I've not gone away. Writing something at the moment. Here's something worthwhile from Beau Bo D'Or while I finish it off. Class.

Tags: News, Politics, Tony Blair

News From Black Thursday

This week, for reasons I won't trouble you with, I've been getting my news almost exclusively from the Tellybox (I'm led to believe that this is still the way very many voters get their news). As such, I haven't heard much about this (apologies if this is all over the interwebs already). The timing, as always, has been exquisite.

On "Black Thursday", the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (now headed by the intensely loyal Mike Gapes) released evidence given to the Butler inquiry by Carne Ross, Britain's top Iraq man at the UN from late 1997 to mid-2002. The government has until now suppressed this evidence, threatening Mr Ross with charges under the Official Secrets Act if he went public. Now that it's been released on a suitably busy news day, the government no longer needs to fear that it'll be leaked on a quiet one. And Mr Ross still fears possible charges so he still isn't keen to talk to the media. What could have been a massive story, wasn't. It's all very professional.

Mr Ross' full evidence, given in June 2004, is available online via the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. I've picked out a few quotations.

When I was briefed in London at the end of 1997 in preparation for my posting, I was told that we did not believe that Iraq had any significant WMD.

I read the available UK and US intelligence on Iraq every working day for the four and a half years of my posting.

[T]here was no intelligence evidence of significant holdings of CW [chemical warfare], BW [biological warfare] or nuclear material.

There was, moreover, no intelligence or assessment during my time in the job that Iraq had any intention to launch an attack against its neighbours or the UK or the US.

I quizzed my colleagues in the FCO and MOD working on Iraq on several occasions about the threat assessment in the run-up to the war. None told me that any new evidence had emerged to change our assessment; what had changed was the government's determination to present available evidence in a different light.

We've become used to hearing about the way this government manipulated the evidence to build a justification for a war of choice, it is difficult to avoid thinking that this is old news, but they have never been held to account for this extraordinarily disgraceful behaviour. They started a war based on a determination to present available evidence in a different light. They spun us into war. It doesn't get any worse.

Mr Ross also provided an insight into the attitude of Foreign Office as to the likely outcome of a policy of "regime change".

[W]e would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.

Got that? What is happening now is what the Foreign Office always thought would happen if the U.S. decided to remove Saddam.

I've thought about this a lot over the last four years. It seemed impossible to me that the people who worked at the Foreign Office would have misunderstood the situation as badly as they appeared too. For anyone who came in late, I've got a degree in International Relations so know a bit about the Foreign Office and the sort of people who work there. There are people there who've studied I.R. to a higher level than I did and who know a lot more about Iraq than I ever will.

And I've often wondered, how could these people have been so incompetent? How could they have failed to warn of the horrendous consequences of the action advocated by Bush and Blair? I've been pretty sure of the answer for a good while but this appears to be fairly solid proof: they did understand and they did issue warnings. Indeed, it was the policy of the Foreign Office staff working on Iraq to warn that the country would "collapse into chaos" if regime change was attempted by the U.S.

The problem was that Bush and Blair didn't want to hear it, didn't listen and were therefore totally unprepared for it when it happened.

What will Tony "who could possibly have predicted this ?" Blair say about that?

Not much if his spokesman is any guide.

These are two entirely separate failings. Engineering a war of choice is quite distinct from refusing to pay any heed to expert warnings on the outcome of that war. I guess different people will have different views as to which is worse. Either one, on its own, would have been more than enough to force a man of conscience to resign. Blair, on the other hand, is immediately moved to outraged indignation if anyone has the audacity to even begin to suggest that he bears any responsibility for either of these shameful actions.

And he still genuinely believes he has right on his side. That itself is another demonstration, as if one were needed, that he is not fit to be the Prime Minister of this country.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Tony Blair

Normal service to be resumed shortly but in the meantime, it's all in the timing. It's a perfect day to bury news the government doesn't really want you to think about.

It is, you see, sometimes in the national interest to sell extremely powerful weapons to wealthy, corrupt, religious totalitarian, anti-democratic regimes. The pro-democracy rhetoric is all very pretty but it's emptiness is revealed in all its glory when our government quashes an investigation like this.

According to Goldsmith, Blair and Defence Secretary Des Browne (he really is, apparently) argued that carrying on the investigation would harm intelligence and diplomatic co-operation with Saudi Arabia, in turn damaging the UK's national security. In other words, when it comes to the national interest, the rule of law can go whistle.

