for fear of not being perfect.
Mr Spog,
Wouldn’t you agree that the same applies equally to a media giving such warnings about a government they oppose?
And this is…bad?
There are (I hope) many of us who would find life easier if we could rely on Parliament not to tolerate the Executive using the “lie simple” (or a scantily clad, close approximation thereof), but only the more usual (and obvious) forms of political deceit.
Best regards
“Who cares if the government gets the country into a war by issuing false accusations about the opponent? Allow me to spell it out. Such a government will no longer be trusted by its own people. When there is a genuine threat and the government again sounds the alarm, the people will be inclined to assume that the government is merely trying to manipulate them, and may well refuse to support a war which may be indispensable to their security. The habit of lying about important matters tends to produce undesirable results like that.”
This is the correct answer
“Wouldn’t you agree that the same applies equally to a media giving such warnings about a government they oppose?”
No, we don’t vote for the media, and the media doesn’t spend our money at gunpoint.
It is true that we don’t vote for the media, but I don’t see why that means we should let them off. If we had a government we didn’t get to vote for, would it be OK for them to lie?
In this country, you pay for the media (the BBC, anyway) at gunpoint.
Let me put it another way:
“Who cares if the media gets a government overthrown by issuing false accusations about the opponent? Allow me to spell it out. Such a media will no longer be trusted by its own people. When there is a genuine threat and the media again sounds the alarm, the people will be inclined to assume that the media is merely trying to manipulate them, and may well refuse to oppose a government which is really after dragging them into an unecessary war or instituting tyranny. The habit of lying about important matters tends to produce undesirable results like that.”
This is the problem with sentiments along the lines of not caring whether the media have got it right or wrong, so long as Tony Blair is in political trouble as a result. Ends justifying means, you see.
The media is a part of the aparatus of the establishment – it is formally privatised and independent, but still constitutes a part of the ‘ruling elite’. They even call it the fourth estate. I do not see “the government” as necessarily a single monolithic entity, but classify it as all those individuals granted power by virtue of their position to influence public policy and affect other people’s lives. (A functional definition is required, otherwise the government could avoid all this tedious accountability by simply renaming themselves…)
The media have tremendous power over people’s lives. They can conduct their own public show trials, and declare people innocent or guilty by fiat. They can influence policy and pressure for new laws. They can influence elections by emphasising or supressing information. They are widely perceived by decision-makers as representing “public opinion”. Elected ministers, even the prime-minister, treat the press with extreme caution.
The media act as the Ministry of Truth, and the best bit is that because they are not “official” government they are subject to absolutely no accountability to limit their power. I said above that if they lied people would stop believing, but in practice they don’t. If the media get caught lying about the government, nobody will hear, because nobody will report it. All most people will ever see is the lie. Or if they are caught and exposed, it will be dismissed as “just journalism” and quickly forgotten; and within a year they will be able to repeat the lie again without fear of contradiction.
And so the public will continue to trust the media. Orwell spoke of what he knew, and nothing has changed in 60 years.
I trust journalists far less than I trust politicians, and that’s saying something. Not because I think politicians are fine and moral characters – they aren’t – but simply because they’re watched.
Not all power comes out of the barrel of a gun. The pen is sometimes mightier than the sword.
An interesting tension, for both politicians and the press.
Perry’s
is a form of caveat emptor.
Mr Spog’s
is a form of breach of (implied) contract.
And concerning Pa Annoyed’s
what about the BBC and the Kelly/Gilligan Affair, concerning which: demonstrable guilt and proportional punishment seem, at least to me, to be distant from what actually happened.
Best regards
Or, in the context of the US structure of government, P.J. O’Rourke described the three branches of government as “Money, Television, and Bullshit.”
And this in a country that, by and large, doesn’t have a tax-supported news outlet. (Unless you count NPR/Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which doesn’t count for much)
The Kelly/Gilligan Affair is a very good example of what I was talking about, but how you interpret it depends on what you think really happened. How many people, do you think, actually downloaded the transcripts and evidence and made their own minds up, and how many read the potted opinions and conclusions in the press?
