Comments on: Minor factual

By: Mick Fealty

Mick Fealty — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 13:26:52 +0000

The point I think is being missed here is that the BBC clearly believed Gilligan was on to a great story. Had the 6.07 broadcast been true, (i.e. that the government knew that the 45 minutes element of the dossier was untrue) that would have been a great story. It would also have warranted the 19 broadcasts he did that day. For whatever reason the BBC dined out for a day on the substance of his original mistake. Now I’m not saying it wasn’t true (it and much worse may yet come to light), but Gilligan did not know it to have been true at that time. For some reason I was awake enough at the time and I heard the first and the second report. I was so startled by it that, accordingly, I waited to hear the fallout in the second bulletin. There was none. It was clear from the changed account that Gilligan had over-egged the original into the great story category, from what it was worthy but essentially dull notebook detail (i.e. something that might be explosive were it to fit with another two or three corroborating facts). Much else around this story is sound and fury (to which some very senior figures have contributed). The BBC has an important national and international position of credibility. It cannot expect to retain that if it maintains the current levels of hysteria!

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:20:27 +0000

Which lie are you talking about? Specifically and provably, Blair’s statement to the Commons that the February dossier came from the intelligence services when they hadn’t checked it. More generally; numerous statements by Blair, Straw and Hoon into which we haven’t had a proper inquiry.

By: Julian Todd

Julian Todd — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:19:39 +0000

How much longer is this rewrite of the record permitted to go on? Clearly, by the latest reports, the probabality of the WMDs being in Iraq is now known to be zero. There is no room for doubt on this experimental fact. There was also absolutely no rationale for Saddam Hussain to mislead anyone about this. The inspection regime of Iraq should have declared it clean. However, under Blix, it was not permitted the time to to reach this conclusion. It may well have reached it soon, but war had to be started in time to head off that possibility. Under the previous regime, the inspection process was perverted by the CIA who wanted to not to find all the WMD, but to hunt down Saddam and kill him. This was attempted in 1998 by a night of bombing presidential palaces (they missed their target). The top inspector at the time, Scott Ritter, said on the news on December 17, 1998: “The U.S. has perverted the U.N. weapons process by using it as a tool to justify military actions, falsely so. … The U.S. was using the inspection process as a trigger for war.” That’s why we are now at the point of splitting hairs with this accusation that, although Saddam Hussain did not violate the terms of holding and developing WMD, he did violate the terms of the inspection regime up to 1998, five years before the invasion of 2003, although he had not violated the terms of the 2002/3 inspections. And you’ve also got to really delude yourself that the 1998 inspections were conducted in good faith, when the people doing it say not.

By: ahem

ahem — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 11:19:51 +0000

frankly I’m not impressed with “And if UNSCOM hadn’t been compromised so that it was acting as a franchise of the CIA.” as a useful comment on anything except how to contruct a sentence fragment. How about the contemporary comments from the UN to say that it was inappropriate for a UN body to become, and I only loosely paraphrase, a franchise of a national intelligence service? You also mischaracterise what happened to UNSCOM in 1998. But that’s to be expected. After all, that’s one reason why John Bolton and the US delegation at both the chemical and biological weapons treaty negotiations undermined steps to implement the proposals for verification: the fear that independent inspection teams looking at US facilities might be compromised by connections to foreign commercial or state intelligence interests. I’m sorry your post didn’t make it obvious that you were upgrading from unsatisfactory dossier to lie. I’m sorry you forget that Blair backed up his unsatisfactory dossiers with parliamentary statements. BTW does this change the argument that we should rely on our intelligence agencies to determine the exact moment when a power-hungry dictator with actual banned weapons experience becomes a threat that is imminent? No: it makes it more imperative that intelligence agencies should not be put in a situation where they to abandon their usual standards for assessment to produce publications for public consumption and to back up the a prioris of their political masters. See dsquared’s references to the FASC report, passim.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:26:15 +0000

“Sorry, Sebastian; I’ve lost the thread that connects this to how its OK to lie to the British Parliament.” I’m sorry your post didn’t make it obvious that you were upgrading from unsatisfactory dossier to lie. Which lie are you talking about? Or do you take intelligence failures to be lies? BTW does this change the argument that we should rely on our intelligence agencies to determine the exact moment when a power-hungry dictator with actual banned weapons experience becomes a threat that is imminent?