Back in 1997, embarrassing though this is to admit, I thought that Labour might be a welcome change from the sleazy Tories. Now, older and possibly a tiny bit wiser, an Orwell quotation (this one surprisingly not from 1984) seems appropriate.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Tags: News, Politics, BAE, Sleaze, Tony Blair

The Wriggle

Apologies for the lack of blogging this week. I should be back up to speed by the weekend or the start of next week at the latest. In the meantime, here's a wee thought.

Did you know that an Aberdeen football team holds the record for the worst defeat in a British competitive football match? Bon Accord F.C. were beaten 36-0 by Arbroath in 1885. Ouch.

Can you imagine what the after-match press conference would have been like if Tony Blair had been the manager of Bon Accord?

Journalist: Well Tony, that was an absolute shambles. You chose 11 players who couldn't play football, a formation which didn't work and a goalkeeper who was scared of the ball. Do you feel any responsibility for this embarrassing defeat and will you resign?

Blair: No, I accept no responsibility for this. The principal reason we had this problem is because the other team deliberately tried to give us a problem.

Journalist: Well yes, but shouldn't you have expected that and planned accordingly? It's not like the other team attempting to beat you was a surpr...

Blair: Look, there's sometimes a sense in which, it's as if, if only we sort of had a different strategy, somehow we could have avoided this problem. This problem hasn't originated naturally. It's originated as a result of the other team deliberately trying to score more goals than us.

Perhaps Alan Pardew should have tried that one.

This could become the start of a sort of series.

Serial Killer Still at Large: Police "not to blame"

Police spokesman Tony Blair has said that the failure to catch a notorious serial killer was exclusively due to the killer's desire not to be caught. "We nearly caught him when we visited his house but he slipped out through the back door and is now in hiding" said Blair. "We didn't plan for the possibility that he might deliberately attempt to avoid us" he added.

Why not try this technique yourself next time your boss has a go at you? If it works for the Prime Minister, surely you can make it work for you too.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Tony Blair

Reconciliation

Former hostages Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden have announced that they forgive their kidnappers. In a statement, they said:

We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us. We have no desire to punish them. Punishment can never restore what was taken from us.

They have also made it clear that they oppose the imposition of the death penalty.

This is just the sort of naive, woolly-headed, wishy-washy liberal surrender monkeying which gives encouragement to extremists. If people like Kember were in charge, we'd never win the war on terror. I'll tell you this; if these scum had kidnapped me, I'd be only to happy to see them hang. In fact, I'd be there at the gallows to hear their necks break. Violence is the only language these vicious thugs understand.

No desire to punish them? Good grief! What is wrong with these people?

Meanwhile, in Iraq, tit-for-tat sectarian attacks continue to spiral out of control. I just don't understand it. If only Iraqis were able to forgive and forget and move on instead of being overcome with the need for revenge.

But these barbarians just don't seem capable of it! What is wrong with these people?

This post brought to you in association with Faux News - as fair and balanced as a dizzy storm cloud.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Norman Kember

The Tony and George Show.

Extraordinary stuff.

I had some thoughts and was going to post them here but it'd basically be a regurgitation of my comment on the Blairwatch post. In short, Blair is in deep denial. Hardy news but there you are. Sometimes, when he's at his most detached, it still needs to be said.

Update

Doh! I forgot to include the link to the man. Well done Nick for asking the hard questions. Proper.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, President Bush, Tony Blair

Liars and Their Lies

It is often claimed that Blair has absolutely no influence over Bush. Today, evidence suggests that this isn't quite true. Here's coverage of their press conference:

"It's bad in Iraq," Mr Bush conceded to reporters. But he said the violence was not a result of "faulty planning".

"It is a deliberate strategy. It is the direct result of outside extremists teaming up with internal extremists... to foment hatred and to throttle at birth the possibility of a non-sectarian democracy."

Now where have I heard that before? Ah yes. Blair has passed on to Bush his ridiculous "nothing to do with us" nonsense. He does have some influence after all.

The notion that none of this is the result of faulty planning or in any way down to Bush and Blair's ignorance of the likely consequences of the invasion is based on the claim that what is happening now couldn't have been predicted in advance. This is disingenuous in the extreme. No, I'll go further; it's a bare faced lie.

