War in Iraq and its aftermath - archives back to Feb 9 2003

Jan 22 ~ "...within the Bush White House lies an ugly beast that never gets acknowledged" Washington Post

Richard Cohen of the Washington Post speaks out after President Bush's State of the Union speech " The administration misled the American people, either purposely or out of incompetence. This is not a minor matter, because war, with all its unforeseen consequences, is not itself a minor matter -- nor is the loss of some 500 American lives." Read in full

Jan 22 ~ Yesterday Jack Straw hinted that elections in Iraq could be brought forward to this summer

Times ..Mr Straw told the World Economic Forum in Davos: "We want elections as soon as it is feasible to hold them. We have to take account of what Ayatollah al-Sistani is proposing. Either a solution is possible or not. The discussion which has been stimulated by Ayatollah al-Sistani is whether there could be an element of elections injected into the earlier part of the process.....A senior UN official said yesterday that it wanted to bridge the differences between the two sides and hoped to have a report ready by the end of next month. He said that the organisation was wary of being caught in the middle.
A spokesman for Ayatollah al-Sistani said that the cleric welcomed the expected arrival of the UN team, the first officials to visit Iraq since UN staff were evacuated from the country last year after two suicide-bomb attacks. ..
... Although there is no electoral register, there is a national list used for rations..." "

Jan 22 ~ Mr Bush's self-serving timeline

Guardian Leader "......Another rethink is required before it is too late. As we have said before, direct, democratic elections must be held as swiftly as is feasible. If the UN concludes that practical problems truly prevent that happening by June (for such problems, while significant, have been exaggerated), then Mr Bush's self-serving timeline must be altered accordingly. He has often pledged, after all, to see the job through, however lengthy, to "do what it takes for what is right". He started it; he must finish it, not cut and run. There is no good reason why, if more time is needed to ensure a legitimate process and to avoid chaotic alternatives, Iraq should not aim for a national poll this autumn. In the US itself, November 2 is thought to be a good day for an election."

Jan 21 ~ "UN the only possible legitimate body in the area. There will not be a transition to a peaceful self determination in Iraq as long as US and UK occupiers are still there."

An emailer writes of BBC Radio 4 "Taking a Stand"
" This was fascinating today, with Keane interviewing Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentgon papers re the reasons for the Vietnam war and how the grounds for conflict were manufactured.
Ellsberg stated towards the end that Bush and Blair had lied outrageously to the people "systematically and outrageously deceived their publics", and implied that he hoped that someone would feel duty bound to leak papers on a big scale as he had done in order to expose the crimes.
He said there would be a mass of incriminating evidence in the UK. No transcript is available unfortunately. The audio will only be available until the next programme in the series, presumably until next Tuesday."

Jan 21 ~ Kurds turn against US after losing control over oil-rich land

Kurdish community claims it had more autonomy under Saddam Independent "Iraqi Kurds, the one Iraqi community that has broadly supported the American occupation, are expressing growing anger at the failure of the United States and its allies to give them full control of their own affairs and allow the Kurds to expel Arabs placed in Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein. Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told The Independent in an interview that the Kurds had been offered less autonomy "than we had agreed in 1974 with the regime of Saddam Hussein".
..... ..... Before the war, Washington intended to invade Iraq from the north using Turkish bases and accompanied by a Turkish army. The Kurds were told by the US to keep quiet, though they protested furiously. In the event, the Turkish parliament rejected the US demand. The Americans were compelled to rely on the Kurds to create a northern front against Saddam. As the regime in Baghdad collapsed, Kurdish forces swept into the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. The Kurds saw that as a first step towards reversing ethnic cleansing which pre-dates Saddam's regime. ................ There are the seeds here for a savage ethnic conflict. The Arabs and Turkomans in Kirkuk are frightened. Many of the Arab settlers have been there for more than a generation and it is not clear where they would go. The last year has seen a number of small-scale but bloody clashes. ......they fear that their current superiority may not last and their gains over the past year will be chipped away as the face of the country changes. ..."

Jan 21 ~ George Bush stepped up efforts to calm the dispute over transition to self rule in Iraq,

calling in the Iraqi Governing Council president, Adnan Pachachi, and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shia member of the council who is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, for talks in Washington.
Last night, there were reports that the British and US governments were looking at running direct elections in time for the handover of power to Iraqis by 1 July. The Guardian reported that unnamed British officials said the Government had been swayed by the Shia argument. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said it had been studying using dyes on voters' hands as a means of working without an electoral roll. " Independent as above

Jan 21 ~ Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are considering a request by an international body of lawyers to try the Prime Minister for alleged war crimes during the invasion of Iraq.

Independent " A report alleging illegal deployment of cluster bombs and weapons using depleted uranium was handed to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor in The Hague, yesterday. He will decide whether to begin a formal investigation which could include questioning of Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence. If he concludes that a prosecution has a "reasonable prospect of success", the case will go before the pre-trial chamber of the court, which has the power to try individuals and governments for war crimes. No case has been made against the US administration because America has not signed the treaty that established the court. The report was written by eight international lawyers after a "war crimes inquiry" in London last November heard evidence from eye-witnesses and expert witnesses and leading counsel.
The panel concluded there was enough evidence for the prosecutor to investigate members of the Government for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes during the conflict and occupation. They said that he should investigate the use of cluster bombs in urban areas, and whether attacks had been launched on non-military targets.They also want the prosecutor to look into attacks on media targets and whether weapons were used which caused excessive loss of life or injury to civilians."

Jan 20 ~" About 100,000 protesters marched through Baghdad to al-Mustansiriyah University shouting "Yes to elections" and "No to occupation"..."

Independent "....The Shia, believed to number some 15 to 16 million out of a total Iraqi population of 25 million, fear the US and its local allies will seek to rob them of power by appointing members of a new assembly and government to which the US has pledged to hand over power on 1 July.
The demonstration was clearly aimed at Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN, seeking to persuade him not to endorse US plans for indirect elections. Mr Annan met Paul Bremer, the chief US official in Iraq, and a delegation from the US-selected Iraq Governing Council in New York yesterday.....
...Amar Abdul Hassan, a student protester, said: "The Americans want to choose our leaders for us. We want to choose them ourselves through elections."
Giant banners billowed in the wind as the marchers, almost all men, chanted praise to Ali and Hussein, the martyred founders of the Shia faith. US observation helicopters flew overhead.... The demonstration marks another stage in the elevation of Ayatollah Sistani, the 73-year-old leader of the Hawza, or network of religious schools in Najaf, as perhaps the most important Iraqi leader. If he issues a fatwa denouncing the political process organised by the US and the Governing Council then it will have little legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis....It will be embarrassing for the US to hold elections denounced as undemocratic by Ayatollah Sistani and the largest Iraqi community.... "

Jan 20 ~" Mr Annan has expressed a desire for more "clarity" before committing the UN to a renewed mission.."

Telegraph "...America and the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council were pushing for the the UN to send a "technical mission" to Baghdad, but there had been no decision yet as to how to respond, Mr Annan said."

Jan 19 ~The case of Ms Gun, which is likely to go to trial in the autumn, will call into question the legality of the war in Iraq.

Leader Observer "..... At the time of the disclosure Ms Gun had no reason to believe the British Government would go to war without a second resolution. Most experts in international law believed then that intervention would be illegal. Many still do.
The Government has been under pressure to disclose the Attorney General's legal advice, which made the case for war without a second resolution. If it helps Ms Gun get a fair trial, then we believe that advice should be released immediately. "
See also warmwell pages about Iraq and the UK Attorney General, Lord Goldsmithe.g. "...the hapless Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, was rushed forward ... to refute almost all legal opinion and invent an eccentric interplay between resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 to deny the fact that last year's coalition was forged on the explicit understanding that war was for the Security Council to determine..." Simon Jenkins on March 19th 2003

Jan 19 ~ Shells found near Basra were not chemical weapons

Rupert Cornwell in Washington Independent Three dozen mortar shells found buried in southern Iraq did not contain chemical blister agents as initially reported, the Danish army said yesterday.
The conclusion, after a week of tests by British, US and Danish experts, is a further blow to the dwindling hopes of finding the barred chemical, biological or nuclear weapons whose alleged existence was the official reason for the 20 March invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. .... Earlier reported finds of caches of chemical weapons also proved false, while supposed mobile biological weapons laboratories found after the war appear to have been for other purposes. No trace of any biological agent has been discovered on them. With every passing day it seems more likely that Iraq did destroy its WMD stockpiles in the early 1990s after the Gulf War in 1991 - just as Baghdad claimed."

Jan 19 ~ Washington will press the United Nations today to send a veteran troubleshooter to Iraq

The Times "....Washington and London are pushing Mr Annan to send Mr Brahimi to help bring Ayatollah al-Sistani on board. The former Algerian Foreign Minister, who worked closely with the Americans in setting up a new Government in Afghanistan, has acted as an informal go-between for the United States and Iran. His good relations with Teheran could give him leverage with Ayatollah al-Sistani. Mr Brahimi has also just been named a special adviser to the UN chief in New York amid speculation that he will take on new responsibilities in Iraq.
He has made clear that he does not want to replace Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Special Representative who was killed in a suicide bomb attack at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, but he does not rule out playing a role."

Jan 18 ~ commanders are seeking to reach out to tribal leaders by relying on a report devised in 1918 by Britain, the country's then ruler.

Independent
"..... Lieutenant-Colonel Alan King, head of the Tribal Affairs Bureau set up by the US-led coalition last month, admitted last week that he had been referring to the pages of the British report to fathom Iraq's network of tribal sheikhs - regardless of the fact that it dates back to the First World War. The revelation is not likely to improve confidence in the ability of the US to sort out the deepening muddle over how it means to relinquish political power to the Iraqi people by this summer. .. His bureau - the Office of Provincial Outreach - was awarded US$900,000 last week to establish "Tribal Democracy Centres", to provide resources to the sheikhs. .."

Jan 18 ~Tomorrow, Paul Bremer will travel to New York on an urgent mission to seek help from the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan.

(From Independent article above )The US is increasingly anxious to persuade the UN to return to Iraq and assist in selecting the interim government as well as preparing for the first full election in 2005 and the writing of a constitution. "The UN has a lot of expertise in organising elections, electoral commissions, electoral laws, and has a great deal of expertise it can bring to bear," said Mr Bremer, who will be accompanied by the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi.
But it is not clear how far Mr Annan will go to answer the American call. The Secretary General withdraw his staff from Baghdad after a bomb attack on his headquarters there last summer that killed 22 people, including his envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. "The meeting is really for us to listen and see what he has to say, and we'll take it from there," one UN official said. "We're not there to give the seal of approval ... Whatever process is adopted needs to be fair and inclusive, and everybody needs to have a stake in it."

Jan 18 ~ Blair faces new 'war crimes' accusation

Independent "An eminent panel of legal experts is to accuse Tony Blair of committing war crimes in Iraq in a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The panel, which includes law professors from universities in Britain, Ireland, France and Canada, will claim on Tuesday there is compelling evidence that the Prime Minister broke international law and UN treaties by invading Iraq last year.
The eight experts will recommend that the ICC launches a formal investigation into the Government's conduct - the first step towards indicting ministers for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their dossier will add to the renewed controversy over Mr Blair's stance on Iraq. It will be published a week before Lord Hutton issues his report into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly, which examines the Prime Minister's role in the decision to name him...."

Jan 17 ~ "Under the pretext of the war against terrorism, the United States has violated all international conventions on human rights." Shirin Ebadi

The anti-globalisation forum, World Social Forum at Mumbai, India is taking place this week. It is an "open platform to discuss strategies of resistance to the model for globalisation formulated by multinational corporations, governments, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO," as the WSF Charter says.
The organizers chose not to accept money for the $1.8 million event from the U.S.-based Ford Foundation, but took donations from Britain's Oxfam and Canada's state-run humanitarian agency.
José Bové said "...we are here to express our solidarity and to show our concern." W.R. Varada Rajan, a trade union leader said "This forum will explode the myth that this model of globalization has universal acceptance."
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP, said "The terror of war has brought about a change: the privatization of an entire country...the United States wants to send a message to the world: "The Americans can do it if they want to do it... ..The Iraq war, however, also has motivated people from around the world to forge stronger alliances against forces of globalization. It has mobilized young people in a way I had not thought before."
Iran's Shirin Ebadi, who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, said at the opening ceremony, "Under the pretext of terrorism, the United States has violated all international conventions on human rights. We are here to say that humans who are suffering from war have no dignity."
Among those also attending are Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist Samir Amin and former UN Human Rights chief Mary Robinson. (account taken from several news sources - see for example BBC)

Jan 17 ~ Bremer tries to salvage appointed-government plan amid Shia opposition

Independent Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad "..... Ayatollah Sistani insists that "each Iraqi must have the right to vote". It is his refusal to give his blessing that sent Paul Bremer, the chief US civilian official in Iraq, rushing to Washington yesterday to discuss the Shia leader's objections with President George Bush. Mr Bremer and his British deputy in the Coalition Provisional Authority, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, will join a delegation on Monday of the Iraqi Governing Council to see Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, in New York. They will press for the UN to send back its staff to Iraq and play a role in supervising the indirect elections. But the UN fears its participation will give legitimacy to the dubious local caucuses. The grand ayatollah has also said that a new Iraqi government must be able to rule on whether or not US and allied troops can remain in Iraq.
After the fall of Baghdad, the ayatollah did not call for resistance to the occupation. He told his followers they could co-operate with the US but after every discussion with an American official they should ask: "And when are you Americans going to leave?" .....

Jan 17 ~ The Pentagon inspector general's office is said to be investigating possible criminal violations involving fuel imports to Iraq by Halliburton Co

Independent as above the oil services company once headed by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President.
The Democratic politicians Joseph Lieberman, Henry Waxman and John Dingell said they were told by the inspector general's staff on Thursday that an overcharging issue involving Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root unit was now being investigated."

Jan 17 ~ Bush forced to rethink plans for transfer of power

The Times Roland Watson in Washington and Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo
President Bush was rewriting the terms of America's handover of power in Iraq yesterday after the country's leading Shia cleric threatened to boycott the plans....... As Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, arrived at the White House for crisis talks with Mr Bush, officials said the Administration was ready to "refine and improve" the handover plans. After his talks Mr Bremer said there would be no changes in the handover date. ... he added that the US was prepared to change its proposals of how the caucuses are convened, opening up the process in an effort to meet Ayatollah al-Sistani's demands.
Mr Bremer will appeal to Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, on Monday to give the UN's stamp of approval to the US plan, which is also backed by the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).
The US insists that it would be impossible to organise direct elections by the end of June. There has been no census in Iraq for years and a register of voters does not exist.
..... the US would lose a lot of face if it postponed the handover date to accommodate elections.

...Separately, the commander of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, ordered an investigation into reports of abuse of prisoners at coalition centres. The military gave no further details"

Jan 16 ~ Hutton report out on January 28

Matthew Tempest, political correspondent of the Guardian "....Lord Hutton's report was originally expected in November, then December, then the "new year", and now confirmed for January 28. After those lengthy delays, it was announced today that publication would be on the Wednesday - the same day as PMQs. Lord Hutton will also broadcast a live television address from Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice summarising his conclusions. The relevant parties to the report - the government, the BBC, Dr Kelly's family, the Speaker's counsel, Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts - will have 24 hours notice of the report. The complex logistics of publication mean that Lord Hutton's report will actually go to the printers on January 19. BBC sources have already been quick to insist that they will not pass their advance copy on to their news-gathering teams, but keep the report within its legal team and top brass. Parties will be required to sign an undertaking not to reveal the contents of the report before publication. ..."

Jan 16 ~ "Paul Bremer has been recalled from Baghdad

for brainstorming consultations at the White House and the United Nations, in a scramble to salvage a timetable for Iraqi self-rule. " Scotsman

Jan 16 ~ "US baffled by Shia leader who refuses to cut a deal"

The Times "Defiant cleric continues to frustrate coalition efforts to handpick a new government"
"President Bush is desperate to transfer power to an Iraqi government and start withdrawing troops before the presidential election in November. But whether he succeeds depends largely on a venerable, self-deprecating 75-year-old cleric who gives no interviews, never appears on television and has not left his spartan home in the backstreets of Najaf, central Iraq, since Saddam Hussein's agents tried to kill him ten years ago. ......
....there were plenty of signs that this was a man to be reckoned with...... After the fall of Saddam, Ayatollah al-Sistani denounced looting, which rapidly died down in Shia towns and cities.
His representatives helped to organise local councils to enforce law and order and restore basic services. He issued a more controversial edict prohibiting lethal reprisals against former officials of the Baathist regime. "People even respected that, at least for a while," one Shia politician said.
...... his own lifestyle remained rigorously austere. "You get just one glass of tea, and the mattresses you sit on are very thin," said a recent visitor. .... in June he dropped a bombshell, issuing a ruling that declared the American plan to have a new constitution written by an unelected committee unacceptable and demanding that any new constitution be written by an elected assembly.
Eventually persuaded that this edict might be serious, Paul Bremer, Iraq's American administrator, requested a meeting with Ayatollah al-Sistani, which was refused.
Mr Bremer then requested that the Ayatollah nominate representatives to meet his officials to negotiate a compromise. "Mr Bremer, you are American. I am Iranian. I suggest we leave it to the Iraqis to devise their constitution," the Ayatollah replied.
Subsequent US efforts to find a way to hand power to a malleable Iraqi government have elicited unwavering demands from Ayatollah al-Sistani for one man, one vote.
.... It is clear that Ayatollah al-Sistani could seriously derail coalition ambitions for the region by calling on his followers to protest en masse. ..."

Jan 16 ~ Iraq's Shia Muslims march to demand early elections

Independent "Tens of thousands of Shia Muslims marched through the streets of Basra yesterday demanding early elections for an Iraqi national assembly. They shouted: "No to America" and "Yes to Sistani", after their spiritual leader, Ali Sistani, demanded elections.
The march, attended by 20,000 to 30,000 people, shows that Iraq's Shia Muslims, some 60 per cent of the population, who were denied power by Saddam Hussein, are increasingly fearful that they will be denied political power if a new assembly is selected indirectly by caucuses...."

Jan 15 ~ "a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy." Senator Edward Kennedy

.... Kennedy said "if Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America never would have gone to war." ... the administration "has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price - even the price of distorting the truth." He also said the Iraq war had made the effort to stop "terrorism" more difficult. See Washington Post

Jan 15 ~ the risk of Iraq splitting up

BBC Middle East pages "With less than six months to go before sovereignty in Iraq is due to be handed to a transitional government, the political path is beginning to look as obstacle-strewn as the security one. .......Ayatollah Sistani has said that "if the transitional assembly is formed by a mechanism which doesn't have the necessary legitimacy, it would not be possible for the government to perform a useful function". Mr Bremer has rejected elections, arguing that they are not practical in such a short timeframe....
The coalition is pinning its hopes on the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It is meeting him in New York on 19 January. It would like him to use his authority to send a message to Ayatollah Sistani that elections are not possible. If there is no agreement, the prospect opens up of the transitional government failing to command the support of the country's Shias, who make up 60% of Iraq's people. And beyond that, if this is handled badly, there could be the risk of Iraq splitting up. ..."

Jan 15 ~ "At least 21 US military personnel involved in the Iraq war have committed suicide since the conflict began last March

the Pentagon revealed. It is higher than the normal suicide rate in the US military recently." BBC latest on Iraq violence.

Jan 13 ~ war against Iraq "a strategic error"

BBC "A report published by the US Army War College has criticised the war against Iraq as a strategic error. It also suggests that the Bush administration's global war on terror may be unsustainable....
..The author of the report is a visiting professor at the prestigious college in Pennsylvania and his conclusions about the Bush administration's conduct of its war on terrorism appear quite damning.."

Jan 13 ~Michael Howard told Tony Blair he was "very much looking forward" to debating the findings of the forthcoming Hutton Report. The Prime Minister mouthed back: "So am I." It was unconvincing.

The Scotsman yesterday comments that "the Prime Minister has ducked every public question with a stock response: don't be impatient. Let's wait for Lord Hutton's report. "....
"....The tactic Mr Blair was attempting yesterday was "closing down" the Hutton Inquiry issue - knowing that the report may still be a fortnight away. The more questions he answers, he believes, the more he will be asked - keeping the Hutton Inquiry in the news and keeping him in trouble.
His fear is that, by the time Lord Hutton's report is published, he will be boxed into a corner by the Conservatives if he keeps responding to the issues they raise - and fuelling their attempts to push Lord Hutton in the news. It is a long time since Mr Blair took the Tories so seriously..." Read in full

Jan 12/13 ~ mortar shells found on friday "appeared to have been abandoned for at least 10 years" says Danish army

BBC "Coalition experts are currently examining the 120mm mortar rounds to see if the initial tests are borne out. "

Jan 12 ~ Blair: I don't know if we'll find WMD

Independent (new window) ".....The Prime Minister said that on the issue of WMD: "You can't be definitive at the moment about what has happened." His words mark a stark contrast with his assertion before the war that Saddam Hussein was capable of launching a WMD attack within 45 minutes. He later said claims that Iraq had destroyed all its weapons were "palpably absurd".
Mr Blair, who is facing one of his most difficult months as Prime Minister, was also accused of preparing to "run away" from the findings of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of the weapons scientist David Kelly. Mr Blair again refused to say whether he would face MPs in a full Commons debate on its conclusions or whether a vote would take place.
The Conservative leader, Michael Howard, said it was "absolutely extraordinary" that the PM had failed to give the commitment. But Mr Blair insisted: "I have no intention of hiding away from this. On the contrary, I am enthusiastic about at long last being able to debate these issues."

Jan 11 ~ Blair comes under pressure for Commons vote on Hutton inquiry

Independent on Sunday

Jan 11 ~ The President saying, ‘Go find me a way to do this.'"

Former Bush aide: US plotted Iraq invasion long before 9/11 Sunday Herald

Jan 11 ~ Powell withdraws al-Qa'ida claim as hunt for Saddam's WMD flags

Independent on Sunday (new window) "...Significantly, the Prime Minister made no mention of WMD during his lightning visit to Iraq last weekend, instead stressing the role of British forces in bringing stability to the country.
The Carnegie Endowment report, compiled over six months, is scathing about the deliberate errors and omissions of the White House - and, by extension, Downing Street - saying the thesis that Iraq or another rogue state would make WMD available to terrorists was "questionable" and "unexamined".
Officials ignored caveats by the intelligence agencies, and consistently adopted "worst case" assumptions. .."

Jan 10 ~ "For the "independence" of Iraq, Washington has plucked a different date from the air: June 30, 2004.

The timing has nothing to do with any sane estimate of the time Iraq needs to prepare. It is dictated by George W. Bush's re-election campaign. Nobody denies this. It is criminal. .." Matthew Parris in the Times

Jan 10 ~ "However sincerely, Mr Blair got it wrong about WMD

as three more events this week have underlined. The first was a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, which concluded that Saddam could not have destroyed, hidden or exported chemical and biological weapons and related production facilities on the scale that he was alleged to possess, without US surveillance noticing what he was up to. The second was a detailed report from Iraq by the Washington Post (see below) which quoted a previously undisclosed Saddam regime document that suggested Iraq destroyed its biological weapons as long ago as 1991; it also documented an internal culture of deceit over Iraq's special weapons programmes in which weapons designers and project managers who exaggerated their achievements and abilities in order to impress Saddam, thereby simultaneously misled foreign inspectors and intelligence agencies about the scale and modernity of Iraqi programmes. And the third was the quiet withdrawal from Iraq this week (see below) of 400 military inspectors, whose work of searching for chemical and biological weapons caches and launchers was said by Washington to have been "essentially done". ..." Guardian Leader today.

Jan 10 ~ Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper

Since Gulf War, Nonconventional Weapons Never Got Past the Planning Stage Washington Post "...David Kay, who directs the weapons hunt on behalf of the Bush administration, reported no discoveries last year of finished weapons, bulk agents or ready-to-start production lines. Members of his Iraq Survey Group, in unauthorized interviews, said the group holds out little prospect now of such a find. Kay and his spokesman, who report to Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet, declined to be interviewed. ..
... Program managers promised more than they could deliver, or things they could not deliver at all, to advance careers, preserve jobs or conduct intrigues against rivals. Sometimes they did so from ignorance, failing to grasp the challenges they took on. Lying to an absolute ruler was hazardous, Iraqi weaponeers said, but less so in some cases than the alternatives. "No one will tell Saddam Hussein to his face, 'I can't do this,' " said an Iraqi brigadier general who supervised work on some of the technologies used in the rail gun. .... "

Jan 10 ~ Military team seeking WMD pulled out of Iraq

Guardian (Jan 9)"...It was an important element of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which has spent seven months hunting for the arsenal that was the justification for the invasion.
Over the past few months the ISG has been stripped of translators, special forces troops and other specialists.
....The ISG, according to some weapons experts in Washington, has been reduced to a remnant of a few hundred specialists from its peak strength of 1,400. Its leader, David Kay, is said to be on the point of resignation. A colleague in Washington said: "His family is worried about his safety and he is disenchanted, both by the failure to find weapons he was sure were there and because his team has been cut in half." The withdrawal of JCMEG became known only yesterday, but a defence official said its members had been sent back to their home countries in October, and called its disbanding "old news". ...The CEIP produced a report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yesterday, co-authored by Mr Cirincione, comparing prewar claims by US officials and postwar findings that concluded that the administration had "systematically misrepresented" the Iraqi threat. Yesterday, the US secretary of State, Colin Powell, acknowledged that he saw no "smoking gun, concrete evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida terror network...."

Jan 10 ~ Howard accuses Blair over Hutton

PM charged with reneging on promise and fighting shy of debate The Guardian Tony Blair was last night engaged in pre-Hutton report skirmishes on two fronts as Michael Howard accused him of reneging on a promise to give the Tories an advance copy - and backbench MPs accused him of running away from the debate on its findings. Quite why Downing Street has refused for the past 48 hours to confirm that the prime minister would open the inevitable debate - as well as make a statement on publication day - has baffled and irritated ministers as well as MPs. One reason why No 10 is hesitating on Mr Blair's role in the debate is its optimistic hope that Lord Hutton's focus will be on weapons of mass destruction, or even the BBC - making Jack Straw, Geoff Hoon or even Tessa Jowell the right minister to debate the report. Yet most observers think it inconceivable that Mr Blair would - or could - avoid such a debate, any more than Margaret Thatcher did in the 1986 Westland affair. None the less, No 10's evasiveness triggered predictable accusations that he is running scared.
....... the growing tension and suspicion between politicians as time for the Hutton report to appear gets closer. No 10 expects it late this month....... Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said: "When the Scott report [on covert arms sales to Iraq] was published, Robin Cook and myself were given just three hours in a basement at the Department of Trade and Industry to wade through it by the government ..."

Jan 9 ~ Bush's America, "... a menace to itself and to mankind".

by John Pilger; January 08, 2004 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=4806 This important article may be read in full here.

Jan 9 ~ The domination effect

Guardian "Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the US has sought not just to influence but to control all information, from both friend and foe ....
......Nor is information dominance something dreamt up by the Bush White House. It is a mainstream US military doctrine that is also embraced in the UK. According to US army intelligence there are already 15 information dominance centres in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad. Both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in this country have staff assigned to "information operations". In future conflicts, according to the MoD, "maintaining morale as well as information dominance will rank as important as physical protection". " Read in full "

Jan 9 ~ The choices are beginning to look stark for NGOs providing humanitarian relief in "war on terror" conflicts - either act as sub-contractors for the superpower or pull out.

The Pentagon has pulled out a 400-strong military team which was searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, but US officers insisted yesterday that the hunt would go on. The disbanded multinational team was known as the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group (JCMEG) ..... In September, a report was published by the chief institution for defining and prescribing aid policy - the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report, entitled A Development Cooperation Lens on Terrorism Prevention, appalled NGOs. Although it speaks of the need to prevent development aid becoming "an instrument of nondevelopment interests", the thrust of the report is that the resources and capacities of development agencies should be "calibrated" to serve the counter-terrorism agenda. .......The concern in the NGO community, particularly in the US, is that the taint of terrorism may be used to discredit the work of politically dissenting international NGOs, or even to stop their funding. .....
..... the "war on terror" has created an acute need for NGOs' international expertise while at the same time providing justification for glossing over or rooting out their progressive political agenda. At a time when it is needed most, "the conscience of the world" looks vulnerable." Guardian

Jan 7 ~ Downing St 'corrects' its evidence to Hutton

Independent (new window) "..... last night Whitehall dismissed speculation that the move was a last-minute panic measure aimed at preventing Mr Blair being criticised by Lord Hutton, who is now finalising his report. ...... Sir Kevin's testimony, which raised the most serious questions at the inquiry about Mr Blair's involvement, came at a special sitting a month after Lord Hutton had finished taking evidence from other witnesses. His cross-examination was delayed because he had an eye operation. After news broke of Dr Kelly's death last July, Mr Blair was asked by journalists on board an official flight in China: "Did you authorise anyone in Downing Street or in the Ministry of Defence to release Dr Kelly's name?" He responded: "I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly. Nobody was authorised to name Dr Kelly. I believe we have acted properly throughout." But Sir Kevin told the inquiry that a meeting at Downing Street on 8 July, chaired by Mr Blair, decided to issue an MoD press statement giving some details about Dr Kelly. The following day, the scientist's name was revealed in the media.
.......... Greg Dyke, the director-general, told staff in an e-mail: "There will be no scapegoating inside the BBC as a result of the inquiry."
See also Democracy page on warmwell

Jan 4 ~ The truth about WMD lies beyond Hutton

Michael Meacher in the Observer (new window) "..... It is crucial, if Lord Hutton feels unable to tackle these central issues, that a separate judicial inquiry is now set up to establish beyond doubt what the truth really is and what the implications are for Britain's governance. ....... It is quite clear that throughout 2002 both Washington and London were actively seeking, contrary to intelligence assessments, evidence to justify the case for war. Four key items were deployed for this purpose. One was almost immediately exposed as plagiarised from a student thesis more than 10 years old. The other three were documents purporting to show that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium for nuclear bombs from Niger, the claim that Iraq was able to deploy WMDs within 45 minutes, and 'evidence' from a top-level Iraqi defector that Iraq had produced several tons of the deadly nerve agent VX.
Each of these raise worrying questions of credibility which require systematic investigation by an independent inquiry. ..." Read in full

Jan 4 ~ the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule "CIA plans new secret police to fight Iraq terrorism"

Telegraph (new window) " Nine months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared mukhabarat (intelligence) operatives, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington.
... The force will cost up to $3 billion (£1.8 billion) over the next three years in money allocated from the same part of the federal budget that finances the Central Intelligence Agency. .........
John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at the Washington-based Global Security organisation, told The Telegraph: "The money for this has been buried in the 'other procurements' section of the Air Force budget. The CIA is funded out of that category.
"The creation of a well-functioning local secret police, that in effect is a branch of the CIA, is part of the general handover strategy. If you are in control of the secret police in a country then you don't really have to worry too much about who the local council appoints to collect the garbage."....... "The presence of a powerful secret police, loyal to the Americans, will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set," said Mr Pike. "To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule."

Jan 3 ~ Mr Bush has one priority for 2004: Get America out of Iraq. Fast.

Independent " Iraq is breaking up into rebels and collaborators, with a vast heap of innocent bodies turning up each day at the morgues.." writes Robert Fisk. "More desperate attempts by the Americans to escape from Iraq and more talk of turning "New Iraq" into ethnic statelets. More Arab humiliation. More anger. More "war on terror". Flak jackets on for 2004. Read in full

Jan 1 2004 ~ Defence agency takes over oil supply

Reuters (Guardian) "The US forces fuel agency is taking over the supply of oil products to Iraq, bringing to an end the controversial arrangement with Halliburton, the former company of Vice-President Dick Cheney. .... Halliburton has increasingly come under criticism for its behaviour in the arrangements for Iraq. Many Democrats have seized on the issue as an indication of the government's failure to act fairly in awarding contracts, an accusation the White House has denied. DESC will take over the fuel contracting plans within 60 to 90 days, officials said. ..."