I recall people complaining how Hutton was a whitewash and all the judgements went against the BBC, and yet, reading the actual report, I noted at least a third of the conclusions criticised the government. I recall the BBC saying afterwards that all their material accusations had been borne out by the evidence and the conclusion against them had been on technicalities, and yet, having read the evidence I found the BBC’s case unproven and the way they handled the case worthy of criticism.
It’s been a long time and I no longer remember all the details as I once did, but I recall my extreme disquiet at the profound disconnect between what I read from the enquiry and what the press were saying about it, and I have to say, the final judgement came as no surprise to me whatsoever.
Whether justice has been served is another matter. The BBC suffered a number of resignations, but I do not think it’s reputation suffered any lasting damage, and it seems to have made little change to the way it or the rest of the media works. The government technically won the battle, but I think lost the war when it came to their credibility, and were cowed from challenging any other press misrepresentations for a long time. Is any of this justice for Dr Kelly? No, definitely not.
People remember the grey-faced PM being asked if he had blood on his hands, they remember the crowing over the revelations of the government’s PR machinery, they remember the confidence before the decision that the BBC would win, and the shock and disbelief when they didn’t. They remember it as a whitewash, when the government’s appointed judge gave Tony a free pass and slammed their beloved BBC. All of that, today, is the truth – as sure as two plus two equals five.
At least nowadays you can dowload the raw information, and indeed get news from less thoroughly filtered sources. Twenty years ago, I would have had no alternative but to accept the information served up on the TV news, and would probably believe differently as a result. But even today, most of my family still get all their information through mainstream sources, and I believe most other people do too. The media still have tremendous power, and I trust them with it less than ever.
Duncan wrote:
So you don’t pay the BBC License Fee?
So are people really suggesting that the media needs to be held to the same level of accountability as the government you vote for and pay your taxes too and who decides when and how the military is deployed?
That just seems dangerous to liberty.
They should be held accountable to the extent that they have real power, which is not of the same nature as that of the government. So, no, I don’t think it should be the same level of accountability, but there do need to be checks and balances.
We rely on the media to give us the information we need to judge our government. Is it doing what we want it to, is it competent, is it honest, are the issues it is prioritising the right ones? What happens to all that if the media is lying?
What happens if it is caught faking photos, getting its stories from foreign stringers working for the enemy, engaging in Pallywood-style propaganda shoots? What happens if it sells some politicians or other public figures as Bambi-like saviours of mankind, and others as right-wing racist fascists? What happens if it promotes some causes, and ignores others of greater seriousness? What happens if it shuts out opposing views, distorts history (or science), takes sides, and imposes that narrative on the public understanding?
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
The media implicitly tell people who to vote for, they decide what taxes the government can get away with, and they can make things very hot for a government that deploys the army somewhere the media don’t want it to go. That sound dangerous to liberty, too.
I don’t know what can or should be done. I haven’t thought about it for long enough. The problems it gives rise to are in many ways like a monopoly or cartel, and perhaps the same thinking should apply: not to restrict what the media can do, but to ensure that other voices can compete on fair terms. Maybe the internet will solve the problem eventually, or maybe they will find a way to control that too. The power Google and other ISPs potentially hold is another topic of major significance, but one for another day I think.
You cannot ever limit the reach or power of a govt if you’re this apathetic about it lying to get what it wants. You don’t mind the lies of others to get your way in Iraq? Why should anyone ever believe anything you have to say?
Would you lie to get your way politically? Do you care to admit that in public?
As usual, you completely miss the point. GOVERNMENTS LIE. A lot. To pretend otherwise is delusion. It is one of many reasons to limit the power of governments as much as possible as they are inherently untrustworthy institutions.
Moreover as I stated my reasons for wanting Saddam overthrown were not the same as the UK governments reasons, hence my lack of deep concern over the claim they lied about some facts. Which bit about that is not clear?