I can clearly remember hearing expert warnings that if the U.S. invaded Iraq, "outside extremists" would flock there and attempt to provoke instability. I'm not an expert myself but I knew it was going to happen and I could see that the "coalition" didn't really understand what that would entail and weren't prepared for it. That was one part of the reason why I opposed the war (there are many others). As for the sectarian violence, ask Secretary Baker why he wasn't in favour of removing Saddam back in 1991. These two factors, along with the well known unsuitability of U.S. troops when it comes to peacekeeping and nation building, meant that a disaster of the sort we're now witnessing was always the most likely outcome.

As I've pointed out before, Peter Oborne's documentary contained interviews with more than one expert on Iraq. Before the invasion, these academics warned Blair face to face of the enormous difficulties he should expect in the post-invasion period. Blair didn't listen.

Even Jack Straw, way back in March 2002, warned that "We have also to answer the big question - what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything. Most of the assessments from the US have assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD threat. But none [sic] has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better."

For Bush and Blair to now claim that what is happening wasn't predictable is fatuous, self-serving crap. Only the most unscrupulously dishonest politician would even consider using this garbage as a defence of their indefensible actions. It isn't a surprise, therefore, that Bush and Blair have decided to do exactly that.

One final note about extremism. The Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, recently told a Senate committee that:

The longer this goes on, the less controlled the violence is, the more the violence devolves down to the neighborhood level. The center disappears, and normal people acting not irrationally end up acting like extremists.

The coalition's failure to provide security since the invasion is causing normal people to behave like extremists. That's why the situation is deteriorating.

Blair and Bush once claimed that the invasion of Iraq was part of their strategy to defeat extremism. Now that the opposite is happened, as many people warned it would, they want to pretend that it has nothing to do with them. They really are beyond the pale.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Tony Blair

The other day, Guido wrote another of his self-congratulatory posts on the number of hits he gets. He asked why it was that blogs from the right were more popular then those from the left. As I was in a bit of a cheeky mood, I decided to have a little troll in the comments so I wrote that the reason was that:

Right-wingers are narrow minded bigots who never bother to read anything which might challenge their opinion.

As I said, it was trollish, and deliberately so.

I checked back a couple of hours later but no-one had responded. Then I forgot all about it. I remembered again today and had another look but still no-one had responded. How disappointing. Perhaps my admission that I was looking for a "shiny troll badge" gave the game away. Or perhaps I hit a nerve with some of Guido's regular comment swarm.

Anyway, it also occurred to me today that some of those from the right who's opinions I respect and who I know do regularly read views which challenge their own opinions might have seen that comment and thought that I was being serious about right leaning people generally. Just to be clear, I wasn't.

I do have some thoughts on the reasons why blogs like Guido's are popular and I may well write about it once I arrange these thoughts properly.

In the meantime, as Tim points out lower down the thread, it is worth remembering that the Scum is Britains best selling newspaper. If you were to argue that this is because of the quality and robustness of their political arguments, I'm afraid I'd have to point and laugh.

Tags: News, Politics, Blogging, Media

Is this the best headline ever?

That's one really bad case of wind. She probably shouldn't have had the bean curry.

Thank you, thank you. You're a wonderful audience. Have you tried the Chicken in a Basket? Only £2.95 from the buffet bar. Lovely, it is, lovely. I'm here all week, ladies and gentleman. Did I tell you the one about the man who walked into a bar...

Tags: Culture

An Exit Route

I may feel the need to write something substantive about the Iraq Study Group's recommendations in due course but in the meantime, I noticed that the group places a lot of emphasis on the need to set out "milestones" for the Iraqi government.

And they claim not to be imperialists. Notice that they didn't offer to set metrestones. Hoist by their own petard, methinks.

Ahem.

The IGC was widely thought to be looking at exit strategies which would provide a sheen of respectability to the United States. A withdrawal which looked like abject failure on the part of the U.S. is what they most want to avoid (Democrats and Republicans). This plan to set milestones seems to be a key part of that effort.

In short, it looks very much like the exit strategy the ICG recommend is based on the idea that all blame for the failure of this misconceived misadventure should be borne by Iraqis. If adopted, we can expect those involved in this fiasco to start selling the message that "we set them milestones and they failed to achieve them" and "we gave them every chance but they didn't take it" and other variations on the same theme. In fact, some of the neo-cons who urged on the invasion without having the slightest understanding of what post-Saddam, U.S. occupied Iraq would be like, have already been giving this concept an airing. The ICG report prepares the way - after a suitable period of milestone setting - for those inside the Bush administration to start doing the same.