Dec 31 ~ Hawks tell Bush how to win war on terror

Telegraph "President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites.
The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies.
The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and "intellectual guru" of the hardline neo-conservative movement, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. They give warning of a faltering of the "will to win" in Washington...." ( Read in full)

Dec 29 ~ "The new row about how the Government treats sensitive information

threatened to destroy the political dividend the Prime Minister has enjoyed since the capture this month of Saddam Hussein.
In his Christmas message to troops a fortnight ago, which reached British soldiers in the Gulf, Mr Blair said the Iraq Survey Group searching for evidence of Saddam's weapons had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories". This, he claimed, showed that the former Iraqi dictator had attempted to "conceal weapons".
But Mr Bremer, interviewed on ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby Programme, who was initially unaware that it was the Prime Minister who had made the claim, ridiculed the comment.
"I don't know where those words come from, but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said," he told Dimbleby as the interviewer tried to interrupt to tell him the source...." Telegraph(new window)

Dec 29 ~ " it does seem rather curious that Paul Bremer, who is running Iraq, doesn't know about it."

Guardian (new window) "....Robin Cook, who has become a formidable backbench critic on the war, said: "If there is massive evidence of clandestine laboratories it does seem rather curious that Paul Bremer, who is running Iraq, doesn't know about it. The truth is the Iraq Survey Group found no evidence of weapons, no delivery systems, no chemical or biological weapons and found no laboratories to produce them. "This is unquestionably embarrassing for those who try and claim there is a chemical and biological arsenal and if they can't convince Paul Bremer, who is remarkably on-message, how can they convince anyone outside?"

Dec 28 ~" The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media

about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. ..." The Sunday Times (new window)
"Stories ran in the media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes (to produce weapons of mass destruction)," said Ritter. "They were sourced to western intelligence and all of them were garbage."

Dec 28 ~ " a hollow ring for future historians"

Sunday Herald (new window) ".... in time, the US will be able to withdraw its forces to leave Iraq much as it has been throughout its short existence – prey to factionalism and internal discord. As one disillusioned analyst in the US state department saw the problem, free and fair elections will probably allow radical religious forces to sweep into power, and pluralism will quickly give way to an all too familiar theocracy.......If this is the Pax Americana demanded by the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, then it will have a hollow ring for future historians. Iraq was invaded and Saddam ousted not because they posed a terrorist threat or that they possessed weapons of mass destruction (both legitimate reasons for intervention) but because the US and its allies wanted to reshape the international order. ..."

Dec 28 ~ Bush's man rejects Blair weapon claim

The Observer (new window)
"Tony Blair was at the centre of an embarrassing row last night after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected the Prime Minister's assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq. In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was 'massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories'. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to 'conceal weapons', the Prime Minister said. But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue - without realising its source was Blair.
It was, he suggested, a 'red herring', probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition. 'I don't know where those words come from but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said,' he told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme. ....... Menzies Campbell said he would be pressing Ministers when Parliament returned in the New Year on what precisely the Government knew. 'It is high time the Prime Minister cleared this matter up once and for all,' he said.

Dec 28 ~ There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no 45 minutes.

"...But the decision to invade Iraq led to the deaths of more than 50 British servicemen, hundreds of US troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians.
..... we didn't go to war in Iraq to remove Saddam. Nor did we invade the country for humanitarian reasons. We went to war in Iraq because we were told by Blair that there was a real and present danger to British national security from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This was manifestly not the case. ..." Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald(new window) ..."

Dec 27 ~ "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them ..."

Robert Fisk in Baghdad on Dec 26 (new window) "(The Independent) Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to "instill fear" in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and grand-daughters into believing that she was being arrested..."
"...To point out that the intimidation is largely coming from the American occupation force - to the horror of the British in southern Iraq who fear, understandably, that Iraqi revenge will be visited upon them as it was on the Italians and the Spanish - is useless." Read in full

Dec 24 ~ Rumsfeld backed Saddam even after chemical attacks

Independent (new window) Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents that reveal he went to Iraq to show America's support for the regime despite its use of chemical weapons. The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle. The criticism in no way changed Washington's wish to support Iraq in its war against Iran and "to improve bi-lateral relations ... at a pace of Iraq's choosing". Earlier this year, Mr Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration regularly cited Saddam's willingness to use chemical weapons against his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the world. .......
America's relationship with Iraq at a time when Saddam was using chemical weapons is well-documented but rarely reported. During the war with Iran, America provided combat assistance to Iraq that included intelligence on Iranian deployments and bomb-damage assessments. In 1987-88 American warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf and broke the blockade of Iraqi shipping lanes...."

Dec 24 ~ Hans Blix says Libya's disarmament plans showed that Iraq could have been contained without "rushing to war".

"Dr Blix spoke out as Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, said that snap checks of nuclear sites in his country could begin as soon as next week." Independent (new window)

Dec 23 ~" It's simple: the only good Saddam is a dead one"

Much has happened during the break since warmwell last reported - continuing misery and useless death in Iraq, the US decision to employ Israeli consultants for training death squads, the capture of Saddam Hussein, inspections of Libya's nuclear weapons facilities - and the unwelcome news of Lord Hutton's retirement (not that this will delay his report). More wise words from Robert Fisk Saddam's capture will not stop the relentless killings from insurgents
Meanwhile, this article by Simon Jenkins is unmissable.

Dec 4 ~ " the American occupation officials rejected the plan to compile a voter roll rapidly, they also argued to the Governing Council that the lack of a voter roll meant national elections were impractical."

New York Times U.S. Rejects Iraqi Plan to Hold Census by Summer
" ....... One American official acknowledged in an interview that American authorities had been aware of the quick census plan but rejected it.
................. Informed of the proposal this week, several members of the Governing Council who advocated a direct national ballot next June 30 said they were upset that they had not seen it. The Census Bureau said it had delivered the plan to the Governing Council on Nov. 1, but apparently it was lost in the bureaucracy."

Dec 3 ~ the deteriorating security situation in Iraq.

(Newsnight daily email) "... The Americans are said to have decided to form a paramilitary unit composed of militiamen from the country's five largest political parties, as part of the wider strategy to hand over ultimate responsibility to the Iraqi people. But how will this work and to whom will these militias be accountable? "

Dec 3 ~ since realpolitik has overtaken idealism as Washington's ruling ethos, at least an orderly break-up of Iraq should be planned, not denied.

Simon Jenkins in the Times, under the headline, The only hope now is to divide Iraq into three "...Those who try to do the undoable must also think the unthinkable. American strategists in Iraq are contemplating what they have always denied, the search for a "strong man with a moustache" to stop the present rot. If the result is not democracy, so be it. If the result is the dismemberment of Iraq, so be it. Iraq has become a mess. There is only one priority, to "get out with dignity". This strategy is now being rammed down the throat of the Pentagon proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, by George Bush's new "realist" Deputy National Security Adviser, Bob Blackwill. He answers to Condoleezza Rice, not Donald Rumsfeld, and is the new boss of Iraq. The Pentagon, Mr Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, architects of the old "idealist" strategy, are in retreat. The Iraqi Governing Council, which Mr Bremer reluctantly created, will be disbanded. Washington must find someone with whom it can do business, someone who can deliver order in return for power. That search is Mr Blackwill's job. ....
...... "In 20 years of meddling, America and Britain have made a mess of this nation. They owe it the least blood-spattered path they can fashion to whatever the future has in store. " Read in full

Dec 2 ~ No advance warning for Hutton report

"Lord Hutton has alarmed the government by refusing to send drafts of his report into the death of David Kelly to ministers, officials and others - including the BBC - who will be the subject of criticism.....
Ministers and officials at Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence are concerned the judge's approach gives them virtually no opportunity to challenge the verdict before it reaches the public domain.
Lord Hutton has decided to eschew "Maxwellisation" - sending drafts of criticisms to the affected parties - because this summer's inquiry included a second stage of cross-examination. Staff for the inquiry told the FT this second phase "effectively gave parties the chance to refute any criticisms, [so] the plan is not to present the parties with relevant extracts from the report unless something new has come up". There were no examples of such new criticisms, the official added, but "there's nothing to stop people putting in submissions at any time".
But government insiders argue that some of the most damaging criticism only surfaced after the individual concerned had faced cross examination. Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, was accused of lying to the inquiry after his denial of any plot to out Mr Kelly as the BBC source appeared to be contradicted by Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's former head of communications. ..." FT

Dec 2 ~ Bottom of the barrel

The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians refuse to talk about it? George Monbiot "....On Thursday, the government approved the development of the biggest deposit discovered in British territory for at least 10 years. Everywhere we are told that this is a "huge" find, which dispels the idea that North Sea oil is in terminal decline. You begin to recognise how serious the human predicament has become when you discover that this "huge" new field will supply the world with oil for five and a quarter days. Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial. ....
The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.
In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to do with oil is simply preposterous. ..."

Dec 1 ~ "we shall be mobilising a further tranche of around 1,100 reservists to support operations in Iraq.

We expect these personnel to deploy from mid-February 2004 onwards.... "
Hansard

Dec 1 ~Tricky stuff, Evil

Robert Fisk in the Independent on " The lies we tell to appease the enemies who are now our friends"
"....... . As the Americans try ever more desperately to escape from Iraq, the thugs and assassins will become the good guys again and the men of Evil in Iraq will be working for us. The occupation authorities have already admitted re-hiring some of Saddam's evil secret policemen to hunt down the evil Saddam.
Tricky stuff, Evil. "

Dec 1 ~ US kills 46 resisting Iraq attack

BBC " The US military has reported killing 46 militants and wounding 18 in clashes in the central Iraqi city of Samarra. ... Two logistical convoys were moving into Samarra when they came under attack from roadside bombs, small arms, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.......The engagement is the biggest clash involving US troops since the fall of Baghdad in April. ... Frightened witnesses in Samarra told a correspondent for the French news agency AFP who managed to enter the city that US forces had repeatedly come under attack on Sunday. However, they added that, in the aftermath of one attack at about 1255 (0955 GMT), an American tank had opened fire on workers leaving a factory at the end of their shift, killing two and wounding "many"..."

Nov 30 ~ 'Two great weeks' says general.... For who?

US commander's triumphal note jars with deadly toll from guerrilla attacks - which grow ever more brazen Independent on Sunday "....Although a significant number of Iraqis want the US to stay for now - fearing a premature withdrawal would produce a bloodbath - there is little love lost between the occupied and the occupier. Complaints abound among Iraqis in Baghdad about the continuing electricity and petrol shortages, raging unemployment, lack of security, and the abrasive behaviour of some of the American soldiers..."

Nov 30 ~ Inside story of how Washington is losing its bottle

Andrew Neil in Scotland on Sunday "....President Bush's bold Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad gave US troops a much-needed fillip and he said all the right things. But behind the scenes the war on terror is going badly wrong in its two main theatres. "In both places it is worse than you think," I was warned before arriving in the US capital for a series of off-the-record briefings. The warning was accurate. Take Afghanistan first. You don't read or see much about it these days. The reality is grim. ..."

Nov 30 ~ "... incredible than an intelligent commentator can caricature the protesters collectively by referring to the burning of the Stars and Stripes"

letters to the Observer The case of the burning Bush ... Andrew Rawnsley doesn't say if he was at the demonstration against Bush's visit. I took part and find it incredible than an intelligent commentator can caricature the protesters collectively by referring to the burning of the Stars and Stripes (Comment, last week).
Maybe a lunatic fringe indulged in this display of anti-American prejudice, but the overwhelming body of the tens of thousands who participated, which included many Americans, made it clear that the march was against Bush and his coterie. The slogan on one banner, 'God bless America. Dump Bush', summed up our sentiments.
Nor was the central message that the terrorist bombings were the inevitable consequence of the failure to resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict, only that that running sore and the war in Iraq were, qua Mary Riddell and Clare Short, 'recruiting sergeants' for the terrorists.
Benedict Birnberg London SE3
It saddened me to read Andrew Rawnsley imply that the US steel tariffs, which break WTO regulations, was just so much 'piffle' to be set along side the latest tabloid palace revelations, when evaluating the major events of the week of Bush's visit to Britain. The hypocrisy is the US enforcing, in the name of free trade, exploitative trade relations with the developing world, while simultaneously flouting international trade agreements.
Hugh Tynan
London SW17
I regularly admire the acuity of Andrew Rawnsley's analyses but take issue with his comment that 'those protesters who toppled that papier-mache Bush in Trafalgar Square... were made to look naïve'.
It is an entirely consistent position to be passionately against al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist attacks at the same time as being passionately opposed to the war in Iraq.
Conflating Iraq (and thus opposition to the war) with Islamic terror merely falls for the lies of the Bush administration in linking these issues in the first place. The toppling of the Bush 'statue' must be seen as an example of using irony to subvert those who abuse their power in keeping with the best traditions of popular protest.
James Waugh
London E1

Nov 29 ~ Given that British intelligence about the status of Iraq's WMD has been shown to be fundamentally flawed, the genesis of this failure should be addressed.

Scott Ritter the former UN weapons inspector, in a letter today to the Guardian
"Operation Rockingham's role in this is not small.
Morrison speaks of the "independent" nature of the intelligence work conducted by Operation Rockingham. The reality is that it institutionalised a process of "cherry-picking" intelligence produced by the UN inspections in Iraq that skewed UK intelligence about Iraqi WMD towards a preordained outcome that was more in line with British government policy than it was reflective of ground truth.
Many examples can be offered to counter Morrison's assertions that Operation Rockingham was little more than a "tiny intelligence cell", the sole purpose of which was to provide intelligence leads to the UN inspectors. Far from being the "shining example of the effective use of intelligence in support of the international community", Operation Rockingham was, in fact, more reflective of an institutional predisposition towards the politicised massaging of intelligence data that resulted in the massive failure of intelligence that we all have tragically witnessed regarding Iraq and WMD. ..." Read in full

Nov 28 ~ two gender equality public servants will cost £152,000 for six months to teach the Iraqis about feminism

at a time when the locals are concentrating on dodging terrorist attacks and trying to scrape together a living. They are being paid for by the Ministry of Defence, which yesterday admitted that it was so strapped for cash that the first soldier who died in the Iraq war did so because he had been forced to hand over his flak jacket to an infantryman...." Telegraph

Nov 28 ~ Guantanamo treatment is 'monstrous', says law lord

Independent "...Lord Steyn said in a speech to lawyers in London last night that judges "have the duty, in times of crisis, to guard against an unprincipled and exorbitant executive response.
"As a lawyer brought up to admire the ideals of American democracy and justice, I would have to say that I regard this a monstrous failure of justice. The military will act as interrogators, prosecutors and defence counsel, judges, and when death sentences are imposed, as executioners. The trials will be held in private. None of the guarantees of a fair trial need be observed."
He also said the type of justice meted out at Guantanamo "is likely to make martyrs of the prisoners in the moderate Muslim world with whom the West must work to ensure world peace and stability".
Human rights lawyers praised Lord Steyn for his courage. Stephen Solley QC, a former chairman of the Bar's human rights committee, said Lord Steyn's comments would send a strong signal to the US Supreme Court, which is about to rule on American jurisdiction in Guantanamo Bay. He added: "It might help to persuade some of the waverers to rule in favour of the detainees."...." Read in full

Nov 28 ~ How British charity was silenced on Iraq

Guardian Save the Children UK "was ordered to end criticism of military action in Iraq by its powerful US wing to avoid jeopardising financial support from Washington and corporate donors, a Guardian investigation has discovered. ..."

Nov 26 ~ "President Bush, our hero in the "war on terror", won't be attending their funerals.

The man who declined to serve his nation in Vietnam but has sent 146,000 young Americans into the biggest rat's nest in the Middle East doesn't do funerals..." Robert Fisk in the Independent

Nov 25 ~ These people were marching for life, for tolerance, for the dialogue of cultures

not the policy of tanks and air strikes, what Bush had maladroitly termed his "Crusade against terror." ...the bronze painted papier machéstatue of George Bush pulled down - an apt material for a president who was so doubtfully elected. "
An emailer writes, "... spoken to many who were on the march, this article is an excellent report."

Nov 25 ~ "Superpowers act out of self-interest, not morality, and the US in Iraq is no different"

"The Moral Myth" George Monbiot in the Guardian".... I do believe that there was a moral case for deposing Saddam - who was one of the world's most revolting tyrants - by violent means. I also believe that there was a moral case for not doing so, and that this case was the stronger. That Saddam is no longer president of Iraq is, without question, a good thing. But against this we must weigh the killing or mutilation of thousands of people; the possibility of civil war in Iraq; the anger and resentment the invasion has generated throughout the Muslim world and the creation, as a result, of a more hospitable environment in which terrorists can operate; the reassertion of imperial power; and the vitiation of international law. It seems to me that these costs outweigh the undoubted benefit.
But the key point, overlooked by all those who have made the moral case for war, is this: that a moral case is not the same as a moral reason. Whatever the argument for toppling Saddam on humanitarian grounds may have been, this is not why Bush and Blair went to war......... " Read in full

Nov 25 ~ ....Is Mr Hoon suggesting that the dossier implied some African country other than Niger?

In view of the latest Panorama, these Parliamentary questions and replies may be of interest. (Iraq Survey group and phials, uranium, David Kay etc) What is puzzling is the answer from Hoon stating that the governnment had never asserted that Niger had tried to sell uranium to Iraq since the 1980s. Downing Street attempted to underline the threat posed by Saddam Hussein by claiming in last September's dossier that Iraq had attempted to acquire nuclear material from Africa. The dossier said: "Uranium has been sought from Africa that has no civil nuclear application in Iraq." The dossier did not name a country, but, as the Guardian pointed out on June 28th, " the finger of blame was quickly pointed at Niger." Is Mr Hoon suggesting that the dossier had in mind some other African country?
Here too is Tam Dalyell trying to pin Mr Blair down on the 45 minute claim.

Nov 23 ~ Britain on red alert as terrorist threat rises

Scotland on Sunday (Simon Jenkins article on Thursday concluded, "...Western systems and traditions cannot be imposed on Arab peoples. When we realise that, the bombs will cease. Until then, they will remain the white man's burden. ")

Nov 22 ~ "... adoption of Israeli revenge tactics, using F-16 aircraft to drop 500lb bombs on residential areas called "suspect zones". They are also burning crops...."

John Pilger New Statesman (via Zmag.com) "An unprecedented gathering of senior American intelligence officers, diplomats and former Pentagon officials met in Washington the other day to say, in the words of Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and friend of Bush's father: "Now we know that no other president of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably . . . The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything."
And Blair and his foreign secretary dare to suggest that the millions who have rumbled the Bush gang are "fashionably anti-American". ......
.....There are signs that the Shia storm is gathering in southern Iraq, an area for which the British are responsible. A Shia underground army is said to be forming, quietly and patiently, as it did under the shah of Iran. If or when they rise, there will be a great deal more British blood on the Prime Minister's hands.
For 11 November, Remembrance Day, Hywel Williams wrote movingly in the Guardian about the exploitation of "the usable past - something that can be packaged into propaganda . . . [by those] with careers to build and their own causes to advance . . . We are now a country draped in the weeds of war . . . The remembrance we endure now is no longer a seasonal affair. It is a continuous festival of death as individual souls are press-ganged into the justification of all British-American wars. To this sorrow there seems no end."
Yes, but only if we allow it. "

Nov 22 ~ Robert Fisk: We are paying the price of an infantile attempt to reshape the Middle East

By Robert Fisk 21 November 2003 The Independent The Australians paid the price for the alliance with Bush in Bali. The Italians paid the price in Nasiriyah. Now it is our turn...
. ....Bush claimed yet again that we "tolerated" the dictatorships of the Middle East. Rubbish. We created them, Saddam's regime being the most obvious example.... " Read in full

Nov 22 ~ "... an explosion simplifies..... The peacemakers' babble is silenced, and people take sides.

An iron fist is demanded. It will be now, after Istanbul. ...Both sides in this war - the US-led coalition and the al-Qaeda terrorist network - will be quietly reinforced by what has happened: reinforced in their prejudices; reinforced in their own self-belief, and reinforced in the new support this will bring them. Both gain. The world loses. " Matthew Parris in the Times .".....It is bad taste, but true, to say that terrorist atrocities are good for the careers of our Prime Minister and the US President. It is bad taste, but true, to say that Britain would probably not have been the target in Turkey on Thursday, had our country not been a key member of Mr Bush's coalition. It is bad taste, but true, to say that British interests and British lives are paying to sustain in office a prime minister who has joined the Americans in a colossal military and diplomatic blunder and now has no choice but to plough on with it. .......
In international relations, as in spiritual teaching, the mistake Dualists make is to see the world in terms of invisible forces rather than real people. But such forces are an illusion except in the heads of men. A l- Qaeda does not exist. The Free World does not exist. Only people exist. ..."

Nov 22 ~ The only plausible explanation can be that it might be embarrassing to Downing Street and the White House

Lib Dems ask for investigation into Iraqi WMD claim Guardian " A US government ban on the release to parliament of crucial information which could reveal whether two mobile biological laboratories discovered in Iraq are weapons of mass destruction or harmless equipment is to be investigated by Ann Abraham, the parliamentary ombudsman. .."

Nov 21 ~"....Yesterday's bombs were due to a mix of political circumstance to which Britain is an active party."

Simon Jenkins in the Times
"....The bombers of the World Trade Centre two years ago were granted precisely the response they sought, the traumatisation of American society and a retaliation which stirred anti-Americanism across the Muslim world. It was not just an outrage but an invitation to war.
I believed then, and believe now, that the West should have declined that invitation. It should never have glamorised al-Qaeda as evil-empire successor to the Soviet Union. Al-Qaeda was a mafia of murderous fanatics, to be hunted down by spies, bribery and subterfuge. In no way did it constitute a threat to Western values or the stability of Western states, whatever George Bush and Tony Blair might claim. I have more faith in those values and in that stability. All al-Qaeda could do was explosions. Overreact, and the West would merely fuel the support on which all outlaws ultimately depend. .... Iraq was different. Here the intention was "pre-emptive retaliation" against an ill- defined threat. Ironically that threat came not from fundamentalism but from its most ferocious foe.... When Saddam could not realistically be protrayed as a threat to the West, America and Britain abruptly changed the casus belli to his threat to his own people. Yet even after the most powerful force on Earth has been brought to bear on him, he remains at large, a submerged but continuing threat to his people. .....
.Yesterday's bombs.... are the inevitable outcome of Britain's decision over the past year to intervene in the region with armed force.
..... the motives behind the bombs must not be smothered in rhetoric or there will be no clear thinking, merely an upward ratchet of violence. The West has intervened in the Middle East for the best part of a century. As Mr Bush points out, it has not brought peace. Nor does peace beckon now. ..." Read in full

Nov 21 ~ "... ordinary people had sent their own statesmanlike message."

Independent "200,000 marched from Bloomsbury to Trafalgar Square via the Houses of Parliament....... you've also got to look at who is marching. You have middle-class, middle-England people who don't go to protests mixing with all other causes and creeds. Because of Iraq, because of what Bush has done to the environment, because of the erosion of our liberties, they have marched peacefully through the streets....... The nearest thing to violence most marchers saw was the showpiece toppling of an 18ft effigy of Mr Bush in Trafalgar Square.......Mr Michaels, 74, said: "There is a tradition of popular protest in this country that sometimes gets forgotten. We felt we had to come here to show that it's not just anarchists or what the media portrays as extremists who care about what Bush is doing through carbon dioxide emissions or his axis of evil." ..... those who pointed to yesterday's bombings in Istanbul as evidence of the need to demonstrate. "That's going to happen increasingly because of the policies of the Western world," he said. "The attacks in Turkey and Bush's visit to Britain were no mere coincidence. People are playing for very high stakes.".....
For Scot Ferguson, 30, the guilt of being a Texan in London during Mr Bush's visit was too much so he chose to stand on Westminster Bridge with a brown paper bag over his head. Mr Ferguson said: "I'm tired of the guilt by association with Texas. I don't really get any abuse but a lot of raised eyebrows. My message to Mr Bush would be, how dare you spill so much blood for the sake of a $1.7bn [£1bn] Halliburton contract [the conglomerate that had the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, on its board]. It doesn't get more blatant than that."

Nov 21 ~ Caroline Lucas, of the Green Party, told the crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square that the bombing in Istanbul "shows us our world is anything but more secure today".

The Times
She added: "Our Prime Minister is an ally of George Bush but the British people are not. We are not anti the American people. We are against a US Administration which has turned the United States of America into the greatest rogue state in the world." Sally Maxwell, 67, from Bristol, said: "This isn't anti-American. Bush worries a lot of people. He represents a whole right-wing, protectionist and globally narrow minded grab-what-you-can view."
Brother Oswin, who joined the march in the brown robe and sandals of the Roman Catholic Society of St Francis, said: "I doubt we'll achieve much today, but at least I'll have registered my protest." ....A number of Americans took part in the protest, some of them marching under a banner bearing the slogan "Vietnam Veterans Against the War".

Nov 20 ~ "...at least 25 dead, including the British Consul-General, and on figures so far, 400 injured - a deadly riposte to George Bush's appearance here."

From Kirsty Wark's "Newsnight" email which concerns the morning's suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul, following on the weekend's attacks on synagogues in the city
"Most of the casualties were Turkish, with several British among the dead. At the joint press conference with the US President and Tony Blair, both men cited this devastating attack as re-emphasising the importance of the war on terror, but for the tens of thousands starting out on the Stop the War march in London as I write, it was cause and effect - one deadly result of the coalition's war in Iraq. .."

Thursday 20th November ~ UK National Demonstration


Assemble 2pm at Malet Street, Central London (nearest tubes: Goodge Street, Russell Square and Euston/Euston Sq). March to Trafalgar Square where a statue of George Bush will be pulled down. This event will continue until 7pm to allow for people coming from work. Route: Malet St - Russell Square - Southampton Row - Kingsway - Aldwych - Waterloo Bridge - York Road - Westminster Bridge - Parliament Square - Whitehall - Trafalgar Square.
Map from Stop the War org.

Nov 20 ~".. lest he even breathe the same air as the protesters outside, he was ferried by limousine from the back door of the palace round to the front.

It was the shortest political car ride since Pauline Prescott saved her hairdo on the seafront at Bournemouth..."
Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian "...The combination of ceremony and security required for this, the first state visit ever granted to an American president, ensured that George Bush spent yesterday sealed off from any potential intrusions of nastiness. He moved in a bubble that enveloped him wherever he went, allowing him and his hosts to think only pleasant thoughts. ....
Bush delivered a very good speech yesterday, well-constructed, well-written and, yes, well-delivered - ....He made a powerful case for multilateralism, against the go-it-alone muscularity that has characterised so much of his rhetoric and record. ....noble and wise sentiments and, since he was in the bubble, he could make them with no fear of contradiction. No one was going to spoil the mood by mentioning America's ongoing support for non-democracies like Saudi Arabia, or its desire in Iraq to do exactly what he said could not be done - to impose freedom by force....
...Sheltered away, whether at an indoor wreath-laying ceremony for the victims of 9/11 or at last night's state banquet, the spell could hold. But only until the bubble bursts - which may come as soon as today. "

Nov 20 ~" In a largely peaceful and satirical demonstration

about 500 people, marching under banners from CND and the Stop The War Coalition, gathered beneath the London Eye and crossed Waterloo Bridge to congregate in Trafalgar Square. Ley Stone, a children's entertainer, spent several weeks constructing a pink wooden tank to travel the route with her son, Juan, six, and daughter, Hannah, 16, aboard shouting anti-war slogans under the banner of the Daventry Stop The War Coalition. The tank, which is the size of a small car, will feature today when it pulls down a mock statue of President Bush, aping the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "When I heard that Bush was coming I felt physically sick. I have given up work and put all my effort into this demo," said Ms Stone. Husband and wife David and Rachel Milling, from Birmingham, wore dyed orange boiler suits and plastic chains in protest at the incarceration of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay. Mr Milling, who works with his wife at a Quaker centre, said: "We chose this form of protest to illustrate the immorality of their detention. But it's only one way in which Bush is getting it wrong." Tony Caccavone, a taxi driver aged 60, ignored rules prohibiting the use of black cabs for political protests and drove the route of the march. Mr Caccavone, who claims to represent the views of thousands of cabbies, said: "I'm against the outrage of the United States labelling countries as terrorist states who don't conform to their economical planning." Independent

Nov 20 ~" international law stood in the way of doing the right thing" Richard Perle

Guardian "International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law. But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable. ..."

Nov 19 ~ Explosions, shortages, instability: In Baghdad, it's back to the future

Independent "..US jets pounding Iraqi positions. City-wide power cuts. And long, long petrol queues. Yesterday was flashback time for Iraq's disgruntled, unstable and unsafe capital. As night fell the city was repeatedly rattled by the sounds of heavy explosions, part of what the US military said was its largest air bombardment in central Iraq since President George Bush declared an end to major combat in May. ..."

Nov 19 ~ President strolls into Fortress Britain

Times "...an aerial detour via Tower Bridge and the illuminated landmarks of Central London, and flew directly over hundreds of protesters marching from the Strand to the American Embassy. The visit is of major importance to Tony Blair, Mr Bush's principal ally in the Iraq war, but with many thousands of demonstrators preparing to take to the streets to voice opposition to US and British policy in the Middle East, security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic wish the trip could have been postponed to a more propitious time. ..."
Independent "...Environmental campaigners offered a taste of what is to come in the three-day visit by Tony Blair's ally in the war on Iraq, several hundred setting off from Holborn, central London, under banners showing the President and the words: "Wanted for crimes against the planet" and "Bush go home"...."

Nov 18 ~ Bush Flies in to Storm of Protest

Scotsman " The feverish atmosphere surrounding George Bush's state visit intensified yesterday, as a peace protester scaled the gates of Buckingham Palace..."
ITV Armed police on the streets are setting up "Fortress London" ahead of US President George W Bush's arrival later.
Guardian One Visit - Two Agendas (details of both the protest marches - e.g. 7.30 pm today "Stop Bush rally with Harold Pinter, Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, George Galloway, Alice Mahon, Ron Kovic, Kate Hudson and John Rees. 7.30pm, Friends Meeting House, Euston. - and the official agenda)
Guardian Leader "...What matters about the demonstration in London in two days time is that it should take place, that it should be large and that it should be peaceful. It matters much less whether the march is routed through Parliament Square and up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square - the route on which the police and the organisers commendably agreed last night - than that it should speak in a dignified manner for millions of Britons in the centre of our capital city..."
Independent "...One in nine police officers in England and Wales will be protecting George Bush on his state visit to Britain, which begins today. Ten thousand more police officers have been drafted in amid rising concerns about the threat from terrorists and the scale of anti-war demonstrations. That brings to 16,000 the number of policemen and women who will be deployed during the four-day trip. The bill will run to at least £7m, and the British taxpayer will pay for it.."
Telegraph "Protests about the state visit to Britain of US President George W Bush have begun after a woman climbed the front gates of Buckingham Palace..."
Many more

Nov 17 ~ His opinions of President Bush no more make him anti-American than my opinions of Prime Minister Blair make me anti-British.

