THE
HUTTON
REPORT
and now THE BUTLER REPORT
(Jan 28th 2004 onward)
Hutton's
was
a
very
polite
report,
and
in
my view did not properly apportion the
blame for Dr Kelly's death. This falls squarely on Andrew Gilligan, who
knew perfectly well that Dr Kelly's name must eventually emerge (unless
he is completely unaware of all contemporary reality), and that he had
represented his views incorrectly, thereby making his anonymous source
responsible for the allegation that The PM and other government
ministers lied deliberately and misled parliament and the country. He
was aided and abetted with the utmost force by his superiors, right the
way up to the Chairman of the Governors. Hutton was right about the
reason why Dr Kelly committed suicide. The BBC was therefore, in
inexorable logic, to blame for his death.
That
the
chairman
has
resigned
is
a
start.
The rest of the governors must
search their own conscience. Sambrook should be sacked.
Let me remind you of
a claim by counsel acting for the BBC during the inquiry:
"While some people saw
some of the pressures Dr Kelly was under, it was always going to be a
partial view. The BBC accepts nobody in the Government,
BBC or Civil Service had an inkling of all the
pressures
he was under."
Sambrook knew, all the time, from
the very beginning, the pressure and the reason for it. Kelly could not
correct Gilligan publicly without breaking his anonymity. By the time
the BBC had backed the story to the hilt and it was world news, rowing
back was impossible.
If
the
BBC
accepts
the
Hutton
report
as
a judgment, they are then
entitled to the license fee. If not, the Corporation remains in
breach of trust in the powerful and privileged, unique position it
holds and is not entitled to enforce financial support on the public.
The Director General's previous apology was a good start, the Panorama
programme was a fine follow-up. The DG's grudging acceptance of the
Hutton Report as 'criticism' today is not helpful. He claims the BBC
never accused the Government of lying. This is not so.
On the 27th June I wrote to the BBC:
"What
an extraordinary question to open Any Questions with: would we rather
BELIEVE the BBC or Alistair Campbell".
That was the BBC accusing the Government, in public, of lying at the highest level, and encouraging the public to accuse
the government of lying, based on false evidence given to the public by
the BBC. It doesn't come any worse than that so lighten up Greg and
just take the medicine. Accept the report, and tell your staff to
accept it.
The Hutton Report is
a considered judgment of an experienced judge, experienced in civil
rights and responsibilities, in possession of all the evidence. It
should be accepted. I want to see the Charter renewed, and the
constitution of the BBC remain as it is. That means it must get its
house in order.
If Dr Kelly had made his views known publicly, with his name to them,
they would not have been the views the BBC claimed were his. That is
the nub of the matter. Why should anyone make allegations anonymously
unless they are allegations to the police or other authority about
persons from whom the authority cannot protect you? Do we really live
in a country where whistle-blowers cannot be protected, and this is the
excuse for the media to run rubbish stories and blame them on people
they say they can't name? Perhaps, when the media has an agenda and
wishes to put up fiction as fact, vouched for by authorities that can't
be challenged.
The critics of Hutton I have listened to so far have completely missed
the point. A man is dead. Hutton was asked to find out if this was due
to dishonesty or failure on the part of the Government. He has
answered: NO dishonesty, some failure by the MOD in the way the news
was broken to Dr Kelly that his name was in the public domain. Since
this was inevitable, this is hardly the cause of his death. Was his
death due to dishonesty or failure on the part of the BBC? His answer
is YES on both counts, though he has glossed over he dishonesty in the
report as some of it might be considered to be transient. Hutton was
also asked to find out if the PM and his ministers had been lying in
the run-up to the war with Iraq, misleading parliament. He answered NO.
Even Robin Cook agrees with that.
ON September 1st Lat year I wrote:
As I have said
before, the responsiblity for winding Dr Kelly up to the
point of suicide lies fairly and squarely with the BBC, at every level:
reporter, programme editor, controller of news, board of governors.
They
are all guilty, .with no mitigating circumstances. Everyone else was
doing their job properly. Of course, having the worlds most powerful
tool at their disposal, the BBC might stop at nothing to make the
public
think otherwise. Or it might apologise. We are approaching a critical
moment, but the really critical point comes when Lord Hutton gives his
judgment. We will then see how the proverbial cookie is likely to
crumble for this country. Will he try to defuse tension with his
judgment, or will he fearlessly call it as it is?