It's a deeply unpleasant business but it may well work to some extent.

That said, it is quite possible that Bush's messianic belief in the rightness of his cause will lead him to reject this sort of thinking. He really does believe that "good will triumph over evil" and there are signs that this makes him incapable of coming to terms with the reality of the situation. Given that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to be part of a war against religious fundamentalists, that possibility represents a particularly ugly irony.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq

The SNP Are Terrorists!

The Politics of Smear and Fear

First up, I should admit that I've stolen (and adapted) the post title from Backing Blair. Specifically, it came from this post which explained how Blair uses fear of the Tories to bolster support for New Labour. This post was written before the 2005 general election .

[W]e'd like to point out that there are a number of parallels between the Tories and terrorists, in that Blair has been using our fear of both to stay in power and get away with all kinds of things the public would never tolerate without the presence of a serious boogey-man. Or two.

Indeed. Here are some campaign posters as a reminder of the sort of thing we're talking about.

I'm pretty sure I saw all four of these in my constituency (I'm absolutely sure about two). It's a Labour/Lib Dem marginal which the Tories were never going to win. They also constantly argued that if disillusioned Labour voters decided to vote Liberal Democrat, this would let the Tories in by the "back door". It was a fatuous claim but it undoubtedly influenced some people.

And in my own constituency, a Professor Matt Qvortrup appeared in the local media to warn Labour voters switching to the Lib Dems might allow the Tories to win the seat. This was clearly a nonsense as the Tories had been a distant third in the 2001 election. In Aberdeen South, the Lib Dems were quite correct to claim that only they or Labour could win the seat. (The actual election result proved the point.) One google later, I discovered that the professor had worked as policy advisor to both Jack Straw and David Blunkett. This wasn't mentioned in either of the articles in which he made his logic defying claim. When I emailed him to ask why he had made this bizarre assertion, he claimed that he had been misquoted. Twice. In two separate interviews with two separate newspapers. In exactly the same way.

I suppose that it is theoretically possible...

That's all in the past now but it is relevant to the forthcoming 2007 Scottish election campaign because we can expect more of the same. In this election, of course, it would be beyond the realms of credibility to use the Tories as the boogey-man so they're going to use the SNP instead. It is already happening; many of the speeches at the Scottish Labour Party conference specifically attacked the SNP. In fact, the conference seemed to be almost exclusively concerned with the apparent failings of the Nationalists. The SNP are doing well in the polls but there is no doubt that Labour have decided to deliberately emphasise the possibility that they could win in order to put the fear into disillusioned voters. "WARNING" posters similar to the one above but with the SNP as their target are probably already on their way to the printers.

And John "We hope we will leave Afghanistan without firing a single shot" Reid, never one to do things by halves, has even made an explicit link between the SNP and terrorism. He claimed that Scotland would be more vulnerable to a terrorist attack if it became independent. This from a supporter of Blair's policies! He really has got no scruples whatsoever. He must never be allowed to become Prime Minister.

The situation this time is slightly different to the general election, however. As I said, the SNP are doing well in the polls. Unlike the Tories at the general election, the SNP could conceivably win the largest number of seats in this election. This is a slight complication and could also make Labour's campaign more effective.

It was clear that the Tories weren't going to win in 2005; the opinion polls and the swing they actually needed to win a majority made it obviously impossible from a very early stage. Backing Blair, among others, were able to point this out and it did, to an extent, reduce the impact of Blair's nasty campaign. That approach isn't possible this time because the SNP might well win.

I'm not an SNP supporter myself, (to borrow from Shuggy, I'm not really interested in a polity based on ethnicity) so that does pose something of a problem. They have, however, been quite clever in their decision to offer a referendum on independence. That means that a vote for them cannot be taken as a mandate for independence, only a mandate for a referendum. The possibility exists to vote SNP and then vote against independence. For their point of view, it is a clever piece of decoupling and it's founded in a democratic approach too so that's all well and good.

What this means, at least for me, is that the possibly of campaigning against Labour and attempting to expose their dirty tricks during the election campaign is still very much on the table.

