h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's just that I can't understand why he would stake his reputation on something unless he had to. And in this situation he didn't need to so I think there must have been strong intelligence or he was fooled. You can always trust politicans to do what is best for themselves.

Let me mention an example, quoted from "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss.

"In February 2003 a Cambridge politics lecturer named Glen Rangwala received a copy of the British government's most recent dossier on Iraq. He quickly recognised in it the wholesale copying of a twelve-year-old thesis by American doctoral student Ibrahim al-Marashi, 'reproduced word for word, misplaced comma for misplaced comma'. Oh yes. Rangwala noticed there were some changes to the original, such as the word 'terrorists' substituted for 'opposition groups', but otherwise much of it was identical. In publishing his findings, he wrote:

'Even the typographical errors and anomalous uses of grammar are incorporated into the Downing Street document. For example, Marashi had written: "Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Azi al-Duri as head..."
Note the misplaced comma. The UK officials who used Marashi's text hadn't. Thus, on page 13, the British dossier incorporates the same misplaced comma: "Saddam appointed, Sabir 'Abd al-'Azi al-Duri as head..."'".

So it seems that certain people, apparently in Downing Street (not the intelligence services) were getting their information from rather dubious sources - not that I'm saying Marashi was in any way wrong (I have no idea), but that text was 12 years old, and the traditional reliable sources of information are not usually massively out of date theses. Downing Street, note.

So who prepared it? I have no idea, and I doubt we'll ever know. Almost certainly not for a long time at least. Could it have been someone directly linked to the New Labour party, in which case do you dare to trust them again? Did Tony Blair have anything to do with it's preparation, or even any knowledge of the source?

Or is it all much more like "Yes Prime Minister" suggests...everything's really done by beaurocrats who the public have no decisions over?

And as for letting the war overinfluence us, and suggesting H2G2 is clearly a selective group of people who are priviliged financially and educationally...well, I'm almost certain the former isn't true and it's questionable what you mean by the latter. If it's that we're the more intelligent members of society, then that's to be expected to an extent, and as this is just a debate, it's a generally beneficial thing to be able to argue points properly. If you mean public school etc educated... I doubt it's true, frankly. As I said before, I don't have a vote, being under 18, but I wouldn't vote New Labour. Not just for the war, but that's a part and this was a debate about the war in Iraq. People may always simplify the other reasons when there's a specific discussion involved.

sigsfried ~ if he was fooled rather than him fooling us doesn't that imply a lack of judgement or level of incompetence ~ do you really want a political leader that comes accross as eithor stupid or dishonest?

It is worring that he may have been fooled but if you got info. from Civil Servants that appeared genuine most of it coming from intelligence services can you honestly claim you would have checked if it was good information or would you trust it? I still think we shouldn't have gone to war but I believe that TB was influenced greatly by the Intelligence services and others. I didn't help that he wanted the war.

I believe it was the other way round ~ the intelligence services were influenced by Blair and gave him what he wanted to hear.
However the war is not my only reason for not trusting him ~ its more about too many broken promises from his government.

Ditto.

Possibly but the intelligence services arn't normally that easy for the goverenment to control.

Didn't the evidence that came out of Hutton and Butler convince you that at the very least something was a bit awry? A little amiss perhaps?

lemme see...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3892809.stm

Some findings of the butler Inquiry into the intelligence which the British government had about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.


The 45-minute claim

"The claim that Iraq could use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes should not have been made in the government's weapons dossier without explaining what the claim referred to."

(Battle field munitions only - mortars and the like. Thank You John Scarlett for admitting that to the Hutton Inquiry! )



The war decision

"There was "no recent intelligence" to lead people to conclude Iraq was of more immediate concern than other countries, although its history prompted the view there needed to be a threat of force to ensure Saddam Hussein's compliance."

"The inquiry is surprised ministers, officials, and intelligence agencies did not reassess the quality of intelligence as UN weapons inspectors failed to make finds in the months immediately before the war."

"Tony Blair's policy to Iraq shifted because of September 11th 2001, not the pace of Iraq's weapons programmes."

(indicating this was politically expediated not intelligence led which is what you are arguing for)



The Weapons Dossier

""A serious weakness" was that the intelligence chiefs' warnings about the limitations of their judgements were not made clear enough"

"The impression there was "firmer and fuller" intelligence backing up the dossier was reinforced when Tony Blair told MPs on its publication day the picture painted by intelligence agencies was "extensive, detailed and authoritative"

(when we know now the intelligence was...what was the phrase? "Patchy and sporadic?")

-----------------------------------

Despite, its many useful findings and my liberal use of the Butler report to back up my point - the Lib dems again took what I feel was the right stance on this - that the inquiry set up by the governemnt should have included remit to investigate the Government's own decision to go to war. It did not (surprise, surprise!) and as a consequnce, it suffers from something of a narrow remit, concerning itself with the inner workings of MI6, the production of the governent dossier and so forth. To that end however it functioned superbly - the point is that despite all the evidence ranged against them, Blair his cohorts in cabinet and his co-conspiritors on the opposite benches have never had to be held responsible for the decision they took on this bad evidence, the decison that has resulted in the deaths of untold and uncounted thousands.