Independent letter from Earl Russell"Sir: I am delighted that Robin Cook (Opinion, 14 November) has attacked the simplistic identification of opposition to President Bush with anti-Americanism. I was recently having dinner with an American colleague who was filling the air with denunciation of George Bush. After half an hour I asked him whether he knew any American who supported the policies of Bush; I got the instant answer - "No". His opinions of President Bush no more make him anti-American than my opinions of Prime Minister Blair make me anti-British.
EARL RUSSELL
House of Lords"

Nov 17 ~ Michael Moore in the Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=464491 The author of the best-selling critique of corporate America, Stupid White Men, says one of the "many lies" told by the US Government about the Iraq war (alongside claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and helped plan 9/11) was the suggestion that "the British are with us on this, the British are our allies and our friends". This claim, Moore believes, will be reinforced if the President's state visit is allowed to proceed as the meticulously stage-managed event he believes is being planned as part of Mr Bush's strategy for winning next year's election. "It is a photo-opportunity. With the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jacks flying in Pall Mall and the whole royal thing he is going to be treated to, this is all about trying to shore him up for next year," he says. The President's London photo-opportunities, he hopes, will be tarnished. "That can happen only in one way, and that's a very large physical presence in the streets of London..." Read in full

Nov 17 ~ Get mad - and get even

"Bush deserves our rage, but Blair should take the brunt of it. We elected him, now we must get rid of him.." writes Gary Younge in the Guardian. ".. carefully crafted, wilful ignorance...... we can only hope that the huge demonstrations that greet him will give him more than a glimpse of where this "perception gap" might have come from. ...... the upcoming demonstrations around Bush's visit are not only necessary but demand our full support.
.... For if the demonstrations show our strength in numbers they also reveal a weakness in application. We have shown that we can get mad; we have yet to show that we can get even. This is a global problem, not a local one. The vast majority of humanity did not want this war to happen, and it happened anyway. Even in those countries that are prosecuting it, including America, opinion polls showed that most were opposed to military action without UN approval.
.... the charges that the demonstrations are anti-American as ridiculous as they are predictable. Americans are not the problem: Bush is. ..... Bush comes to the same country that turned out in droves to welcome Bill Clinton, when he walked through the centre of London with a smile and a wave and not a combat vehicle in sight. Bush is not synonymous with America any more than Blair is synonymous with Britain. We can make Bush uncomfortable; it is only Blair we can make unemployed.

Nov 17 ~ US agrees to international control of its troops in Iraq

Independent "The United States accepts that to avoid humiliating failure in Iraq it needs to bring its forces quickly under international control and speed the handover of power.......The litany of setbacks, growing US casualties and the recent killing of 18 Italian servicemen has brought intense domestic and international pressure on the Bush administration to give the occupying force more legitimacy. .....
... Nato remains the only strong possibility because it would provide international credibility while leaving control with a military organisation which Washington dominates. ... to allow it to deploy in Iraq would mean getting the approval of all 19 Nato allies including France, Germany and Belgium, all staunch opponents of the war. They would need to be satisfied that the UN had been given a sufficient role in the political control of Iraq. Diplomats say that the US and Britain will need to be certain that no one will block an Iraq mission before they make a request.
....Mr Bremer said that work would start on a constitutional settlement. "We'll have a bill of rights. We'll recognise equality for all citizens. We'll recognise an independent judiciary. We'll talk about a federal government," he said.

Nov 17 ~ "We suffered through the economic theories of socialism, Marxism and then cronyism..Now we face the prospect of free-market fundamentalism."

Asia Times Will the real collaborators please stand up? "In the aftermath of the bloodiest period of the Iraqi occupation since the invasion, the US unveiled a new political plan at the weekend that will end the role of the US-handpicked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). ...
....."We suffered through the economic theories of socialism, Marxism and then cronyism," IGC member Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi said at the exclusive World Economic Forum meeting in Singapore. "Now we face the prospect of free-market fundamentalism." Perhaps unaware of just how close the plan is to the hearts of the administration officials, Allawi dismissed it as being guided by a "flawed logic that ignores history". "These things are not yet being thrust down our throat but I strongly disagree with the call for fast and radical change," he said. Allawi probably did not read Donald Rumsfeld's commentary in the Wall Street Journal last May 27 in which he promised to install a regime composed of people who "favor market systems" and who will "encourage moves to privatize state-owned enterprises". With Allawi's pronouncements, it was clear that he had no room in Rumsfeld's regime.
....Faced with an intensifying resistance outside the headquarters, the US does not intend to tolerate criticism from within. Fending off criticism from all sides, the US will not take kindly to internal dissent. And the US needs scapegoats. So they're kicking the IGC members out sooner rather than later...."

Nov 16 ~ Police reverse ban on march to avert threat of violence

Met to allow marchers into Whitehall after organisers warn that restricting their route would provoke uncontrolled protests Independent on Sunday "...The coalition has guaranteed the police its event will be peaceful. In an attempt to rebut claims by the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, that the protests were just "fashionable anti-Americanism", Thursday's march will be led by US anti-war protesters, including Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran profiled in Oliver Stone's anti-war movie, Born on the Fourth of July. Mr Kovic said: "I and other Vietnam vets can't help but see a mirror image of the Vietnam tragedy unfolding in Iraq. I think one of the most patriotic and democratic things a citizen can do, right now, is march against war and in favour of peace." Organisers claim scores of coaches have now been booked for the march from around the UK..."
(Numbers are surely likely to equal the huge demonstration of February 15th this year. Unofficial estimates on that day ranged from two to three million.)

Nov 16 ~ The Prime Minister would like to write them off as extremists

" - but Andrew Johnson (in the Independent on Sunday) talks to those preparing to protest next week and finds the same diversity that made the anti-war movement impossible to ignore....the school pupil (15), the barrister (52), the Muslim (29), the war veteran (76) , the seasoned activist (37), the young mother (23)

Nov 16 ~ "Let's just say it's not a good time to be doing this," said the American diplomat.

Sunday Telegraph ".. the dream visit has turned into a transatlantic nightmare. A trip intended to celebrate the "special relationship" between Tony Blair and Mr Bush has become a frantic exercise in crisis management....c.What ought have been a straightforward celebratory visit has become fraught with tension, as controversy has raged over the failure - thus far - to unearth Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and the horrific guerrilla warfare which has afflicted certain parts of liberated Iraq (most recently last week's suicide bomb attack in Nasiriyah, which killed 27, including 18 Italians....
....Tentative suggestions that the visit might be postponed have been angrily waved away by the Prime Minister. Bush aides are just as full of trepidation and foreboding. "It was a good idea at the time and now we're stuck with it," said one Bush administration official. Black humour has already set in. "Maybe they'll just keep the lights off and pretend they're not home," joked another White House aide. And when one American official was asked where the Bush entourage would be landing, it is said he replied: "Heathrow... if it's big enough."...."

Nov 15/16 ~ The US President was branded a threat to world peace by a clear majority, 60%, of those questioned by YouGov.

One in Three Britons Think Bush Is Stupid - Poll - Scotsman "....The findings are published in The Sunday Times ahead of his state visit to Britain next week, the first by a US leader. A slim majority of those questioned opposed the visit by 26% to 21% although half did not care. There was sympathy with anti-war campaigners who plan a series of protests to mark the visit with a majority of 53% to 41% supporting the demonstrations. The antipathy toward Mr Bush is matched by an increasingly gloomy view of Iraq. "

Nov 15 ~Bush will arrive with "...enough military hardware to invade a small nation"

From Thursday's Scotsman
"... As Air Force One touches down at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday, an entourage of about 900 people, including secret service agents, heavily armed commandos, politicians, secretaries and 200 journalists will join the most powerful man in the world.
Accompanying the presidential aircraft will be two identical Boeing 747-200 jets and three huge military cargo planes carrying fleets of limousines, surveillance vans, a squadron of helicopters and enough military hardware to invade a small nation -- stealth is unlikely to be an option for the secret service agents responsible for White House security. The most conservative estimates suggest that the three-day state visit will cost almost £10 million. .... according to a growing army of UK-based critics of the visit, the logistical exercises serve as nothing more than a political function -- the huge entourage, they claim, is nothing more than a manifestation of US might...."

Nov 15 ~"American expatriates to lead the protests against Bush" (next Thursday)

See also Stop the War Coalition - details of protest
Independent "Americans marching beneath a banner proclaiming "Proud of My Country, Shamed by My President" will lead a demonstration against George Bush during his state visit next week. The Stop the War Coalition, which is organising the rally, expects up to 100,000 people to take to the streets of London and express their hostility to the American President....
... Michael Moore, the American film maker and comedian who is known for his outspoken views on the US leader, is donating $1,000 to transport demonstrators in from Manchester. A spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition said: "We are not anti the American people - in fact many share our reservations about President Bush. This is about the President. There are 500 local Stop the War groups who are bringing people from around the country and the phones are ringing non-stop. ...."
...The march represents the main event in four days of anti-Bush events, for which the President has drafted in an entourage of more than 500 people, including up to 200 secret service and security personnel. On Tuesday activists are organising a public rally in London with high-profile speakers including the acclaimed playwright and actor Harold Pinter, and the Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, whose story inspired the Tom Cruise film Born on the Fourth of July. The former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn and George Galloway MP, who was recently thrown out of the Labour Party for his public comments about the war, will also speak.
There will be a march to the American consulate in Edinburgh on Wednesday and a petition from people throughout Britain will be presented to Downing Street on Monday.

Nov 15 ~ Fear UK soldiers may be flown in for GIS

Scotsman fears were growing today that British troops could be sent to replace American soldiers in Iraq as President George W Bush tries to pull out United States servicemen in a bid to secure re-election next year.

Nov 14 ~ her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war".

The Guardian A sacked GCHQ employee charged yesterday under the Official Secrets Act said last night that her alleged disclosures exposed serious wrongdoing by the US and could have helped to prevent the deaths of Iraqis and British forces in an "illegal war". ...In a statement last night, Ms Gun said: "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government which attempted to subvert our own security services. Secondly, they could have helped prevent widescale death and casualties amongst ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war."

Nov 14 ~ I'd walk to London to tell Bush my son's blood is on his hands

was the original headline to this story on the icWales website "The father of a Welsh soldier killed in Iraq said last night he would gladly walk to London to meet President George Bush face to face, to be able to tell him he was responsible for his son's death. The US President yesterday revealed he will be meeting relatives of British soldiers killed during the war, to tell them their loved ones died for a "noble cause" and "did not die in vain"....
( Mr Bush's words ) "do not convince Mr Keys,whose 20- year-old son Thomas was one of six British Military Policemen killed on June 24. He says he would love to meet the President and "give him a piece of my mind". "He is the man responsible for my son's death, with his gung-ho tactics of rushing off to war," said Mr Keys, from Bala, Gwynedd. ."Bush thinks he has won the war by storming through Iraq in three weeks and pulling down a statue - it's ridiculous." The talk of praying for the families also rankled with Mr Keys. "This is Bible-bashing Bush who thinks he has some divine power to be doing this - it infuriates me."

Nov 14 ~ Only British troops can sort out America's mess

Simon Jenkins in the Times
" The March invasion .....was illegal, lacking both international and regional support. It failed to capture Saddam who, for all we know, is now orchestrating a devastating guerrilla campaign. The invasion was opposed by almost every Arabist expert in Washington and London, not to mention the Middle East. It was in effect a private war, a latter-day Jameson Raid, by Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon Office of Special Plans under Paul Wolfowitz, reckless and ill-conceived.
Iraqis fear that America is about to make yet another mistake: precipitate withdrawal...." Read in full

Nov 14 ~ The Stop the War Coalition is considering taking legal action

against the Metropolitan police if it is banned from marching through Parliament Square and up Whitehall during next week's protests against the visit of President George Bush. Guardian

Nov 14 ~ George Bush is to meet relatives of British soldiers bereaved by the Iraq war

during his state visit next week, telling them that he shares their grief and that their loved ones died for a "noble cause"....Scotsman

Nov 14 ~ Blair 'dishonest, shallow and cheap' in justifying Bush visit, says Cook

Independent "...Writing in The Independent today, the former cabinet minister discloses that a proposed state visit by Bill Clinton was blocked because of the Monica Lewinsky affair. He says: "I was Foreign Secretary at the time the Royal Visits Committee quietly dropped President Clinton from the forward programme of state visits because of his impending impeachment. I am bewildered that the same committee that concluded Bill Clinton did not merit a state visit has decided that George Bush has the stronger claim to be so honoured..... If the state visit takes on the character of the US boss visiting his wholly owned British subsidiary it will do further damage to relations with the Bush administration in the eyes of the British public and further diminish the stature of their Prime Minister." "

Nov 14 ~"... hundreds of armed security officers, instructed to carry guns and use them in defence of the President if need be."

" Hostility to the war has converted this state visit into a furtive occasion, with the President scuttling around here and there and making his arrivals unannounced. "
The Spectator is worth looking at this week for the cover picture alone.
"...Factored into the election plan has been what is known in the White House as the 'British boost'. It is important for US image-makers to foster as best they can, for domestic consumption at least, the notion of a cosmopolitan, well-travelled president. Practically the only international figure known to the insular US electorate - leaving aside the Pope, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein - is the Queen of England. ..
..The idea of an address to MPs has been dropped, presumably because of fears about the kind of disruption that blighted President Bush's visit to Canberra last month..
...The President brings with him a substantial staff, including hundreds of armed security officers, instructed to carry guns and use them in defence of the President if need be. The White House initially pressed for 250 of these Rambo-type figures to be let loose on British streets, while the US secret service is said to be making strong demands that agents who use their guns should be immune from prosecution. "

Nov 13 ~ One Man's World

From an article by Chomsky - the cover story of the New Statesman
".......Arthur Schlesinger, the former adviser to President Kennedy, observed, George W Bush's "policy of 'anticipatory self-defence' [against Iraq] is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy . . . today, it is we Americans who live in infamy....
Occasionally the educated classes do depart from the common stance of subordination to power: in Turkey and Colombia today, for example, where US military aid has sustained harsh and repressive regimes. In Turkey, prominent writers, journalists, academics, publishers and others not only protest atrocities and draconian laws but also carry out regular civil disobedience, facing and sometimes enduring severe and prolonged punishment. In Colombia, courageous priests, academics, human rights and union activists and others face the constant threat of assassination in one of the world's most violent states. Their actions should elicit humility and shame among their western counterparts." ".

Nov 13 ~ US expats face a wave not of anti-Americanism but anti-Bushism.

Reuters "It`s tougher being an American in London than it used to be. Our President has made it so," said Newsweek Magazine`s London correspondent Stryker McGuire.
"Even among friendly Britons, there`s a growing scepticism about the gun-toting, electric-chairing land that has let Dubya be Dubya for nigh on three years now."

Nov 13 ~ Primaries approach...."Bush speeds up the exit strategy"

Telegraph "President George W Bush ordered his senior envoy in Iraq last night to speed up the handover of power to local politicians, following warnings from the CIA of impending disaster and a suicide bombing that killed 18 Italian paramilitary police.
..The atmosphere of crisis in Washington was palpable.
Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, was rushed back from Baghdad to plot a new course for American officials who have been forced to use the word "war" for what had been described as mopping-up operations. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, had to abandon a planned trip. The meeting was also attended by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. ."

Nov 13 ~ Governing council put in frame as US makes no bones about how situation is unravelling

Guardian "The unscheduled summit in Washington over the future of Iraq reflected intense White House unease about the way the situation is unravelling in the country. ... the Iraqis on the council are aware that as American appointees they lack the legitimacy of an elected body. They say they lack authority and that key decisions are taken without reference to the council. "The governing council should not alone bear the responsibility of any inefficiency," Mahmoud Othman, a Sunni Kurd member of the council, told the Associated Press. "This is supposed to be a partnership based on equality, but when the Americans want to find solution for their problems, they do it in any way that suits them....Several council members were furious last month when they found the Americans had agreed to send Iraqi police officers to Jordan for training. Many in Iraq still remember Jordan as an ally of Saddam Hussein. The council was angry again when it learned that the US had invited Turkish troops into Iraq. Weeks of complaints from the council appear to have shelved that plan.
Council members have also pressed to take more control over security in Iraq, and until now their plans have largely met with resistance from the Americans.
Each of the 24 is a likely target for the guerrilla movement because of their perceived support for the Americans. Aqila al-Hashimi, one of only three women on the council, was shot dead outside her home in September. " ."

Nov 12/13 ~" It is not only Bush the Chicken-hawk warmonger and promoter-in-chief of the great illusion about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction who they will be denouncing.

It is also Bush the ignorant, self-righteous Christian warrior, Bush the smirking executioner and Bush the believer in one law for America and another for everyone else. And, of course, Bush the "Toxic Texan", an image made flesh by the "ghost ships" bearing down on Hartlepool, whose US-produced contaminants will find a last resting place on Britain's unpolluted isle...
...today's Washington has a whiff of Soviet ways; suffocating internal discipline, resentment of even reasoned, moderate opposition, and a refusal to admit even the tiniest error. For imperialists, read "evildoers". With their condescending "we know best" attitude, Messrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest offer as close an impersonation of the Politburo as you will find. " Independent

Nov 12 ~ Bush visit: " Tens of thousands of demonstrators against the war in Iraq are expected to descend on the city."

Reuters "The expected tight security measures have been seized upon by critics, among them London's left-leaning Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who has taken part in previous demonstrations against the Iraq war. "Any attempt to try and help Bush avoid protesters would be inconceivable. To create a situation in which up to 60,000 people would remain unseen would require a shutdown of central London which is just unacceptable," he said on Tuesday...."

Nov 12 ~ José Bové welcomes the fact that mainstream politicians are taking cues from the anti-globalisation movement.

"Thousands of anti-globalisation activists have converged on Paris for a meeting that seeks to challenge mainstream politicians on everything from genetically modified food to free trade and immigration. ...Campaigners like Susan George, vice-president of Attac, believe the EU must use the constitution to guarantee basic rights for its citizens and stand up to U.S. hegemony. "There's no other political entity to stop the American steamroller from creating more and more imbalances," she said. Mainstream political parties, seeking to stem a haemorrhage of disillusioned voters to more radical groups, have rushed to show solidarity with a movement that seeks alternatives to globalisation. ..." Reuters

Nov 12 ~ So who did invite him?

Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian ".... how did it happen? The Foreign Office suggests a call to the palace, who promptly insist this was not their doing. "This whole visit is being done with advice - with a capital A," says a palace spokeswoman firmly. The royal family did not do this on their own; government was involved. The two sides cannot even agree on when this wizard idea first surfaced. The Foreign Office says it was settled in June 2002; the palace and US embassy say the first they heard of it was early this year.
All of which makes you wonder if even the hosts are getting cold feet. You can hardly blame them. For who does this trip really benefit? Not Blair, who's getting a headache he could do without. Not the Queen, who has an allergy to political controversy and, given recent events, can hardly be eager to see her already beleaguered institution tarred by association with the "toxic Texan". ..." No, there is only one beneficiary of this visit and it is the Bush White House.

Nov 12 ~ We are ordinary people and we do wish to protest

An emailer writes today, "I, like so many others, have been infuriated by Blair preventing investigations into past government wrongdoings/mishandling of events by saying that we have to move on, and that we must not seek to blame, that what the public are really interested in is what the government is doing to help schools, hospitals, etc. It is this culture of unaccountability which he is nourishing that I find dangerous.  The letter puts it rather well I think http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1083098,00.html

Nov 12 ~ Other interesting letters in today's Guardian

(Read here) include the simple statement "I have never been on a protest march, but after reading Blair's patronising and arrogant comments on the planned anti-war/Bush demonstrations, I feel obliged to attend. " Jim Hatley Brighton

Nov 12 ~ Jessica Lynch herself now says the rescue story was embellished by the US military - false stories

Boston Globe "Private First Class Jessica Lynch said yesterday that she is disturbed that the military seemed to overdramatize her rescue by US troops and spread false stories that she went down shooting ..."

Nov 12 ~ More than half of Baghdad's residents said they did not believe the United States would allow the Iraqi people to fashion their political future without the direct influence of Washington

Gallup poll reported in the Boston Globe

Nov 12 ~ Blair faces Bush security crisis as Livingstone hosts anti-war party

Telegraph"..... Yesterday Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, encouraged the anti-war protests by saying he had arranged a Peace Reception for prominent opponents of the war and subsequent "occupation" of Iraq, next Wednesday midway through the president's stay. ...... It has infuriated Mr Blair who has been busy trying to lure the Left-wing Mayor of London - expelled from the Labour Party three years ago for standing as an independent in the mayoral race - back into the Labour fold in a gesture of conciliation to the Left. An upbeat and unapologetic Mr Livingstone said yesterday that the event would bring prominent peace-minded people together and serve as a powerful anti-war "statement"...."

Nov 12 ~ Iraq refuses to follow the Pentagon game plan

Simon Jenkins in Baghdad yesterday "....The challenge for Mr Bremer is vast. An entire generation of Washington neo-conservatives may live or die with him. Bombs do not help Mr Bremer, who was summoned back to Washington last night for emergency talks. Indeed, as under the Raj, it is hard to ignore the emerging tensions between the different arms of the occupying power. There are moments when the military seem to have remembered nothing about "hearts and minds" since Vietnam. .."

Nov 12 ~ UK cuts rainforest funding to meet Iraq costs

Independent

Nov 11 ~ Iraq Tried Last-Minute Deal to Avoid War

Washington Post "...According to Hage, the Iraqis offered to let 2,000 U.S. agents come to Iraq to verify that it didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq said long before the war - and captured officials still maintain - that the country had no such weapons. Though none has been discovered in seven months of searching, finding the weapons and overthrowing Saddam were the main reasons the Bush administration gave for going to war.
The Iraqis also told Hage that Iraq was willing to cooperate in the war on terrorism and said they would surrender Abdul-Rahman Yasin, who had been in Iraqi custody since 1994 and is on the FBI's most wanted list for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. ..."

Nov 11 ~ A series of shocking pictures revealing US soldiers tying up Iraqi women and children in their own home has provoked international outrage.

English Aljazeera.net "The occupying forces have now come under renewed fire for their treatment of ordinary Iraqis as shown in the pictures published today by Aljazeera.net. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is conducting an investigation and seeking advice before taking further action. "This kind of image increases resentment of American troops in Iraq and can also play a major part in demoralising troops who are having to tie up small children.. ....
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence in London said: "There are a range of options available to the commander on the ground based on the information received. Restraint depends on the situation."
However a senior military source said: "This sort of action would be highly unusual for British troops and would have to be authorised at the highest level.
"We just don't do things like that. We are working very closely with Iraqi people on the ground in Basra and prioritise in winning hearts and minds. "We made a dreadful error earlier on in the campaign and lost some military police as a result. It was a tragedy which we have learned from and do not want to repeat." "

Nov 11 ~ London's Metropolitan police commissioner admits the visit presents an "unprecedented" challenge.

"It's going to be a big test for the Met in terms of what we have to do to prevent an attack on the president, any member of the royal family and any member of the cabinet," said a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard police headquarters. "We have to balance preventative measures with allowing people to demonstrate in a peaceful manner." Reuters

Nov 11 ~ Dreamers and idiots - Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan

George Monbiot in the Guardian "...those of us who called for peace before the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan were mocked as effeminate dreamers ... But ..... as we discovered last week, Saddam proposed to give Bush and Blair almost everything they wanted before a shot had been fired. Our governments appear both to have withheld this information from the public and to have lied to us about the possibilities for diplomacy. ....Over the four months before the coalition forces invaded Iraq, Saddam's government made a series of increasingly desperate offers to the United States
....On March 17, Bush claimed that "should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war"....
... Had a peaceful resolution of these disputes been attempted, Bin Laden might now be in custody, Iraq might be a pliant and largely peaceful nation finding its own way to democracy, and the prevailing sentiment within the Muslim world might be sympathy for the United States, rather than anger and resentment.
Now who are the dreamers and the useful idiots, and who the pragmatists? "

Nov 11 ~ Michael Moore is in the UK to continue his one-man crusade against President George W Bush.

BBC "...Anyone walking past the Palladium on Sunday would have been forgiven for thinking a rock star was in town, judging from the commotion this portly American satirist provoked. By one entrance, activists exhorted Americans abroad to vote for Democratic challenger Wesley Clark. By another, the Stop the War coalition outlined their plans to disrupt President Bush's forthcoming visit to the UK. There was no doubting where Moore stood on the election issue, having already promised to spend his Bush-sanctioned tax cut trying to unseat him. His abhorrence of right ring politics extended to the Conservative Party, which he described as a "dying dinosaur".
For news about President Bush visit, please visit the warmwell democracy page.

Nov 10 ~ White House wants West End to be no-go area

The Times The Times goes on to refer to "anarchist groups" which have pledged to disrupt Mr Bush's trip. That there are so many anarchists in the UK now is an interesting fact. Fellow anarchists may share our deep concern at draconian anti-terrorism laws that may well be used against protesters.

Nov 10 ~ Saddam's desperate offers to stave off war were rejected by Washington

We missed this article in the Guardian on Nov 6 which shows how "Washington dismissed Iraq's peace feelers, including elections and weapons pledge, put forward via diplomatic channels and US hawk Perle"

Nov 10 ~ Failed intelligence risked SAS lives

Scotland on Sunday "The lives of British special forces troops were needlessly put at risk during the Iraq war because of poor intelligence-gathering, their commanders have told MPs. A secret briefing for members of the defence committee was told last week that much of the information provided by MI6 and the American military was out of date or "plain wrong". That meant the already perilous undercover work of elite soldiers such as the SAS was made even more dangerous and led directly to them being shot at by locals they had been assured would be friendly...
...one MP told Scotland on Sunday: "It was awful. On the basis of what they told us you get the feeling they'd gladly sack the intelligence services. How we didn't get blokes [from the special forces] wiped out I don't know." "

Nov 9 ~ How we denied democracy to the Middle East

Robert Fisk in the Independent 8 November 2003: We created this place, weaned the grotesque dictators. And we expect the Arabs to trust Bush's promise?.... " It gets weirder and weirder. As his helicopters are falling out of the sky over Iraq, President Bush tells us things are getting even better. The more we succeed, he says, the deadlier the attacks will become. Thank God the Americans now have a few - a very few - brave journalists, like Maureen Dowd, to explain what is happening. The worse things are, the better they get. Iraq's wartime information minister, "Comical Ali", had nothing on this; he claimed the Americans weren't in Baghdad when we could see their tanks. Bush claims he's going to introduce democracy in the Middle East when his soldiers are facing more than resistance in Iraq. They are facing an insurrection. So let's take a look at the latest lies. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," he told us on Thursday. "Because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Well said, Sir. George Bush Jr sounds almost as convincing as, well, Tony Blair. It's all a lie. "We" - the West, Europe, America - never "excused and accommodated" lack of freedom. We endorsed lack of freedom. We created it in the Middle East and supported it...." Read article

Nov 9 ~ official confirmation of a complete absence of high-level military and political planning to manage the aftermath of victory

Observer "...... An official US army review leaked to the US NGO globalsecurity.org has revealed that the army had no plan for the occupation of Baghdad. Officially titled the Third Infantry Division (Mechanised) After Action Report, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the study provides the first formal internal view of the Iraq war from the point of view of the soldiers who brought down Saddam Hussein. The report provides official confirmation of a complete absence of high-level military and political planning to manage the aftermath of victory and indicates some key problems that continue to hamper US army effectiveness to this day. ..."

Nov 9 ~ Bush visit set to paralyse London

Observer " Itinerary details remain secret in record security operation as thousands plan street protests during first state visit by an American President ...For security reasons the Metropolitan Police will not confirm a route for the cavalcade until the last minute and will be forced to make road closures with minimal notice. After Air Force One touches down a week on Wednesday, the President and his entourage will be flown by helicopter to a central London destination, where a cavalcade will take them to a reception at Buckingham Palace. Bush's arrival is likely to follow the pattern of his visit to Australia last month, when he was spirited away from protesters along empty streets cleared of ordinary people. All police leave has been cancelled and armed units and US special agents will be assigned to the streets of London. .."
Anyone else feeling sick?

Nov 9 ~ Case for war confected, say top US officials

Independent on Sunday "An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair.....
..."There was never a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat. Iraq - and we have very good intelligence on this - was never part of the picture of terrorism," says Mel Goodman, a veteran CIA analyst who now teaches at the National War College. The case for accusing Saddam Hussein of concealing weapons of mass destruction was, in the words of the veteran CIA operative Robert Baer, largely achieved through "data mining" - going back over old information and trying to wrest new conclusions from it. The agenda, according to George Bush Senior's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, was both highly political and profoundly misguided. "The theory that you can bludgeon political grievances out of existence doesn't have much of a track record," he says, "so essentially we have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried." The hour-long film - entitled Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War - was put together by Robert Greenwald, a veteran TV producer in the forefront of Hollywood's anti-war movement who never suspected, when he started out, that so many establishment figures would stand up and be counted. olin Powell's powerful presentation to the United Nations Security Council on 5 February. Of that pivotal speech, Mr McGovern says in the film: "It was a masterful performance, but none of it was true." ....

Nov 8 ~ "suspected guerrilla hideouts" "F-16 fighter planes swooped down"

Reuters " US warplanes and armoured vehicles have battered suspected guerrilla hideouts in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit after six soldiers were killed in the shooting down of a Black Hawk helicopter....After dark on Friday, F-16 fighter planes swooped over Tikrit, dropping several 500-pound bombs near the helicopter crash site. Then raids were launched around the town -- a hotbed of anti-U.S. resistance... U.S. Army statement said the raids were part of "Operation Ivy Cyclone", a new drive to root out guerrillas in the hostile territory around Tikrit. It said 16 people had been detained in the past 24 hours as part of the operation, and five killed..... Troops backed by Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed several abandoned houses which the U.S. military believed had been used by insurgents. "We are targeting those areas where we have had attacks on coalition forces," Russell said. "We want to eliminate those threats...."

Nov 5 ~ Soldier of fortune ... A for-profit army carries out U.S. mission around the world

Cincinnati Post "....By paying civilians to handle military tasks, the Bush administration is freeing up U.S. troops to fight. But the use of contractors also hides the true costs of war. Their dead aren't added to official body counts. Their duties -- and profits -- are hidden by close-mouthed executives who won't give details to Congress....The world of military contracts is a murky one. In Iraq and Afghanistan, important buildings in the capitals bristle with gun-toting Americans in sunglasses. They favor khaki photographers' vests and a few military accoutrements, but lack the name tags and identifying patches of a soldier. Ask who they work for and one often hears "no comment" or "I can't tell you that." Contractors' deaths aren't counted among the tally of more than 350 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. No one is sure how many private workers have been killed, or, indeed, even how many are toiling in Iraq for the U.S. government. Estimates range from under 10,000 to more than 20,000 -- which could make private contractors the largest U.S. coalition partner ahead of Britain's 11,000 troops. ...In the case of Halliburton, the U.S. government hired the company in Iraq without a competitive bid, after the company recommended itself in a study. Halliburton's Iraq oil services contract, worth $1.59 billion so far, will be extended until December or January. The company reported Wednesday that its government work in Iraq and elsewhere helped boost yearly third-quarter earnings by 39 percent, to $4.14 billion. "

Nov 4/5 ~ "The president owes the American people an exit strategy for Iraq, and it is time for him to deliver."

Senator Byrd "I have great respect and affection for my fellow Senators and my colleagues on the Senate Appropriations Committee. But I have even greater respect and affection for the institution of the Senate and the Constitution by which it was established.
Every Senator, upon taking office, swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution. It is the Constitution-not the president, not a political party, but the Constitution-to which Senators swear an oath of loyalty. And I am here to tell you that neither the Constitution nor the American people are well served by a process and a product that are based on blind adherence to the will of the president at the expense of congressional checks and balances. It is as if, in a rush to support the president's policy, this White House is prepared to put blinders on the Congress. .." Senator Byrd's speech

Nov 4 ~ Last week, in a scarcely publicised written answer, the Foreign Office revealed that the UK's involvement in Iraq has cost the British taxpayer more than £1.25bn so far.

Guardian "Military operations, reconstruction and additional security at British embassies across the Middle East and the British Office in Baghdad all received a chunk of the funds, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said. In his statement, Mr Straw confirmed that the biggest slice - an estimated £700m - was spent on military operations. .."

Nov 3 ~ The Bloodiest Day in Iraq for Americans

CounterPunch"....Minutes after the attack, American Black Hawk helicopters swarmed over the scene to rush survivors to hospital while soldiers secured the site, ordering journalists to leave and confiscating film. Villagers and local farmers showed their delight by waving pieces of the smoking wreckage. The bloodiest single incident for American forces since the beginning of the war, and the worst day of casualties since the official end of the combat phase of the war as declared by President George Bush six months ago, eclipsed efforts by the White House to counter the impression that Iraq is becoming a quagmire for America. ..."