The question then is, why would I want Labour to be given another bloody nose given that Blair is intending to stand down around that time anyway. There are a number of reasons but one really stands out. The idea that Scottish Labour is separate from Blair doesn't cut it with me; ultimately, they are part of the Labour Party and Blair is their leader. And the Labour Party, north and south of the border, have decided to let Blair depart "with dignity" at the time of his own choosing. That is enough. Allowing Blair to maintain even a tiny sheen of dignity is not acceptable. The less dignified Blair's exit is, the better.

And I'm not just saying that out of spite. It is the interest of all of us to make sure that a man who has behaved in the way Blair has is not allowed to leave with dignity. What sort of message would that send to future leaders of this country? The message would be "he got away with it, I can too". And the first person who'll get that message is going to be either Gordon Brown or (if ever I wanted to call on the power of an omnipotent deity, it's now) John Reid. Neither of these men needs any encouragement to take liberties with our democracy. What they need is a hefty slap on the wrists before they've even started. A serious whipping at the Scottish elections, especially now that the New Labour machine has decided to become so involved in the campaign, is just what's required.

So, unless something extraordinarily unpredictable happens, I intend to campaign to make Blair's departure as miserable as possible. And that means campaigning against Labour in 2007.

I'd be interested to know whether other bloggers feel the same. Perhaps some sort of collaborative online campaign to counter the spin machine might be worth considering. Speak up in the comments or send me an email if you're interested (my email address is in the right sidebar). Not sure I'd be the best person to coordinate it mind; my organisational skills are legendary. And by that, I obviously mean that they don't actually exist.

By the way, there is is certain irony here and I'm not unaware of it. On the one hand, I'm complaining about negative campaigning but on the other, I'm saying I want to campaign against Blair. There are differences though. Firstly, Blair and his cronies are actually in power. We don't need to guess what they'd be like. We know. Campaigning to end that seems entirely sensible to me.

Perhaps more importantly, what really irks me about Blair and his spinners is that they are knowingly dishonest. For example, they knew full well that the Tories wouldn't win the 2005 election. That election was always about the size of their majority. They also knew that Labour voters switching to the Lib Dems couldn't actually let the Tories in "by the back door". But that didn't stop them from making those claims. Democracy should be about honesty if it is about anything but Blair doesn't understand that. Again, it seems entirely sensible to protest against this state of affairs.

And finally, the sort of campaign I have in mind would not be based on untruths, dirty tricks and deliberately misleading statements. I think that makes a world of difference.

Tags: News, Politics, Scottish Elections, Tony Blair

At PMQs today, answering a question from David Cameron, Blair said:

It has always been my view that it was in the British interest to remove Saddam Hussein.

It's not the first time he's said this sort of thing. We know that even the ever so flexible Lord Goldsmith was unequivocal in saying that a policy based on regime change would be illegal. As the Downing Street memo recorded "the Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action". So, how do we get him prosecuted? Seriously?

Also, in answer to a puff question on Iraq from Ann Clywd, no longer the chairman of the parliamentary party, he said:

It's is important, as she rightly implies, to emphasise that the people that we are fighting are al-Qaeda linked up with Sunni extremists, Iranian backed elements linking up with Shiite militias. Those are the self-same forces that we are fighting in Agfhanistan...

Iranian elements fighting for the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan? That is just utterly ridiculous. Does he not understand this or does he not care what fatuous drivel he speaks in defence of his failing policies? I'm not sure which would be worse and it may well be that both are true. He said many other equally ridiculous things; this just happened to be one which stood out.

Anyway, he's off to get his new orders now from a man who, impossible though this may appear, is even more clueless as to the realities of the situation. The idea that these two men are capable of turning things around, even supposing that the situation was not already irretrievable, flies in the face of all the evidence of the last four years. Blair has been a key advocate for the introduction of performance targets in the public sector. The Head of a failing school doesn't have long to sort things out before they're out on their ear. If Blair had applied that principle to his own position... but of course he never would.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Tony Blair

Clutching at Straws - Part 2

I overlooked one aspect of Bush's meeting with al-Hakim, the leader of the SCIRI, in my previous post. It concerns the reason for the meeting. It is very difficult to think like George and his cabal and this part of it is so bizarre that my brain simply wasn't able to accommodate it properly at first.

Anyway, one of the reasons for the meeting was actually explicitly laid out by Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, in a memo which was subsequently leaked. The quotation from that memo which the media focused on concerned Hadley's doubts about al-Maliki.

