Last week saw the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, all but absolved of any but the vaguest responsibility for the pack of outrageous lies and exaggerations his office presented as justification for the British taking part in the Iraq war.
The Butler report, the fourth in a series in post-Iraq war inquiries, was put together by a small committee of English establishment worthies. It found that what blame there was for dubious information provided by British intelligence quarters was ”collective”. No one in particular could be held to account for specious assertions about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, that Iraqi forces were capable of launching intercontinental missiles within 45 minutes of command by Saddam Hussein — and a great deal more.
As questionable as their findings were, the British intelligence functionaries had presented them to Downing Street adorned with an array of caveats and question marks. Blair then had composed a dossier that he presented to the British public as justification for going to war. It was presented in vindication of his belief that Hussein posed a threat to world peace and safety and that the British had virtually no option but to join the United States in making war — a decision that all but the least cynical believe had already been made.
The ”sexed up” dossier is now infamous for its exclusions and distortions. Downing Street had tinkered with the intelligence, leaving out anything that might disaffirm what they wanted to get across. As the United Nations-appointed weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was to comment: ”All the question marks were changed to exclamation marks.” There’s little doubt that this ”spinning” was the work of Blair’s communications head at the time, the reptilian Alistair Campbell, who then, along with Blair and Peter Mandelson, formed a politically degenerate New Labour trinity.
Faced with wide criticism, in effect Blair was forced to appoint so-called independent inquiries. The first of these was headed by Lord James Brian Hutton and set to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of British scientist, Dr David Kelly, who took his own life shortly after being wrongly ”outed” by the Blair apparatus as being author of the 45-minute claim. Kelly’s suicide remains ”apparent”.
Hutton’s terms of reference were formidably circumscribed by Blair. Even given those constraints, what Hutton produced was widely condemned as a whitewash. He also used the occasion to dump on the BBC in seeming revenge on behalf of Campbell who had long been at loggerheads with the corporation. Top BBC figures had no option but to resign.
That done, another inquiry was announced, headed by another life peer, Lord Gavin Butler. This one was a review of the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As with Hutton, it was throttled in advance by its narrow terms of reference. Last week Butler presented a report oozing with civil service-style cant. He found that a little too much weight had been placed on the intelligence and the central admonition in the report was a gentle ticking off of Blair for his casual style of leadership, an awarding of culpability tantamount to accusing the office boy of forgetting to distribute enough paper clips.
It has been interesting to watch the reactions of the British media to Butler. As they did before Hutton’s report came out, the commentators speculated with glee about how damaging Butler’s report would be. ”Tony’s time of reckoning” and ”Will Blair survive this exposure?”. An optimistic media were expecting something akin in frontal condemnation to parallel the US congressional committee’s excoriation of CIA intelligence. In the days leading up to Butler’s report, the papers, television and radio hyped it up in exactly the same way as they did Hutton’s. At last here comes the bomb to destroy Blair and all who suck up to him.
Instead, another squib. All agog at the CIA routing, the British media seemed to have forgotten how affectionately grind the mills of the British establishment. When Butler stood up last Wednesday to intone in impeccable Etonian vowels his gentle regrets and sub-qualifications, the media analysts were dumbstruck. Butler’s findings were a pallid mockery of what they had predicted with so much certitude. Again they had been made to look out of touch. It was almost saddening to see the British newspapers clutch at the fragile straws of reproach in Butler’s report. It was as though the commentators were desperate not to admit to their humiliation; Blair has pulled the wool over their eyes yet again.
As each of his excuses has been shown to be hollow, Blair has moved on to the next one with his usual oily hypocrisy. No weapons of mass destruction found, so Tones said he had solid proof of Hussein’s intentions to make them. No solid proof found, he now says the war was worth it because the world is a safer place without Hussein. As Blix commented, the reverse is actually true. The Iraq war has in fact stimulated terrorism against the West.
And, saving a miracle, next year the British people are quite likely to vote Blair and his political rat’s nest back into power.