Nov 3 ~ .... Washington's failure to plan for the occupation is creating a vacuum into which foreign elements are being drawn:

the very situation the invasion was meant to prevent. One US source told Jane's Intelligence Digest: "If al-Qa'ida wasn't operating in Iraq under Saddam, it surely is now." Independent

Oct 26 ~ White House withholding highly classified intelligence documents about Twin Towers attack

Reuters "The head of the federal commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks says the White House is withholding highly classified intelligence documents and he is ready to subpoena them if they are not released within weeks, according to a report.....The commission is the latest body to complain about access to administration documents. In August, the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, said Vice President Dick Cheney stymied its probe into his energy task force by refusing to turn over key documents...."

Oct 25 ~ "They're changing. They have dehumanised the Iraqis. They call them 'hajji' now - that's like 'gook'.

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, and I remember," says Adele Kubein, whose daughter is a National Guard mechanic serving in Iraq.
On one occasion, her daughter telephoned her, sobbing. "She said, 'Mom, I have shot people. I am never going to be able to come home and live a normal life again...."
Guardian Troops' relatives speak out as death toll rises and morale falls

Oct 25 ~ Nations pledge additional $13bn to help rebuild Iraq

Independent The sum includes $20bn already promised by the United States. But $13bn takes the form of loans. This will further burden the Iraqi economy, which is already about $120bn in debt. ..." Global pledges mask real cost of recovery "....What Iraq urgently needs is $9.3bn for 2004 in the form of non-returnable grants, according to the UN and the World Bank. It cannot borrow because it is not creditworthy, and is not expected to have oil revenues until then. The urgency of cash now without strings was spelt out by the head of the UN's development programme, Mark Malloch Brown, who saud: "Our needs assessment ... tells the story of a country brought down from a per capita income of $3,600 25 years ago to less than $600 today. "We estimated... that $9bn would ideally be needed for the first year." .........There are concerns about how the cash will be spent, particularly that offered by the US which is not keen on using a specially-established trust fund. Bilateral aid, often tied to specific contractors, was a mistake, an EU official said because it risked "duplication and concentration on priorities of the donors rather than Iraq".

Oct 25 ~ "The US Senate is preparing a damning report on pre-war Iraq intelligence

which will blame the CIA and its director, George Tenet, for the Bush administration's unsupported claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction..." Guardian ".... The report by the senate select committee on intelligence has not been published and is still being fought over by Republican and Democratic committee members. ....the report is expected to allege that the October 2002 national intelligence estimate, which put an official CIA seal of approval on the administration's claims about the Iraqi arsenal, was built on circumstantial evidence and single-sourced and disputed information. The committee chairman, Bush loyalist Pat Roberts, described the intelligence underpinning the war as "sloppy". .....
In the months before the Iraq war, intelligence officials privately complained that they were being put under intense pressure, particularly by the vice president, Dick Cheney, to present "worst case scenarios" for Saddam's arsenal..... Newt Gingrich, a former Republican leader with close links to the Pentagon's top civilian officials, also visited Langley to press for more alarmist reports. ..... Democrats want the scope of the Senate inquiry to be widened to include an examination of the role of the unit and Mr Cheney's staff. "

Oct 23 ~ I believe that we will find the answer only through an independent judicial inquiry.

Michael Ancram in yesterday's Iraq debate "I am mystified by the Government's opposition to an inquiry. If they were confident of their position, they would support the motion tonight. An independent judicial inquiry would end the confusion and the rumours. Their rejection of such an inquiry can suggest only that they are less than confident in their case. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand the very real damage that the continuing allegations are doing to the reputation of this country abroad or to the reputation of our intelligence services at home..... What was the justification for that over-egging? In summary, was the September dossier a genuine intelligence resumé of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, as it was claimed to be, or was it a propaganda device to bring doubting Labour Members onside? These are serious questions, and they are surely best answered in the ordered environment of a judicial inquiry. ........ the conclusion will inevitably and understandably be drawn that at the time of the war there was no concrete evidence of weapons of mass destruction. We would all have a right to feel let down on a matter on which Parliament and the nation as a whole had the right to rely on the word of the Prime Minister on matters of intelligence. More seriously, it would suggest either that the Prime Minister received wrong intelligence from the intelligence services, or that he - if I may put it politely - grossly enlarged upon the information that he had received in order to back up the case that he so passionately made to Parliament...... Once again, the most effective way of clearing this up, setting to rest the suspicions and restoring credibility is for the Prime Minister to submit the evidence and information that he had before the war, and that which he has now, to be assessed once and for all by an independent judicial inquiry.

Oct 23 ~ All but $1 billion of more than $5 billion of Iraqi funds have disappeared into a "financial black hole" says Christian Aid

Reuters " A leading British aid agency accused Iraq's U.S. and British administrators of failing to account for at least $4 billion in oil revenues and other money that is meant to go towards rebuilding the country. As officials from around the world gathered in Madrid to hear U.S. requests for aid for Iraq, Christian Aid said on Thursday the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) had not publicly detailed cash flows since ousting Saddam Hussein in April. A spokeswoman for the CPA in Baghdad responded only by saying the authority was committed to full accountability in its handling of Iraqi funds and was complying with a U.N. resolution obliging it to do so.
Public details are scant, however.
Christian Aid said its figures were a conservative estimate of oil revenues collected by the CPA since the war, prewar oil revenues handed over from the U.N. "oil-for-food" account and seized assets of Saddam's government. All but $1 billion of more than $5 billion of Iraqi funds had disappeared into a "financial black hole", it said. The charity said failure to show where the money has gone would fuel suspicion among critics that funds were going to U.S. firms given contracts to rebuild the country. "There is a U.N. mandate obliging the CPA to account for money coming in and money going out ..."

Oct 21 ~ US failure to count civilian deaths 'incredible'

Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad Independent
"The refusal by the US army to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers in Baghdad has been strongly condemned by Human Rights Watch.
Joe Stork, the acting executive director of the group's Middle East and North Africa division, said: "It is a tragedy that US soldiers have killed so many civilians in Baghdad. But it is really incredible that the US military does not even count these deaths." ...... In some cases troops behave with unnecessary rudeness towards civilians such as putting their feet on the heads of captive Iraqis when they are lying on the ground. The report says that "in Iraqi culture, the use of the feet against another person is highly insulting". The tying up and hooding of suspects, often for hours, also creates lasting bitterness. ...... Mr Stork said: "Right now soldiers feel they can pull the trigger without coming under review."

Oct 21 ~ "Washington will give the United Nations and the World Bank a say in the spending of billions of dollars of reconstruction funds in Iraq

it emerged yesterday, in a further concession to international critics. A new agency, to be run by the two multinational bodies, is to be announced on Thursday in Madrid at the international aid conference on Iraq, apparently in an attempt to persuade donors to give generously..." Telegraph

Oct 20 ~ " They saw it, obviously, as a great photo opportunity" but "No palace parade for Bush as Blair gets cold feet"

Telegraph "Plans for the Queen and George W Bush to make a triumphant procession along the Mall during the president's state visit next month have been abandoned because of fears of anti-war protests. ..... Downing Street, anxious about possible anti-war protests from the start, has now decided to pull the plug on it," said the official.
"We are liaising with the White House and they have made no attempt to hide their disappointment. They saw it, obviously, as a great photo opportunity."......He will travel by helicopter to avoid protesters who line road routes. Other proposed events have also been curtailed or cancelled, and he will not address Parliament because of fears of a boycott by MPs. ..... Downing Street has decided to stage photo events that they can control. The President and the Queen are expected to be photographed together during tea at Buckingham Palace and inspecting the guard...."

Oct 20 ~ Rebel Labour MPs will abstain at the end of a Tory-sponsored debate demanding a full judicial inquiry into the war.

Independent "Rebel Labour MPs who opposed the invasion of Iraq plan to defy ministers on Wednesday by abstaining at the end of a Tory-sponsored debate demanding a full judicial inquiry into the war. The Conservative motion will argue that an investigation is justified in the light of conflicting accounts of intelligence received by ministers in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. It will say that the inquiry should also cover the conduct of the war, and its aftermath, as well as the role of the Attorney-General in advising ministers that the action was legal. The Liberal Democrats, who also support the idea of an independent inquiry, are expected to back the motion...."

Oct 17 ~ Tony Blair must be held to account

"We now know that he was not honest about the outing of Kelly" Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian "A few days after David Kelly's suicide, the prime minister was confronted by journalists on his aircraft as it prepared to land in Hong Kong. "Why did you authorise the naming of David Kelly?" he was asked. "That is completely untrue," replied Tony Blair. "Did you authorise anyone in Downing Street or in the Ministry of Defence to release David Kelly's name?" he was asked. "Emphatically not," responded Blair."I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly". The prime minister added: "Nobody was authorised to name David Kelly. I believe we have acted properly throughout." ......."

Oct 16 ~ "The case for a full judicial inquiry is unanswerable, and all the resources of the parliamentary opposition should be deployed to such an end."

Michael Heseltine in the Spectator "I do not see how the Attorney-General can stay in the government
......... it seemed, and seems, to be stretching the meaning of words to breaking point to argue that the 'serious consequences' mentioned in UN Resolution 1441 meant that Iraq would be invaded if it did not comply. Every observer knew that those words had been chosen precisely because the UN would not stomach any words that implied force. ....... the Americans have produced the most authoritative evidence so far that nothing has been found to justify the assertions which underpinned the decision to invade: that is, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which threatened our security. Furthermore, Robin Cook now asserts that the Prime Minister himself had ceased to believe in the existence of WMD two weeks before the invasion, and Jack Straw is said to have urged delay hours before our troops went into action. I repeat the point I made in the Guardian a month ago. I was present when, in November last year, a senior Democrat with close connections to the Bush administration told a London audience that the UN was irrelevant. The decision to attack Iraq had been taken and would proceed. .... ....The Prime Minister must not be allowed to change the basis of the case he presented as a justification for war. The Hutton inquiry must not be paraded as a proper report on the causes and justification for war. It is not and it was never intended to be. It is a convenient diversion into tragic but essentially irrelevant events that is convenient for a government determined at all costs to prevent the British people from being given the truth.
The case for a full judicial inquiry is unanswerable, and all the resources of the parliamentary opposition should be deployed to such an end. "

Oct 16 ~ "Turkey's problem at the moment is not with the English but the Americans.

Why send troops where they're not welcome? by Adrian Hamilton in the Independent ".. Pressured into making a commitment of troops to Iraq before this week's UN vote on a new resolution, Ankara is struggling to make sense of a decision it knows to be wrong but cannot avoid....
... So a country that doesn't want to do it is set to send troops to a country that doesn't want to have them.. all at the behest of a US administration that insists on overruling their objections. It's madness. It's even more mad when you consider that, on any dispassionate view, the emergence of a viable democratic Iraq needs the wholehearted commitment of its neighbours.
Turkey may be right to suspect that the Iraqi Governing Council's declaration that it doesn't want troops from any of its neighbours is really aimed specifically at it.
But there is an obvious truth in the view that what Iraq needs is the commercial and diplomatic backing of Jordan, Turkey, Syria and Iran, not their military engagement."

Oct 16 ~ Dick Cheney receives deferred payments from Halliburton

The Guardian today Halliburton Allegedly Overcharges in Iraq ".... Reps. Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan complained to the Bush administration that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary is billing the Army between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon, while the average price for Middle East gasoline is 71 cents.
They also complained that Iraqis are charged between 4 cents and 15 cents at the pump for the imported gasoline.
"Although Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, the U.S. taxpayer is, in effect, subsidizing over 90 percent of the cost of gasoline sold in Iraq,'' the lawmakers said in the latest Democratic attacks against the Houston company that received a no-bid contract. ....The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which chose Halliburton, has received bids for a replacement contract that could be awarded this month. Corps spokesman Robert Faletti said he could not confirm the figures that Waxman and Dingell cited in a letter to Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
He said, however, that the contract is being audited by Congress and the Army.
In a further move against Halliburton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced Wednesday he would propose barring the government from awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to companies that maintain close financial ties to the president, vice president or members of the president's Cabinet. ....Cheney receives deferred payments from Halliburton and also has stock options. .."

Oct 16 ~ Bush 'ignored evidence which did not suit his call for war'

Roland Watson and Michael Evans in the Times Doubts are raised on both sides of the Atlantic on why combat was waged... "Greg Thielmann, former director of the strategic, proliferation and military affairs office in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said that President Bush and his aides picked out details from intelligence reports that supported their arguments and dramatised the threat from Saddam Hussein, while ignoring others. ..."

Oct 16 ~ "... opposition parties join forces to demand an independent judicial inquiry into the war."

Independent "...Mr Hoon's speech failed to win over the opposition. Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "Had comments like the one Mr Hoon expressed today about weapons of mass destruction been stated more candidly before military action, it is questionable whether the Government would have been able to pursue the same course of action." The shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Ancram, said: "The Government have previously stressed there is 'absolutely no doubt' weapons of mass destruction will be found. Now they are back-tracking." Mr Hoon would not be pinned down on when British troops could leave Iraq. Asked if they could still be in the country in three years' time, he said he was "cautious about putting any timescale on this because the nature of our involvement might change"...."

Oct 15 ~ Goldsmith 'scraped the legal barrel' over Iraq war

As we also heard on the Today programme (Listen again) the Independent article reports: "Lord Alexander of Weedon QC, chairman of the all-party law reform group, Justice, said it was "risible" for the government to rely on a UN resolution passed in 1990 as the basis for an invasion of Iraq in 2003 - which ministers knew the security council would not authorise. Lord Alexander, a former chairman of the bar and ex-chairman of NatWest, called on the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, to disclose all of his advice to the government that a unilateral strike would be justified under international law so its context could be properly understood. ..
....they fell back on the 12-year-old resolution 678 of 1990 passed for the purpose of authorising the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and the restoration of peace in the Middle East. "An old resolution passed for a different and more limited purpose was ingeniously used as a cloak for the very action which the United Nations would not currently countenance." The government was "driven to scrape the bottom of the legal barrel" because other possible justifications for war under international law, such as self-defence or humanitarian intervention, did not apply. The great majority of the public international lawyers who had expressed a view did not agree with the attorney general's advice, he said...."

Oct 15 ~ The Archbishop of Canterbury has publicly called into question the judgement of the Prime Minister and his ministers in taking the country into war with Iraq.

Independent " Dr Rowan Williams warned last night that national leaders had a moral duty to act on criteria that went beyond national interests and to listen to the voices of their people. "Governments know things we don't know but we know things governments don't. Democratic government is about hearing what it does not know," he said. "

Oct 15 ~ "Tony Blair has also played the tin soldier....... I am told by a good source that the generals are furious with him for sending them to war on false pretences"

States of war an article in the Guardian today by George Monbiot on how appeasing the armed forces has become a political necessity for the American president . "....... Tony Blair has also played the tin soldier, but with less success. He was the first western leader to arrive in Iraq after George Bush prematurely announced victory there. But when he addressed the troops, they remained silent. I am told by a good source that the generals are furious with him for sending them to war on false pretences.
But in America, the armed forces, whether they want it or not, are being dragged into the heart of political life. A mature democracy is in danger of turning itself into a military state."

Oct 14 ~ Blair chaired the meeting that led to Kelly naming plan

Independent "....Tony Blair chaired the decisive meeting at which a change of stance took place over David Kelly, leading to the scientist's identity being disclosed, the most senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence revealed yesterday. Sir Kevin Tebbit also dismissed as untrue a number of entries about the affair made in the diaries of Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's former director of strategy and communications. .......
Michael Ancram, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said in a statement after the hearing: "Kevin Tebbit's evidence is yet another damning indictment of Tony Blair's role in the naming of Dr Kelly. "Sir Kevin has said the key decision on the naming strategy 'was taken at the meeting in Number 10'. "That meeting was chaired by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's denials are now shown to be a sham."

Oct 13 ~ Alastair Campbell and Sir Andrew Turnbull, the head of the Civil Service, are to be summoned before the Public Administration Committee

Independent " to answer questions on the treatment of Dr David Kelly. Mr Campbell, who had earlier refused to appear before the Public Administration Committee, will be asked about Downing Street's role in releasing Dr Kelly's name to the press. He is expected to be called next week when MPs return to the House....The cabinet secretary is understood to be cautious about the invitation and his office is negotiating with the committee on the terms of his appearance and the date. "Why wasn't the head of the Civil Service involved in the whole issue of how to treat Dr Kelly?" asked one source close to the committee.

Oct 13 ~ Sir Kevin rejected claim that he had been consulted over a proposal to leak Dr Kelly's name to the press.

Guardian "The chief civil servant at the Ministry of Defence today denied smearing David Kelly as "a bit weird and rather eccentric" in a dinner party chat with a BBC journalist after the weapons expert's name had become public. Sir Kevin Tebbit, giving evidence at the final hearing of the two-month-old Hutton inquiry, also denied ever telling Tony Blair's former communications director, Alastair Campbell, that Dr Kelly was "a bit of a show-off".
....Mr Campbell's diaries - already read out to the court in earlier hearings - mooted a plan to give Dr Kelly's name to the papers ahead of the prime minister's appearance before the parliamentary liaison committee, but that "they [Sir Kevin Tebbit and Sir David Omand] didn't want to do it." Sir Kevin agreed that hypothetically he would not have wanted to do it but said he had never been informed or consulted about it in any case. ..."

Oct 13 ~ Another American dead in Iraq, another day in Iraq, a conference in London stressing the business opportunities in Iraq.

From the always lively Channel 4 news update email "Lots of big US figures present, but is the place secure enough, indeed do the Americans yet have the legal right to start selling off businesses? Shirley Williams from the House of Lords believes not. .."

Oct 13 ~ Russia to price oil in euros in snub to US

article in the Telegraph on friday: " Russia is to start pricing its huge oil and gas exports in euros instead of dollars as part of a stragetic shift to forge closer ties with the European Union. The Russian central bank has been amassing euros since early 2002, increasing the euro share of its $65 billion (£40 billion) foreign reserves from 10pc to more than 25pc, according to the finance ministry.
The move has set off a chain reaction in the private sector, leading to a fourfold increase in euro deposits in Russian banks this year and sending Russian citizens scrambling to change their stashes of greenbacks into euro notes. German officials said Chancellor Gerhard Schroder secured agreement for the change-over on oil pricing from Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, while on a trip to Russia this week. The two leaders have forged a close personal bond and are both keen to check American economic and diplomatic power...."

Oct 13 ~ "Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers, while British are condemned as too soft"

US soldiers have "uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops" Independent
...."They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees," said one man. .... The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation...."

Oct 13 ~ "no target on the planet or in space would be immune to American attack. The US could strike without warning whenever and wherever a threat was perceived, and it would be protected by missile defenses."

From an article by Noam Chomsky this week Dominance and its Dilemmas: ".... Hypersonic drones would monitor and disrupt targets. Surveillance systems are to provide the ability "to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city." The world is to be left at mercy of US attack at will, without warning or credible pretext. The plans have no remote historical parallel. Even more fanciful ones are under development.
These moves reflect the disdain of the administration for international law and institutions, or arms control measures, dismissed with barely a word in the National Security Strategy; and its commitment to an extremist version of long-standing doctrine.
In accord with these principles, Washington informed the UN that it can be "relevant" by endorsing Washington's plans for invading Iraq, or it can be a debating society. The US has the "sovereign right to take military action," Colin Powell informed the January 2003 Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, which also strenuously opposed Washington's war plans. "When we feel strongly about something we will lead," Powell informed them, even if no one is following us.
Bush and Blair underscored their contempt for international law and institutions at their Azores Summit on the eve of the invasion. They issued an ultimatum - not to Iraq, but to the Security Council: capitulate, or we will invade without your meaningless seal of approval. ...." Read in full

Oct 13 ~ Sir Kevin Tebbit may face questioning regarding the "coaching" of MoD officials

Independent on Sunday "Sir Kevin Tebbit, the most senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, may face questioning regarding the "coaching" of MoD officials who appeared at the Hutton inquiry when he gives further evidence tomorrow. Several MoD staff, recalled in the second phase of the inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly, are understood to have had preparation sessions beforehand with a team of government information officers at the Civil Service College in Sunningdale, Berkshire. A source said the inquiry was aware of the allegation, although it has been denied by the MoD..."

Oct 12 ~ Why in-fighting is losing Iraq and could cost Rumsfeld his job

Sunday Herald ".... A series of polls has shown recently that more than two-thirds of Americans believe US foreign policy is on the wrong track, and Bush's popularity is now at its lowest point since he was elected.
..... The post-war mess in Iraq has been widely blamed on planning failures and strategic myopia on the part of Bush's foreign policy team. .... While many American newspapers have reported the opening of a bitter rift between Rice and Rumsfeld, Washington sources have suggested to the Sunday Herald that the rift is in fact between Rumsfeld and Bush, and that Condoleezza Rice has exploited it to her own advantage. ..
......Rumsfeld's fall from grace has been spectacular. ..........
But doubts are being voiced as to whether the reshuffle will in fact accomplish anything and whether Rice's appointment was merited. Several of Bush's advisers privately blame her for the debacle over the State of the Union address....her determination to establish her toughness led to errors in judgement, guiding Bush down an aggressively unilateral path on issues from Kyoto to North Korea to the UN. "She is prone to the naive view that 'we are strong and they are weak and we should ruthlessly exploit this'," said J Roy Stapleton, Bush's ambassador to China, of her foreign policy leanings. ..."

Oct 12 ~ Many soldiers, same letter

The Olympian "A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash. ......... The five-paragraph letter talks about the soldiers' efforts to re-establish police and fire departments, and build water and sewer plants in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where the unit is based. "The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened," the letter reads. It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you. It's not clear who wrote the letter or organized sending it to soldiers' hometown papers"..." Detail from letter

Oct 11 ~ In 1983, the US 'pre-emptively' invaded Grenada. Sound familiar?

Interesting article in the Guardian about regime change in Granada in 1983. Jonathan Steele concludes:"The true impulse - America's obsessive hatred of Cuba's independence and its desire to stop other countries in the region from following suit - was spelt out on the walls of the looted Cuban embassy. "Eat shit, Commie faggot," said newly written graffiti. The vandals had left their calling card, the initials AA for All American, which the 82nd Airborne Division likes to use. (They are the same outfit which recently killed three Iraqis near Falluja while shooting up a farmhouse and calling in airstrikes to destroy the building.) Tawdry, vicious and ignorant, the invasion of Grenada differed from this year's war on Iraq in one important particular. A furious British prime minister did not hesitate to tell the US president he was wrong. ....she knew when the Americans were going wrong and was not scared to tell them. The contrast with Blair is sad."

Oct 11 ~ "an acknowledgement that Mr Bush realises he has a huge problem with the way things are being reported and with how things are going in Iraq"

Guardian story on the rift between Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, President George Bush's national security adviser: ".... little reassurance that important decisions about postwar Iraq were being made. "If Ms Rice's memo signals a real attempt to exercise political control over the violence and instability in Iraq, that would be welcome. But so far, the grandly named Iraq stabilisation group seems more like an attempt to substitute title-building for nation-building."

Oct 11 ~ Britain will pledge 550 million pounds

to the reconstruction of Iraq ahead of an international donors conference in Madrid later this month, the Financial Times has reported. See Reuters

Oct 11 ~ "The people are in removal mode"

Michael Moore writes, "don't be depressed about Arnold. The people are pissed off and they have every right to be. They are in a "removal" mood. That is a good thing. As soon as we do our work to inform our friends and neighbors how Bush has wrecked the country, the economy and our standing in the world, they will be more than ready for "Terminator IV: Hasta La Vista Bush."
Moore's book Hey Dude, where's my Country is now # No 1 bestseller on Amazon.com

Oct 10 ~ Archbishop uses memorial to question morality of Iraq war:

Channel 4 news update email: "..... the deep moral conflicts of war were taken head on by Rowan Williams in his address: There is little, one imagines Tony Blair would disagree with in that, though he might tense at the suggestion later put: Those who attended today must have had conflicting and varied emotions. Some have talked of their support for the war, others talked of their anger. "

Oct 8 ~this war-torn and war-weary country, armed with a new central bank and a brand new currency, will soon be in a loving embrace with global investors and exporters

Times "... Foreign companies will be allowed to buy 100 per cent ownership of state-owned companies. Tariffs are to be slashed and local producers will be given no protection. Taxes will be very low, up to a maximum rate of 15 per cent. Foreign banks will take over the banking system. In short, this war-torn and war-weary country, armed with a new central bank and a brand new currency, will soon be in a loving embrace with global investors and exporters. At least, that is the hope of the coalition provisional authority which has signed the plan into law...
..the lessons from Russia give pause for thought. Key among them is that much-needed new investment will not flow into a country until it has sound foundations. These include a rule of law, effective tax collection and clear, open government that can control corruption. Without them, a market economy can all too soon give way to a frontier-style free-for-all."

Oct 8 ~ I pray that each and every one returns safely and I will also pray the fool who sent them comes to his senses

The Times reports an online petition www.129bringthemhome.com boasts almost 12,500 signatures from across the nation. It has inspired a sister website - www.bringhomethe142.org - in Minnesota and plans for similar petitions in other states.

Oct 8 ~ "The Department of Defence should not be a discount shopping outlet for would-be terrorists"

Extraordinary revelations in today's Times that the US Congress began an investigation yesterday after the Pentagon was exposed for selling biological warfare components to the public over the internet. Pentagon sold off germ warfare parts

Oct 7 ~ "conclusive and incontrovertible" evidence that Saddam had been in breach of UN resolutions. was ten years old

Guardian "The test tube of botulinum presented by Washington and London as evidence that Saddam Hussein had been developing and concealing weapons of mass destruction, was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator, where it had been sitting for 10 years, it emerged yesterday. David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt for weapons, told a congressional committee last week that the vial of botulinum had been "hidden" at the scientist's home, and could be used to "covertly surge production of deadly weapons". Since then, the discovery of the vial has been at the heart of the debate over prewar claims that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons. ..."
David Kay

Oct 7 ~ Freedom of the press is beginning to smell a little rotten in the new Iraq.

Robert Fisk in today's Independent "..... Things are no better in the American-run television and radio stations in Baghdad. The 357 journalists working from the Bremer palace grounds have twice gone on strike for more pay and have complained of censorship. According to one of the reporters, they were told by John Sandrock - head of the private American company SAIC which runs the television station - that "either you accept what we offer or you resign - there are plenty of candidates for your jobs". Needless to say, the television "news" is a miserable affair that often fails to make any mention of the growing violence and anti-American attacks in Iraq which every foreign journalist - and most Iraqi newspapers - report. .." (This is a Portfolio article and has to be paid for)

Oct 7 ~ a classic case of Number 10 setting up an Aunt Sally that they can then knock down. It is a classic diversionary tactic. The best thing is to look at what Robin says

Telegraph Cook's backers accuse No 10 of muddying waters on WMD " "The idea that the Prime Minister ever said that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction is absurd." But a friend of Mr Cook said Downing Street had deliberately inflated the allegation in order to knock it down. Mr Cook, he said, did not conclude from the conversation with Mr Blair that no Iraqi WMD existed. But he did understand that it was nowhere near as potent as claimed by the Prime Minister.
The friend said: "That's a classic case of Number 10 setting up an Aunt Sally that they can then knock down. It is a classic diversionary tactic. The best thing is to look at what Robin says." Mr Cook's allegations are contained in diary extracts taken from his book, Point of Departure, serialised in the Sunday Times. The MP, who resigned as Leader of the House of Commons over the decision to go to war, paints a picture of a Prime Minister at the mercy of the Americans, desperate to influence a belligerent White House...."

Oct 7 ~ Rumsfeld and Bush "adamantly opposed to an expanded UN role"

Independent on the news that the White House is setting up an "Iraq Stabilisation Group" under the national security adviser Condoleezza Rice , centralising control of US operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan "......a warning from President Vladimir Putin of Russia that the US could be facing a 21st-century version of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, when the swift invasion of 1979 was followed by a bloody and decade-long guerrilla conflict, and ultimately humiliating withdrawal in 1989. To avoid this fate, Washington must hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis, Mr Putin told The New York Times, and secure a new Security Council resolution to enlarge the role of the United Nations in Iraq.
But the creation of the new co-ordinating group does not appear to signal much movement on either front.
Mr Rumsfeld is said to be chastened by the criticism to which he has been subjected, and he - and Mr Bush - are adamantly opposed to an expanded UN role."

Oct 7 ~ " improved media communications"

The Times article on the same subject "Bush snubs Rumsfeld over Iraq role" "... Dr Rice's group will oversee four new National Security Council committees on counter-terrorism, the Iraqi economy, the development of political institutions and improved media communications. "

Oct 7 ~ Mr Keys believes Britain fought "an illegal war" in Iraq and blames Mr Blair for his son's death.

In a personal message for the prime minister, he said: "I feel your misguided actions and those of your government have caused the unnecessary deaths of 51 young men. "Fathers, sons, husbands. I hope you can sleep at night Mr Blair. Because I can't, after the loss of our Tom."

Oct 6 ~ "Wishful thinking will not help us. But a hard-headed assessment of what has been achieved can provide the basis for working out what still can be done"

Gary Younge in the Guardian " The anti-war movement failed to stop the attack on Iraq, but it has already had a decisive impact on politics..
...In Britain we have a war-mongering, privatising, race-baiting administration that governs in the name of a party set up to represent the interests of working people. In America, the most rightwing Republican party since Nixon's time controls the presidency and both houses of Congress. Israel is intent on building its own version of the Berlin wall through Palestinian land. Fundamentalism, be it Christian, Islamic or Hindu, is on the rise, with all the intolerance and violence that goes with it.
At home, the largest demonstration, produced by one of the most broad-based political movements in British history, failed in its central objective. We did not stop the war. In short, there seems little to feel optimistic about.
And yet it is in these bleakest of moments that optimism on the left is most crucial. Extinguish the flame and there is no torch to pass on in more hopeful times. Wishful thinking will not help us. But a hard-headed assessment of what has been achieved can provide the basis for working out what still can be done. .." Read in full

Oct 6 ~ Blair's own Smoking Gun

"While Mr Cook's claims are not entirely new and hardly conclusive, they provide further weight to the impression Downing Street was far from straight with the public or Parliament in attempting to secure backing for military action." Daily Post

Oct 6 ~ After Cook's diary. "Mr Blair's Labour critics warned him that they would intensify the spotlight on the Prime Minister when the Commons returns next week"

Guardian "..former culture secretary, Chris Smith, said: "If he keeps insisting, without any sort of qualification, that he was right all along, that we did the right thing, that we haven't learned any lessons from what we now subsequently know, then, I fear, the electoral water is going to be very choppy for him."

Oct 6 ~ "The willingness of journalists to accepts the establishment's view of the events of, and after, 9/11 is truly staggering"

says Paul Donovan in yesterday's Observer. "...For those who inhabit a world outside of the Parliamentary lobby, the views expressed by Meacher (See here) as to the way the whole 9/11 scenario and what followed so easily fitted with the Bush administration's agenda is anything but conspiratorial. In his piece Meacher quoted from sources across the media including the Times, the Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, the BBC and Time magazine. His crime for establishment journalists is in putting together the various pieces of information to come up with a credible rationale for what has happened over the past two years. The fact that the account seems so incredible is reflective of how poorly others in the have done their jobs in terms of informing the public. ...
.... from the tragedy that was 9/11 Bush has been able to deliver for his backers in the arms and oil industries. The President has also been able to portray himself as a wartime leader. This is the real story that journalists should be probing at and uncovering, not decrying the likes of Meacher who has at least had the guts to stand up and say what many have suspected for some time...."

Oct 5 ~ "Tony Blair privately conceded two weeks before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein did not have any usable weapons of mass destruction, Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, reveals today."

Sunday Times "John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), also "assented" that Saddam had no such weapons, says Cook. His revelations, taken from a diary that he kept as a senior minister during the months leading up to war, are published today in The Sunday Times. They shatter the case for war put forward by the government that Iraq presented "a real and present danger" to Britain.....His disclosures are likely to lead to renewed calls for a judicial inquiry into the legitimacy of the war. ...He raises "the gravest of political questions. The rules of the Commons explicitly require ministers to correct the record as soon as they are aware that they may have misled parliament. If the government did come to know that the [United States] State Department did not trust the claims in the September dossier and that some of even their top experts did not believe them, should they not have told parliament before asking the Commons to vote for war on a false prospectus?" ...."