The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.

This quotation seems to have dominated coverage of the memo to the exclusion of its wider implications as Chris Weigant at the Huffington Post does an excellent job of pointing out. They really don't have the faintest idea what they're doing.

There are two quotations from the memo relevant to Bush's meeting with al-Hakim. The first in the section titled "Augmenting Maliki’s Political and Security Capabilities", says this:

[We should] Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc.

The thinking is that al-Maliki's room for manoeuvre is extremely limited because he is dependent on Shiite factions with mostly sectarian concerns. On that at least, they are correct.

The second relevant quotation, in the "Moving Ahead" section, says:

If Maliki seeks to build an alternative political base [we should] Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) [Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Maliki rival] to support Maliki.

The meeting then, was partly about persuading the "moderate" al-Hakim to align himself more closely with al-Maliki so that the Iraqi PM is freed from the constraints imposed by his sectarian Shiite political base.

You can perhaps see why this didn't fully register when I wrote the previous post. The Bush administration wants to free al-Maliki of constraints imposed by his sectarian Shiite supporters by making him more reliant on al-Hakim, the leader of the Iranian backed, intensely sectarian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Normally at this stage, it'd be time to dig up satire's corpse for another bloody killing. Unfortunately, satire's corpse has recently developed an addiction to cocaine and it doesn't seem right to kill it again when it's in such a state. Fortunately, President Bush has a plan to reduce its dependence on the insidious nose sherbet. He's going to give it free crack.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Iran, President Bush

Bob Gates, the man chosen to replace Rumsfeld and pretty much certain to be confirmed, may have a highly dubious past but at least he's not completely barking.

At this stage, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Bob Gates

Clutching at Straws

Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), visited the Whitehouse yesterday to attend a meeting with President Bush. The President told al-Hakim that "the US supports his work... to unify the country". Good grief.

Is Bush going to invite al-Sadr too? In actual fact, that might be more useful (except that he would refuse to meet the President). Al-Sadr is far more open to dialogue with Sunni groups than al-Hakim is ever likely to be. He often calls for calm and reconciliation. He hates the occupying forces far more than he hates Sunnis and he has attempted to work with them to achieve peace in order to bring an end to the occupation. He's also an Iraqi nationalist and believes strongly in preserving a unified Iraq (he opposes federalism, unlike the SCIRI). It is true that his Mahdi army participates in revenge attacks but that appears to be mostly due to its relatively loose structure. The Mahdi Army formed after the invasion on a sort of ad-hoc basis. Al-Sadr undoubtedly has firm control of members of the militia in his close vicinity and a degree of control over the rest but he's probably unable to stop reprisals when emotions are running high after an attack.

The armed wing of the SCIRI, the Badr Organisation, is rather different. Set up by the Iranians and based there for two decades, it's a proper organisation with well established command and control structures. It's members have been well trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Unsurprisingly, it still has close ties with the Iranian regime. In fact, the SCIRI is by far the most Iran friendly of all the parties in Iraq today. It is highly likely that they are still receiving support of one form or another from the Iranians. They are not Iranian puppets but they are very close allies.

The SCIRI is also the faction which was accused of running death squads from the Interior Ministry when they had control there. Their Badr Organisation have long since thoroughly infiltrated Iraq's security forces and they are certainly still running death squads today. They are also almost certainly responsible for abducting and torturing Sunnis. This is a very deliberate policy designed to intimidate Sunnis into submission. It's a doomed policy unless they are prepared to be as brutally efficient in this task as Saddam was before them (mostly in the opposite direction in Saddam's case, of course). Unfortunately, they may very well be.

In a speech he gave after the meeting, al-Hakim explained his solution to Iraq's troubles.

The only way to stave off civil war in Iraq is for U.S. forces to strike harder against Sunni-led insurgents, a leading Shi'ite politician said on Monday after talks with President George W. Bush.

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the biggest party in Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government, put the onus on Washington and its allies to take tougher action in Iraq, and denied that majority Shi'ites were stoking sectarian violence.

Tougher action against the Sunnis? Who could have predicted...

For the SCIRI, reconciliation with the Sunnis is not on the agenda. Al-Hakim, although he might not say it openly, believes that the only way to solve Iraq's security problems is to win the nascent civil war. His organisation is not yet powerful enough to do that on its own. He has, however, got a cunning plan. What he needs is a large powerful army, preferably one led by someone who doesn't really understand the situation, to act as his proxy and crush the Sunnis once and for all. Fortunately for him, there's just such an army very close at hand. It's hard to tell whether Bush and his advisers will see this.

