15 July 2004

Carhart denim logger pants for Anna at Self Winding 11:24:00 PM    Mmm? [] THE BUTLER REPORT   The intelligence: flawed   The dossier: dodgy   The 45-minute claim: wrong   Dr. Brian Jones*: vindicated   Iraq’s links to al-Qa’ida: unproven   The public: misled   The case for war: exaggerated    And who was to blame? No one   Thus the front page of The Independent this morning.  Enough said   *Dr Brian Jones was formerly head of the branch within the Scientific and Technical Directorate of Defence Intelligence Staff that was responsible for the analysis of intelligence from all sources on nuclear, biological and chemical warfare. He was highly critical of the use made by the government of the data that he was helping to process. .   As Teflon Tony once again dodges the slings & arrows of the outraged media, the government may at last be in a position to begin to draw a line beneath the Iraq issue.  However, it’s impossible to predict at this point whether for Blair the whole business will prove to have been a bridge too far or whether an exhausted public just doesn’t give a damn about giving a damn any more.    As for Tony Blair himself, he will accept without demur what he believes to have been the ultimate verdict of the Butler Report – namely, that Downing Street was free of blame.  Heads will roll elsewhere & he will be personally troubled neither by conscience nor doubt.  He will lay his head upon the pillow at night & he will sleep the sleep of the just.   So much of what happened in the run-up to the war & during its course was a direct function of the personalities of the protagonists.  Towering pride informing unswerving action; blinkered conviction led by belief arising from desire rather than certainty arising from knowledge; monolithic obduracy in the face of growing evidence contradicting the fundamental claims of those prosecuting the war – these were all deeply subjective states of mind neither promoted nor mitigated by democratic process. If pressed to rationalise them then maybe Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush & Tony Blair would declare their decisions in two words that echo down through history: personal destiny.   Today I looked down a set of quotations that I gathered from somewhere & was struck by how germane they are in present circumstances.     We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. -- Anais Nin The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. -- William Shakespeare     We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle     To thine own-self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou can'st not then be false to any man. -- Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 3     Man is what he believes. -- Anton Chekhov     The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. -- Mahatma Gandhi     No one can give you better advice than yourself. -- Cicero     The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's self. – Nietzsche     I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. -- Winston Churchill     People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson     Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got. -- Betty Ford     Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and, perhaps, remedied. -- Pearl Buck     10:51:06 PM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2004 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/08/2004; 23:45:27.