03 February 2004

TONY BLAIR – THE MAN WHO KNOWS BEST That Tony Blair is a clever guy, nobody can deny.  Anyone who can simultaneously paint himself into a corner whilst shooting himself in the foot is prodigiously talented.  Courtesy of the UK Daily Mirror, check out these authoritative utterances…  Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed & growing.  The intelligence picture is extensive, detailed& authoritative. SEPT. 24 2003 Not only do we know that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we also know that he is capable using them.  Saddam must disarm or face the consequences.  NOV 30 2003 The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin & ricin.  All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death.  FEB 25 2003 We are asked now to accept that in the last few years – contrary to all intelligence – Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons.  I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.  MAR 18 2003 The UN weapons inspectors say vast amounts of chemical & biological poisons, such as anthrax, mustard gas & VX nerve agent remain unaccounted for in Iraq.  MARCH 20 2003 Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a little bit.  I remain confident that they will be found.  APRIL 28 2003 There is no doubt about the chemical programme, the biological programme, indeed the nuclear weapons programme.  All that is well documented by the United Nations.  MAY 30 2003 If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that is at its least responsible for inhuman carnage& suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.  JULY 18 2003 History has been less than kind to a wide range of heroes & villains.  Late 20th & early 21st century vilifications of such hitherto irreproachables as Winston Churchill, Mahatma Ghandi & John F. Kennedy would seem to give Blair little cause for optimism concerning his own reputation.  If he sincerely believes that ‘history will forgive’ then maybe, just maybe, he is more naïf than knave.  Either way, when the chips are down, there’s little to choose between a damned liar & a bloody fool. One late 20th, early 21st century hero who is in no doubt as to which category best fits Blair is John Pilger.   It was well worth wading through the dross in today’s Daily Mirror to glean the following from Pilger’s two-page demolition job, entitled MASS DECEPTION. Pilger writes of a top secret British intelligence operation called ‘Operation Rockingham’.  Its entirely political purpose, he claims, was to carefully select any incoming data that might be suitable for presentation as evidence of the existence of a weapons arsenal in Iraq.  Former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter reveals that intelligence thus ‘massaged’ would have been placed before the parliamentary Joint Intelligence Committee.  This committee it was that produced the two government dossiers that made the case for going to war.  Ritter goes on to state that Rockingham operatives were being directed ‘from the very highest levels’.  Pilger demands that ‘the question of how high needs urgently to be answered’. Meanwhile, across the pond, Secretary of State Colin Powell paid tribute shortly before the war to Iraqi defector, General Hussein Kamel, the man officially responsible for Iraq’s weapons programmes & thus duly feted by Bush & Blair as their star witness.  What Powell chose to withhold from the world was the following statement, subsequently revealed in the transcript: ‘I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons.  All weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear – were destroyed’.  Pilger claims that Bush & Blair must have been aware of this entirely accessible declaration but chose to ignore it.  ‘Iraq was attacked’, he insists, ‘so that the United States & Britain could claim its oil & its assets.  Only Mary Poppins would believe otherwise…’ If the substance of Pilger’s assertions is sound then, as it all begins to unravel during the next few weeks & months, even Mary Poppins is going to be baying for blood. 11:39:47 PM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2004 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/03/2004; 23:20:24.