And what is President Bush doing inviting this man to the Whitehouse anyway? At first, I wondered whether he didn't understand quite who he was dealing with. On reflection, it seems more likely that he wants al-Hakim to take a message to the Iranians. If so, he chose the right guy.

I'm all for dialogue but it seems hugely unlikely that anything useful will come from engaging Iran on this issue. I don't believe they are stoking the violence as some do but do believe they're quite happy to see their great enemy bogged down in Iraq. What does Bush expect from the Iranians? If the recent comments of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei are anything to go by, they will insist on U.S. troop withdrawn as a prerequisite before they will consider helping to quell the violence. That's going to be a very short conversation.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq, Iran

Ha ha!

Quack, limp, quack, limp, quack...

Tags: News, Politics, John Bolton, President Bush

We Are Committed to Self-Serving Hypocrisy

Blair is about to make a statement on his desire to see Britain replace it's ageing weapons of mass destruction. He won't use those words of course; he'll call it our "independent nuclear deterrent".

Of the three words he'll use to describe the system, only one is unproblematic. I think we can all agree that we're talking about "nuclear" weapons.

But it is unclear who is supposed to be deterred by these weapons. As for the system's "independence", the claim is laughably inaccurate. It is independent in the same way that Blair's foreign policy is independent from that of President Bush.

In truth, "weapons of mass destruction" is a far more accurate and uncontroversial description of what we're talking about.

So, should we replace our ageing weapons of mass destruction?

I've already seen some or other Blairite drone essentially argue that replacement of Trident was a manifesto commitment and that the public had therefore endorsed it at the general election. This is just the sort of standard dishonest tactic this government seems to revel in. Despite the fact that very many people clearly voted Labour for the simple reason that they didn't want the Tories to win, a sentiment amplified and exploited by Blair's spin machine to the extent that it was the central theme of their campaign, it is now argued that all these people read, agreed with and wholeheartedly endorsed every single word of the manifesto. We can expect more of this fallacious nonsense over the next three months.

What the manifesto actually said was this:

We are also committed to retaining the independent nuclear deterrent and we will continue to work, both bilaterally and through the UN, to urge states not yet party to non-proliferation treaties, notably the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, to join. (PDF, page 88)

As as a commitment to replace Trident, this is a triumph of ambiguity.

I'm reminded of the manifesto commitment on ID Cards:

We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.

On first reading, this appears to say that people can "volunteer" to have an ID card when they renew their passports. We now know that that was never the intention. And we also know that the government steamrollered the Lords into backing down on opposing ID Cards because of this "clear" manifesto commitment.

Be in no doubt that these commitments were deliberately written in this ambiguous fashion. I'm not well informed about the exact process used to write the manifesto but it obviously has very little to do with democracy. As far as I'm aware, ordinary Labour Party members have essentially no say as to what it contains.

The commitment on nuclear weapons is, however, unambiguously hypocritical. Article VI of the NNPT formally commits the nuclear armed states to "pursue negotiations in good faith... on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control". Making an express commitment to retain nuclear weapons with no mention of any desire to attempt to achieve disarmament is a clear, indeed material breech of the treaty. In the same sentence, the manifesto then goes on to emphasise the importance of the very treaty it so blatantly flouts. You can't even see the moral high ground from that position, never mind occupy it.

There are those who say that nuclear weapons are a Pandora's Box, that they will always be with us, and that this makes the disarmament provisions of Article VI undesirable and unworkable. This, in itself, is a perfectly credible position to adopt and one I respect.

If that is to be the basis of policy however, it is important to face its full implications. If we are to abandon our obligation to work towards "complete disarmament," then the NNPT is a dead duck. As we would have no intention of abiding by Article VI, we'd either have to withdraw from the NNPT or the treaty itself would have to be renegotiated or scrapped. Given the difficulties that such negotiations would provoke, it is far more likely that it would have to be scrapped.

More concretely, adopting this position would mean telling the 180 or so non-nuclear signatories to the NNPT that we do not believe that non-proliferation is achievable and that we will not disarm. The likely effect of this message doesn't need to be spelled out.