Oct 5 ~ "The case for going to war was a political case, not an intelligence case,"

Washington Post "CIA Director George J. Tenet is under fire as never before. With efforts unsuccessful so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, some conservative lawmakers and pundits are blaming the agency for inadequate intelligence on Saddam Hussein. Democrats are accusing Tenet of bending the intelligence to support President Bush's policy of preemption in Iraq. ...
..other national security officials say he has been dismayed at what he sees as exaggerations of Iraq's link to al Qaeda and its nuclear weapons program offered by Vice President Cheney's office. Tenet's regular access to the president remains, and he continues to "tell him what he thinks," one senior official said. ..
..Other intelligence experts said going to war is ultimately the president's call. "The case for going to war was a political case, not an intelligence case," said Winston Wiley, former chief of the CIA's counterterrorism center and deputy director of intelligence...
...The feeling inside the agency, summed up by one veteran officer, is that Tenet "became bulletproof [from being fired by the president] after taking the spear for the State of the Union speech this year, and he is not going anywhere until maybe after the election."

Oct 5 ~ "ricin plot" in January appeared to bolster the case for war against Iraq. ..Now the Times reports "The case appears to be crumbling"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-842694,00.html "...critics are now expected to seize on the admission over the alleged ricin plot as further evidence that the government was engaged in a "spin offensive" in the run-up to the war in Iraq. One source close to the case said: "The government said at the time that chemical weapons had been found in Britain for the first time. Defence lawyers have been told that they can no longer substantiate this statement. The case appears to be crumbling...."
We remember all too well the public fear created by such stories both here and in the US. Simon Jenkins wrote in January this year

Oct 5 ~ No uranium, no munitions, no missiles, no programmes

Independent "As the first progress report from the Iraq Survey Group is released, Cambridge WMD expert Dr Glen Rangwala finds that even the diluted claims made for Saddam Hussein's arsenal don't stand up"

Oct 5 ~ "It is not known if Mr Kay retains financial interests in SAIC."

Independent Survey Group head's link to arms industry

Oct 5 ~ The Bush administration and major US firms are facing fresh charges of "profiteering"

from the Iraq war after allegedly inflating the costs of key contracts. (Independent on Sunday)
"The accusations from Tom Daschle, the Democrat Senate leader, came after his staff uncovered evidence of the "gold plating" of cost estimates for dozens of contracts. The controversy has highlighted the White House's growing problems in persuading a deeply sceptical Congress to release an extra $87bn (£52bn) for Iraq and, in part, Afghanistan - in addition to the $79bn it approved in April.
Meanwhile, the US's main allies, including the EU, Japan and some Arab countries, are balking at President Bush's attempts to raise $35bn in financial support and are thought instead to be offering no more than $1bn...."

Oct 4 ~ A land ruled by chaos

Award-winning writer Suzanne Goldenberg returns to Iraq, from where she reported on Saddam's fall. But in place of the promised peace she finds a country where lawlessness, violence and fear have filled the void Guardian "...Benefits, when they did arrive - a partial restoration of electricity, and a gradual reduction in crime - were seen as miserly and overdue, a betrayal of the promises made by Britain and America to build a new Iraq, prosperous, modern, and free. Saddam's Republic of Fear, the mechanism of iron controls that held the state together, was gone, but its replacement is a violent chaos. "

Oct 4 ~ Michael Moore:"I have written a book that seeks not to defeat the Bush people next year, but to have them removed from Washington right now."

Click here "I know, I'm not asking for much. But I have spent the better part of the past year researching and writing this new book, and when you read it you'll see why the current criminal investigation of the White House for outing a CIA agent in revenge is, in my opinion, just the tip of the iceberg. I can only hope that my book will make a small contribution toward that day when we'll see one long perp walk of administration officials in handcuffs being led out of the White House and into a waiting paddy wagon. Like I said, I'm not asking for much. "Dude, Where's My Country?" is also my humble attempt to violate the Patriot Act on every single page of the book. And, I have learned that many want to get on John Ashcroft's evildoer list with me. There are already a record number of orders from bookstores across the country. The first printing alone is almost one million copies (my last book's first printing was 50,000). Chapters include "Oil's Well That Ends Well," "The United States of BOO!", "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-in-law," and more. (Click here to see the cover that will win me a free ticket to Gitmo)..."
(We see that the Guardian has this story today too, plus an extract from the book)

Oct 4 ~ Hans Blix warned the US-led experts hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yesterday to beware the dangers of "spin" when presenting their findings to their political masters anxious to justify the invasion of Iraq.

"We don't want another epidemic of spin," the former chief UN weapons inspector told The Independent, as President George Bush seized on the interim report to justify his decision to go to war." Independent

Oct 4 ~ 1,200 weapons inspectors spent 90 days in Iraq. The exercise cost $300m. And the number of weapons found? 0

Independent ".. blamed the slow progress on the way Iraq had arranged its WMD activities, the widespread destruction of materials and documents before the war, and looting of suspect sites afterwards. But the meagre results seem bound to reinforce contentions that the US and British governments, wilfully or by error, grossly exaggerated the scale and the imminence of any threat from Saddam..."

Oct 3 ~ In a stark rejection of American proposals, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has made clear that the United Nations cannot play a proper political role in Iraq under terms Washington wants

U.N. officials and diplomats say. Reuters
"While not refusing outright to participate in the political process, Annan told ambassadors at a Security Council lunch that the new U.S.-drafted resolution envisaged a role for the United Nations that could not be implemented. It was one of the few times during his five years as secretary-general Annan had opposed the United States so bluntly on a crucial issue. The United States had tacit support for the resolution from a majority of Security Council members, although many were sceptical. But Annan's comments, diplomats said, might make it impossible for the 15-member body to support the measure. ..."

Sept 30 ~ Yup, things are getting better and better in "New Iraq".

Robert Fisk Don't Mention The Oil. Or Ask About The Victims

Sept 30 ~" Now Mr Blair regularly peddles the line that the battle between Russia's drunken and rapacious soldiers and the brutal warlords of Chechnya must be "seen in the context of the fight against international terrorism".

Back in June he even tried to smarmy up to that grand old KGB spymaster, Vladimir Putin, by saying that some of the toughest fighters against US and UK forces in Iraq "were Chechen". This was a lie. No Chechen fighters have been found in Iraq. Indeed, Iraqis were stunned to hear that such exotic folk had turned up here - Chechens don't even look like Arabs and would not speak Arabic. But Mr Blair got away with it.
No, I don't think we're going to invade Syria. For starters, it hasn't got enough oil to make it worth invading. But we've been fed so much of this tosh about WMD that I don't think anyone - other than the Blairs and Bushes and their idiotic spooks - really believes it. As for the "intelligence community", maybe this is the moment to close it down." Robert Fisk Lies, Mischief And The Myth Of Western Intelligence Services

Sept 30 ~"I don't discount the possibility that the neo-conservatives in Washington are planning another intervention. I think next time they come knocking on our door looking for support, they should get a different answer."

Robin Cook, quoted in the Independent which also reports that "The Government's £3bn "war kitty" for Iraq is almost exhausted and the eventual cost to Britain of the conflict and its aftermath could double to £6bn, the equivalent of 2p on income tax. A study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates the continuing operation in Iraq is costing Britain £100m per month. It puts the bill for the three-week war at about £1.6bn and the pre-conflict costs at £700m - a figure confirmed by the MoD." Independent

Sept 29 ~ The White House denied on Monday that President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was behind a leak of secret information apparently aimed at discrediting a vocal critic of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Reuters "... The controversy centers on the disclosure that Valerie Plame, the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, was an undercover CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. Wilson believes his wife's cover was blown by administration officials looking to discredit him. ......Wilson has accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein as it made its case for an invasion of Iraq. He wrote in The New York Times in July that he went to Niger in February 2002 at the CIA's request to assess a report that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. The International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed the allegation as based on forged documents.
The Niger uranium charge found its way into Bush's State of the Union speech in January as part of the U.S. case against Saddam, and only after Wilson went public did the White House admit Bush should not have included it, blaming the CIA. The CIA recently notified the Justice Department by letter of a leak of classified information regarding Wilson's wife, which leaves it up to Justice whether to investigate. .......The White House, already struggling to deal with the chaotic situation in Iraq and defend an $87 billion post-war spending request, rebuffed Democratic calls that a special counsel be appointed to lead an investigation of the matter. ....
....Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democratic presidential hopeful, said an independent commission needed to look into the allegations. "This administration has played politics with national security for a long time, but this is going too far," Clark told Reuters."

Sept 29 ~ I'm proud of what we have done in Iraq (but comrades, you can't vote on it)

Independent "..Mr Blair refused to accept that intelligence about Iraq's weapons was wrong. He told his critics to "wait and see" what the Iraq Survey Group, which is hunting for weapons in Iraq, says in its interim report due later this week. The Prime Minister admitted he was concerned about security in Iraq but insisted that the situation on the ground was improving. "What we have delivered in that country is freedom and for all the difficulties, let's ... be proud of what we have done," he said. ..."

Sept 29 ~ "... foreign service officers have stood on principle and have quit, some of them before the war ever started,

...and they have issued eloquent statements as to how their conscience would not permit them to have to tell these lies to folks, to try to rally support for an unjust US policy.
There is Andrew Wilke in Australia, an incredible person whom Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity had to this country. We all chipped in and paid for his fare. He spoke in Congress at one of the congressional hearings. Andrew quit the Office of National Assessments in Australia, which is the CIA counterpart, eight days before the war, because he could no longer countenance his country going into a war on the basis of intelligence that he saw to be bogus. And he spoke out immediately, and over the last few weeks, although you won't see it in the US press, he and Prime Minister Howard in Australia have been having a personal argument in the press as to how the intelligence was over-egged as the British say, exaggerated, sexed-up, ...
.. if the mainstream press still has the guts to say 'hey we were taken in, and we don't like to be lied to and on behalf of the American people, we are going to tell the real story here.' And the story is that the ostensible justification for this war was bogus, contrived, it was a lie. ...."
From an interview "The Crazies Are Back": Bush Sr.'s CIA briefer discusses how Wolfowitz & allies falsely led the U.S. to war http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215 This piece also available in audio and video from www.DemocracyNow.org

Sept 28 ~ The UK is now the second biggest arms supplier in the world.

Sunday Herald "Britain under Tony Blair has overtaken the United States as the biggest supplier of arms to Third World countries, with total weapons sales to developing nations of £2 billion in 2002. The amount Britain earns from arms sales now almost matches the annual average of £3.3bn in UK aid to developing countries. In total, Britain earned £2.8bn from arms sales overseas last year. At times, British arms sales under Labour have been greater than under the last Conservative government. The UK is now the second biggest arms supplier in the world. .."

Sept 28 ~ "It shows how Blair has let himself be bamboozled by Bush."

Independent on Sunday Cook leads posse of authors ready to throw the book at Blair "... Peter Riddell, columnist for the Times, is regarded as one of the Government's more sympathetic observers, but his book Hug Them Close, an analysis of the "special" relationship between Washington and London, may not make comfortable reading in Downing Street. According to one source in the publishing world: "It shows how Blair has let himself be bamboozled by Bush."..."

Sept 28 ~ The conference committee is being accused of using the "old tactics of the left" to combine a resolution on Iraq with other issues to ensure an anodyne composite resolution.

Sunday Herald: Battered Blair blocks Labour damaging debate on Iraq "Tony Blair's conference fixers were embroiled in a late-night fight to prevent Labour's annual conference in Bournemouth holding an emergency vote on Iraq while a clutch of opinion polls show the party has slumped to its lowest rating since 1994. The eve-of-conference atmosphere is described by one member of the party's National Executive Council (NEC) as "disgusting and essentially horrible". The conference committee is being accused of using the "old tactics of the left" to combine a resolution on Iraq with other issues to ensure an anodyne composite resolution.

Sept 28 ~ It is vital that we call Tony Blair to account

The march contained many of the most vocal anti-war activists including George Galloway, the Labour MP suspended by the party for comparing Mr Blair and George Bush to wolves. He said: "It is vital that we call Tony Blair to account, because if a crime and a blunder on this scale goes unpunished, it will happen again and again." But the demonstration also had its share of new faces.." Blair must go, say anti-war marchers by Jonathan Thompson in the Independent on Sunday

Sept 27 ~ "It is often said that, but for the war, Saddam would still be in power.

But if his overthrow was the aim, why was this not baldly stated? Because, in Britain, it would be deemed illegal. That is why it is now doubly important that the attorney-general's legal advice be published. This WMD fiasco has brought into question the judgment, competence and candour of the intelligence services and, indeed, of Mr Blair and senior ministers. As a matter of fact, not opinion, Britain went to war on a false premise. It hardly needs to be said how very serious and very damaging a conclusion that is." Guardian leader yesterday.

Sept 27 ~ press reports on the London demonstration

Marchers demand end to Iraq occupation CBC news
London and World Protests Oppose Iraq Occupation Reuters

Sept 27 ~ "You occupy with a military force but you can't restore law and order with it."

Panorama: The Price of Victory will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday, 28 September, 2003 at 2215 BST. The UN's special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, voiced his hopes and fears for the country in his final television interview, before he was killed in a car bomb explosion last month.
He told BBC One's Panorama programme that he wanted the handover of power to the Iraqi people to take place as quickly as possible.
"This is why an occupation cannot last. Since this country is occupied, the occupation should be kept as short as possible, particularly when it comes to the security sector."
Vieira de Mello told Panorama that he felt that some soldiers were "unnecessarily rough", adding: "I have made that point, and again, often not respecting local sensitivities, of culture and religion. "That is unnecessary because I presume we can achieve the same purpose by displaying more respect for local traditions and local culture...Soldiers are bad policemen, they're not trained for that .."

Sept 27 ~ "We are looking forward to a very large and angry demonstration"

says Stop the War Coalition chairman Andrew Murray. Thousands of people are gathering in London for the fifth major demonstration this year. The demonstration will leave Hyde Park and march to Trafalgar Square for a rally to be addressed by Ken Loach, suspended Labour MP George Galloway, Ken Livingstone and other politicians and union leaders.

Sept 27 ~ "Where was the press after 9/11? Apparently too wrapped in its cultural-patriotic story-telling ...

...to find credible sources to challenge the Wolfowitz-Perle vision of a democratic domino theory in the Middle East. Thus, the administration was able to push a weak case for war based on fantastic assertions of an al-Qaeda-Iraq link, and the even stealthier innuendos that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks -- a connection that 71% of the public attributed to the administration as late as June, 2003"
W. Lance Bennett is Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and the author of News: The Politics of Illusion. His article, Operation Perfect Storm: The Press and the Iraq War is written in what we find an unfortunate style of English - but it nevertheless paints a depressing picture of the media in the US - and is ours (with some very honourable exceptions) so very much better? And where he asks "Where were the Democrats?" one is tempted here to ask "Where was our opposition?"
"... if a trail of smoking deception about the War somehow reaches the Oval Office, the press may well turn on the man they endowed with Texas Swagger, and send him into early retirement like they did his father. But this reversal of political fortune, if it occurs, will not likely be due to much dogged reporting on critical questions (for those questions have been there all along). It will be because the press has found a better story. "

Sept 26 ~ A double blow for Bush as UN pulls out staff

Telegraph "The United Nations is to reduce its staff in Iraq, it announced yesterday, citing safety fears after two recent attacks on its offices in Baghdad. The decision is a double blow to Washington, undercutting its claims that Iraq is stabilising, and reducing its hopes that greater involvement by the UN in Iraq could lead to other nations sending troops to share the security burden....a call-up of "weekend warriors" is seen as risking weakening domestic support for the American presence in Iraq as most are married with families and so are expected to be less tolerant of a prolonged tour of duty than regular soldiers. Meanwhile, Mr Bush's approval ratings dropped yesterday to the lowest since he took office as the apparent failure to find weapons of mass destruction added to the challenge facing his administration.... "

Sept 26 ~ Edward Said has died

Obituary in the Guardian "....Said recognised that Israel's exemption from the normal criteria by which nations are measured owed everything to the Holocaust. But while recognising its unique significance, he did not see why its legacy of trauma and horror should be exploited to deprive the Palestinians, a people who were "absolutely dissociable from what has been an entirely European complicity", of their rights. ..
...A Christian humanist with a healthy respect for Islam, he was a member of the academic elite; yet he inveighed against academic professionalism, venturing into territories well outside his area of speciality, insisting always that the true intellectual's role must be that of the amateur, because it is only the amateur who is moved neither by the rewards nor the requirements of a career, and who is therefore capable of a disinterested engagement with ideas and values. ... "

Sept 26 ~ Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers today warn Tony Blair he has become dangerously close to President George Bush and needs a more traditional Labour agenda.

Independent "...they have advised the Prime Minister his closeness to President Bush on foreign affairs may give the voters the idea he is pursuing a "right-wing Republican" agenda on domestic issues....

Sept 25 ~".. a cynical abuse of power which deserves the strongest possible condemnation" Gompertz

Reuters Campbell's diaries " indicate with clarity...that the secretary of state's denials of the government strategy, put to him in cross-examination, were false," he said. Gompertz later referred to "the hypocrisy of Mr Hoon's public stance". .... Gompertz said the family wanted the "duplicity of the government" to be exposed and he called a claim by Ministry of Defence officials that Kelly was given strong support "risible". "Never again should there be such feeble support for an employee at a time of crisis," he said. "No wonder David Kelly felt betrayed after giving his life to the service of his country. No wonder he was broken-hearted," Gompertz said.

Sept 25 ~ "Whatever the formal outcome of the Hutton inquiry...

...and the displacement activity of the government's row with the BBC over an early-morning radio broadcast, it has unquestionably confirmed that Alastair Campbell and other Downing Street officials did strain every nerve to create the false impression of a chemical and biological weapons threat from Iraq, a threat that it is increasingly obvious did not exist.
Even more damagingly, the inquiry has revealed Blair's reckless dismissal of the February warning by the joint intelligence committee that an attack on Iraq would increase the threat of terrorism.
Combined with the failure to find any weapons, the admission by the former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix that he now believes Iraq long ago destroyed them and the discrediting of a litany of propaganda ploys (links with al-Qaida, the forged Niger uranium documents, the 45-minute weapons launch claim), Hutton has helped to strip the last vestige of possible legal cover from the aggression and shift opinion against the war.
So has the chaos and resistance on the ground in Iraq, where guerrilla attacks on US soldiers are running at a dozen a day and US casualties are now over 300 dead and 1,500 wounded. Latest estimates of Iraqi civilian war deaths are close to 10,000..." Guardian

Sept 25 ~ The Growing Irrelevance of Tony Blair - His intermediation is no longer seen as useful in Washington

Adrian Hamilton in the Independent
"Not many people seem to have noticed, but the one person missing from the UN in New York this week is the head of the country which holds the presidency of the UN Security Council, Britain. Tony Blair has been busy on more pressing domestic matters, visiting hospitals. The international agenda was important, he told reporters on Tuesday, just as George Bush was giving his address to a stony-faced general assembly at the UN, "but it's also important to make sure we are dealing with the problems in our National Health Service." Fair enough, except that is far from the message Tony Blair was giving as he took the country to war earlier in the year or jetted off to address a joint session of Congress in Washington after it. But then a lot's happened since, including Lord Hutton, an occupation of Iraq that has gone sour and a US administration that has begun to lose its popularity in the States. ..... Blair's absence from New York reflects not just his difficulties at home over Iraq but also his growing irrelevance abroad. France, and Germany, have no need of an interlocutor in Washington. They may be demonised in America, but the Administration now needs them and they can manage their own talks with Bush directly. Equally Blair's intermediation is no longer seen as particularly useful in Washington, where the British Prime Minister is increasingly regarded as a lame duck in his own country. The latest Newsweek's cover picturing the British Prime Minister with the headline "The Twilight of Tony Blair" is a fair indication of how he is now perceived around the world. ....."

Sept 25 ~ General Wesley Clark -

Michael Moore's newsletter "...Clark told those gathered that certain people, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, called him immediately after the attacks on September 11th and asked him to go on TV to tell the country that Saddam Hussein was "involved" in the attacks. He asked them for proof, but they couldn't provide any. He refused their request.
Standing in that living room 12 nights ago, Clark continued to share more private conversations. In the months leading up the Iraq War, friends of his at the Pentagon -- high-ranking career military officers -- told him that the military brass did NOT want this war in Iraq, that it violated the Powell Doctrine of "start no war if you don't know what your exit strategy is." They KNEW we would be in this mess, and they asked the General, in his role now as a television commentator, to inform the American people of this folly. And, as best he could, that's what he did...."

Sept 25 ~ US inspectors fail to uncover evidence of Saddam's arsenal

Prime Minister dealt fresh blow as ISG fails to find weapons to support case for war Independent"A leak of a draft interim report by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which has been searching for WMD since the war, says no weapons have been found."
Is there anyone left in the UK surprised by this? The timing is rather awkward for Mr Blair as the Labour Party conference looms next week.

Sept 24/25 ~ "The final day is expected to be one of the most intense days of the six week inquiry, with uncomfortable accusations likely to fly from all quarters."

Guardian "Dr Kelly's family lawyer Jeremy Gompertz will take the stand first, followed by government QC Jonathan Sumption.
Over the past two weeks lawyers from all sides have subjected key witnesses including government communications chief Alastair Campbell and BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan to a fierce grilling about their role in the chain of events that ended with Dr Kelly's apparent suicide in July.
All tomorrow's speeches will be televised, making it the first time anyone other than Lord Hutton or the inquiry's senior counsel, James Dingemans QC, have been filmed at the inquiry...."

Sept 24/25 ~ "It would have been too much, perhaps, to have expected a mea culpa on the part of either Mr Campbell or Mr Hoon ..."

" But even so their answers marked the nadir of a political culture that makes every politician (and that includes Mr Campbell) into a grotesque version of the three monkeys, seeing nothing wrong, speaking nothing wrong and hearing nothing wrong."
From the Independent Editorial, September 23 quoted on the Guardian's round-up of Hutton Inquiry news reviews, 'Blair is in a terrible limbo'

Sept 24 ~ Gavyn Davies:" We were facing absolutely unprecedented pressure from the director of communications at Downing Street"

The chairman of the BBC, Gavyn Davies said today that he still stands by his memo to the BBC Governors in June, which said: "We should not buckle under pressure, whatever emerges about the rights or wrong about the 45 minute claim." He said to the government's QC: "I have to say, Mr Sumption, that I still agree with that paragraph. We were facing absolutely unprecedented pressure from the director of communications at Downing Street (Alastair Campbell). It was a legitimate public duty of the board to say that that pressure was intolerable." When he was asked whether the Governors should have been told who the source was, Mr Davies said that would have been "highly irregular. It was more important to say whether the source was credible and reliable, rather than focus on whether he was a member of the intelligence service."

Sept 24 ~"The fine art of hocus-pocus, turning lies into truth, goes back centuries but has now reached dazzling heights.

To turn repression into patriotism is just one recent example." An intriguing article entitled, "The Immaculate Dictatorship" on Znet "....More and more Americans have detected the odor of dictatorship. It is even possible to imagine a national nervous breakdown taking place, as people see how they have been fooled for so many years and become desperate or cynical--but cannot imagine a new, better kind of society. ..."

Sept 24 ~ Kelly got the message - in just 46 seconds

Ananova "Government weapons expert David Kelly was warned that his name had been confirmed to the press in a telephone call lasting just 46 seconds. Dr Kelly's line manager at the Ministry of Defence, Bryan Wells....... admitted that evidence he gave to the inquiry last month that Dr Kelly had been warned at his first interview with MoD officials that he was likely to be named at some stage was wrong..."

Sept 24 ~ Campbell's f*** letter tirade

Magnus Linklater at the Hutton Inquiry in yesterday's Times "Alastair Campbell took us into the heart of Downing Street yesterday -- and what a dark place it turned out to be. Shorn of courtroom niceties, and legal jousting, this was the Kelly affair as it was seen direct from the corridors of power: nasty, brutish and with no holds barred....
...Perhaps the most interesting revelation of Mr Campbell's "black" diaries is the unflattering light they shine on the cabal within No 10 and the Ministry of Defence, which was orchestrating the whole Kelly affair. In particular, Mr Hoon, who had spent much of yesterday morning presented a robust defence of his position, emerges as a prime mover, a man who is, as Mr Campbell points out, "almost as steamed up as I was". Far from wanting to distance himself from some of the more Machiavellian schemes to get Dr Kelly's name into the public domain, Mr Hoon is constantly pressing for immediate exposure...." Read in full

Sept 24 ~" I think you should redraft the para."

Independent "Intelligence that undermined the case for war against Saddam Hussein was dropped from the Iraq dossier at the last minute after the intervention of Tony Blair's chief of staff.
John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, admitted yesterday that he had made the crucial change on the "prompting" of Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's most senior aide. The intelligence - that Iraq was more likely to use chemical and biological weapons defensively than offensively - was cut the day before the dossier was sent to the printer, the Hutton inquiry heard. Mr Scarlett said he removed the passage after an e-mail from Mr Powell had called it as "a problem" that could be seized on by anti-war critics.
Mr Powell's message, which was sent after the deadline for final comments from intelligence chiefs on the dossier, objected to the claim that the Iraqi dictator would use his weapons only if invaded.
"I think the statement on pg 19 that 'Saddam is prepared to use chemical and biological weapons if he believes his regime is under threat' is a bit of a problem," the e-mail read.
It pointed out that the claim would, in effect, back up an article by Donald Macintyre, The Independent's chief political commentator, that Saddam was "bad", but not "mad" enough to launch a WMD strike against the West. The e-mail went on: "It backs up the Don McIntyre [sic] argument that there is no CBW [chemical and biological weapons] threat and we will only create one if we attack him. I think you should redraft the para."...."

Sept 23 ~ "Kofi Annan makes a pretty bold speech for a Secretary General, urging no more unilateral, pre-emptive strikes on anyone and calling for collective action

if action has to be taken." Jon Snow's Channel 4 update. "He maps out reforms that might strengthen the UN Security Council. I thought him close to tears in talking about those who died in the attack on the UN Mission in which so many of his colleagues died.
Bush calls for help:
George Bush made an unapologetic speech at the same venue. More of the same - "with us or against us" is the order of his day. You either "bring order or you bring chaos." He places himself on the side of those who bring order, but the international jury must be well out on that one...."

Sept 23 ~ Scarlett dropped a key sentence from the dossier days before publication after prompting from Downing Street

Reuters "....In an email to John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, (Jonathan) Powell noted that the sentence "backs up the argument that there is no CBW (chemical, biological weapons) threat and we will only create one if we attack him. I think you should redraft that para (paragraph)."

Sept 23 ~ the CIA created fake mullahs to counter anti-American sentiment

Reuters The CIA paid Mullahs and created fake Islamic religious leaders to preach a moderate message and counter anti-American sentiment in the Arab world after the September 11 attacks, a new book says. "We are taking over radio stations and supporting clerics," a CIA source was quoted as saying. "It's back to propaganda. We are creating moderate Muslims." In "The CIA at War", Ronald Kessler, an investigative reporter and author of several books about the CIA and the FBI, also detailed espionage activity in Iraq that supported the March invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein.

Sept 23 ~ Kofi Annan has warned Bush that his doctrine of preemptive military intervention posed a fundamental challenge to the United Nations

Reuters "... and could lead to a global free-for-all. In a speech to be delivered shortly before Bush addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Annan declared that Annan declared that the Iraq crisis had brought the United Nations to a "fork in the road" as decisive as 1945 when the world body was founded. Without mentioning the United States by name, Annan spoke as states in the 191-member world body were struggling to heal deep rifts caused by the war on Iraq...Annan questioned U.S. arguments that nations have the "right and obligation to use force preemptively" against unconventional weapons systems even while they were still being developed. "My concern is that, if it were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification," Annan warned in a text of his speech released in advance. .."
George Bush will stand before the United Nations in New York today and insist that the United States and Britain did the right thing in invading Iraq. He will call upon its members to help to stabilise the country with contributions of cash and soldiers.

Sept 23 ~ John Scarlett - was he being economical with the truth?

John Scarlett insisted he had command and control of the dossier. He will be cross examined today at the Hutton Inquiry on why it was that he agreed to give emphasis to parts of the dossier that would be of political expediency to the government. He is a former high-ranking MI6 official and one of the government's most senior intelligence advisors. He worked for MI6 for 30 years and ended up as one of its five directors.

Sept 23 ~ Campbell's diary entries undermine Geoff Hoon's evidence

"The private diaries of Alastair Campbell revealed yesterday how the he and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, were desperate to expose Dr David Kelly in its conflict with the BBC, and to try to shore up the crumbling credibility of the Iraq arms dossier. The bitterness of the confrontation was highlighted in one entry in which Mr Campbell spoke of how identifying Dr Kelly as the BBC source would "fuck" Andrew Gilligan, the journalist who made the claim that the dossier was "sexed up" by Downing Street...." Independent
"Geoff Hoon and other witnesses have repeatedly insisted that the Ministry of Defence's question-and-answer material was not part of a strategy to put Dr Kelly's name into the public domain. But the inquiry was shown an entry in Mr Campbell's diaries on 9 July, which stated his view that "the biggest thing needed was the source out". When asked if this meant identifying Dr Kelly, he replied: "That was my view." Mr Campbell also revealed he had been "aware" of the MoD's tactic of confirming the scientist's name to journalists through the Q&A approach. Either Pam Teare, the ministry's director of news, or Kate Wilson, her chief press officer, had told Mr Campbell of the plan at a daily No 10 meeting of press chiefs. "I was aware that that was the policy they had agreed," Mr Campbell said. Independent

Sept 23 ~ "...yesterday Jeremy Gompertz, the QC representing Dr Kelly's family, built a powerful case for a conspiracy

to bring the weapons expert's name into the public domain when he cross- examined Mr Hoon.
Firstly, there was the statement issued by the Ministry of Defence that an anonymous official had come forward to say he had met the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan. Mr Hoon admitted this was bound to excite the media into finding out the official's identity, as indeed it did.
Second, the MoD produced a "question and answer" briefing for its press officers, under which they would confirm Dr Kelly's name if it was put to them by a journalist.
Third, there were the additional clues to Dr Kelly's identity offered by Tom Kelly, the Prime Minister's official spokesman, who will be asked about his briefings when he is recalled to the inquiry today.
Denying a conspiracy, Mr Hoon said there was "not the slightest shred of evidence for that assertion".
But Mr Gompertz won the argument that it seemed more conspiracy than cock-up. Lord Hutton leant forward and, in one of his rare but telling interventions, repeated the "conspiracy" question.
Perhaps we should not read too much into Lord Hutton's words. But I would not be surprised if the senior law lord does not focus very hard on this point when he produces his inquiry report in November...." Independent

Say no to privatisation

Guardian "America's plan to privatise the Iraqi economy is a mistake that needs to be corrected before it is implemented. The huge sell-off programme, tax breaks and virtual elimination of tariffs on imports is designed to attract foreign investment..."

Sept 22 ~ "Hutton hasn't asked Blair to explain why he went to war.

The issues of the deaths of up to 10,000 people in Iraq has not arisen. The inquiry's virtue is that it will reinforce the public view that the government are a pack of liars, they are a pack of warmongers and they deserve only cynicism and they deserve direct action. I have never known in a reasonably long career in journalism for the public to be so aware, for their political consciousness to be so high."
"... In early 2001, visiting Cairo, Colin Powell said, "Saddam Hussein has not developed any capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project even conventional power against his neighbours. So in effect our policies have strengthened the security of the region."
Condoleezza Rice said something very similar at the time.
If you look through all the archive footage, as I've had the dubious pleasure of doing, it confirms that as far as their public position is concerned the Bush gang were in no doubt that Saddam Hussein was no threat. That's true of course. The UN inspectors and everyone else confirmed it. He was no threat and there was no issue of weapons of mass destruction..."
John Pilger - whose documentary can be seen tonight at 10.45pm, ITV.