Isn't it tragic we'd rather talk of Howard Flight and 35 billion pounds in spending by 2012 than hold up to the light the worst case of culpable bad government there has been seen in years?

I accept the information was dodgy but at the time I don't believe Blair realised how bad it was.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, honest, but what does that mean; that our primeminister is incompetant or just stupid? Because on the basis of his mistake or his error he committed this country to war.

I don't accept he was ignorant of the possibility.

There were a few million people on his doorstep telling him they had their doubts too.

I can only guess but he would probably have had meetings with those who compiled the evidence if they seemed confident I imagine he wouldn't have checked it as thourglly as he should have done.
THe alternative is that he was very stupid and went to war knowing ti was wrong for the reasons he said but also knowing there were perfectly good reasons.

We close to retreading the paths of Gilligan and one Dr David Kelly.

Its not necessarily whether the government knew the inteligence it had was wrong (though it was) its that all caveats that proclaimed this intelligence information as 'limited' or 'probable', 'single source' 'uncorroborated' and the rest of it - they were all removed.

You have to ask at whoose behest? If Blair had gone to Parliamanet and said we think he might have a few shells were not to sure, possibly some arms dumps soemwhere but again theres very little information. What we do know is he definately hasn't got any missiles capable of long-range delivery but he probably has a few medium range missles and lots of battlefield munitons and small arms all ready and raring to go in 45 minutes. Do you think we'd have gone to war?

Consequently, with the caveats removed, the vote to commit troops was preceeded by that speech and Blair quite deliberately in my view used only absolutes and spoke of the certainty of Iraq's weapons breaches.

I have wondered often how one can prove and negative. If Iraq never had the weapons of which we were accusing them, how could they ever proove to our satisfaction that they didn't have them?

Its not a simple as that of course because Iraq was bluffing and obfuscating like mad but the point is not that it may have taken longer to find the truth but that the truth once found completly contradicts the case for goign to war.

Let us not forget either this war was never waged to rid the world of saddam or to right the wrongs of human atrocities, nor even to spread the good word of liberty, freedom and democracy to all those beknighted nations the world over.

The issue was weapons. Blair said Saddam could stay in power if he only complied with united nations resoltuons. how could he have done that if he did not have the WMD of which we were accusing him?

WE can argue for ever on this. Me saying I don't think it was all TB fault you saying the opposite we'll never get anywhere. Not that that will stop me:

THe caveats being removed is almost standard procedure when presenting inteligence to the commons.

It's just about impossible to argue now that the War was properly justified.
The debate, then, is whether the systemic failures that lead to it were capable of control from No.10
I don't know. We're not told.

If you treat this as a vote-choice issue, it looks simple. Two main parties still basically pro-war, the next biggest party and several fringe ones consistently against.

The trouble is, the parties against don't have any experience of power.
Could the Lib Dems, say, change this culture effectively? I'm not saying they couldn't, but maybe idealism has to be tempered with pragmatism when it comes to dealing with intelligence and the civil service. It's easy to claim the moral high-ground, far harder to build on it.

I think, curiously enough, that the Prime Minister has got himself into trouble on this precisely because he got too idealistic in his engagement. If Britain had just helped America without being overtly gung-ho about the cause, then a lot of the fallout could have been avoided.

The moderated post seems to be mine. It remains to be seen whether or not it will be re-instated.

>> I accept the information was dodgy but at the time I don't believe Blair realised how bad it was.

I have earned my living for the last 15 years, one way or another, by being a professional asker of questions, and to me it is unforgivable that, presented with the information that weapons could be mobilised within 45 minutes, nobody appears to have asked "which weapons?"

This is only one of the systemic failures which - regardless of whether or not other parties would have or could have been equally culpable - happened on Tony Blair's watch.

Let me repeat that: It happened on his watch. He is ultimately responsible.

Ben

This post has been removed.

Lying is a strong accusation.

Labour have an interesting position in that an immediate handover of the leadership to the chap next door would comfortably secure the election.

If the PM believed he'd lied, he might have taken such a course already.

Of course, you could argue that someone who could create and compound such a mess as Iraq, while all the time still trying to justify it, is more dangerous than any mere liar.

I think Blair should have asked more questions about the evidence but I'm not sirprised he didn't. I don't think he was totally honest though but no more than any other politician

Actually Sigsfried, you are right, I meant to post an apology if it seems I was ranting a little back there.

I still can't see how anyone can give TB the benefit of the doubt but by all means it is your perogative to do so and at this rate I don't think we'll convince each other before the election takes place!

Mutual disagreement is fine by me Everyone has to vote how they think best.

Well on the basis of a post of mine that has been moderated apparantly you are not allowed to mention the names of the leaders of the parties.

So that is at least a third of all the posts since this election thread thingy started.