Well, he called it how it is. We were told he was that sort of a guy,
and we were told right. I am waiting for the right reponse. Not from
Michael Howard, of course, but from those who matter.
JB - 28th Jan 2004
UPDATE Jan 29th
The wrong man has resigned. Greg seems too proud to apologise and won't
sack Sambrook because he needs to stick to the 'buck stops here'
principle. What a mess. Critics of Hutton are still talking WMD. The
issue is the death of Dr Kelly, and not just Gilligan's mistakes but
the subsequent championing of the BBC of the theory that the public HAD
TO CHOOSE between the veracity of the Government and the BBC. They are
still at it. We are being asked now to choose between the BBC and the
PM, Hutton, Campbell and the entire Cabinet. This is quite intolerable.
All that was required was for the BBC to accept that it was to blame
for Dr Kelly's death by using him and quoting him incorrectly and
making a meal of it day after day, insisting the entire population
believe the BBC or the Government but not both. That was why Kelly
died, and the BBC must accept it. Neither the Chairman or the DG could
do that.
Absurd hysteria is now setting in amongst the journalist
community. How utterly pathetic. We have lost a good DG, but
that's that.
14:35 pm - We now have a new
acting Chairman, who has issued a proper apology, and a new
acting DG with BBC experience even if he will not match the Dyke drive
and personality. It looks like they are entitled to the license fee
once more, but let's just wait a few days! There are still those in the
BBC it seems who do not understand what they did wrong. They are
nitpicking details of Gilligan's reporting. Gilligan is becoming
irrelevant now - we are seeing the true problem emerging. Political
views of some BBC staff are blinding them to their duty to report
accurately and follow the logic wherever it leads.
The best comments yet on Hutton came late this evening on
HARDtalk, on BBC 24. Tim Sebastian spoke with Tom Mangold, a
veteran journalist, personal friend of Dr Kelly and someone with
considerable experience in
a range of matters and environments relevant to the issues. I recommend
this as required listening or reading, but will there be a full transcript (most
important) available, or perhaps a recording?
UPDATE JAN 31
Those who want the BBC to remain independent, funded by the licence
fee, and reponsible to its board of governors as now, should be
grateful to Lord Hutton. The severity of his judgment is, I am
certain, precisely because he cares deeply about the BBC and does not
want it privatised, commercialised, or dependent. Those who really
value the BBC will come to understand that when the Charter is renewed,
Hutton will have made it possible. All this has nothing whatever to do
with the fact that no stores of WMD have been found in Iraq.
UPDATE FEB 01
I have changed my mind about the resignation of Greg Dyke. I no longer
think this is great loss. He has done the job that was required and if
he had continued he would have failed to manage well in the future. He
clearly fails to understand that the main problem was not Gilligan but
what happened after, and has little to do with WMD. The British public
were not asked to choose between Gilligan or Campbell's version of
events, but between the BBC and Campbell and then the BBC and the
entire government. Again and again the BBC put its name and entire
authority up as the alternative truth, with no possible compromise, to
the word of the Government. Jonathan Dimbleby was still doing it this
weekend on Radio 4, asking the audience to choose between the veracity
of the BBC and ministers. This would be acceptable if it was not the
same BBC who has for the last few years fed the public with the message
that all ministers are liars, and the PM a prime one, not least through
a range of comedy programmes where a cheap laugh is gained every few
minutes on this score. All this was pointed out to the BBC over a
period of weeks and then months, with the consequences of what would
happen if they ignored it made extremely clear. It is not just that the
BBC made mistakes, but that when these mistakes were pointed out, not
by the government but by license payers, they refused to take them
seriously. No self respecting citizen of this country would financially
support a broadcasting corporation telling he entire world that our PM
and government are unprincipled liars. Dyke and Gilligan are still
holding that because parts of Gilligans story were right, Hutton's
criticisms are wrong; or that because Hutton did not criticise the
government, criticism of the BBC is wrong. This is rubbish. This
evening Dyke is still rabbitting on. I can now see why the governors
accepted his resgination.
