The latest update of the WMD fiasco

by
Dorian van Braam

"That was a Hutton week that was" or at least it certainly was for Mr Blair. He must have been holding his breath, but he needn't have worried. The forces were with him, especially the forces of the establishment. First there was the contentious debate on variable university fees during which Blair manifested yet another facet of his Brave New World/1984 political philosophy. Then we had the Hutton enquiry and as the outcome of this fiasco continues to take its toll in both Government and BBC circles, England might well be drifting politically towards a government which monitors and controls our broadcasting. If independent broadcasting is influenced by their advertisers who pay the bills, it is conceivable that with the BBC charter up for renewal, it will lay the path for selective government gagging and suppression of truth. The Hutton enquiry might well be the softly softly beginning of an insidious control and ultimately, censorship. After all "he who pays the piper calls the tune," and, it might be the public who supplies the money but it is the government who is the paymaster.

When we consider the university fees debate, the question that so many people are asking is "if we cannot afford education and the national health service, why have we spent so much money on destroying countries with the Bush/Blair war machine and the alliance weapons of mass destruction?" There are so many national and international altruistic alternatives that the tax payer would prefer to see his money spent on, alternatives which great leaders and democratic governments would be glad to help. War is expensive and the kind of war that Blair and Bush have been indulging in belongs to the 20th century . We are given the figure of seven billion pounds as being the cost of the Gulf War. And the rest! Seven billion represents merely the basic costs incurred organising men, supply of hardware, the destruction of hardware, bullets, rockets, shells, vehicles, aircraft etc (both accidental and deliberate) and the general war effort. Unfortunately after destroying a country's infrastructure it has to be rebuilt. But not only are we rebuilding Iraq but also Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Kosovo/ Yugoslavian associated countries, all of which have to be financed from the public purse. They have to be rebuilt because the American and British Alliance countries destroyed them in the name of global democracy which perhaps is more an offshoot of globalisation than world leaders would like to admit. War, illegal immigration and economic migrants are stretching the national purse almost beyond fiscal imagination and runs into double figure billions. This kind of spending has to stop, but how? National countrywide congestion charges on all roads? Change the Prime Minister? Appoint a Chancellor of the Exchequer who actually has a real grasp of economics? Elect a different party at the next election? Who knows, but changing the political perspective of today's politician is one basic essential which we need more than anything. Charles Kennedy or Michael Howard? We don't know what they would do if they were to get into power and we have to take their protestations and promises with a pinch of salt. Either would be an improvement on the Emperor Blair and his new suit of clothes.

One thing is becoming apparent, Mr Blair must be stopped before he actually believes that he is an emperor. He has the new clothes syndrome and the mentality is becoming dangerously "Caligulafied." After the Hutton deliberation, Blair was on a high, exultant and arrogant but did anyone expect him to be otherwise if judgement were to be found in his favour? Even a top Judge relates to the establishment regardless of how honest, objective and impartial he appears to be. After all, he was the respected Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and he chaired important enquiries in that province. Blair's relative victory in the Hutton Report is dubious even though he was apparently vindicated by the absence of any censure. No one expected Hutton to say that Blair was in the wrong and it was an easy guess that the BBC would be for the inquisitorial chop. Lord Hutton declared that Kelly took his own life and that there was no third party involved. Even with reason to believe that Kelly had been assassinated, would Hutton have been prepared to admit the possibility in public?
I doubt it , any more than a guilty criminal, who has been cleared by a mistaken Jury, would admit that he had been guilty of the criminal activity for which he had been tried and declared not guilty. Such miscarriages of justice happen frequently and it is self evident that the truth of many political situations of intrigue, only comes out when it is discovered by those who do not gain from keeping it secret. Any alternative belief is naive in the extreme. Imagine the furore that an endorsement of a third party would have created and the political "weapons of mass destruction" it would have released within the establishment. Blair would never have recovered and Alistair Campbell's smile might well have been wiped from his face.

Doctor Kelly's death gave birth to the Hutton report and even though this is significant, its not so much how he died that has national importance but the multi- faceted periphery of circumstances which indirectly led up to his death. This is the real heart of the matter and the tax payer has the right to know that the English nation was taken into a war with themes that had a more mendacious quality than one of veracity. The Hutton enquiry had a remit which didn't include the development of this subject and without doubt, Lord Hutton gently sidestepped the issue of the specious arguments which Blair and Bush used to con the British and American public. The final result was yet another successful "Blair smoke screen" which his government puts up when there is a more unpleasant truth lurking behind the political dissimulation of the moment. Using the Lord Hutton connection was a whitewash and I am referring to the purported falsification of the truth hidden within the pages of the famous "weapons of mass destruction dossier" and the numerous spurious reasons extrapolated from it and promulgated as to why England and America went to war. The latest development on the WMD theme is that Bush is now demanding explanations from his advisors as to why he was misled with inaccurate advice about the weapons of mass destruction! It is even being mooted that Bush is holding Blair responsible for misleading him. Bush has already ordered an internal enquiry and now "poodle" Blair has decided he will do the same. But will the Butler enquiry be any better than the Hutton version ? Both the Bush and the Blair enquiry will have the same hidden agenda, to protect their positions as the present incumbents of the White House and No.10 Downing street. They are losing votes and they will do what is necessary to try and stem the flow of Republican and New labour disaffection. Blair still speaks with the dissimulation of a man with a forked tongue and his new enquiry will only deal with the nature and quality of the information supplied by the intelligence agencies. What it should deal with is the more significant knowledge of the application of what the government knew and the political decisions taken from that information . Who on earth do Bush and Blair think they are kidding ? Even Colin Powell has done a U turn and Condoleezza Rice (the National Security Advisor for America no less!) has admitted that she doesn't believe that Weapons of Mass Destruction ever existed. And now Blair tells us that he didn't know that the weapons of mass destruction referred to in the dodgy dossier were simply battlefield armoury! More and more incredible as the facts become more fictional in concept. Apparently Geoff Hoon knew but Blair claims that he didn't verify the truth which he used to take this country to war. If you can believe that you can believe anything!