The government doesn't want to deal with any of this or even talk about it. They want to have their cake and eat it. This simply isn't a credible position. As I've said before, President Ahmadinejad is wrong about many things but when he calls our government hypocritical over their attitude to the NNPT, he is entirely correct.

The world today is very different from the Cold War era of Mutually Assured Destruction. The decision as to whether to replace Trident is a complex one and there are good arguments on both sides. A full public debate on this very important issue, including the full implications of deciding to replace, is surely essential in a democratic country.

But we're not going to get that. What we're going to get is a three months sales pitch for a pre-determined policy. Like the patter of a particularly unscrupulous used car salesman, it'll be dishonest, evasive, well practised rubbish. No real conversation will take place.

And what's the rush? Partly, it's because of pressure from BAE Systems.

Speaking to the parliamentary defence committee yesterday, Murray Easton, head of the submarine division at BAE Systems, warned that a delay could have a "catastrophic" impact on the industry.

My hear bleeds. BAE Systems are not even going to make £1 billion profit this year. That's clearly only one small step from catastrophe. Give them a grant, quick sharp...

OK, I'm being facetious but only because I'm resisting a rant on the insidious relationships between government and "defence contractors". In fact, BAE Systems base their claim on the fact that delay would mean that crucial expertise was lost. Given the fact that replacement is predicated on the fact that nuclear technologies, once invented, can't be lost, it isn't a very good argument. Is someone going to shoot these experts if these contracts are not awarded? (Yes, facetious again.)

The other reason for the rush is, of course, Blair's desire to secure his legacy. And I suppose it's fitting in a way. On the one hand, he'll be remembered as the PM who supported a war which could accurately be described as catastrophic over weapons of mass destruction which didn't exist. On the other, he'll be remembered as the PM whose decision to replace our ageing weapons of mass destruction hammered the final radioactive nail into the NNPT's coffin. This seems to be an entirely suitable legacy for a man of Blair's talents.

It is, however, unfortunate that the rest of us with have to live in the world where that legacy exists.

Right, I'm off to see what he's got to say about all this.

Tags: News, Politics, WMD, Tony Blair

Go minimalist!

In a leaked memo written just before he got the boot, Rumsfeld recommended that the Bush regime recasts U.S. goals for Iraq. "Go minimalist" were the actual words he used.

I think it's a euphemism for "shit, we lost".

Here's the memo in full from the New York Times.

Tags: News, Politics, Iraq

In Britain today, "Celebrity News" magazines seem to have become even more prevalent than sexually transmitted disease (if such a thing is possible). The rash of such magazines now available is enough to make your brain itch in a most unpleasant fashion.

I don't see inside these things often but I was flicking through one the other day at a friend's house. The "Spotted this Week" section was mystifying.

A person you've never heard of spotted in Waitrose. Another person whose name might be vaguely familiar was seen eating food in a restaurant. Pete Doherty spotted looking spotty. Some or other ex-Hollyoaks actor was in a nightclub trying to chat up every woman within a ten mile radius. Pete Doherty spotty in court...

There was more than half a page of this and it was written in really quite small print and small print is a rarity in these mags if the one I had was anything to go by. Is this some sort of celebration of existentialism or something? I just don't get it.

But the bit that baffled me most was even more bizarre. On the top of a page was the headline "Everything You Need to Know About Tom and Katie's Wedding!". There then followed three full pages of who on earth knows what. Extraordinary.

Tags: Culture, Media

At the Labour Party conference this year, Martin Bright discussed Labour's "loans" with Lord Levy.

What did he make of the general point I made in the programme: that the loans from wealthy party supporters were not intended as loans, but were to be converted into donations?

He gripped my arm like a long-lost friend and said, by way of answer: "Only some of them."

Loan on "commercial terms" are not normally given on the understanding that the lender will quietly donate the borrowed sum to the borrower at some later date in order to cancel the debt. If anyone knows of any commercial lender who would be willing to offer a loan on these terms, I would be most grateful if you would email me their contact details. In the meantime, I'll continue my experiments into methods of turning Swiss cheese into gold.

It's all unravelling now though. Now, some of the lenders are demanding their money back and Labour are desperately trying to reschedule the repayment of the loans due to acute cash flow problems. What a mess they've got themselves into. It's almost as if they never expected to have to pay back these loans...

Tags: News, Sleaze, Sleaze, Tony Blair