Who’s apathetic? Whether I tolerate the government lying depends on what it is lying for. There are rare circumstances where I would expect it to lie in the national interest. I am as much against them lying in their own interests and against ours as anyone, although I am realistic enough to know that people will do that. Politicians are as human as anyone.
However, I sense the subtext of your question is the matter of lies supposedly told to “get my way” in Iraq. I am most definitely not in favour of a government telling lies about intelligence in order to sell a war. If it is ever proved that they did so, I will be quite cross about it.
My point, though, is that most of the claims that lies were told are themselves lies – told by the Islamists, the far left, various political movements and activists, and to a large extent by the media. My point is that most people do not know they are lies, and will never find out, because they get all their information via that same media. It is a self-perpetuating system, nobody can do anything about it because all the channels by which such action might be organised or effected are controlled by that very same media. You believe what you are told. And when next year they tell you something completely opposite, you will believe that too.
How many chemical weapons were found in Iraq? I have met intelligent and well-informed people who believe the answer is none! They really believe it! Because that is what the media has said, and the media has not yet said any different, or at least, not in a voice loud enough to hear. And this is counted evidence of amongst the foremost of the ‘lies’ told by the government in the run-up to Iraq. It is, itself, a lie, and a whopper of a lie too. Given the potential consequences at the next election of people believing it, what should the penalty be for telling it?
I could go on and catalogue the litany of lies they have told about this government, but I just don’t have nearly enough time. There are many things I don’t like about the current government and its policies, but I will not condemn them for things they have not done. To do so in the interests of political expediency would put me in the moral position of those I hate most. I will also oppose those lies and the political activists who spread them, because should they ever gain power by means of them, precisely the situation they warn about would come into being: people who will say anything, ally with anyone, and sell out any value to get and keep power.
Anyway; Merry Christmas, everyone!
You cannot both ‘benefit’ (in getting what you want) from a govt lie and also distance yourself from that lie. You’re OK w/ govt lying to get your way, which implies you’d be perfectly happy to lie to get your way yourself. You didn’t have to tell the lie to get us into your war, because you had the govt to do it for you.
Your logic is flawed. I am not the government. I did not even vote for the government and am a constant critic of the government. I wanted ‘X’ to happen (topple Saddam) and it did. If the government says ‘Y’ is why it did something but ‘X’ happens, how is their justification my concern when I have made it clear all along that I wanted ‘X’ to happen for my own reasons? My only connection to the government is that they used some of my tax money to do what I wanted for their reasons, and that action just happening to coincide with my desired objective. I do not have to sign on for the whole enchilada.
“I don’t care if the govt got it’s socialized medicine program passed based on bogus statistics about children dying w/o medical care. I personally never quoted that made up stat, and the important thing is that socialized medicine is something we should have done anyway, so just shut up about the govt’s lies. The important thing is I’m right, and my not caring if the govt lied to get my way just proves how morally superior I am.”
Perry, would you accept the above from a socialist?
Or replace “socialized medicine” with “govt takeover of industry” above, and use hysteria about how global warming will drown us all as the lie. Is it still OK for a liberal to think those lies are OK, because govt taking control of the economy “should have been done, anyway” and if they have to create false global warming scares, so be it?
Including limiting their power to wage wars, like the one(s) you support? (I don’t mean pacifism, just limiting what they can do outside of, say, a foreign invasion).
You do not seem to be reading what I am writing. One last try: I did not say it is “ok that the government lies” because that is not what I think. What I did say is that the fact (or rather opinion) that the government lied about some of the intelligence regarding Iraq is irrelevant to my support for the war to bring down Saddam because those ‘facts’ were not the main reason I wanted the war to happen.
The reason I wrote the article was that I was asked “if it proves to be the case that the government lied about the WMDs, would you reconsider your support for overthrowing Saddam?” and my answer was “no, because WMDs were not my main reason for wanting Saddam overthrown… ergo, it does not matter what the government said as the government’s reasons were not my reasons.”