Sept 22 ~ Hoon back in the witness box:

Channel 4 news update email. " The Hutton inquiry into the death of Britain's top expert on Iraq's weapons is under way again. The Defence Secretary, Mr Hoon, is back in the witness box. A more confident performance but an admission that he left a crucial detail out of his original testimony. He did indeed discuss the public naming of David Kelly when he had said earlier that he had not. Beginning to look to some as if the hapless Hoon was driven largely by Alastair Campbell, the communications chief in 10 Downing street.
Campbell himself is in the dock as I write, and another robust fist he is making. Nevertheless --perish the thought I should be Gilliganised for this -- the questioning is leading to the distinct impression that Alastair Campbell may indeed have 'sexed up' the dossier that preceded the case for war on Iraq. Worse, neither he nor Hoon made any effort to rebut press reports that suggested Saddam's missiles could hit Cyprus. No dossier, no agent, no one, ever suggested such a thing...."

Sept 22 ~"You know that the Americans made many promises before they came here.

They promised freedom and security and democracy. We were dreaming of these promises. Now we are just dreaming of blowing ourselves up among the Americans."
Robert Fisk's article in yesterday's Independent makes wholly distressing reading - and puts in perspective all the distractions of the Hutton Inquiry and the shrugging off of responsibility by its participants.

Sept 22 ~ Geoff Hoon and Alastair Campbell are to face tough cross-examination at the start of the final week of the Hutton inquiry.

Reuters at midday: "Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon says his department had made no errors in its handling of a scientist who killed himself after being thrust into the limelight as the source of a report alleging the government had hyped the threat from Iraq. In combative mood at an inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly, Hoon was adamant that the Ministry of Defence had protected the anonymity of the Iraq weapons expert and denied a suggestion that the government had agreed a strategy to leak Kelly's name. ..."

Sept 22 ~" Iraq was in effect put up for sale yesterday

when the American-appointed administration announced that industry, health services and water are to be auctioned off to foreign investors " Independent and The Guardian See also: Bush will ask for help to govern Iraq in UN address "One year after he told the United Nations he was prepared to go it alone in Iraq if necessary, President George Bush will return to the UN General Assembly tomorrow to appeal for international help to meet the mounting human and financial cost of maintaining a post-war occupation force"
"Mr Bush's cap-in-hand gesture seems unlikely to be accompanied by much humility, however, as the prevailing rhetoric in the United States continues to blast the French for obstructionism and suggests that there is nothing wrong with international co-operation being conducted entirely on American terms...."

Sept 21 ~ John Pilger's documentary, Breaking The Silence: Truth And Lies In The War On Terror, will be shown on ITV1 on Monday at 10.45pm.

"Their declarations of concern were cruel illusions that prepared the way for the conquest of both Afghanistan and Iraq. As the illegal Anglo-American occupation of Iraq now unravels, the forgotten disaster in Afghanistan, the first "victory" in the "war on terror", is perhaps an even more shocking testament to power. " Read John Pilger in yesterday's Guardian

Sept 21 ~ Fear as human shield faces jail

Faith Fippinger, a 62 year old retired teacher of the blind was one of the two hundred or so volunteers from more than 25 countries who chose to live in Baghdad during the US bombing. Read Kelley Benham's article "A soft target" "...America has changed since she learned the Girl Scout salute. She thinks the government is wrong to spend money on weapons instead of schools and health care. She thinks the war was built on hollow propaganda. And she thinks it doesn't make her a traitor to feel that way."
Now the BBC has taken up her story:
For travelling to Iraq Faith Fippinger will now probably lose her house, her pension and go to jail.

Sept 21 ~ The army is planning to end the use of depleted uranium tank rounds, the most controversial weapon in its armoury.

- "within six years"... Sunday Telegraph"The phasing out of depleted uranium rounds, which are used because of their armour piercing qualities, will please critics of the munition, including veterans of both the 1991 Gulf war and the Kosovo campaign. They have long argued that the shells can be directly linked to leukaemia, kidney damage and lung cancer and is also one of the causes of Gulf war syndrome.
...The Government continues to insist that the munition is safe......It is estimated that up to 2,000 tonnes of depleted uranium may have been used during the recent war in Iraq. "

Sept 21 ~ "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions."

said a senior weapons inspector, quoted in today's Toronto Star.
Many stories today are concerned with the virtual abandoning of the search for "WMD" and the vexed question of Niger. The CIA admitted in July that Bush's claim in his January State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought to import uranium from Niger was based on forged documents. It seems that intelligence officials in the US now fear "key portions of the pre-war intelligence may have been flawed."
As for Hans Blix...he says dismissively: "In the beginning, they talked about weapons concretely, and later on they talked about weapons programmes. Maybe they'll find some documents of interest."
Britain continues to imply that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger even though UN weapons inspectors have flatly contradicted claims by Tony Blair that they were given information from "a number of sources" about Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons.

Sept 21 ~ Tony Blair's efforts to seek agreement with France and Germany over Iraq suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday

when French President Jacques Chirac bluntly insisted that power should be handed back to Iraqis in a 'few months'. Observer

Sept 21 ~ "A culture of secrecy has descended upon the Anglo-American occupation authorities in Iraq. They will give no tally of the Iraqi civilian lives lost each day."

Read Robert Fisk in the Independent on Sunday today. "....Six days ago, American soldiers killed eight US-trained Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian hospital guard 14 miles away in Fallujah, claiming at first that they had "no information" on the shootings, and then apologizing - but without providing the slightest explanation for the killings. Several Iraqis in Khaldiya suggested that yesterday's ambush may have been a revenge attack for the slaughter of the policemen.
True or false, that is what the guerrillas may well claim. Do they, many Iraqis wonder, follow the political trials of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair? Was the devastating attack timed to coincide with Mr Bush's increasing embarrassment over the false claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction? Unlikely. But yesterday when the former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix condemned the "culture of spin, the culture of hyping" - in reference to the Anglo-American exaggeration of Saddam Hussein's threat to the world - some of his words may have found their mark in Iraq. "In the Middle Ages," Mr Blix said, "when people were convinced there were witches, they certainly found them."
Now Mr Bush is convinced he is fighting a vast international "terrorist" network and that its agents are closing in for a final battle in Iraq. And the Iraqi mujahedin are ready to turn the American President's fantasies into reality.
I couldn't help noticing the graffiti on a wall in Fallujah. It was written in Arabic, in a careful, precise hand, by someone who had taken his time to produce a real threat.
"He who gives the slightest help to the Americans," the graffiti read, "is a traitor and a collaborator." ...."

Sept 19 ~ " the problem is not really a compromise between Blair himself, and Schroeder and Chirac, it seems to me, but rather how to find a compromise with Washington,"

Radio Free Europe " Blair was always in favor of the biggest role for the United Nations and the Security Council, and from this point of view he was European. He wanted very much bigger involvement of Europe even at the moment when the United States was hostile to a bigger presence....Blair, as U.S. President George W. Bush's main ally in the war on Iraq, will of course not adopt a position openly at variance with Washington. The continuing closeness between the two coalition partners is underlined by remarks in Baghdad this week by Britain's special representative for Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, who pledged British support to the top U.S. official there, L. Paul Bremer.
... The German Foreign Ministry, which is hosting the talks in Berlin, says that despite the differences, Germany hopes an acceptable UN Security Council resolution can be ready when world leaders convene on 22 September for the opening of the UN General Assembly. Although the media focus of tomorrow's Berlin summit is Iraq, the trio is also expected to discuss EU issues, including the coming conference to finalize an EU constitution."

Sept 19 ~ "It was like seeing a man try to open an oyster with a butter knife"

Simon Hoggart on the Hutton Inquiry (Guardian) "There was a splendid face-off at the Hutton inquiry yesterday. Richard Hatfield, the personnel director at the Ministry of Defence (or anti-personnel director, as Dr David Kelly's family no doubt think of him) became the first witness to fight back against one of the majestic briefs who are now doing the cross-examinations. He faced Jeremy Gompertz, the QC who is appearing for the Kelly family. I don't think I have seen two people simultaneously patronise each other, so successfully too.
Mr Hatfield spoke to Mr Gompertz as if he were a clever but hopelessly inattentive schoolboy. Mr Gompertz spoke to Mr Hatfield as if he were a junior clerk who had split an important infinitive. .."

Sept 18 ~ Hatfield says Dr Kelly should have been suspended

''With hindsight I think I should have...initiated formal disciplinary proceedings,'' Hatfield said. ''I think I would probably have been forced to suspend Dr Kelly.'' ''The public identification followed from his own act of talking to (BBC reporter) Mr Gilligan,'' he said. ''I do not think we needed explicit consent to give his name out.''

Sept 18 ~ Bush conceded for the first time yesterday that the United States had no evidence indicating Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

New York Times"....As Mr. Bush has described the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror, he has drawn a loose connection, saying that after Sept. 11, 2001, the United States could no longer tolerate the kind of threat Mr. Hussein posed or risk that Mr. Hussein's weapons could reach the hands of terrorists."

Sept 18 ~ Hans Blix has attacked the "spin and hype" behind U.S. and British allegations of banned Iraqi weapons

Reuters "...Blix, who said this week he believed Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, told BBC radio that Washington and London "over-interpreted" intelligence about Baghdad's weapons programmes.
Comparing them to medieval witch-hunters, he said on Thursday the two countries convinced themselves on the basis of evidence which was later discredited, including forged documents about alleged attempts to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. (See warmwell page on Niger)
...... "What in a way stands accused is the culture of spin, the culture of hyping...Advertisers will advertise a refrigerator in terms that we don't quite believe in, but we expect governments to be more serious and have more credibility," he said. ......... "The patience that they require for themselves now was not anything that they wanted to give to us," said Blix, whose inspectors were forced to pull out of Iraq in March after just three and a half months' work.
..... Blix's comments have been echoed by his successor Demetrius Perricos, who told Reuters it was becoming "more and more difficult to believe stocks (of WMD) were there" in Iraq. "

Sept 18 ~ The Baghdad Blogger at the Hutton Inquiry

Guardian "So your government's marketing campaign turned out to be a fraud; I would have thought the "west" would be very sceptical of marketing campaigns in general, and government-funded ones especially, but that doesn't seem to be the case. What I really don't understand is the fixation on the 45 minutes. I mean, what does it matter whether it was 45 or a 100? The real question is whether Saddam had WMDs or not. Because that, in the end, was the main selling-point of the war. ...I also went to the House of Commons a couple of days ago to watch the debate on the role of the UN in Iraq, and I can tell you: that being an Iraqi and seeing that and the bit of the Hutton Inquiry yesterday, is quite strange. It is like listening to your parents discuss how they should bring you up; it is your life, but you are not making the decisions."

Sept 18 ~ Mr Gilligan stood by the thrust of his report and stressed that he had been proved right subsequently by much of the evidence since heard at the Hutton inquiry.

Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor of the Independent "Andrew Gilligan admitted yesterday making mistakes in his original broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on 29 May. But Mr Gilligan stood by the thrust of his report and stressed that he had been proved right subsequently by much of the evidence since heard at the Hutton inquiry. Here, The Independent judges Mr Gilligan's original claims against what we now know about the drafting of the Government's Iraq dossier in September last year, which was said to have been "sexed up".......
....the guts of the Gilligan claim, has been vindicated by the inquiry evidence. The inquiry heard this week that a memo was written on behalf of the DIS by Dr Brian Jones, head of its WMD section, objecting to the claim as it appeared in the dossier. Dr Jones and his chemical expert wrote further formal complaints. The DIS did feel the claim was unreliable because it came from a single source. But we have also heard that those intelligence officials were worried because the claim came second-hand, not from an Iraqi military officer. It also failed to make clear the intelligence related only to battlefield weapons and not missiles that could threaten the West. Even Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, agreed this week that the claim received "undue prominence" in the dossier and should have included original raw intelligence...... "

Sept 18 ~ Blix: Saddam destroyed his weapons of mass destruction a decade ago

David Usborne in New York and Nigel Morris in the Independent "....Mr Blix, speaking from his home in Sweden, said that he thought it unlikely that non-UN experts deployed by the coalition forces to search for weapons of mass destruction would find anything beyond "some documents of interest". He added: "The more time that has passed, the more I think it's unlikely that anything will be found." His comments were made as Tony Blair defended his decision to join US-led military action in Iraq and denied ignoring intelligence warnings that the war would increase the risk of terrorism in Britain...."

Sept 17 ~ "Gilligan admitted his original allegation that the Government knew its claims were "probably wrong" might give the impression that the Government knew its claims were probably wrong.

So he corrected his later broadcasts to the idea of the claims being "questionable". He also apologised for e-mailing a Lib Dem MP on the Foreign Affairs Committee and identifying Dr David Kelly as the source of Susan Watt's reports on Newsnight even though he didn't even know that to be true. But he insists - contrary to evidence given yesterday - that he did give due warning to the Ministry of Defence about the story. Richard Sambrook admitted there were several lessons to be learnt - including not doing such complicated and controversial stories as live reports, but scripting them instead. ..." Channel 4's news update email.

Sept 17 ~ Was Alastair Campbell ever properly vetted? If not "...he was seeing intelligence that he was not cleared to see, including the proceedings of the JIC, which is about as high level as you can possibly get.."

On Sept 2 we reported the Telegraph column "London Spy" that quotes Sir John Keegan, The Daily Telegraph's Defence Editor: ".......It is certainly rumoured that Campbell was never properly vetted. If so, he was seeing intelligence that he was not cleared to see, including the proceedings of the JIC, which is about as high level as you can possibly get."
On the 15th of September, Peter Ainsworth asked the Prime Minister a Parliamentary Question http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/cm030915/text/30915w17.htm#30915w17.html_wqn1 Earlier, in an answer to a PQ by Dr Julian Lewis, Geoff Hoon said: This statement, referred to by Mr Hoon, says, "Individuals employed on government work who have long term, frequent and uncontrolled access to TOP SECRET information or assets, will be submitted to the level of vetting clearance known as Developed Vetting (DV)."
If Mr Campbell had been subject to developed vetting, why should Mr Blair not have said so, rather than dodge the question as he did?

Sept 17 ~ Wesley Clark seeks Democratic nomination

Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian "Wesley Clark, the general who led Nato's bombing campaign in Kosovo, shook up the race for the White House yesterday when it was revealed that he would seek the Democratic party's nomination. ....
"All the other candidates want him as vice-president," said John Hlinko of DraftWesleyClark.com, one of two high-profile websites which have raised $1.3m (£800,000) in campaign pledges. "We say cut out the middleman and make him president."
...... Gen Clark, who now works as a private consultant, has attacked the Bush administration for its idea "that the continuing war against terrorism is best waged outside the structures of international institutions ... our success will depend on the willing cooperation and active participation of our allies". That could become a central campaigning message, aimed at quelling voters' fears of American overcommitment - unless, of course, Mr Bush succeeds in his current attempt to draw other countries into the Iraq operation. ..."

Sept 16 ~ the gloves are off

Reuters (external link) "Judge Lord Hutton's investigation into why government scientist David Kelly took his own life has up to now been precise but courteous in its questioning of witnesses. But now the gloves are off as lawyers for the government, BBC and Kelly family are let off the leash to cross-examine key figures who have been recalled to the inquiry. Tuesday's sharp interrogation of Martin Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence, will serve as a warning to embattled Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell, who will appear again next Monday. ....Glenmore Trenear-Harvey, an intelligence expert who watched the proceedings, told Sky Television: "Howard was a most discomfited little bunny." ....."

Sept 16 ~ "General Wesley Clark is going to run for President after all. A decent, clever military man with a compassionate side.

He may be electable here in Europe - he doesn't sound the right man there, but who knows, if the wheels come off the warrior President's wagon for his failures in war then a man who achieved peace in Kosovo and stood against the war in Iraq might just make some headway.." Channel 4's news update email.
General Wesley Clark certainly has the endorsement of Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine etc) who, somewhat aghast at himself for his support of a general, writes, "The other night, when you were on Bill Maher's show, he began by reading to you a quote from Howard Dean where he (Dean) tried to run away from the word "liberal." Maher said to you, so, General, do you want to run away from that word? Without missing a beat, you said "No!" and you reminded everyone that America was founded as a "liberal democracy." The audience went wild with applause." Read Michael Moore's open letter.

Sept 16 ~ Stage two: the 15 issues that Hutton must now consider

Paul Waugh in the Independent "James Dingemans QC, counsel for the Hutton inquiry, said yesterday that stage one of the hearings - set up to examine the circumstances leading to the death of David Kelly - had not fully revealed why certain events happened. In that case, Lord Hutton might consider in stage two some or all of 15 issues. The Independent provides answers to each in the light of what has been established so far...." Read in full

Sept 16 ~ Lawyers ready for their turn

Guardian page of witnesses , when they will appear and by whom to be examined - from today until closing statements by counsel on Thursday 25th September.
"Witnesses being recalled are shown in bold, along with the teams of lawyers who will be cross-examining them. Tuesday, 16 September
  • DC Coe, Thames Valley police
  • Nicholas Hunt, forensic pathologist
  • Martin Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence, MoD. Examined by own counsel and cross-examined by counsel for the Kelly family, the BBC, and the Hutton inquiry
  • Dr Shuttleworth,Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory
  • Kate Wilson, MoD "

    Sept 15 ~"Hutton has set out 15 key questions he wants to resolve

    and issued a cast list of people who he wants to be cross-examined. Headed by Alastair Campbell and the unfortunate Geoff Hoon, currently Britain's Defence Secretary. Whether Dearlove and his ilk like it or not, Hutton is blowing vast quantities of unwarranted secrecy from the secret services and their doings." (Channel 4 news update email)
    We note with interest that Lord Hutton is to recall John Scarlett, head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who was responsible for the September 2002 dossier. Reuters notes, "The inquiry has already seen that Campbell and other Blair aides bombarded Scarlett with suggestions to harden up the language in the dossier. Defence intelligence officials voiced serious doubts about its content.... "

    Sept 15 ~ ...panic at the heart of government last night, as senior aides sought to kill off damaging claims that the Foreign Secretary had developed cold feet on the eve of battle.

    The Scotsman "A source close to Mr Straw said his caution to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was delivered as a contingency plan and had not been an attempt to undermine Mr Blair's authority or his stark determination to deal with Saddam Hussein by force. The latest crisis concerning Iraq hit the Prime Minister on the eve of the Hutton Inquiry's resumption in London today, amid speculation that the Foreign Secretary will now also be called to give evidence...."

    Sept 15 ~ Did we thus go to war knowing that the chemical and biological weapons capabilities had been rendered useless?

    An e-mailer has alerted us to the recent interview with Professor Hennessy, Atlee Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary College, University of London, relating to Iraq's capabilities regarding WMD.
    Prof. Hennessy stated that, during the whole Iraq crisis, fundamental questions relating to the pre-war operations of Special Forces in Iraq have not been asked e.g. what missiles (al Husseini), if any, did they find, was there any evidence of biological/chemical warheads, were these missiles destroyed/incapacitated?
    This leaves open some vitally important questions:
  • was Iraq effectively rid of any chemical and biological threat prior to the war?
  • If this was the case, who in Government knew of this, and would Dr Kelly have been aware of this, either through his work for government, or through the Iraqi contacts he is known to have had?
  • Did this knowledge contribute to his great unease?
  • Did we thus go to war knowing that the chemical and biological weapons capabilities had been rendered useless?

    Sept 15 ~ "the whole process of reason, other reason, yet other reason, humanitarian, morality, regime change, terrorism, finally imminent WMD attack... was merely covering fire."

    John Pilger ".... On 17 September 2001, six days after the attacks in America, Bush signed a document, marked Top Secret, in which he directed the Pentagon to begin planning "military options" for an invasion of Iraq. In July last year, Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, told another Bush official: "That decision has been made. Don't waste your breath" (Washington Post, 12 January 2003; New Yorker, 31 March 2003). On 2 July last, Air Marshal Sir John Walker, the former chief of defence intelligence and deputy chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, wrote a confidential memo to MPs to alert them that the "commitment to war" was made a year ago. "Thereafter," he wrote, "the whole process of reason, other reason, yet other reason, humanitarian, morality, regime change, terrorism, finally imminent WMD attack... was merely covering fire."
    The unfettered disclosure of this would present an uncontrollable crisis to the clique that runs Britain: the secret service, the civil service, Downing Street, the favoured City and the courted media. Few spooks and mandarins have much time for the strange, Messianic Blair, but they will strive to protect him in order to protect themselves and to ensure that their version of Lord Curzon's "great game" (ie, imperialism), continues unopposed...."

    Sept 15 ~ According to a recent study, up to 10,000 civilians were killed.

    ".....Quite low at 10,000. And multiply that many times when the figure includes the killing of mostly teenage conscripts who, as a Marine colonel said, "sure as hell didn't know what hit them". Keep multiplying when the wounded are added: such as 1,000 children maimed, according to Unicef, by the delayed blast of cluster bomblets. What does it take for journalists with a public voice and responsibility to acknowledge the truth of such a crime? Are those who stand in front of cameras in Downing Street and on the White House lawn, incessantly obfuscating the obvious (a technique they call objectivity), that conditioned? The resistance to the illegal Anglo-American occupation of Iraq is now propagated as part of Bush's "war on terror". The deaths of Americans, Britons and UN people are news; Iraqis flit across the screen: otherwise, they do not exist...." In his latest New Statesman column, John Pilger describes viewing videotape of the attack on Iraq that was not shown in the West and is horrific evidence of a great crime. : Pilger :11 Sep 2003

    Sept 14 ~ Mr Kampfner's book also alleges that Mr Blair had agreed to go to war as early as April 2002, when he had a summit with Mr Bush in Texas.

    Sunday Telegraph "And it claims that Mr Blair himself had doubts about the intelligence over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which formed the basis of his justification for war." (See below. John Kamfner's book "Blair's Wars" is published tomorrow click link )

    Sept 14 ~ Tony Blair was last night facing a deepening crisis following the disclosure of the contents of the letter sent to him by the Foreign Secretary.

    Scotland on Sunday ".. Straw is said to have written a confidential "personal minute" to Blair saying the UK should offer the Americans "political and moral support" in their campaign against Saddam Hussein, but not military backing.
    Straw is said to have argued that the United Nations' refusal to back the invasion would make it damaging for Britain to take part. The Foreign Secretary reportedly urged Blair to tell President George Bush that British troops would help clear up the mess and keep the peace once the war was over, but would play no part in Saddam's overthrow. But the shocked Prime Minister rejected Straw's plea point-blank, telling him there was no going back and making him promise to keep quiet, according to the book by political journalist John Kampfner, entitled Blair's War. ........If true, the allegations in Kampfner's book would suggest that doubts about the wisdom of committing troops to action in Iraq reached to the very innermost circles around Blair. Straw is one of Blair's most loyal Cabinet allies and was one of the staunchest supporters of the war in public, regularly appearing before the cameras to argue that it was right. ..." (about Kampfner's book "Blair's Wars" click link )

    Sept 14 ~ "Britain and America have decided to delay indefinitely the publication of a full report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist."

    Sunday Times (external link) ".. It had been expected that a progress report would be published tomorrow but MPs on Westminster's security and intelligence committee have been told that even this has been delayed and no new date set. .... David Kay, the survey group's leader, to George Tenet, head of the CIA, had been delayed and may not necessarily even be published. ..... But last week British officials said they believed Kay had been "kite-flying" and that no hard evidence had been uncovered. The hunt for weapons is seen in London and Washington as a vital step in convincing an increasingly sceptical public that the war was justified...."

    Sept 12 ~ Hutton inquiry summons Greg Dyke - other witnesses to be announced on Monday

    LONDON (Reuters) " - The inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly has said it is summoning BBC Director General Greg Dyke and Ministry of Defence officials for cross-examination on Monday.
    Judge Lord Hutton will also quiz Air Marshal Joe French, Richard Scott of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and former deputy chief of Defence Intelligence Tony Cragg. It did not list other witnesses who will be summoned later in the week, but said details would be announced on Monday. Cragg and French are both likely to be asked about how concerns among some intelligence analysts over Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier on Iraqi weapons were dealt with by their superiors.

    Sept 12 ~ Blair's war: PM ignored intelligence advice on Iraq

    Paul Waugh and Kim Sengupta in the Independent
    "Another of Tony Blair's main justifications for war on Iraq was blown apart yesterday by the disclosure that intelligence chiefs had warned that deposing Saddam Hussein would increase the risk of terror attacks on Britain.
    The Prime Minister told Parliament and the public earlier this year that the West had to act against Baghdad to prevent chemical and biological weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists.
    But exactly two years after al-Qa'ida's 11 September attack, a committee of MPs revealed that the Mr Blair had been told that the threat from Osama bin Laden "would be heightened by military action against Iraq". The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), chaired by the Labour MP Ann Taylor, also criticised the Government's dossier on the Iraqi threat, concluding that key claims should have been omitted or heavily qualified...."

    Sept 11 ~ The intelligence was not 'sexed up' the MPs say, and they then proceed to detail how almost every part of it was either by 'tightening' or omission, 'sexed up'

    Channel 4 news update on the ISC report:

    Sept 11 ~ There is a dark cabal around Blair

    Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian's security affairs editor: "..........What has already emerged - but been largely ignored - from the Hutton inquiry is the existence of a dark, almost Jacobean, cabal at the core of the Blair administration.
    It is a group of powerful, unelected people few would have heard of were it not for the evidence given to Hutton:.... .... Scarlett let the cat out of the bag over perhaps the most contentious claim - the assertion, made most emphatically in Blair's foreword, that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. That claim, Scarlett conceded, referred to short-range, battlefield weapons systems, not missiles. Thus they posed no threat to western interests, including British bases in Cyprus, as the government had strongly implied.
    ...... MI6 allowed Scarlett to include that "intelligence" despite opposition in an intelligence community concerned - as much now as it was before the war - about how its work was being abused.
    This is the most damaging episode for MI6 since the Falklands. But then it was about complacency. Now its integrity is in question. As long as Scarlett remains in his post, that damage will not be repaired. " Read in full

    Sept 11 ~ Spy chiefs warned war would raise terror threat

    Reuters: "Spy chiefs warned Prime Minister Tony Blair just weeks before the invasion of Iraq that war would increase the risk of militants acquiring weapons of mass destruction, an intelligence committee report says. It said the government's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) judged in February there was no intelligence that Iraq had provided chemical or biological weapons material to the militant al Qaeda network. But it added that "any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology or agents finding their way in to the hands of terrorists," parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee said. It said the JIC believed that al Qaeda and associated groups represented "by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq". ...."

    Sept 7-13 ~ Blair has leapt to Hoon's defence in the Commons, praising the splendid war he won over Iraq

    Pressure on Geoff Hoon to resign is growing we hear ....but what about Al Kennedy's view?
    Reuters " London's Evening Standard said on Wednesday parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) will accuse Hoon of falsely denying that intelligence analysts expressed unease over the pre-war dossier on Iraqi banned weapons. Political observers have already singled out Hoon as the most senior of the likely victims ..." However, comment in the Guardian today by Al Kennedy takes a more robust view: "....our central problem - the one involving Mr Blair and all that blood. Obviously, we shouldn't take the phrase "blood on his hands" terribly literally, because that wouldn't be fair - Blair's only our prime minister, sitting at the centre of a complex and sophisticated network of advisers and in possession of global influence and serious investment capital. You wouldn't want to go holding him responsible for things....." Read the article and rejoice that someone is saying this.
    On the same lines is Channel 4's update from Jon Snow, "....the Commons Committee that vets intelligence matters has reportedly found the same Mr Hoon guilty of "misleading" and "unhelpful" responses to their questioning. The report is a leak ahead of publication tomorrow. Mr Blair's spinmeister Alastair Campbell is apparently cleared by the Committee. There is a whiff of a suspicion that those anxious to see him cleared leaked the report and dumped on poor old Hoon into the bargain. Anyway, Blair has leapt to Hoon's defence in the Commons, praising the splendid war he won over Iraq."

    Sept 7-13 ~ a majority of Americans had no problem accepting two fallacious contentions put forward by the Bush administration: that Iraq had a hand in 11 September, and that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qa'ida

    article by Andrew Gumbel in Tuesday's Independent ".... Many lefty anti-war protesters saw this as evidence of a sinister manipulation by the White House, a glaring instance of the Big Lie theory of propaganda: that if governments - aided and abetted by a pliant, uncritical media - say something often enough and loud enough, people will believe it.
    But I heard an even more pessimistic explanation from Hussein Ibish of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee. Americans, he said, have been so ground down by decades of negative imagery from films and television depicting Middle Easterners as religious extremists and terrorists that they are simply unable to make distinctions. In their eyes, Saddam Hussein is Osama bin Laden. All Palestinians are suicide bombers. The demonization was the same when the Vietnamese were tarred as "gooks" a generation ago; in America, there is nothing difficult about peddling stereotypical distortions of the enemy of the moment. ..... the purpose of education is betrayed because children are simply denied access to reality. And the students don't buy it; they are simply bored to tears. ...."

    Sept 7 - 13 ~ "....Sept. 11, 2003, will arrive with no credible evidence for the alleged link between Saddam and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden"

    There's Good Reason to Fear US (external link) Noam Chomsky, Toronto Star, September 8, 2003
    ".... From early September, 2002, the Bush administration issued grim warnings about the danger that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States, with broad hints that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The propaganda assault helped enable the administration to gain some support from a frightened population for the planned invasion of a country known to be virtually defenseless-- and a valuable prize, at the heart of the world's major energy system.
    Last May, after the putative end of the war in Iraq, President Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared that he had won a "victory in the war on terror (by having) removed an ally of Al Qaeda.-- But Sept. 11, 2003, will arrive with no credible evidence for the alleged link between Saddam and his bitter enemy Osama bin Laden. And the only known link between the victory and terror is that the invasion of Iraq seems to have increased Al Qaeda recruitment and the threat of terror. ..."

    Sept 7 -13 ~ Letters to the Guardian about Michael Meacher's comments

    See http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1037514,00.html ".... I was walking through the sea of candles and tributes that had transformed Union Square into an oasis of calm and human dignity. I remember reading a neatly penned card: "We know your agenda, Bush. Don't think you can hide behind this". As events unfolded over subsequent months, I keenly followed the news and was intrigued to learn about the existence and activities of the neo-conservatives in Washington.
    No one with an open mind should be outraged or surprised by Michael Meacher's comments. I am amazed that more have not considered these ideas as a feasible and logical explanation for "the global war on terrorism" and the coincident air of paranoia and insecurity that hangs over the US and UK at present.
    Dr Tobias Zundel
    London"
    And an important letter on Tuesday: "...The tragedy of the twin towers will be rightly recalled on Thursday. I doubt if the media will mention September 11 1906, when Mahatma Gandhi initiated non-violent, passive resistance as a means of social reform. The sufferings of the US were followed by calls for revenge and a hatred which contributed to the many deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. The message of Gandhi was about forgiveness, self-sacrifice and peace. 1906 has more to teach us than 2001.
    Bob Holman
    Easterhouse, Glasgow "

    Sept 7-13 ~ The fate of the UN resolution, "depends partly on the Europeans, but also on the neo-conservatives in America.."

    "..occupying important posts in the Pentagon and the White House, says Georges LeGuelte, head of research at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris. "So long as they defend the idea that the US is all-powerful and can impose its will by all means, including military, so long as they are not ready to give up the idea that Iraq is their terrain, we will get nowhere," he argues..." Christian Science Monitor

    Sept 7- 13 ~ Day by day, the noose tightens round No 10

    The Observer article by Henry Porter : "Henry Porter, bestselling author of espionage novels, examines the role of intelligence chief John Scarlett and shows how the Hutton inquiry is uncovering a dangerous mix of spies and secrets....
    ...as each day goes by without serious evidence of WMD being found in Iraq, the authorship of the dossier, its contributors, editors and promoters come into focus. Did the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), the body that makes intelligence assessments for the Government, own the document, or was it ultimately the product of the policy-makers and staff at Number 10?"

    Sept 7 - 13 ~ "We have, perhaps, a chance to mend fences and garner more support from the United Nations if the administration can swallow its pride.."

    says Senator Byrd ".. and come up with a new resolution that cedes a meaningful role in the reconstruction of Iraq to the international community. Perhaps we also have a chance to attract serious monetary contributions from the international community, but I doubt that we will begin to approach the level of support that we received from other nations during the first Gulf War. Nevertheless, we must keep trying, and returning to the United Nations is an important, if long overdue, first step. The American taxpayer should not have to shoulder the entire burden of restoring order and rebuilding Iraq..."