UPDATE FEB 05 2004
We now have not the BBC, but the BBC Lawyers (through a leak)
contesting Hutton, claiming hw was 'wrong in law' to have ignored
the differences of opinion in the security services, the failure of the
government to rebuke some of the tabloid for about their over-exited
interpretation of the famous 'dossier', Campbell's failure to tell the
Foreign Affairs Committee of a change in one draft out of several, and
a few other details. More fundamentally they claim a fundamental right
in European law for Gilligan to publish. Personally I think
they are possibly correct in the last point. The reason Hutton judged
as he did was because Gilligan's errors were not only not corrected,
they were takes up by the BBC as th truth, and the BBC then asked the
public, in such programmes as Question Time, to vote if they believed
the BBC or the Government on the truth of the Gilligan report, even
after Dr Kelly had been named and had indicated it was an incorrect
rendering.
And we have Michael Howard calling on the PM to resign because he did
not know in advance of the vote on the war whether the intelligence on
the 45 minute warning referred to battlefield or other weapons. Since
the 45 minute warning formed absolutely no part of the PM's decision
making on acting to enforce 1441, it is hardly surprising he did not
waste his time ruminating on this imponderable issue. At the time, I
wrote that if and when we were on the receiving end of a WMD attack, in
the battlefield or elsewhere, there would possibly be no warning at
all. As far as British Forces in Cyprus are concerned, WMD developed by
Saddam could already be on the island if he was left free to develop
them and finance his agents with unrestricted oil exports. Right or
wrong, it is clear that the PM, acting in his capacity as leader of our
elected government, with his cabinet and advisers, took the decision to
enforce 1441 and remove Saddam who refused to comply with it. Margaret
Beckett used an unfortunate example, though, in Winston Churchill. He
would have informed himself of known current operational weapon
delivery details before deciding it was irrelevant. Blair decided it
was irrelevant and therefor not a priority to seek details (which could
have been wrong anyway). Unfortunately when dealing with so many people
who are obsessed with irrelevancies, and with opportunists, he had no
such luxury. However, I am glad to hear Andrew Marr making sense as
usual.
There is still a chance the new BBC may be entitled to the licence fee,
but they will have to wait a bit longer before my judgment is settled.
POSTSCRIPT
AUGUST
13th
2010
-
SIX
YEARS
LATER!
The new Attorney General in the Tory-Liberal coaltition government has
decided Hutton did not answer all the medical questions possible about
the death of Dr Kelly.
I have to tell you, dear reader, that whatever the latest collection of
forensic experts (who were not involved at the time) have to say about
their failure to understand exactly how the damage Kelly did by taking
pain-killers/anti-coagulants and slitting his veins led to his death by
suicide,
they will be yet more incapable of showing how the same recorded
evidence led to his death by murder. Re-opening this enquiry is a
purely political exercise and a total waste of time. But have a look at
how it can sell newspapers. First duty of an editor in the current
economic conditions is to increase sales. Second duty is to increase
sales. Third duty.....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/columnists/article-1284538/Ive-long-thought-Dr-David-Kellys-suicide-questionable-.html
Better find out what the Duke of Edinburgh was doing at the time, he
must be handy with a knife...
Now scroll down to JUNE 9th 2011 - the madness never stops!
THE BUTLER REPORT
Intro
Feb19 2004.
Lord Butler has been chosen, presumably, as he is the man most familiar
with all branches of government at the top level and is unlikely to
slip up in his work. He is intimately familiar with our unwritten
constitution and its history, will know exactly what questions to ask
and will be able to press for answers. It is rather a pity that his
exceptional qualifications for this job, gained during his very long
time at the head of the civil service, should have been bought at such
incredible cost to the nation. For it is this man who ministered to,
and was to an extent responsible for, the pathetic inactivity
that passed for many years in this country as government. While France,
Germany and other leading economies pressed forward in the 1970s and
1980s modernising their railways, roads, telephones and data networks
and every sort of modernisation and the proper application of
electronics to much of commerce and industry and the management of
society, Butler remained stuck in the 19th century. He had not the
slightest idea of what was going to happen in the 1990s and after the
Millenium, or how to prepare for it, which is why we are facing such a
mess right now. We can of course blame Mrs Thatcher for such things as
the ERM problem, when we went in at a ridiculous exchange rate, but the
fact that there was nobody there to tell the Enid Blyton of economics
she was making a pig's ear of it is also due to the fact that Lord
Butler was there, intead of
somebody who knew which way was up. Thatcher was right to wind down
coal-mining of course, principally on health grounds. The unions had
prevented the modernisation of the industry and the only thing to do
was to stop it in the interests of all, as quickly as possible.