It is not that government lying is “ok”, it is that it is completely irrelevant to my support for starting the war that brought down Saddam. Am I getting through this time?
In fact, see my final line:
If lying by the governments I dislike are causing them problems politically, that just makes things even sweeter. Woe for the lesser evil, overthrow for the greater evil. Sweet.
I’d like to take a somewhat different view on what Perry wrote, than that of “Who Me?”
On this, I think that it is mostly people in government who lie, rather than government itself. This is be cause they wish to protect themselves from accusations of bad judgement, incompetence and/or wrongdoing.
Concerning lying by governments, I recollect the definition of a diplomat: “A man sent to lie abroad for his country.”
Now, I think it might be useful to draw a distinction between governments lying to each other (they are big boys after all) and government ministers lying to parliament and to their electorate.
The issue here seems to be that of means versus ends.
I have a significant dislike of serious lying, but do accept that a small lie (particularly one that is just careless), in support of a large and important end, should not be punished in the same way as a big lie in support of any end.
The problems with the Iraq War is that the UK was so divided on the issue, and the issues were so divisive, that lying (or grossly unsupportable exaggeration) was one way of winning the argument.
More importantly, and at least somewhat in support of Perry’s case, what were all those MPs thinking, especially given the views of Robin Cook and others (and its widespread publicity).
Best regards
No, this is your attempt to support the govt while it was lying (even if you personally didn’t quote the lie) and then trying to distance yourself from that lie. Your war, your lies. You just had them doing the lying for you. You cannot separate the war from the lies needed to get it started. They are not two separate issues.
Should the govt had told the truth even if that would have left Saddam in power?
Should these lies lead people not to just limit the power of govt, but to limit it’s power to go around the world ridding it of the likes of Saddam?
Wrong and just repeating the contention does not change that. My objective was to see Saddam removed because he was a mass murdering tyrant… oh and I think he might have a WMD programme. The government’s objectives were (they said) to remove him because he had a WMD programme… oh and he is a bad man. The fact they (maybe) misrepresented some facts does not change my motivation for wanting to see him removed nor require me to sign off on how the state spins things. In fact I was quite sceptical(Link) about many of the things being said in the run up to the war. Moreover if the state gets in trouble for telling porkies, that has no bearing on my reasons for wanting Saddam removed.
In truth I am deeply suspicious of your motivation and truthfulness. Seems to me that you actually are just looking to justify your opposition to removing a tyrant. You want to limit the power of the state, you claim… but you were presumably quite happy to see a large and murderous state remain for another few decades in Iraq.
Should the govt have told the truth about Saddam’s supposed WMD, even if that would have meant no war and him still in power?
A civil war can kill as many as a “murderous state”, and that may very well be the result of your invasion, due to the idiocy of the govt you supported. It will just lack a media-friendly single villain to blame everything on.
And you are quite happy to see the govt lie to get it’s way, as long as it’s your way as well. You don’t sound like you actually regret the lies that got you your war, you just want to use those lies, which got you your war, for your other political ends as well. A nice rhetorical backflip, but totally lacking in integrity.
I’ll ask again: should the govt have told the truth about Saddam’s supposed WMD, even if that would have meant no war and him still in power?
It is clear to reasonable commenters that it was not clear if he had WMDs or not, but what I wanted was the government to say they would overthrow Saddam because he was a tyrant with form for invading his neighbours.
So what? The war to break up Yugoslavia killed a lot of people too and that was sure worth it (ask most Croatians or Slovenes). Overthrowing a tyranny is not for the faint-hearted and people usually die. But that does not make it wrong to refuse to accept the legitimacy of a tyrannical government.
Your comment confirm what I thought… it is overthrowing tyrants you are against in principle when you look closely, not limiting the power of states. Your questions are asked and answered. I am done with you.
“Who, Me?” wrote:
I’m not sure Perry either wants or needs anyone to speak for him. However, I see Perry as supporting the action (of invasion) rather than the agent (government) or their claimed motive.