The mystery deepens although in my opinion it isn't very difficult. Bush decided to go to war, probably at the insistence of his father who nurtured regrets and resentments from the first Gulf war. Father and son knew the importance of oil and the global significance of the Iraqi reserves. As war clouds cast shadows over the Middle East tinder box ,Bush wined and dined Blair at Camp David. With the cheese course (or was it the pretzels?) they must have reached a deal in which Blair promised to back Bush in his bellicose activities and the rest is history. Since that meeting and until the declaration of war, Blair's agenda was to distort the truth so that the British and the world believed that there was only one way forward. "SEND IN THE TROOPS , ATTACK , WAR.WAR " The idiot Generals of the First World War couldn't have done any better. There cannot be any reasonably logical, alternative explanation. Blair is not pragmatically stupid so why does he think that the British Public will believe the whimsical WMD justification for war? Blair and his cronies are doing a political ostrich and it looks as though their heads will remain buried in the sand of spin until such time that they are removed by the grace of god and hopefully the democratic muscle of the ballot box.

Bush and Blair have several things in common and at the top of the list is that they both desperately want to keep their jobs and go down in history as great men of destiny, a quality both lack. Bush, having observed Blair's success with the Hutton Enquiry and report, is now creating his own version, hoping to back track on attitudes which are losing him votes. He is attempting to disassociate with the passion that has been common to both, the fantasy of the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Something that millions of people and much of the world has always believed was a misrepresentation and a lie.
After Hutton we will have days of the usual disputing experts, pundits and political observers each putting their view points from the front of the Palace of Westminster or the BBC's head office but the real issue of the emperor's new war clothes will probably be conveniently ignored by much of the establishment in the interests of the politics of political correctness. What ever the Hutton enquiry was or was not , Lord Hutton became involved as an innocent participant of Alistair Campbell's spin. As a cross bench Law Lord, Hutton shouldn't have a political axe to grind or a group of people he feels he should protect although, as an eminent Judge, he would have known contemporaries destined for the upper echelons of the judiciary. Lord Hutton had a link with the late Lord Chancellor appointed by Tony Blair after his election victory in the 1997 general election, the same year that Hutton, whose career was impeccable, was elevated to the peerage. Blair was a pupil in Derry Irvin's chambers ( the ex Lord Chancellor ) and an old boy net work is a network whether it consists of the aristocrats of the past or the night class socialists of today in the format of John Prescott the deputy Prime Minister.

I believe that Hutton was selected for the enquiry because of his rigid honesty and single minded pursuance of the case in hand .Ideal for producing the final report without the danger of non sequiturs . What the Hutton report did for Blair and his cronies was perhaps devious even as a Machiavellian strategy. A strategy that, if my suspicion is correct, had a dark calculating ugliness although Hutton himself would not have been aware of his role and participation in the hidden agenda.
In the Sunday Times Greg Dyke revealed that Tony Blair admonished him in a letter during the early stages of the Iraqi war . Blair's letter has not been produced but Dyke's response was published. Powerful stuff . It must be said that the BBC does an excellent job taking politicians to task. Let's hope that they do not allow themselves to be intimidated by Alistair Campbell's left-overs. Gavin Davis and Greg Dyke gave in their notice which is a dangerous indication of the way things might go and if the renewed charter, with carefully selected appointments, emasculates the BBC any more, then the general public will have reason to fear the images which are appearing on the fresh horizons of new Labour. Images that reflect the literature of Orwell and Huxley. Let us not forget the idealistic innocence of Hitler in the early thirties and the old adage "a stitch in time saves nine" be it socks or politics. Some of our politicians might think that the thought police would have a value in our modern society but undoubtedly, a large percentage of the public disagrees with this opinion, in the same way as they disagree with the continuation of Blair's residence at No 10. As the dispute continues Hoon and Blair continue to defend their corners but if they really believe what they say then such people have no right to be governing this country.

This last weekend I had a dream, I had a dream and I dreamt that both Bush and Blair have been nominated for the Nobel peace prize because after the Iraqi war the world is a safer place. Surely it was a dream but no, I find that it is true. Has the world gone mad ?

Copyright February 2004 Dorian van (de) Braam

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