Politicians have remarkably little to do with government of the type
seen in successful economies, though the present government is trying
to change that. Maybe Butler just decided that decent policies could
not be sold, electorally, by any of the parties of the the latter half
of the 20th century, so he just gave up and tried to act as damage
limitation on whatver half-baked fiddling was attempted. But now is his
moment. Just the man for the job. But at what cost.
MARCH 1st
It was fairly obvious that the great opportunist [MH] would bail out of
the
Butler Report as soon as he discovered that Butler was not going to
allow it to be used as tool for those who are not in government (but
wish they were) to milk public support from the anti-war lobby. Butler
has set out to look into the workings of the intelligence sources so as
to make sure that the advice given to the government was the best
available, properly processed and assembled. Nuff said, totally
predictable and in the long term of no consequence other than to
consolidate the consignation of the reputation of Howard to the
dustbin. As hinted in the previous paragragh, the twister realised he
had met his match in Butler, who may be square but is, as a
consequence, straight and extremely well informed on our unwritten
constitution. The enquiry will now enjoy the confidence of all serious
observers. Mates is right to stay on board. Butler will, of course,
cover the points Howard now says it won't.
John Major has made a big mistake in recommending that the PM should
release any further details of the Attorney General's opinion on the
legal basis for removing Saddam Hussein. What had been published
already is quite enough. What has been withheld might well strengthen
it, but should not be revealed. Of course it is certain that had the
Conservatives been in power they would have faced the same choice and
and taken the same decision, though to have been in power in the first
place they would have had to had a leader of sufficient character to
win a general election - so it would not have been any of the current
offerings. Clarke could not lead his party, and Howard or Haig could
not lead the country.
MARCH
5th 2004
THE
THOUGHTS
OF
CHAIRMAN
BLAIR
Today Tony Blair delivered what was called a robust defence of his
decision to enforce UN resolutions in the case of Iraq, even though the
UN failed to authorise the enforcement after 12 years and about as many
resolutions, the last one stating clearly that serious consequences
would follow if it was ignored. He made the point that international
law has to be written and if necessary updated, to deal with the actual
problems of the current decade. The UN must do the job it was formed
for in a way that achieves acceptably, even if not to perfection, its
aims. He asks for a proper debate on the subject. But experience tells
us that even if the subject is discussed daily in the media and in
parliament, there will be those in the UK who claim it never has been.
There are still millions who claim the arguments for and against entry
into the EU and Common Currency have never been discussed, let alone
explained. This does not, however, mean that the UN itself can avoid
self examination and if necessary, reform. This does not mean gearing
it up to do the bidding of the United States. It means gearing it up to
deal with global threats and taking the reponsibility for imposing its
resolutions, if necessary by authorising local enforcement by those
states equipped and disposed to so do. Some of these may well be to the
disadvantage of the United States.
MARCH 6th 2004
Today we have the critics of Blair's apologia. Let us take for example
the opinions expressed on the BC Any Questions programme: Robin Cook
(Lab) and Kenneth Clarke (Cons.), Julia Hartley Brewer (Political
Editor of Sunday Express) and Kathy Sykes (Professor of Public
Engagement in Science, Bristol Univ.) The aforementioned were all asked
why we went to war, in the light of the controversy and the PM's latest
clarification of his own thoughts.
Pont of view 1 - Julia Hartley-Brewer:
Julia thinks we went because it was the right thing to do from every
point of view but that we should have done in a decade earlier, when it
would have been easier, caused fewer casualties, not have been confused
with so many other political agenda and saved the hundreds of thousands
of lives of those massacred by Saddam or harmed by sanctions.
Why Point of view 1 is wrong:
Julia is wrong because we had to stop the first Gulf War at the point
the UN mandate for it ran out. If we had not, we would have undermined
the UN at a very important time in history. The coming together of the
major powers after the Cold War and the forming of the coalition to
include so many Middle-Eastern countries had been the greatest advance
in international politics since the foundation of the European Union.
