Dave Warnock picks up a piece from yesterday’s Independent exposing new evidence of the British government’s untruthfulness on the run up to the Iraq War
The Government’s case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
A devastating attack on Mr Blair’s justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain’s key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, “at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests.”
Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been “effectively contained”.
He also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. “I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed),” he said.
“At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that ‘regime change’ was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Kim 12.16.06 at 7:33 pm
Of course Blair is a liar - but a special kind of liar. He is the kind of liar who is so convinced of his own virtue - and the righteousness of his cause - that he mistakes sincerity for truth. “Sincerity,” writes the sociologist Peter Berger, “is the consciousness of the man who is taken in by his own act. Or as it has been put by David Riesman, the sincere man is the one who believes in his own propaganda.”
The archetypal modernist figure of the Sincere Man is Rousseau, one of the fathers of the post-enlightenment rejection of the doctrine of original sin. This rejection shows itself in the practical denial that we are flawed, in an unshakeable trust in one’s own heart and instincts, and in the consequent accusation that when things go wrong, it is always somebody else’s fault.
Isn’t all this Blair all over?
DH 12.19.06 at 7:58 pm
Isn’t a liar someone who intentionally doesn’t tell the truth? I don’t think Blair did this at all. Also, who is to say that there wasn’t WMD? We know we found cartriges dated after 1992 and as late as 1999 found in 2001 well after the 1992 UN resolutions calling for armed response if found.
““At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that ‘regime change’ was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.— and that wasn’t the case under the Saddam regime? I think you would find from this answer that ones definition of “chaos” seems weirdly different than it should be. The collapsing into chaos occured alot earlier than the supposed US and allied response to Saddam.