    Sept 7 - 13 ~ "it's worth noting who is in charge of reconstructing Iraq's agriculture industry.."

    " It's not USAID, and it's not the Department of Defense, or the US Treasury, or any of the other usual suspects. It is, in fact, the USDA. The USDA's strategic plan for FY 2002-2007 lists as its top strategic goal the expansion of international markets for American agricultural producers....
    ...goal of opening and "democratizing" Iraq's agricultural market takes on a more sinister aspect, what with the potential for the entire sector in the country to get undermined entirely by foreign competition. The choice of Dan Amstutz as the head of Iraq's agricultural rebuilding efforts simply underscores the fairly transparent agenda of the USDA.
    An article based on a Reuters report quotes Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, describing Amstutz as "singularly ill-equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a developing country," and that "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission..." " interesting article at Iraq Democracy Watch

    Sept 7-13 ~ Thanks to Hutton we now know that John Scarlett never believed this claim applied to real weapons of mass destruction, but to battlefield shells and "small-calibre weaponry''.

    wrote Robin Cook last week. "That was not the impression created by the dossier, which was crafted by people who knew only too well that Parliament would not vote for war because Saddam had small-calibre weapons ready for use in 45 minutes.
    Even ministers have given up pretending that they now expect to find actual weapons. Instead they have spent the past two months lowering expectations by encouraging the public to settle for evidence of programmes of weapons of mass destruction as proof that the dossier was right all along. Yet Hutton has now blocked even this bolthole.
    Of all the embarrassing evidence released by the Hutton inquiry, I found most damning the discovery that until a week before publication the title of the dossier was Iraq's Programmes of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The decision to drop "Programmes'' from the title was deliberately calculated to encourage the belief that Iraq already had weapons and the threat therefore was urgent. Ministers cannot now ask Parliament to accept a justification for war based on evidence of programmes, when they themselves have been caught out rejecting that as the basis on which they asked Parliament to vote for war...."

    Sept 7 ~ "beneath the smiling demeanor, a ruthlessness that is accompanied by a lack of respect for proper procedure, and a willingness to be "economical with the actuality..." Clare Short

    CNN today quotes the YouGov poll, taken the day after the adjournment of Lord Hutton's inquiry, which were the first to show that more voters are now against Blair than for him. Under the headline Poll: Blair should quit over Kelly, CNN looks at the mounting pressure, the inconsistencies in evidence and Clare Short's latest comments.

    Sept 7 ~ Britain and US will back down over WMDs

    Andy McSmith, Raymond Whitaker and Geoffrey Lean in today's Independent on Sunday

    Sept 7 ~ This call for help is about re-election, not Iraq

    Anne Applebaum, a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post, in today's Sunday Telegraph(external link):

    Sept 7 ~ "Let the fireworks now begin, as they say."

    The Sunday Herald Two articles in the independent Sunday Herald newspaper. The Hutton Inquiry has proved the government's case for war was exaggerated. What will it take to get Tony Blair to finally tell the truth? and
    The Awkward Questions (about the chances of recall o the Hutton Inquiryfor Geoff Hoon, Alastair Campbell, Andrew Gilligan and John Scarlett and the questions that need to be asked now)

    Sept 7 ~ Even in Bush's Bible belt, the Iraq doubts are rising

    John Humphrys in today's Sunday Times. "..... Every conversation I had about Iraq or terrorism was instigated by me. Only once was Blair's name volunteered and then it was with a puzzled question. This being a respectable newspaper I shall not go into details, except to say that the words Bush, arse and lick appeared in the same sentence. This would not have surprised me in the cities of the East Coast or California. New York liberals have never liked Bush or his war on terror. But I was in the Deep South, as deep as you can get: southern Alabama. The county where I spent most of my time is the heart of the Bible belt...."

    Sept 6 ~ Kelly family wants Hutton to recall Blair over role in naming scientist

    Independent. "The family of Dr David Kelly wants the PM to be recalled for cross-examination at the next phase of Lord Hutton's inquiry.
    In a request likely to be granted, the Kellys plan to ask for TB to be questioned agin over his role in the "naming strategy" for the the weapons scientist..........
    ...On an official flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong on 22 July, the PM "categorically" denied he had "uauthorised the leaking of the name of Dr Kelly". But at the inquiry, Mr Blair was forcd to admit his central role in the process tht led to Dr Kelly's name being confirmed to the media. He held four meetings over two days in his Downing Street study at which the "naming strategy" was agreed. The PM might also be asked about his previous denial of reports that intelligence staff were worried abou the "45-minute" claim. He told the Commons in June: "The allegation that the 45-minute claim provoked disquiet among the intelligence community is...completely and totally untrue."..."

    Sept 6 ~ This war on terrorism is bogus

    Michael Meacher speaks out in today's Guardian.
    "....there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. ....... Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."
    Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden....... None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism. ....The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action...." (See extract from Time magazine)

    Sept 6 ~ Don't Say We Were Not Warned About This Chaos

    By Robert Fisk "How arrogant was the path to war. As President Bush now desperately tries to cajole the old UN donkey to rescue him from Iraq - he who warned us that the UN was in danger of turning into a League of Nations "talking shop" if it declined him legitimacy for his invasion - we are supposed to believe that no one in Washington could have guessed the future. Messrs Bush and Blair fantasised their way to war with all those mythical weapons of mass destruction and "imminent threats" from Iraq - whether of the 45-minute variety or not - and of the post-war "liberation", "democracy" and map-changing they were going to bestow upon the region. But the record shows just how many warnings the Bush administration received from sane and decent men in the days before we plunged into this terrible adventure...." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4614.htm

    Sept 5 ~ Hoon looks set to be recalled to Hutton Inquiry:

    Another fascinating (if slightly irritatingly worded) Channel 4 news update last night:

    Sept 5 ~"Lord Hutton has done more in six weeks to advance the cause of freedom of information than this Labour government has done in six years."

    Robin Cook in the Independent yesterday. " In the process he has demolished the case which the Government made for war. Some commentators have deplored the restriction of Hutton's remit to the death of Dr Kelly, but I welcome the consequence that the rest of us are free to draw our own conclusions from the other evidence he has unearthed. Number 10 cannot tell Parliament next week to sit quietly and wait on the findings of the inquiry when we all know that it has ordered Lord Hutton not to come to any findings on the case for war. But the Hutton inquiry has given Parliament plenty of leads to pursue. Why did the Prime Minister try to persuade MPs that Saddam was "a current and serious threat'' when we now know that Tony Blair could not convince his own chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, that Saddam was an imminent threat. Even Alastair Campbell, Tony's alter ego, appears to have had his doubts. In his diary, the month the dossier is published, he asks, "Why was this such an important issue to the British government now? Why Iraq? Why only Iraq?"...."

    Sept 4 ~ Mr Blair is expected to be questioned about yesterday's revelation

    that intelligence analysts expressed resentment at "political interference" in their work by "spin merchants" (see extracts from yesterday's Hutton Inquiry, below) "....Mr Blair may also be asked about reports which have said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told him to send more troops to Iraq or risk "strategic failure" of the coalition's efforts to keep the peace. Mr Straw is said to have spelt out to the Prime Minister his concerns about the "deteriorating" situation in Iraq. The warning was revealed in notes drawn up for a meeting between the two men which were leaked to a broadsheet. In the notes marked "confidential", Mr Straw suggested sending an extra 5,000 UK troops to Iraq to increase security amid the growing threat from terrorist bombings and attacks on coalition troops, reports have said. Mr Straw urged "visible improvements" by the beginning of the Muslim festival of Ramadan on October 27. The Foreign Secretary said that Iraqis' expectations for reconstruction are not being met. "Electricity generation still around 25% below war levels, and transmission undermined by looting and sabotage," Mr Straw reportedly said. Mr Straw's warning follows ongoing attacks on British and US interests in the post-war country as well as the the devastating car bombing of the UN's headquarters in Baghdad and Najaf mosque attack which killed scores of people last week...." (ITV news)

    Sept 4 ~ Q. You make the comment about the involvement of the spin merchants of this administration. Who were you referring to?

    From the transcript
    "Mr A", the chemical warfare expert at yesterday afternoon's evidence at the Hutton Inquiry, gave this reply : " Well, it is really a general comment from the working level within the DIS about perceived interference and really that --
    Q. Sorry to interrupt. What was the perception?
    A. The perception was that the dossier had been round the houses several times in order to try to find a form of words which would strengthen certain political objectives...

    Sept 4 ~ Dr Brian Francis Gill Jones: "...I think "weapons of mass destruction" has become a convenient catch-all which, in my opinion, can at times confuse discussion of the subject..

    Q. And what was your CW expert's particular concern?
    A. Well, at its simplest he was concerned that some of the statements that were in the dossier did not accurately represent his assessment of the intelligence available to him....
    Q... concerns had not been accepted?
    A. Some had, but there were significant ones that had not been accepted.
    Q. And how did your CW expert feel about that?
    A. He was very concerned....they were really about a tendency in certain areas, from his point of view, to shall we say over-egg certain assessments in relation particularly to the production of CW agents and weapons since 1998.
    .....Were you aware of any concerns about the 45 minutes?
    A. Yes, I had some concerns about the 45 minute point myself; yes.
    (more detail)

    Sept 3 ~ "..The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past it into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq. "

    Opinion column in the New York Times by Maureen Dowd: " When your aim is remaking the Middle East, you don't want to get stuck making it up as you go along. Even officials with a combined century of international experience can behave with jejeunosity -- if they start believing their own spin. The group that started out presuming it could shape the world is now getting shoved by the world. Our unseen tormentors are the ones who seem canny and organized, not us. As they move from killing individual U.S. soldiers and Iraqis to sabotaging power plants, burning oil pipelines, blowing up mosques, demolishing the U.N. headquarters and now hitting the Baghdad police headquarters, our enemies seem better prepared and more committed to creating chaos in Iraq -- and Afghanistan -- than we are to creating order. They've also proved more adept at putting together an effective coalition than the Bush team: a terrifying blend of terrorists from other countries, Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam fighters, radical Shiites and Saddam remnants, all pouring into Iraq and united by their hatred of America. If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim......" Read in full

    Sept 3 ~ "Government accused of 'over-egging' dossier" reports Channel 4 News

    Channel 4 news email update (written in the style it seems to favour at present): "A huge day at Hutton -- forget all the BBC stuff -- today we got to the people who really matter - the MOD scientific/intelligence people. And boy -- are they unhappy at the Government exaggerating the "case" for invading Iraq. Extraordinary stuff. Accusing the Government of 'over egging' the dossier; shutting out the boffins who knew the reality of the 'threat and not the spin; slagging off Alastair Campbell in emails -- directly accusing Tony Blair of having no real evidence of any threat although he talked about the deployment of WMD in 45 minutes.
    Indeed they say there was no evidence of Iraq even having - definitely - chemical or biological weapons. Even if they did have them -- it's not really accurate to describe them as weapons of mass destruction.
    All in all, devastating witness evidence against the Government's spinning of the case for war. Curiously, all this just on the day when the great overhaul of the No 10 publicity department is announced in detail. Dave Hill will not be allowed to order around senior civil servants like Alistair Campbell did. Will it make politicians tell the truth? Let's wait..."

    Sept 3 ~ "Army chiefs were forced to issue a humiliating apology after SAS soldiers beat 11 innocent Iraqi civilians in a bungled raid."

    Mirror co.uk "The troopers - who waded in with stun grenades, kicking and hitting with boots and rifle butts - wrongly thought they were netting suspects involved in the execution in June of six Royal Military policemen. They could be thrown out of the army...."

    Sept 3 ~ Anger, fear and grief as Shi ite cleric buried

    HUNDREDS of thousands of mourners converged on the Iraqi holy city of Najaf yesterday for the funeral of a popular Shiite cleric and to hear his brother issue an angry demand that the United States armed forces leave the country. The Scotsman

    Sept 2 ~ How Tony Blair climbed the foothills of the big lie

    The Hutton inquiry is a brilliant distraction from the real issues of war says Hugo Young in today's Guardian "...in reality, Hutton is little more than a brilliant, beguiling distraction from the questions on which the future of this government ought to rest.
    "....I can think of several issues that damage Blair's reputation as badly as, or worse than, the little matter of who advanced the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a weapon of mass destruction in 45 minutes. Every inch of coverage of Hutton serves the purpose of obscuring them.
    ....We are told to be patient. It's said evidence of WMD will be discovered, though I notice that the timescale now inches forward into years, not months. But the more time passes, the more incredible looks the official assertion that the threat to Britain from Iraq was "imminent". We must take care not to let amnesia, a useful supporter of big lies, enter the frame.
    Second, we must not allow the rationale for war to change. How would this have sounded last March? That statement represents roughly the true assessment most politicians and intelligence people were making before war began. If Blair had put it in those terms to parliament and the country, does anyone think he would have secured national assent for what he wanted to do? ...."

    Sept 2 ~ Brutal Diplomacy "The wealthiest 5% of the world's people now earn 114 times as much as the poorest 5%..."

    George Monbiot in today's Guardian "The Worst of Times"
    In the first of a three-part series on trade, George Monbiot argues that the rich world's brutal diplomacy is worsening the plight of poor nations "The 500 richest people on earth now own $1.54 trillion - more than the entire gross domestic product of Africa, or the combined annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity.
    ....on farm subsidies. In 1994, the rich countries agreed that they would phase them out, if the poor countries promised to open their markets to western corporations. The poor nations kept their promise, the rich countries broke theirs. The new round of talks is supposed to lead to the "phasing out [of] all forms of export subsidies", and a negotiating text to this effect was meant to have been produced by March 31. Again, the promise has been broken, and again the poor have been told that only if they grant the rich world's corporations even greater access to their economies, farm subsidies will come to an end. But the powerful nations, while refusing to address the demands of the poor, press their own claims with brutal diplomacy. ..
    ...But eventually, as in France, there must be a revolution. It is likely to happen only when there is a globalised crisis of survival: a worldwide shortage of grain, for example (like the deficit which followed the bad harvest of 1788) or - and this is currently more likely and more imminent - a shortage of fossil fuel...."

    Sept 2 ~ Union leaders have agreed a motion condemning the Iraq war.

    Independent "Unions are expected overwhelmingly to endorse the resolution at the TUC conference next week, which is likely to be a dress rehearsal for Labour's conference a fortnight later. The union statement also expresses opposition to any future attempt by America to "target independent states such as Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba for regime change"...
    ....this year, party activists are expected to agree a composite anti-war statement that is likely to attract a massive majority of Labour delegates.
    The TUC's general council opened up another front against the Prime Minister yesterday, reaffirming its opposition to increasing private-sector involvement in the delivery of public services. A statement passed by the general council attacked the Government's commitment to private finance initiatives, public-private partnerships and foundation hospitals.... "

    Sept 2 ~" It was the most personal and emotive testimony heard so far, and, for Downing Street, devastating."

    Independent ".. At the time of Dr Kelly's death, Tony Blair is said to have acknowledged privately that if the scientist's family blamed his Government over what happened, his position would be called into question. That damning accusation was made six weeks later. Mrs Kelly told the inquiry that when her husband had come forward to tell his superiors at the MoD that he had met the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan, he was assured that his identification would not be made public. Extraordinarily, while the honours section in Downing Street was considering whether Dr Kelly should be offered a knighthood, Mr Blair's official spokesman was claiming that the MoD rated his contribution as no more than that of a "middle-ranking technical expert". Mrs Kelly said: "He was deeply, deeply hurt. He was being treated like a fly, that's the phrase he used."....

    Sept 2 ~ "David Kelly's widow raised serious questions yesterday about the truthfulness of crucial evidence given to the Hutton inquiry by the prime minister's closest advisers.."

    ".. over the Whitehall strategy which led to his exposure in the media. In devastating testimony to the inquiry, Janice Kelly said her husband had felt "totally let down and betrayed" when he learned that a press statement had been issued which quickly brought about his unmasking. Mrs Kelly said her husband had been given assurances by his bosses that a press statement would not be released. Dr Kelly did not know until after the event, she said.
    Her evidence contradicts testimony to the inquiry by Tony Blair and his top officials.
    Asked by Lord Hutton from whom Dr Kelly had received the assurances, she replied: "From his line manager, from all their seniors and from the people he had been interviewed by." The inquiry has heard that the decision to issue a press statement - describing an unnamed individual who had volunteered the fact he had met the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan - was taken at a meeting in Mr Blair's study on the morning of July 8. Among those present were the prime minister, Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's communications chief, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and John Scarlett, chairman of the joint intelligence committee. ..." Guardian

    Sept 2 ~ "If we are ever going to try something like this again," he wrote with great prescience, "we must be absolutely sure that (the) people and army want what we want."

    Another Fine Mess
    It began as a quiet plot to protect UK and US interests in Iran. Fifty years on, the fall-out of Operation Boot can still be felt through the Middle East. Robert Fisk, who knew the British classical scholar who helped mastermind it, reflects on a saga of unintended consequences and unlearnt lessons. More ambitious ideological projects, vast armies - and bigger egos - are involved in regime change today. Maybe that's why they fail so quickly and, in the case of Iraq, so bloodily. The coup against Mossadeq was the first such operation carried out by the Americans in the Cold War - and the last by the British. At least we never claimed that Mossadeq had weapons of mass destruction. But the final word must go to Kermit Roosevelt. "If we are ever going to try something like this again," he wrote with great prescience, "we must be absolutely sure that (the) people and army want what we want."

    Sept 1 ~ Mrs Janice Kelly has told the Hutton inquiry that her late husband had felt totally let down and betrayed.

    When asked for more detail by Lord Hutton, she added: "I believed he meant the Ministry of Defence because they were the ones who had effectively let his name be known in the public domain." She said Dr Kelly had received assurances from his line manager and senior ministry officials that his name would not be made public. When it was made public and he knew he was to be made to appear before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee - and that this would even be televised- "I'd never known him to be as unhappy as he was then"

    Aug 31 2003 ~ Protesters hold Iraq war 'inquiry'

    BBC news ".....High profile anti-war campaigners such as Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP and John Pilger said Tony Blair's government had "manipulated opinion" to gain support for the attack on Iraq. ..... Hans von Sponeck.... resigned, after 36 years of UN service, in protest at alleged British and American violations of Security Council resolutions that made it impossible to properly distribute humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. He called on the international community to come to the aid of the Iraqis, but to refuse to support the "US-UK occupation". ..."

    Aug 31 ~"... we are realizing that the 9/11 treason and murder probably will remain unsolved for all time, just like the Kennedy assassination."

    John Kaminski "When we discovered that the highest officials in the United States not only knew 9/11 was going to happen (and that is a certainty with thousands of footnotes), but profited mightily from that knowledge, this revelation could have offered a tremendous window into the political behavior of the American nation. ......A legitimate probe of 9/11 - not like the sham that was just perpetrated that didn't address any of the really major questions -would have shed light on the corporate powers that control the media and the White House, and maybe - just maybe - would have taken that large step to show the deluded American populace that we are neither a democracy nor a republic, that we are a corporate-controlled police state whose leaders are savaging their own citizens simply to make more money for themselves and the rich friends who put them in office in the first place. ...."

    Aug 31 ~ "a civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies"

    Robert Fisk in the Independent "......what is happening, in the Sunni heartland around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion or even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is the start of a civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies and implore the world to share the future of the country with them."

    Aug 31 ~ "the first shot in an Iraqi civil war that Middle East experts warned would ensue if Saddam were removed without careful planning."

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4574.htm "The bombing of one of Islam's holiest shrines not only killed an important Shi'a leader, it also signals the first shot in an Iraqi civil war that Middle East experts warned would ensue if Saddam were removed without careful planning. The assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim in Najaf on August 28 is the opening volley in the coming Iraqi Civil War. The United States will reap the whirlwind. One of the most consistent and ominous prewar warnings to the Bush administration by Middle East experts was that removal of Saddam Hussein without the most careful political and social engineering would result in the breaking apart of Iraq into warring factions that would battle each other for decades. The hawks in the White House would not listen. They were so wedded to the fantasy scenario that the removal of Saddam in an act of "creative destruction" would result in the automatic emergence of democracy. They brushed aside all warnings...."

    Aug 30 ~ Heseltine calls for judicial inquiry into the reasons for war

    The Guardian reports today: "... Lord Heseltine, the former deputy prime minister, yesterday led a group of Tory and Labour politicians in calling for a full-scale judicial inquiry into why Britain went to war against Iraq. In a rare intervention after Tony Blair's appearance before the Hutton inquiry, Lord Heseltine said the narrow focus of the Hutton inquiry showed the need for a full judicial inquiry into the "flimsy" evidence used as a basis for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. ..."

    Aug 30 ~".. Campbell was there from the very beginning, an ally and co-conspirator

    in those long-ago days when Blair was a young shadow energy secretary in a hurry. Once officially installed, he gave advice on everything: from when to smile on TV, to what to say and how to say it. Campbell was not just a co-founder of New Labour; he was a co-creator of Tony Blair. "
    Read Jonathan Freedland on Blair all alone at the end of an era
    "They complemented each other perfectly. Campbell gave Blair, nicknamed "Emily" at school and "Bambi" in opposition, some macho cover. Campbell is not just the tabloid bruiser of modern myth. He is one of those men whose bullying charisma makes other men crave his approval. You would see it whenever he was surrounded by a pack of hacks, which was often. He had locker room magnetism, which he deployed to great effect. Blair has none of it. ....."
    See also the Scotsman "...A tall man, Campbell's 6ft 2in frame would appear even bigger as he towered over former colleagues to scream obscenities at them and threaten to leave them out in the cold politically. His temper was legendary. Michael White, the Guardian's mischievous political editor, had his glasses broken by a punch from Campbell who objected to Mr White's continual joking about Robert Maxwell, Mr Campbell's former boss. But his job was not just to bully journalists. He gradually took over more and more of the presentational side of the Blair government, controlling every release from his 8:15am meetings with the heads of Whitehall press departments. ..."

    Aug 30 ~" He had more power, I would guess, than anybody else in Downing Street.

    But it's a vacuum that has to be filled, and I hope that it is going to be filled in a way that the government gets out of this spiral of distrust it's in." Martin Bell. See today's Guardian on the departure of Alasdair Campbell. "...the Tory MP Ann Widdecombe called for a "new honesty" in politics. "I hope there will be a new breed of political adviser. In fact, I'd like a new breed of politician. I'd like Tony Blair to follow him. This government has turned spin into an art form, and a very unpleasant and dark art it has proved to be."
    Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's Downing Street press secretary, told the ITV News Channel: "Blair is responsible ultimately for the loss of trust, because he allowed the methods Campbell employed to operate.
    "I think we have seen it from the beginning, this absolute obsession with the media. We have seen it repeatedly, the way in which these methods have been employed - it is the ultimate in cynicism."
    The former Labour MP Tony Benn said Mr Campbell's role was really that of a deputy prime minister and that this was unacceptable. ..."

    Aug 30 ~ "What is emerging is a pattern of protecting Blair...."

    John Pilger last week. The Scott inquiry produced a mountainous report and opaque conclusions. No politician was prosecuted; a few reputations were ruffled. The English establishment is expert at this. Tim Laxton, an auditor who examined the books of two British arms companies, believes that if there had been a full and open inquiry, "hundreds" would have faced criminal prosecution. "They would include," he said, "top political figures, very senior civil servants throughout Whitehall: the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Trade and Industry... the top echelon of government."
    The Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of Dr David Kelly's death has its memorable moments, too. The warning of Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, not to "claim that we have evidence that [Saddam] is a threat", points directly to Blair's lying. However, that was exceptional. What is emerging is a pattern of protecting Blair, who is being subtly spun as a restraining influence, a peacemaker, even a guardian of Dr Kelly. ..David Kelly's tragedy deserved public investigation; but so does the epic, unneccessary. tragedy of the thousands of Iraqis whose lives Blair helped to end or scar. ."

    Aug 29 ~ "He must be the only person in Britain who thinks that the September dossier wasn't sexed up."

    From the icWales website "...TORY leader Iain Duncan Smith last night accused Prime Minister Tony Blair and Downing Street of presiding over "underhand" and "shameful" treatment of weapons expert David Kelly - both before and after his apparent suicide. Mr Duncan Smith, commenting after Mr Blair gave his evidence to the Hutton Inquiry, said, "The Prime Minister knew about, and was satisfied with, the underhand treatment of Dr Kelly and the systematic attempt to destroy his reputation both before and after his death. "This is the most shameful act of this sorry saga....
    .....Nothing was done by the book - it broke all the rules and it was done to protect the reputation of Downing Street and the Prime Minister." Tory MP Richard Ottaway, a member of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said after Mr Blair's evidence, "He must be the only person in Britain who thinks that the September dossier wasn't sexed up."

    Aug 29 ~ The essential message: I was responsible for everything and guilty of nothing.

    Channel 4's News update last night: "... The PM told Lord Hutton he was ultimately responsible for the strategy of confirming David Kelly's name to any journalist who asked, but didn't seem to recall being very involved in many of the decisions along the way. His argument ran that because David Kelly's name would have come out anyway they had to have a way of avoiding the finger of blame pointing at innocent parties within defence and intelligence communities. They had no idea David Kelly was anything but a robust individual well capable of dealing with the media.
    On the dossier Blair said he was well aware that Alastair Campbell had discussions with the Joint Intelligence Committee Chairman John Scarlett about the presentational wording, but that the intelligence itself came from the JIC and was owned by John Scarlett. He said he had to be able to say "hand on heart" that the dossier came from the JIC and not Downing Street.
    If the BBC's allegations had been true, he said, he would have had to have resigned. He even telephoned the BBC Chairman to suggest a compromise whereby the BBC said they defended their right to report the story but accepted it was wrong. The BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies rejected the suggestion saying Newsnight's Susan Watts had largely corroborated the Today programme's Andrew Gilligan - but the PM hadn't watched Newsnight so gave up on the attempt to settle the dispute.
    So not much in terms of revelations - but a clear statement that if Lord Hutton finds fault with the government then the buck stops with the PM...."

    Aug 28 ~ Tony Blair said today that he took responsibility for weapons expert David Kelly being named

    But, as the Independent said yesterday, "....on a flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Mr Blair uttered the words he may live to regret to a scrum of journalists.
    Asked whether he had authorised the leaking of Dr Kelly's name, he replied: "Emphatically not. I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly."
    The long trail of e-mails, memos and letters emerging at the inquiry now suggest otherwise. One telling note by Sir David Omand, the Government's Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, is headed: "Meetings in the Prime Minister's study, 7 and 8 July 2003." These took the fateful decisions that Dr Kelly would appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee and to issue a statement that an official had come forward to say he had met the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan. Downing Street's strategy of saying that the Ministry of Defence was the "lead department" has been undermined by the weight of evidence submitted to the inquiry. It suffered further damage yesterday, when Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, proved reluctant to take on the role of fall guy and sacrificial lamb. He added to the trail of clues leading back to Number 10. "

    Aug 28 ~ "Mr Hoon... failed to follow the script.."

    says today's Scotsman "..after days of speculation that he had acquiesced to demands from Downing Street that he deliver himself up as a "sacrificial lamb". Instead of falling on his sword, he turned it on Downing Street as he fought for his political life. Mr Hoon made it clear he does not intend to carry the can for the row over BBC claims the government had exaggerated the threat from Iraq and the subsequent chain of events that led to Dr Kelly's apparently committing suicide. His game plan will leave Mr Blair with the prospect of facing awkward questions when he gives evidence today, undoing much of the rescue plan so carefully put together by Sir John Scarlett, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, earlier in the week..."

    Aug 28 ~ "Unless you can justify the war with Iraq I say that you should take responsibility for your wrongful and ill-judged decision and stand down "

    On the day that our Prime Minister told the Hutton Inquiry that if the BBC report accusing his government of "sexing up" intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons capability had been true, he would have resigned, we read of yet another Kelly. This time it is the youngest British serviceman to die in the war with Iraq, Andrew Kelly, who was 18. He was serving with the Third Battalion Parachute Regiment near Basra when he died in a shooting accident. The article on the Cornwall BBC page tells us that his father is still waiting for a reply from Mr Blair in answer to the letter he wrote him on July 20th: - "Surely, to declare war on another nation should only be a last resort when all efforts to avoid war have been exhausted. This was clearly not the case with you. Your decision to go to war, unnecessarily so, put my son in the firing line unnecessarily. Therefore I hold you personally responsible for my son's death, as well as the deaths of the other servicemen killed as a result of your decision to go to war with Iraq. Unless you can justify the war with Iraq I say that you should take responsibility for your wrongful and ill-judged decision and stand down from your position as prime minister of our great country to enable a person with integrity and our country's interests at heart to lead with sincerity and dignity. . .."

    Aug 28 ~ " Lord Hutton will also want to know about Blair's role in Kelly's "outing."...."

    Christian Science Monitor "....."He will be asked how much pressure to reveal Kelly came from his office or from the prime minister himself," says Iain McLean, professor in politics at Oxford University. "A more important question would be, 'Who hardened up the dossier, when, and why?' The inquiry has found out a surprising amount about that." Indeed, although not strictly tasked with examining whether the dossier was hyped up, the three-week-old hearings have teased out some fascinating snippets. A snowstorm of e-mails from intelligence officers and Blair's aides betray an effort to get hard and fast WMD intelligence for inclusion in the fall dossier. A picture is emerging of government officials appealing to the intelligence community for any scraps that could be pulled together to make the dossier more convincing. "The prime minister's office has been doing what prime minister's offices always do, and that is spin," says Professor McLean. "Mr. Blair may be able to make a clean breast of 'outing' Dr. Kelly by saying it was important for national security, and that he didn't know he would go on to kill himself," but it will be harder for him to wiggle free from the charges that his aides "hardened up the dossier," he says...."

    Aug 27 ~ "one day, when the costs of occupation become unsustainable, it (the US) will be forced to retreat in a manner and at a time not of its choosing.."

    "..Iraq may swallow George Bush and his imperial project, just as the Afghan morass digested the Soviet empire. It is time his opponents stopped seeking to rescue him from his self-destruction. " Read George Monbiot on Beware the bluewash "The UN must not let itself be used as a dustbin for failed American adventures "

    Aug 27 ~ "Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has, basically, been explaining how far out of the loop he was when it came to naming Dr David Kelly."

    (Channel 4 news update) " Not quite 'oh it was all something Downing Street cooked up,' but not far off. Grim testimony this afternoon though about the toll it was all taking on Dr Kelly's wife and himself - he told a close colleague who was shepherding him through the Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, that it was the most pressurised experience of his life - worse than his PHD interview, hitherto his most stressful period. Link to Hutton Inquiry Home Page. Main points of Mr Hoon's evidence on Sky News website

    Aug 26 ~"... over the weekend, as 900 new documents were posted on the Hutton inquiry website, fresh pieces of the jigsaw puzzle suggested that not only Mr Campbell but also Mr Blair requested substantive changes to the now infamous dossier."

    A central issue for Mr Blair is why he insisted on stating that Saddam Hussein posed a "current and serious threat" just weeks after Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, said the dossier should not be used to allege that there was an "imminent threat". Critics will also claim that the sheer volume and noise of e-mail traffic within No 10 in the run-up to the publication of the dossier shows that Mr Campbell and his army of Downing Street officials overstepped the mark from "presentation" to interference...." Independent

    Aug 26 ~ "John Scarlett, who will appear before the inquiry today, insisted that changes be made

    to the Prime Minister's foreword to the dossier to make clear that the JIC was not responsible for everything that was in it. The move, which appears to have come in response to requests from other members of the JIC, casts further doubt on the testimony of Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's director of communications. Mr Campbell told both the inquiry and the Commons foreign affairs select committee that the dossier was entirely the work of the JIC...." Telegraph today

    Aug 26 ~ "To continue to talk of an "underlying improvement" in the situation is to whistle in a very murky dark..."