It was too precious an acheivement to allow it to be ruined by the
coalition taking advantage of the approval it had to expel Saddam from
Kuwait. The US would never have been trusted with another mandate to
act on behalf of the UN. The US and Britain already stood accused of
being responsible for imposing rulers on Arab countries, so the time
had come to see if they could replace their rulers with one of their
own choosing. That proved impossible because George Bush I was stupid
enough to encourage an uprising he was not prepared to support, against
a tyrant capable of genocide and equipped to carry it out. It was
probably impossible anyway, but the repression of that uprising put the
lid on it.
Point of view 2- Kathy Sykes
Kathy approves of the removal of Saddam
Hussein and would like to believe that the PM was genuine in his
opinion that WMD were a real if not an immediate threat that had to be
dealt with before it became even more dangerous. But she has to admit
WMD are not turning up and asks "why Iraq and not Korea?" and points
out that the terrorist risk is now worse, not reduced, so the judgment
to go to war .
Why Point of view 2 is wrong
(A) The 'if Iraq, why not everywhere else that has a mad dictator or
WMD' argument is of course just silly. We had Lybia as well and some
places in Africa, should we not have gone for them all at once? For the
girl that has been called 'a beautiful mind' to come up with this is
absurd. Even if it was politic to deal with them all, taking on more
than one at a time would be madness. Not dealing with any of them is
global suicide. The only way is to pick the one that is a real priorty,
where the operation can be carried out on known terrain with weapons
that can handle it, where the political outcome could have at least a
chance of success due to internal political support, and where the
operation could encourage other mad dictators to rejoin the
international community and cease to support there economy by hiring
themselves out as a rogue state where terrorists can train tax free if
they support the dictator with laundered money. (B) Anyone who thought
Saddam was going to leave WMD of any sort lying around to be found by
the UN or the US so he might end up judged by an International Court
and imprisoned for life underestimates Saddam Hussein's type of
intelligence, such as it is. (C) Yes, the terrorist threat is
definitely much worse. Those of us not just out of nappies remember
that in all wars, after you engage in hostilities, things get
progressively worse until the end. We were relatively safe in the UK
until we took on Hitler. The difficult judgment Blair had to make,
consulting with many others, was whether we should appease all rogue
states and hope that they would not become a breeding ground for
international terror, or whether we should take steps against them. The
judgment of all is that some action is needed, usually sanctions such
as trade and arms embargos, but leaky embargos are worse than none. The
judgment was that 12 years of sanctions against Iraq were injuring
only the innocent and building up more trouble for the future. So point
of view 2 from the 'beautiful mind' is just bollocks. God help us
from scientists who think they understand politics and politicians who
think they understand science (and economists who think they understand
economics).
Point of View 3 - Robin Cook
Robin Cook accepts the honesty of the apologia, but because it is
honest it does not make a case. No WMD having been discovered, the PM
can explain why he took us to war but must then admit that his
judgment, which is what he is
defending, was faulty. Blair then falls back on the effect of
the 9-11 attack, which he says was a revelation. Cook finds this naive.
Cook thinks Blix should have been given more time and that war could
and should have been avoided. Cook says we went to war because of the
9-11 attack in order to be a faithful ally to America, but the
worldwide coalition against terror, which was successfully built and
even survived the Afghan operation, was wrecked by the invasion of
Iraq, thereby undoing all the diplomatic effort and success in the war
against terrorism achieved up to that point. The support for the US is
not reciprocated, so there is no gain there, terrorism is worse, and
Blair's opening up of his thinking reveals it to be simplistic and
incapable of motivating the international community.
Why Point of View 3 is wrong
(A) The WMD argument cannot be resolved, that much we must all accept.
But the view of our own expert, Dr Kelly, was that Saddam and his
followers (whether the followers were voluntary or compelled) were
decided on WMD as their basic armory of last resort, and as their
method of internal suppression. While nuclear weapons have been seen as
a rational deterrent (and Israel is known to have some), allowing a
genocidal despot to develop a nuclear programme while protected from
any internal revolution by chemical and biological weapons that can be
used against his own countrymen without fear of mutual destruction is
not a rational stance for the international community to take. The
current foreign affairs spokesman for Iraq made it clear when he
recently addressed the UN that it had been their duty to remove Saddam
Hussein. Had Saddam accepted the authority of the UN, this would not,
could not have been so. But he deliberately refused to accept the terms
of the Gulf War ceasefire ad the subsequent resolutions requiring his
accounting for all WMD and WMD programmes.