By: robin green

robin green — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:21:45 +0000

There’s a simple answer to that one (replacing “US” with “Bush”): The US public are the only people who can really defeat Bush. That’s why the obsequiousness of so much of the US media is so appalling. Of course, replacing Bush with a Democrat is unlikely to more than tweak US foreign policy. I forever live in hope, however.

By: Empress

Empress — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 11:35:43 +0000

This discussion is pointless. The fact of the matter is, we are all POWERLESS against the Blair-Bush tag team. We can protest, debate, confront, challenge, but it won’t make a blind bit of difference. The war has been fought, lives have been lost and now all we are left with is a cyclic argument over who said what. Let it go people, the BBC and Dr. Kelly came too close to the truth and look what happened to them. Even if Blair did admit that the grounds for going to war with Iraq were wrong, whose got the balls to oppose the U.S?

By: dsquared

dsquared — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:26:08 +0000

Sorry, Sebastian; I’ve lost the thread that connects this to how its OK to lie to the British Parliament.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 07:17:18 +0000

“And if UNSCOM hadn’t been compromised so that it was acting as a franchise of the CIA.” Even if true (and I’m conceeding it only for the sake of argument), so what? Saddam started a war with Kuwait. He end up losing to the United States, ahem the UN, and as part of the ceasefire he agreed intrusive inspections of his WMD programs. Why did we insist on inspections? Because UNSCOM found out that he was about 6-12 months from a nuclear weapon when before the war they thought he was 4-5 years away. But after inspections resumed, they still allowed Saddam to play games for years, ending in their total inability to leave their hotels by 1998. And that was after almost 3 years of being thwarted at major sites and being barred from the palaces. So frankly I’m not impressed with “And if UNSCOM hadn’t been compromised so that it was acting as a franchise of the CIA.” as a useful comment on anything except how to contruct a sentence fragment.

By: ahem

ahem — Fri, 30 Jan 2004 05:24:24 +0000

Quite a bit of this mess could have been avoided if the UN in 1998 had insisted that Saddam allow the inspectors to go wherever they wanted with no notice. And if UNSCOM hadn’t been compromised so that it was acting as a franchise of the CIA. Anyway, Hutton’s basic point is that since governments and intelligence services hold high office, they can’t be deemed to play rhetorical games for political expediency. It just wouldn’t be polite. Instead, we’re going to remember ‘subconsciously influenced’ for a long time. (Chris: I think you’re right. Gordon’s giving Tony as extended a Pyrrhic victory as possible.) And as for choosing Campbell and Mandelson of all people to open their gobs… it takes the cake.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:07:55 +0000

Oh, I see, the Hutton report is good for the Blair government because it says that there was no malice in its affirmations about Irak WMDs, it’s just that they had absolutely no good intelligence about Irak and most of their beliefs were completely wrong. Sebastian, please explain to me what is the exact relationship between U.N: inspections and the intelligence services abilities to get information. ¿Do you mean that without inspections the intelligence community had no sourdes of information on Irak? ¿Is this supposed to make us feel good?

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 19:28:26 +0000

It is a bit odd to make a big point about old information when the left did its very best to make sure no one could get any useful information out of Iraq by simultaneously resisting strong inspection regimes in the mid and late 1990s (pre-Bush please note)while demanding that we shift away from human intelligence sources because they tended to be too unsavory. Quite a bit of this mess could have been avoided if the UN in 1998 had insisted that Saddam allow the inspectors to go wherever they wanted with no notice. They had a US president whom they liked, I’m sure he could have been convinced to provide the small amount of military support that the UN might need. Oh, sorry. I probably shouldn’t talk about fantasy worlds where the UN actually tries to do anything other than play the status quo for junket meetings.

By: British Spin

British Spin — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:55:08 +0000

Daniel, I was going to comment, but the thing got so long I’m afraid I’ve had to post rather critically on this post over at my blog…

By: david

david — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:18:04 +0000

Which argument was that, Adrian?

By: mandarin

mandarin — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:17:29 +0000

Oh get a life the lot of you. It’s too late for them to get a life. They’re academics.