This is indicative of what I see as a major problem with modern politics: that it is becoming increasingly difficult to support one political party substantially more than another. This is not least because (all) political parties now seem too much stained by the means through which they conduct their business, and not enough coloured by either policy or principle.
Best regards
It was clear to the govt that it’s claims about Saddam couldn’t be backed up, but it made them anyway. Should it have admitted before the invasion it had no basis to claim Iraq was a WMD threat, even if that meant it didn’t get the support it needed for your war and left Saddam in power?
Wouldn’t that be a decision for the Iraqis to make, and not for you to make for them?
What I’m against is the State lying to get what it wants and then making a bad situation (Saddam in 2003, not the Saddam of the 80s you talk about) worse.
Should the govt have come clean about what it knew concerning Saddam’s ‘WMD’ before the invasion, even if that meant no war?
If you say ‘yes’, you would have been willing to keep Saddam in power. If you say ‘no’, you have signed on to the govt’s lies and cannot dismiss it as their lies and not yours.
Which is it, Perry?
If we were told ahead of time that Iraq would turn into Yugoslavia post-invasion (bloodshed and all) and not the ‘cakewalk’ people like you promised, we wouldn’t have invaded and Saddam would still be in power.
One more lie. Should the govt have told that one, too?
No means Saddam in power, yes means you’ve signed on to their lie.
Which is it, Perry?
Your question is meaningless as that is not and never was single binary choice on offer. Moreover Yugoslavia post-war has ended very much the right way up (though I am sure you are heartbroken poor old Slobo did not come out in top).
There are many ways the war in Iraq could be ‘sold’ (which is why your either/or contention is so idiotic), the fact the government sold it one way and I would have sold it another is hardly an issue for me for reasons I have already stated and if that is not the answer you want to hear, that is your problem, not mine.
Moreover I never said establishing a more liberty friendly situation in Iraq was going to be a cakewalk (though I did say the invasion itself to overthrow Saddam would be and I was correct). I have spent quite enough time on a disingenuous Ba’athist supporting fool such as yourself.
Who me,
There were several strands to the case for war. The legal case was with regard to violations of UN security council resolutions – of which WMD was an important but not the only part – as well as the strategic and moral case. I do wish people would stop telling us the case made was about WMDs – that’s a press simplification.
To answer the question; had it been the case that there had been no basis for the belief that Saddam had failed to comply with UN resolutions and this posed a threat to international peace and security, then yes, they should have said so, even if that had resulted in Saddam remaining in power. This includes the WMD claims.
Similarly, I hope you would accept that if there was evidence of violations that according to the UN charter justified invasion, that this should be told, even if that led to Saddam’s overthrow. I hope you would accept that if these claims were subsequently found to be substantially true, albeit not in every detailed aspect and not in those most dramatic claims highlighted by the press, then this ought to be acknowledged, even if that has the effect of justifying an invasion you disagreed with.
It is as important the media tell us truths that justify a government as truths that discredit it, and that discrediting a government is not an end held to justify the means of obscuring the truth from the public.
Critics demand impossibly high standards of pro-war debaters, but will never, ever, concede any valid point made against their position. They will deny, ignore, change the subject, or otherwise refuse to say anything giving their opponent any legitimacy. There is no point in debating with such a fanatic.
As I said, had there been no evidence of WMD, that should have been said, even if it had resulted in sanctions collapsing and Saddam remaining. Will you likewise concede that the WMD capability and intentions that have been found should be publicised and not hidden by the media, even though that justifies the action taken?
I predict you will refuse, because like most of your kind I don’t think you are an honest debater. Are you prepared to surprise me?
Not being a statist, I don’t have to care one way or another about what the UN thinks.
If you wanted the govt to ‘sell’ the war w/ something other than Saddam being a WMD threat to us, and that they’d throw rose petals at our feet, thus making installing a ‘democracy’ easy, then you wanted a course of action that would have meant no war and Saddam still in power.
Why do you love the Baathists so much, Perry?
Didn’t think you would! QED, as they say.