(B) Blix was only getting access under reasonable conditions because
the coalition deployed its troops. Blix was not getting cooperation on
anything except being allowed to travel where he asked. This was not
compliance and was never going to be. Cook therefore expected the
coalition troops to either remain on station around Iraq indefinitely
or go home. This would have allowed Saddam to install his family regime
for ever and recommence WMD programmes as soon as the coalition troops
had gone home, which they would have had to. They could not have come
back. The no-fly zones would have gone on indefinitely as would
sanctions. An utter disaster which would make the current situation
look like a picnic.
(C) Yes, the invasion of Iraq damaged the worldwide coalition that
formed in a mood of sympathy for the United States. It is true that
George W is a hopeless diplomat with an image that makes him a hated
figure in the 'old world'. It is true we are paying a price for our
alliance. But any handling of the Atlantic Alliance other than the way
Blair has played it would have had worse results for the UK, for the UN
and for the world. No space to explain that here, just take my word for
it. However, as pointed out already, in any war, even one against
terror, the danger increases progressively once you start it and this
continues till the end.
Cook makes a very clever case when he speaks, because he is a brilliant
and fluent speaker. Given any position to defend, Cook can do it and
get applause. But verbal gymnastics when dealing with a complex set of
facts can make facts seem absurd and fiction solid sense, If you can
contradict what I have written in the paragraph above, the Cook was
telling it straight. If you cannot, he wasn't. Try it.
Point of View 4 - Kenneth Clarke
Ken looks at the big political picture and answers the question: why
did Blair take us to war.
The US had decided on regime change shortly after Bush became
President. The 9-11 attack made it possible to carry out this policy,
whether or not there was a direct link between Saddam and 9-11, [true,
because the American public for the first time realised that they were
vulnerable to attack by terrorists, and terrorists could be financed by
rogue states, train in rogue states and launder money in rogue states.
Rogue states were those whose dictators defied the UN and suppressed
their own people so could not be removed].
Blair had to decide whether or not to back the US decision. He decided
it was essential to back the US [for reasons discussed briefly above
and more fully elsewhere on this web site and many other places] but
was
determined to get UN backing for Saddam's removal unless he complied
with UN resolutions. The UK then set about drafting, with the help of
Europeans, UN resolution 1441.
Blair's hope was that Saddam would, with the certainty of invasion and
the offer of sanctuary at a price, leave Iraq where he was hated by the
great majority. But he did not. Blair was then committed to invade on
the American timetable, and allowed the final vote to take place on
ambiguous grounds, including popular understanding of tabloid press
articles (hard to get more confused than that) which ensured a
combination of those who wanted us to 'do the right thing' and those
who changed their anti-war minds because they got the wind up. This
ensured a parliamentary and national majority. Which fell apart when he
war went badly because the US had misjudged the support that Iraqis
would give, and further apart when WMD were not discovered by the
coalition and the new special investigation team.
Clarke's view: Don't go to war without a national consensus at home.
Why Point of View 4 is wrong
Ken Clarke's point of view is not wrong in his analysis of why Blair
took us to war. He answered the question correctly. What he
fails to understand is that Blair did not take us to war as a career
move. He accepted that he might well be blamed for all the things that
went wrong, for all the mistakes that the US politicians and military
made as well as our own. He knew there would be many, and that even
without mistakes it was going to be hard, hard, hard. But he believed
the alternative would be worse. He did not believe that international
terrorism could be countered in the future unless the UN faced up to
its duty and authorised appropriate states (appropriate due to
location,
capability or both) to enforce its resolutions when these were of the
mandatory level.
Ken is a man who likes to be comfortable and get consensus. He is a
great diplomat. He can't abide Bush. But Bush was a Saddam Hussein
removal tool. Ken could never have used him. There may also be more to
Bush than we think, but then we don't think much of him.
