HOW THE WAR WAS SPUN - No. 10

[dArKeR]

DOWNING Street spinners massaged the case for war on Iraq, weapons expert David Kelly told a journalist.

Worried officials “desperate” for information to be released to back the case for a strike “seized” on the disputed claim that Saddam

Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

They then failed to stress in a Government-published intelligence dossier that the real threat posed by Iraq was what weapons it might have in the future – “because that takes away the case for war”.

In a damning 20-minute tape that trashed Government denials of spin, the Hutton inquiry yesterday heard Dr Kelly detailing the rising tensions as No 10 sought evidence to support the case for conflict.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13290177_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-HOW%2DTHE%2DWAR%2DWAS%2DSPUN-name_page.html

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/

[pansypoo53219]

1. what was Blair thinking???

was he just sucked into the bushivic zone??? was it their born again, we must prevail against satan, we are great men mindthink that deluded them? well, blair, we know bushit had other ideas while couching it as a battle between good and evil.

[CWebster]

2. Supposedly Clinton was advising Blair...

And the Dems who supported the Resolution were called "Blair Democrats".

Makes it difficult for the Dems to pursue an investigation of this crime when they were willing participants.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em"

A Guardian article last month quotes from a book by Peter Stothard, a journalist (ex-editor of The Times) sympathetic to Bliar, who followed him closely during the Iraq war:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,998776,00.html

The fundamental points were:

· Gulf war 2 - President George W Bush v Saddam Hussein - would happen whatever anyone else said or did.

· The people of Britain, continental Europe and most of the rest of the world would not even begin to support a war unless they had a say in it through the UN.

· It would be more damaging to longterm world peace and security if the Americans alone defeated Saddam Hussein than if they had international support to do so.


I think that, starting from that, he decided to spin Iraq into as big a threat as possible, to convince, at least temporarily, Britain, Europe and the UN Security Council voters. He particularly needed a UN vote to give some justification under the UN charter. The ambiguity of the UN resolution got everyone to vote for it, and then Bush could go ahead, cutting short the time the inspectors asked for, and claiming military force had already been authorised (Blair would have liked the second UN vote to make that explicit, but it became clear he couldn't swing that).

He's also too trusting of American politicians (and that also goes for Brown, his most likely successor). He seems blind to the purely self-serving policies of the Bush administration, and ends up struggling to get basic human rights for British citizens, signing unequal extradition treaties, watching Halliburton get lucrative but incompetently-managed contracts, and so on.

The people who've got to the top of British politics just haven't had the combination of greed and self-righteousness Blair now finds in Bush et al. He's a little out of his depth.

[GCP]

5. Welcome to DU, Muriel!

Excellent name and excellent post :toast:

[T_i_B]

6. Welcome muriel_volestrangler!

Thanks for posting that. I can remember discussing this article when it first came out. Essentially Blair seems to have gone to war primarily to appease the PNAC and WMD was the pretext used to attempt to sell the public this unjust war.

It must not be forgotten that Blair's reasoning on going to war with Bush is morally repugnent. If Neville Chamberlain had used Blair's warped logic then he would have sent British troops in to invade the Sudetenland on Hitler's behalf! :grr: That is not a situation that I, nor any other thinking person can possibly support.

[ewagner]

3. Caution here

How credible is The Mirror?