Truth and lies over Iraq

Melanie Phillps whose right wing credentials are not unknown, is a good starting point for a discussion on this topic. She leads us to two articles :

The panic over Iraq

This is a pdf but the link defaults to the archive from which you have to find the article - good luck!

Who is lying over over Iraq?


by Norman Podheretz

This wiki has a mass of links on NP


~~~~~

My position is clear: I wanted Saddam removed but was unhappy about the way the war was carried out and disgusted with the idiocy and cynicism of the aftermath.

If Bush and Blair are not liars then they are fools. In Bushes case we have a president who mind is furred up with religiosity (a signal idiocy to telegraph his eye-shutting and hand clasping to the rest of the world) and who compounds this with a hazy grasp of geography which makes it certain he would have gone into Iraq 2003 with his eyes firmly shut(as he prayed?). He was politican enough to know, as he stood on the street near the wreck of the Twin Towers in New York, loud-hailer in hand, praising the firemen as good Americans, that he would have to be seen to be doing something pretty soon. That he chose to attack Iraq instead seriously confronting the supporters of the terrorism wich had resulted in 9/11 says much of what we need to know about him.

For Blair, I wrote in a facetious post a year or so ago, where I constructed a dialogue about how he would have argued the toss with Alaister Campbell about how he must appear to be strong (especially with the history books in mind) when he in fact he had little in way of substance to back it up with. He will not have lain at wake at nights over the ethics and morals of whether to invade and its probably consequences such as the death of Iraqis and the soldiers he was sending out there.

The intricate details of all this, which history will sort into truth and lies, are hardly the problem. The general intents and purposes are far more important to grasp.

~~~~

The question we need to ask is not whether Bush or Blair (or Chirac or Putin) lied, but "Was Iraq was on its knees from Guf war I onwards?" If itwas then there was no real reason for the war in practical terms. Of course it was weak. We had 10 years to see its weakness. So, though we can't be unhappy that Saddam and his gangster state were removed, the reasons he was removed, which receive currency every time a politician opens his trap now on the subject - that it was a vile dictatorship - are not actually reasons but the excuses for the war. When we are given excuses for reson we know oour democracies have degenerated somewhat.

~~~

Iran seems to be of great concern now - it was always a greater problem than Iraq - but the politicians say there is to be no military solution for Iran (in words that leave it open as a later option). This seems only sensible since even the US can't muster enough reservists to make Iraq safe, let alone contemplate setting up a force to invade Iran. Everyone knows that if push comes to shove, and Iran is bombed into submission (with UN approval), as a softer option to an invasion, to remove plants which might lead to a bomb for Iran, it will immediately do all it can to ensure the oil doesn't get out of the Gulf.

Since what primarily motivates the major participants in this war is continuity of oil supply, not civil rights and democracy for Middle Easterners (the 10s of thousands dead Iraqis since 2003 will not get any freedom of democracy), this will mean years of nail-biting while everyone waits for Israel to neutralise some of the rising nuclear capability of Iran (without UN approval).


~~

What I will never understand is why those countries most heated about Iraq (US and UK) could not have said, with UN approval, we intend to invade Iraq with massive forces to check if they have WMD.This would have removed the necessity to prime the publics of the US and Britain for a war which would necessarily result in the loss of lives of servicemen and innocent Iraqis. Who could have been unhappy with this, especially if the plan had been to go in without intent to kill as many Iraqis as possible, check and come straight out if nothing was found?  ¶ Wednesday, January 18, 2006