Both Cook and Clarke think Blair's apologia is simplistic. I would ask
them both one question: in a country where few people understand the
English language (a skilled executive on Who wants to be a Millionaire
tonight did not know the meaning of the word fraternal and many in the audience
he had to ask got it wrong), is it really a good idea to explain the
full reasons for removing Saddam now rather than later, or why he took the only chance either Iraq
or the world was ever likely to get? I think not, he would only
start a further debate in which total confusion would reign. He tries
to keep it simple, stupid. Clarke's view is wrong because it is
comfortably self-centred and self satisfied but it doesn't get the pigs
in. The only decent job he did in government was when he was
chancellor. That was very clever but not that difficult in the
popularity stakes. It was based on the fact that his previous
experience in other departments taught him that unless the government
actually collected the taxes it was supposed to the country would fall
apart at the seams. He collected the funds very diplomatically. That's
Ken's role in life. Nice guy, and he's not a liar.
UPDATE JULY 9
The CIA has been blasted so as to save Bush from accusations of
exaggerating and cherry picking intelligence, or even of asking the CIA
to do that for him. We shall see what Butler come up with in his
quasi-equivalent examination in the UK. Comments on the CIA position
are in WMD and Pre-emption on this site.
JULY 11th
The editorial leader in today's Independent
has a bigger than usual headline:
The
intelligence was obviously wrong. But we still don't know why.
May I politely suggest the obvious? Saddam Hussein's tyranny was based
on a well known model, that of Stalinist Russia. This depended on a
blockage on the freedom of information. In this case in the civilian
sector and within the military. No military commander who did not have
WMD capability in his regiment would be able to confirm that others did
not. In this way, Saddam could be assured that the neither the army or
a civilian rebellion could overthrow him. While he could persist in
denials to the UN, within his own country there was not doubt amongst
those who wished to remove him that others under his command had the
weapons and would use them, not against an invading international task
force but against any insurrection. When an election returns a 100%
turnout in favour of the most hated tyrant, the picture is clear.
Saddam himself was responsible for the idea that he had both the
weapons and the will to use them. At the same time as he made claims of
innocence, feeding enough information and bribes behind the scenes to
ensure that the UN would never pass the final vote for war, he refused
to provide proof or documentation or allow key personnel to speak
publicly. Had he done so, war could have been avoided and he could have
been overthrown in a civil war without UN or coalition intervention.
The result of Saddam's game playing, combined with his history and the
foreseeable future if sanction were removed, made the recommendation by
the intelligence services inevitable. The recommendation had to be that
Saddam should be taken at face value: he could easily have provided
credible evidence of compliance with UN resolutions but he did not. The
WMD threat by which he ruled Iraq was therefore taken as credible, as
he meant it to be. He had to fool his own military at the popular level
after all, even if some commanders might have suspected the WMD had
been actually removed, hidden or destroyed in order to avoid discovery.
Naturally it was always Saddam's intention to make a
complete fool of Bush whatever happened. Because Bush has managed to
seriously embarrass 50% of the chattering classes of Europe and America
on a whole raft of issues, they are quite likely to use the
damage inflicted by Saddam to get rid of him. Meanwhile Nature pursues
its course, and uses all its parts to reach a possible future.
I doubt that the Butler report will come up with this explanation, but
I would dearly like to be wrong.
JULY 15th
So now we have it. Butler has
examined the process and decided, in summary, that the prewar
intelligence on WMD contained caveats on the reliability of some
sources and some facts,and that these were omitted from the infamous
'dossier'. It is not a question of sexing up or adding, but removing
these caveats and not revealing in public the very great difficulty we
had of getting precise and reliable data out of Iraq.
Michael Ancram spoke for
most Conservatives who voted for war when he said that if they had been
told all that in advance they would still have voted for the military
action (he is to be respected for that). But he shares the objection
still sustained by some others in all parties that they were misled as
to the strength of the intelligence.
What people need to understand
is this; the intelligence services do not decide on the overall risk or
whether or not a country has to take military action. They can give a
Prime Minister what information they have, and add the caveats. But a
Prime Minister has to then take the decision in the light of the
intelligence, the caveats, and a mass of other intelligence that does
not come from MI6, GCHQ or DIS. It comes from a massive resource of
historical, political, scientific and economic knowledge and advisors
which a Prime Minister has at his command. This cannot be put in a
dossier. It has to be absorbed of a long period of time. In the case of
Iraq, a particularly intense period in the previous decade. It will
have involved the opinions of scholars and military leaders,
economists, sociologists, biologists, students of the region and its
history and input from many individuals with a variety of insights. The
one very weak area will have been in modern Iraq itself, In that area,
as it turned out, the press and public were clamouring for details.
Saddam knew exactly how to play it - how to play the UN, the European
public, the whole grisly game. He knew he had us all in a catch-22
situation, and that public opinion would force the coalition to hold
off. He knew that there were liberal democrats who claimed that
containment was working and could be sustained, and others who were
anti-war at all costs. There are still those today saying British
soldiers are supposed just to defend their own country, not to take
part in the enforcement of UN resolutions. That way lies disaster for
all. No enforcement means no UN.
Fortunately we had several
leaders on the coalition countries who were made of sterner stuff, who
knew what the consequences would be if 12+ enforcable UN resolutions
were ignored, and if Saddam was to stay in power and the coalition
forces to pack up and go home. Once Saddam had refused all
inducements such as exile, and refused (for his own internal political
reasons) to allow evidence of the destruction of WMD and the cessation
of WMD programmes to be given either in writing or personally by those
involved, and it was clear that Hans Blix could spend a lifetime and
find nothing, it came to the final decision. At that point, it would
have been completely fatuous to have gone to the public with the
caveats rather than such current intelligence we had - the case for
action was not based on intelligence concerning a few weeks in 2003! It
was based on a full intelligence picture built up over many years in
many countries. It is a Prime Minister's job, looking at all the
information and advice he has to come to a decision, not ask the public
to decide. We have a Prime Minister who is capable of taking decisions,
and a cabinet of sound and honest people who backed him. As a result
not of Gilligan's programme but the BBC's insistence on backing him and
inviting the public to call either the BBC or the PM a liar, the
British public were seriously misled: not by the PM but by much of the
media, on the whole issue. They are asked now with apparent seriousness
by Gavin Esler to believe that Tony Blair should have said: "We have
got to enforce 1441 now, but with regard to the dossier on WMD I have
to tell you we are not sure where he weapons are, or if he has hidden,
exported or destroyed them because he won't come clean." Dear Mr Esler,
you may be wearing long trousers, but you should be still in
nappies. You have a good brain, now get a life and put something
in it.
UPDATE JULY 16
The fact that some intelligence on WMD was withdrawn because the
sources were later deemed unreliable is now being touted as
significant, because the 'dossier' was deemed to be the 'intelligence
of the day'. The PM was not informed. How much more of this claptrap do
we have to listen to? Not only was the dossier irrelevant to the PM,
once intelligence is publicised it it no longer intelligence. July 17th
was the date some intelligence was withdrawn. It appears some people
think the PM should have been informed so he could have announced it in
the house. This of course makes sense for those who would base the case
for military action on the validity of that intelligence. Thankfully,
we did not have a PM and cabinet foolish enough to base the case for
war on shaky intelligence. Therefore officials in the Foreign
Office, DIS, MI6 etc were then, and presumably are now, indifferent to
whether he was informed at the time of the change in status of that
item.
UPDATE DEC 12th
The credibility of the Butler Report has now been enhanced by the
further evidence that he is an anti-Blair man by inclination and
fundamentally opposed to one particular aspect of Blair's style of
govenrment, which is to take decisive action on key, selected issues so
as to use his time as leader of the Labour Party and then as Prime
Minister to change the historical outcome. Butler's style of
government, which he facilitated over the time he spent as the most
senior and influential civil servant, was to MANAGE ENTROPY. This
boring old Harrovian advised ministers on options of presiding over the
decay of the infrastructure of Britain for a quarter of a century or
more. But even he could not bring himself to conclude that Blair was in
any way dishonest in persuading the British people that allowing a
Stalinist serial killer and his dynasty to secure an unassailable
control over the middle East through terror and bribery was a recipe
for disaster.
JUNE 9th 2011 HUTTON AGAIN!
BRAVO The Attorney General. To cede one inch to the half-witted
conspiracy theorists on the death of David Kelly would have been very
wrong.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13709515
I am letting them off too lightly by questioning their sanity only, it
is their very hearts and souls that need disinfecting.
nnnn