    " ... We and many others urged the British government to cash in its credit with the Bush administration and press hard for a greatly enhanced UN role in Iraq. If ever secretary-general Kofi Annan needed unequivocal support, it is now. Instead, our foreign secretary, Jack Straw, still appears determined not to ruffle a single buttoned-down collar in Washington. To continue to talk of an "underlying improvement" in the situation is to whistle in a very murky dark. As the Washington Post argued editorially on Sunday: "It seems at least equally plausible that time is working against the coalition." The paper deplored the failure of secretary of state Colin Powell to share responsibility in Iraq with the UN. As a report issued yesterday by the International Crisis Group spells out, that is the only way forward with a chance." Guardian Leader

    Aug 26 ~ "When [Mr Blair] wrote the foreword suggesting the threat was current and serious, was he aware of Jonathan Powell's reservations the information did not justify the conclusion? "

    Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday Mr Blair and Mr Hoon had serious questions to answer.... "How much did they know about the strategy to put Dr Kelly's name before the public?"

    Aug 25 ~ "With each passing day of the Hutton inquiry, the case for war, already questionable, has looked flimsier.

    Mr Blair's standing as a leader to trust could hardly be lower. On Thursday he will face perhaps his biggest challenge: to convince an increasingly sceptical public that there was no cover-up to protect a woefully exaggerated case for war." Herald Editorial, Glasgow, August 25

    Aug 25 ~ 400 Iraqi women kidnapped raped or sold in Iraq since fall of Saddam Hussein

    Arabic Daily News "Yanar Muhammad.. explained that professional gangs are selling, raping or kidnapping women in order to get financial ransom. She stressed that women in the streets are exposed to insulting sexual harassment and threats of kidnapping "and that a state of real fear exists among women...many of them avoid getting out of their houses." The women's organization accused the American forces of turning a blind eye to what is taking place and stressed that, uselessly, it talked to the transitional governing council and the American administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer and asked for enhancing security and imposing penalty of sexual harassment."

    Aug 25 ~ "..there's nothing new in smearing the dead, is there?"

    Thank God for Robert Fisk. Read this important article.
    "....Rachel Corrie who stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer that was about to demolish a Palestinian home and who was killed - wearing a clearly marked jacket and shouting through a loudspeaker - when the Israeli driver crushed her beneath his bulldozer and then drove backwards over her body again. All this was filmed. As a Jewish writer, Naomi Klein, bravely pointed out in The Guardian, "Unlike Lynch, Corrie did not go to Gaza to engage in combat; she went to try to thwart it." Yet not a single American government official has praised Rachel Corrie's courage or condemned her killing by the Israeli driver. President Bush has been gutlessly silent. For their part, the Israeli government tried to smear the activist group to which Rachel Corrie belonged by claiming that two Britons later involved in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv had attended a memorial service to her - as if the organisers could have known of the wicked deed the two men had not yet committed.
    But there's nothing new in smearing the dead, is there? Back in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, I remember well how the British Army's press office at Lisburn in Co Antrim would respond to the mysterious death of British ex-soldiers or Englishmen who were inconveniently killed by British soldiers. The dead were always described as - and here, reader, draw in your breath - "Walter Mitty characters". I used to get sick of reading this smear in Belfast Telegraph headlines. Anonymous army officers would pass it along to the press. The guy was a Walter Mitty, a fantasist whose claims could not be believed. This was said of at least three dead men in Northern Ireland.
    And I have a suspicion, of course, that this is where Tony Blair's adviser Tom Kelly first heard of Walter Mitty and the ease with which authority could libel the dead. ..."

    Aug 25 ~ Scarlett urged coaching for the weapons expert ahead of his appearance before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

    The Observer today reported that the chief of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, who supervised the dossier - he is described as its "owner'' - asked Mr Blair to change his foreword, apparently in a bid to tone it down. The newspaper said the foreword was originally drafted by Mr Campbell but it was known what the changes were. "Scarlett, who is also giving evidence to Hutton this week, will be questioned about it,'' it said.
    Utv's website tells us ; "Dr David Kelly's widow officially protested to Tony Blair about spin doctors smearing him, secret documents reveal."

    Aug 25 ~".. those nations that do not choose to take Washington's whip are going to need to coordinate their positions and keep in touch..."

    wrote Matthew Parris in the Times last April, " The balance of power needs rebalancing. For want of a better term, I shall call the grouping of which Russia, Germany and France now form a putative core, the Rest of the World. " The whole article can be read again here. "...Finding himself halfway across a swaying transatlantic bridge, our Prime Minister scuttled in panic to the American side - an act which we are now being urged to see as brave. But it happened more through miscalculation than valour. Tony Blair thought the bridge could be repaired and that he might be the bridgemaker. Now he is marooned on the other side and will have to take his chances there. Fellow Conservatives who, super-sensitive to the most trivial European encroachment on British sovereignty, used to bawl themselves hoarse in defence of the fat content of the British sausage, have over the past month witnessed the most spectacular ceding of our independence in foreign and military policy since Suez - and all without a peep..."

    Aug 24 ~ " A Baha'i would take his or her own life only if he or she had been overwhelmed by pressure of some kind."

    The Scotsman article The leader of Dr Kelly's religion, Barney Leith, explains its attraction ".....Baha'is do not condemn those who commit suicide. We believe God to be merciful to those who have suffered great stress in life. A Baha'i would take his or her own life only if he or she had been overwhelmed by pressure of some kind. Baha'is pray for the progress of the souls of those who die, whatever the mode of their death. The fundamental message is summarised in a letter which Abdu'l-Baha sent to Mrs Jayne Whyte - then his host in Edinburgh in 1913 and now regarded as the first Scottish Baha'i. "... the world of man should become the world of God - and unity, fellowship and love be won for the whole human race." .... I don't know enough about Dr Kelly to say how he came to identify himself as a Baha'i - which he did in the United States in 1999. ...."

    Aug 24 ~ Campbell did redraft Iraq dossier, says the Sunday Herald

    Sunday Herald today: "Hutton releases 6000 pages of documents which show Blair's spin chief actively involved in rewriting case for war....In a speed-read of the documents published yesterday, the Sunday Herald has also found:
  • Downing Street was sent into panic over what Dr David Kelly might tell the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) when he appeared before MPs to answer questions about his con versations with BBC reporters.
  • Kelly was "briefed" and "prepared" by government officials and told not to give the FAC his views on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme.
  • A summary of Kelly's evidence, given in private to the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee, showed that Kelly believed there was only a "30% probability" that the Iraqis had usable weapons.
    Kelly said the claim in the Prime Minister's September dossier that Saddam could deploy WMD in just 45 minutes was "unwise" and was included for "impact". The documents also reveal Campbell urged Tony Blair to be "more combative" in dealing with criticism of the plans for war.
    In a lengthy briefing note from Campbell to Blair telling the Prime Minister how to handle critics, Campbell accuses the BBC of trying to "contaminate" Blair's success as a war leader. ..."

    Aug 24 ~ We opened our doors to the British because they got rid of Saddam, but now they have killed my boy, and for what?"

    The Washington Post today on "what, with minor exceptions, has been an incident-free coexistence with British forces." An interesting article which compares the low key experienced approach of the UK soldiers with the "considerable mistrust and tension have plagued U.S. military relations with Iraqis" explained away by reference to "more hostile communities in the north, including some Sunni Muslim areas that supported Hussein and have been the targets of U.S. raids, as well as some impoverished Shiite districts whose religious leaders have been agitating against foreign occupation." But the killing of the distraught man's nephew, Azhar Fawzi, 25, happened when a wedding procession through the Basra streets was punctuated by traditional celebratory gunfire and the British, not understanding that the gunfire was a traditional celebration, opened fire.
    Three British soldiers were killed yesterday "Extremists from outside"? Read John Pilger below.

    Aug 24 ~ 'extremists from outside'?

    Writing in the Daily Mirror, John Pilger identifies the root cause of the bloody bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad, which Washington and London have blamed this on 'extremists from outside'. "..Who can forget the BBC's exultant Chief Political Correspondent Andrew Marr, at the moment of "coalition" triumph. Tony Blair, he declared, "said that they would take Baghdad without a blood bath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both those points he has been conclusively proved right."
    If you replace "right" with "wrong", you have the truth. To the BBC's man in Downing Street, up to 40,000 deaths apparently does not constitute a "blood bath"...."

    Aug 24 ~ More than two-thirds of Britain's voters believe that they were deceived

    More than two-thirds of Britain's voters believe, from what they have heard so far in the inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly, that they were deceived by the government about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Sunday Telegraph ".... Documents released last night by the inquiry reveal that Dr Kelly faced arrest earlier this year. One series of e-mails show Ministry of Defence officials discussing a request from the Metropolitan Police to interview Dr Kelly about a leaked document to Andrew Gilligan, a BBC defence correspondent, in March about the lack of known al-Qaeda links to Iraq. MoD officials ask for a "damage assessment/impact statement if Kelly was to be arrested". The police investigation was separate to the MoD's later inquiry into the source of Gilligan's report about the intelligence being exaggerated. The new documents increased the pressure on Mr Blair and Mr Hoon as it emerged that another senior civil servant - in addition to Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the MoD - expressed reservations about forcing Dr Kelly to give evidence to two Commons committees. Sir Michael Jay, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, agreed with his opposite number at the MoD that the request was "pushing it"...."

    Aug 20 ~" it was a shattering assault on the UN as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the United States."

    "...The reaction to yesterday's tragedy could have been written in advance. The Americans will tell us that this proves how "desperate" Saddam's "dead-enders" have become - as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying US rule in Iraq. The truth - however many of Saddam's old regime hands are involved - is that the Iraqi resistance organisation now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime. Increasingly, the Shias are becoming involved in anti-American actions. Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness upon Saddam's former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Saudi "terrorists", al-Qa'ida "terrorists", pro-Syrian "terrorists", pro-Iranian "terrorists" - any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: that our occupation has spawned a real home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on Earth..." An important article by Robert Fisk in the Independent that is worth reading in full.

    Aug 20 ~"the top civil servant at the MoD Kevin Tebbit knew perfectly well that Kelly's views on the forty-five minute claim could be damaging for the Government."

    Channel 4's daily update says (Wednesday 20 Aug): "It now seems clear that as Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and some of the other most important people in the country should perhaps of been concentrating on how to rebuild and bring stability to post-war Iraq, they were actually concentrating on getting Dr David Kelly to help them win their battle with the BBC.
    Evidence today paints a picture of Downing Street coming to a view that Kelly was Andrew Gilligan's source but that Gilligan had embellished his story. So they thought Kelly being named and giving evidence to MP's would win their battle for them.
    However, it also emerges that the top civil servant at the MoD Kevin Tebbit knew perfectly well that Kelly's views on the forty-five minute claim could be damaging for the Government. Put that together with the revelation last week that Kelly was briefed the day before he gave evidence and told not to give his personal view on the dossier and it is starting to look as though he was in a pretty impossible position.
    And the accusation that he effectively misled the Foreign Affairs Committee starts to seem pretty unfair. "

    Aug 20 ~Successive versions of the dossier released last week showed that the 45-minute claim was indeed a late addition.

    Daily News (South Africa) "...Yesterday an email from Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to senior colleagues in the Prime Minister's office showed that Powell considered the arguments for war still too weak. Damning the dossier with faint praise, Powell - an experienced ex-diplomat - said in its current form it would convince only "those who are prepared to be convinced". .... Yesterday's emails showed that it was none other than Campbell who informed Powell that the dossier was being rewritten, and none other than Campbell to whom Powell sent his withering assessment. This may have been simply because Campbell was acting in his capacity as Communications Director.
    The late Kelly, according to those reporters who spoke to him, veered between identifying Campbell as personally involved or responsible by virtue of his position. The distinction hardly matters. Kelly's accusations - and the BBC's reporting of them - are vindicated..."

    Aug 19 ~"The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam ....

    An e-mail fromJonathan Powell to Mr John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, dated September 17, acknowledged that there was no evidence in the dossier of any "imminent threat" from Iraq. "The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced," he noted. "The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam .... We will need to to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat." Lord Hutton also heard how Mr Blair himself chaired crisis talks after it emerged that Dr Kelly could be the source of the BBC reports. See The e-mails, the rewritten dossier and how No 10 made its case for war (Independent)

    Aug 17 ~ The 'washing of hands' by Number 10 will leave serious questions for MoD staff.

    Observer "...Hutton constantly pressed witnesses who appeared before him last week as to why they thought it necessary to name Kelly. If he makes any criticism of the policy, it will be the MoD who will be expected to carry the can. Pam Tear, the MoD Director of Communications, will give evidence tomorrow as to why she agreed to confirm the Government scientist's name if it was put to her by journalists. ...Campbell will also categorically deny that he deliberately inserted the intelligence claim that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so. Hutton will focus on two key meetings, both believed to have taken place on 9 September, two weeks before publication of the dossier. One was of the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by John Scarlett. It was this committee that first agreed that the 45-minute assessment was credible. On the same day Campbell chaired a meeting of the Iraqi Communications Group, which had a close role in drawing up the dossier. It was only after the two meetings that the 45-minute claim appeared in a subsequent draft of the dossier. .."

    Aug 17 ~ "Lord Hutton's forensic approach to the inquiry into Dr David Kelly's death is cutting through the political spin to reveal far more than the Government ever intended."

    Independent on Sunday "The inquiry's remit - carefully circumscribed by the Government - was to focus purely and simply on those events which led up to Dr Kelly's death. After only a week of hearing evidence, many questions about his death remain to be answered...." "Last night, David Davis, the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, said: "There's something seriously wrong when even the most senior civil servants have to twist their actions to fit with government spin. If this is correct, it is a stark demonstration [of] the demise of the British system of government."....A briefing for MoD press officers also appears on the website. It shows that journalists were misled in one key area. The "Q & A" states that the scientist was not a member of the Iraq Survey Group, but repeated testimony this week showed that he was.

    Aug 16 ~ 45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay

    Guardian "...The revelation that the 45 minute claim is second hand is contained in an internal Foreign Office document released by the Hutton inquiry. It had been thought the basis for the claim came from an Iraqi officer high in Saddam Hussein's command structure. In fact it came through an informant, who passed it on to MI6. ...The irony is that the government launched a furious attack on the BBC for broadcasting allegations that the dossier was "sexed up" based on a single, anonymous, uncorroborated source. That source was Dr Kelly. Mr Campbell told the foreign affairs select committee: "I find it incredible ... that people can report based on one single anonymous uncorroborated source." In fact, the foundation for the government's claim was even shakier, according to the document: a single anonymous uncorroborated source quoting another single anonymous uncorroborated source. ..."

    Aug 14~Mr Blair may yet meet his Watergate

    Scotsman Lord Hutton is "....breaking all the traditions of the political whitewash. They are moving at breakneck speed, ploughing through witnesses to leave a harvest of hard evidence. " "In the space of three days, we know more about the doubts behind the Iraq dossier than the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee was able to establish in three months. The Hutton inquiry is so far surpassing all expectation. ..
    ...The pace and quality of Lord Hutton's inquiry so far suggests it may reach a quick conclusion - and produce a devastating piece of contemporary history. Lord Hutton is collecting a candid snapshot of British politics in 2003. The first surprise hit of his inquiry is the website. Perhaps because TV cameras are banned, the internet transcripts of the day's proceedings are proving a surprise Festival-time smash for lovers of good courtroom drama. ...
    .....Already, a plausible answer to Lord Hutton's main question is emerging. Intelligence agents were relaxed about providing the raw data (little wonder: they handed over nothing that a 12-year-old with access to the internet could have found). But they were furious to see the rather tawdry finished product presented as intelligence work. Dr Kelly knew about this discontent, and informed his journalist contacts. " ."

    Aug 6 ~ "The Government has abandoned its intention to attack the credibility of David Kelly after the furore...

    ... caused by The Independent's revelation that Tom Kelly, Tony Blair's official spokesman, denigrated him as a "Walter Mitty". As Downing Street apologised to Dr Kelly's family, Whitehall sources acknowledged its plans were in disarray. A source said: "This policy of demeaning a dead man was never going to work. In a way, Downing Street should be thankful that this has been lanced, and personalised with Tom Kelly. The alternative of this strategy being carried into Hutton would have been pretty disastrous." Independent

    Aug 6 ~ "So, it's perfectly possible that, from time to time, the Nobel-prize nominee Dr Kelly was a Walter Mitty character;

    but then, so, hopefully, is his namesake who tried to undermine the scientist's reputation with such a cheap shot. Unless, that is, he is content to spend his time smearing the name of a dead man on behalf of the Government." Independent

    Aug 6 ~ "Tony Blair was under intense pressure last night to clear out the culture of spin

    rife through the government by sacking the Downing Street official at the centre of an attempt to smear Dr David Kelly." Scotsman "...Professor Alastair Hay, a close friend of Dr Kelly, said that the remarks were "heartless in the extreme" and "deeply shaming". Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said: "It is time to abandon the whole culture of spin and off-the-record briefings. "We need a new atmosphere of openness and transparency if the political system is to regain public trust." Mr Prescotts unprecedented public apology followed a day of chaos at Downing Street, which at first tried to distance itself from the slur by originally claiming nobody in No 10 could have said such a thing.
    ...Mr Kellys actions are a huge embarrassment for Mr Blair ahead of the Hutton inquiry, which resumes next week and will raise further questions about the extent of the politicisation of the civil service under New Labour. Although Mr Blair and Alastair Campbell, his director of communications, were on holiday when Mr Kelly spoke to the journalist, it is still not clear whether the attempt to smear the weapons expert was authorised by No 10. ...."

    Aug 5 ~ Tuesday, 8pm, R4: Pipeline Politics

    How badly does America need oil, and did the demand influence the decision to go to war in Iraq?

    Aug 1-4 ~".. the question is whether the US and Britain can prove their claims that he still had them in sufficient quantities to pose an imminent threat to the world."

    Independent on Sunday : Blair and Bush join forces to spin away weapons issue "....Officials say that WMD information is being collected and collated to create a "big impact". Both Downing Street and the White House are said to have learnt tough lessons from the experience of February's "dodgy dossier" on Iraq and the false claims about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa."

    Aug 1-4 ~ America has warned the Niger government to keep out of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme

    Sunday Telegraph: ...."Let's say Mr Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government'. Basically he was telling Niger to shut up."
    The dramatic American intervention reflects growing concern about the continuing row over claims that America and Britain distorted evidence to justify the war against Iraq.
    It follows The Telegraph's exclusive interview with Hama Hamadou, Niger's prime minister, last week. Mr Hamadou said that the Niger government had never had discussions with Iraq about uranium and called on Tony Blair to produce the "evidence" he claims to have to confirm that Iraq sought uranium from Niger in the 1990s.
    American officials denied that there had been any attempt to "gag" the Niger government. The Niamey official, however, said that there was "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger".
    He said that Washington's warning was likely to be heeded. "Mr Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. ..."

    Aug 1 -4 ~ Hutton orders Blair to testify.

    Tony Blair faces the humiliation of having to cut short his summer holiday and endure a public cross-examination by BBC lawyers at the inquiry into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly. The Scotsman

    Aug 1-4 ~ "The Prime Minister, Alastair Campbell, BBC journalists and Dr David Kelly's widow

    -- all we now know will testify to Lord Hutton's inquiry -- which got underway on friday. Lord Hutton promises to hear evidence "as to how and why this came about" -- this being the apparent suicide, which still hasn't been officially confirmed by the police. Is this really the right way to be conducting this inquiry? You can read what Lord Hutton revealed about the pathologist's report and Dr Kelly's letter to his line manager about Andrew Gilligan here: http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/08/week_1/01_hutton.html "

    Aug 1 ~ Foreign Affairs Select Committee says military action in Iraq may have increased the threat posed by international terrorism.

    The Scotsman today:" Tony Blair came under renewed criticism over the Iraq war yesterday when an influential group of MPs claimed the military action may have increased the threat posed by international terrorism. In a hard-hitting report which questioned the whole rationale behind the invasion of Iraq, the foreign affairs select committee concluded the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein had not reduced the risk posed by al-Qaeda and may even have enhanced its appeal to disaffected Muslims. ..."

    Aug 1 ~ "...more Americans watch the BBC in America than watch BBC1 in Britain;

    and what Murdoch and the other ascendant TV conglomerates have long wanted is the BBC "checked, broken up, even privatised . . . All this money and power will likely become the target for Blair government regulators and the merry men of Ofcom, who want to contain public enterprises.... As if on cue, Tessa Jowell, the British Culture Secretary, questioned the renewal of the BBC's charter.
    ......... a comprehensive study by Media Tenor, the non-partisan institute that he founded, which analysed the war coverage of some of the world's leading broadcasters and found that the BBC allowed less dissent than all of them, including the US networks. A study by Cardiff University found much the same. More often than not, the BBC amplified the inventions of the lie machine in Washington, such as Iraq's non-existent attack on Kuwait with scuds. And there was Andrew Marr's memorable victory speech outside 10 Downing Street: "[Tony Blair] said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both those points he has been proved conclusively right." Almost every word of that was misleading or nonsense. Studies now put the death toll at as many as 10,000 civilians and 20,000 Iraqi troops. If this does not constitute a "bloodbath", what was the massacre of 3,000 people at the twin towers?
    In contrast, I was moved and almost relieved by the description of the heroic Dr David Kelly by his family. "David's professional life," they wrote, "was characterised by his integrity, honour and dedication to finding the truth, often in the most difficult circumstances. It is hard to comprehend the enormity of this tragedy." There is little doubt that a majority of the British people understand that David Kelly was the antithesis of those who have shown themselves to be the agents of a dangerous, rampant foreign power. Stopping this menace is now more urgent than ever, for Iraqis and us." John Pilger in the New Statesman

    July 31 ~ the CIA's objections went far beyond the well-aired dispute over whether Iraq was seeking uranium from the west African state of Niger.

    Guardian article "Do not use 45-minute claim, CIA told No 10" The Foreign Office, which was responding to a series of questions from the Commons foreign affairs committee, also spells out the key role played personally by John Scarlett, chairman of Whitehall's joint intelligence committee (JIC), in drawing up the dossier. ...Evidence shows that Mr Campbell asked Mr Scarlett whether the passage about the uranium claim in the draft dossier could be hardened up. Mr Campbell fiercely denies suggestions that he "sexed up" the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services. The FO goes out of its way to emphasise the role played by Mr Scarlett. Mr Campbell described Mr Scarlett in evidence to the committee as a friend who he saw regularly. The government prevented Mr Scarlett from appearing before the MPs' committee. Mr Scarlett has let it be known that he had what he described as a "debate" with Mr Campbell about the contents of the September dossier. He denies having a "bust up". ..."

    July 31 ~ Baghdad Al-Jazeera bureau chief has written a scathing reply to Paul Wolfowitz

    Robert Fisk in Baghdad "...complaining that in the past month his offices and staff in Iraq "have been subject to strafing by gunfire, death threats, confiscation of news material, and multiple detentions and arrests, all carried out by US soldiers"....... the US administration appears ready to close down Al-Jazeera's operations in Iraq - along with Al-Arabiya channel - for alleged "incitement to violence". The US proconsul in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said he would shut newspapers or television stations guilty of "incitement to violence" - without explaining what this phrase means. Mr Wolfowitz, a right-wing ideologue, is one of the cabal that pushed the US into war on the grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that destroying the regime would open the way to a new, democratic Middle East. He used the Murdoch-owned Fox channel to make his allegations against Al-Jazeera, many of which are palpably false. For example, he accused Al-Jazeera of "slanting the news incredibly ... the minute they get something that they can use to spread hatred and violence in Iraq, they're broadcasting it around."

    July 31 ~ The verboten truth is that the unprovoked attack on Iraq and the looting of its resources is America's 73rd colonial intervention.

    ".... As for the great human catastrophe in Iraq, the bereft hospitals, the children dying from thirst and gastroenteritis at a rate greater than before the invasion, with almost 8 per cent of infants suffering extreme malnutrition, says Unicef; as for a crisis in agriculture which, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation, is on the verge of collapse: these do not exist. Like the American-driven, medieval-type siege that destroyed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives over 12 years, there is no knowledge of this in America: therefore it did not happen. The Iraqis are, at best, unpeople; at worst, tainted, to be hunted. "For every GI killed," said a letter given prominence in the New York Daily News late last month, "20 Iraqis must be executed." In the past week, Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit charged with hunting evildoers, murdered at least five people as they drove down a street in Baghdad, and that was typical.
    The august New York Times and Washington Post are not, of course, as crude as the News and Murdoch. However, on 23 July, both papers gave front-page prominence to the government's carefully manipulated "homecoming" of 20-year-old Private Jessica Lynch, who was injured in a traffic accident during the invasion and captured. She was cared for by Iraqi doctors, who probably saved her life and who risked their own lives in trying to return her to American forces. The official version, that she bravely fought off Iraqi attackers, is a pack of lies, like her "rescue" (from an almost deserted hospital), which was filmed with night-vision cameras by a Hollywood director. All this is known in Washington, and much of it has been reported. ..." John Pilger in the New Statesman

    July 29 ~ "those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans".

    George Monbiot America is a religion in today's Guardian "....Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January: "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.
    The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell. "

    July 29 ~ "Hutton has difficult questions to ask, not least because of the increasing evidence that Kelly himself had not been telling the whole truth about his role in the events leading up to his suicide."

    See article "... The BBC is adamant that Kelly is on tape talking about the role of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications. .... When Downing Street suggested it may have found Gilligan's source, it described him as a middle-ranking civil servant. Kelly was said to have only been involved in writing historical accounts of UN weapons inspections for the government dossier on the threat from Iraq; and Tony Blair's official spokesman claimed Kelly was merely "a technical expert on machinery and equipment. Blair's spokesman added: "He was not someone who had access to the intelligence which had been included in the dossier. The MoD also denied that Kelly was "one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up the dossier. None of these claims stands up to scrutiny. Kelly, in fact, had access to vital intelligence on Iraq and its WMD programmes. He also had access to all the drafts of last September's controversial dossier and was closely involved in compiling the information contained in the document by using the most up-to-date intelligence available to MI6. Kelly was a senior adviser to an MoD taskforce chaired by the ministry's policy director Simon Webb - one of the MoD's most senior officials. The job of this taskforce was to sift through every piece of intelligence relating to Saddam and WMD. ....Kelly, in other words, was MI6's brain when it came to Saddams WMD.
    It must remain a matter of conjecture why such a man killed himself after a grilling by the foreign affairs committee. One BBC insider suggested: "Kelly was in grave difficulties. You can only have sympathy for him. He wanted to keep faith with people like Andrew Gilligan, but he was also facing serious threats from his employers, including the withdrawal of his security clearance. If they had done that to him, it would have ended his career. The spooks were all over the MoD looking for who the BBC source was, and he was under serious pressure and in a terrible bind. Kelly was caught between two stools. The MoD was telling him to come out to the FAC and screw Gilligan into the ground, but he didnt want to do that. He was being loyal to the reporters he'd spoken to. ..."

    July 28 ~ Top lawyers from Greece are travelling to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Monday to file a lawsuit against senior UK officials.

    link to BBC "The UK Government insists the invasion was legal They will accuse the prime minister and other senior members of the government and military of breaching international law by attacking Iraq. The Athens Bar Association (ABA) believes it has strong evidence and is seeking the indictment of Mr Blair. "
    It will be most interesting to see what the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, will have to say now. Perhaps we might even see his evidence for ruling that the war was legal.

    July 28 ~ " I look at the insanity of the Congress voting for war, for the Patriot Act, and fighting quite literally like unruly children last week, and I think, this is not my country.

    I stand in line to be searched in airports, museums, and concerts, and I think, this is not America. I listen to George Bush lie about everything from intelligence on Iraq, to the deficit and what it will do to my child and my grandchildren, and to empty promises about Medicare, Medicaid, and education. Surely this cannot be my President. I listen to the airwaves filled with hate-filled, duplicitous, and slandering right-wing talk show hosts and wonder at the ignorance of the American people. Am I in the wrong country? I read the decisions of the federal appeals court as it rips up the Constitution, article by article (save for the provisions relating to an omnipotent Executive branch), and shreds the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, and I marvel at how the judiciary could have vanished in a mere two years...." link to CounterPunch article

    July 28 ~ Galloway Memoirs Stolen

    Sky News link "A first draft of memoirs by anti-war MP George Galloway have been stolen from his Portuguese cottage. Mr Galloway arrived at his Iberian retreat on Friday evening to discover his computer, desk and chair all missing. The Glasgow Kelvin MP, who was suspended from Labour after an outspoken interview on an Arab TV station at the end of March in which he denounced war in Iraq, said the burglary appeared to be no "ordinary crime"...But the raiders, he said, were "doomed to disappointment", since there was nothing "remotely of interest" apart from his first draft.... He said the thieves had worn gloves and would have needed a four-wheel drive vehicle to reach the remote farmhouse. ."

    July 28 ~ Sack Gilligan and it's peace - government offer deal to BBC......."Greg has told everyone this is about the very heart of the BBC and the heat from the government is fierce. And he will go if any compromise is forced on him."

    James Cusick, Westminster Editor of the Sunday Herald writes

    July 28 ~ Has everyone forgotten that Alastair Milne was forced to resign by Mrs Thatcher's behind-the-scenes fury as long ago as 1986?

    See too the BBC Charter ..and its chilling paragraph 8.3

    July 28 ~ Campbell's war against the BBC, may be over the very soul and future of the public service broadcaster.

    Sunday Herald "The Blame Game"
    "... According to the former head of the BBC World Service, John Tusa, the size of the hole the government now finds itself in can be equated with the "vehemence of their onslaught on the BBC". Tusa believes the war against the BBC is a "displacement activity, a diversion from finding weapons of mass destruction". But, diversion or not, the weaponry at the disposal of the government - everything from threats over the BBC's charter renewal, the licence fee, and plans to replace senior executives and governors - means real damage can be inflicted. And those inside the BBC at the very highest levels realise the current blame game is being played for very high stakes. The war, Campbell's war against the BBC, may be over the very soul and future of the public service broadcaster.

    July 28 ~" I think they actually believe that if they can muzzle the BBC they can muzzle all dissent, all suspicion."

    Sunday Herald Why Will This Man Not Stop?
    It seems the government is determined to cover up its lies at any cost -- even if that means destroying the BBC in the process, writes Ian Bell
    "..... Questions breed questions. At the beginning of this affair I was content to believe that Blair, Campbell, Hoon and the rest were delighted to pick a fight with the BBC simply to take our minds off the bigger story. It seemed to me, and to many other people, that they were very much happier talking about standards in the media than about the way a war was engineered. I no longer think so.
    There is more than a whiff of paranoia about the government. Its frenzy over the BBC has the smell of panic. It is as though ministers are trying to support a house of cards. I believe they are deeply worried, from Blair down, that the truth about the war will begin to seep out. I think they actually believe that if they can muzzle the BBC they can muzzle all dissent, all suspicion.
    Consider: the government is in a hole and should, by normal practice, stop digging forthwith, yet for some reason it can't. Its standing has been badly damaged, as the polls prove, yet it has turned a fight with the BBC into a demented battle over public trust, a battle it will surely lose. Ask yourself: why? " Full article

    July 28 ~" It has become clear that Dr Kelly was not quite the narrowly focused specialist, with little connection to the world of spying, that he seemed

    when he gave evidence to the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) during its investigation of the decision to go to war in Iraq. He himself sought to create that impression before the committee, and his reasons for doing so may be significant.
    It was public knowledge that Dr Kelly had a distinguished career as a leading UN weapons inspector in Iraq and had been nominated to lead the British contingent in the Iraq Survey Group, formed to take the UN inspectors' place. But we now know that not only was he probably the Government's most knowledgeable adviser on the history of Iraq's weapons programmes, but he also had a high security clearance, sat in on MI6 interrogations of Iraqi defectors and was a member of a high-level committee reviewing all the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. His value was such that he had been appointed a "special deputy chief scientific officer", a rarely used civil service grade that allowed him to move in senior circles without having administrative responsibilities.
    When it came to the contents of the dossier, in short, David Kelly was certainly in a position to know what he was talking about. And it emerged that he had talked, not only to Mr Gilligan, not only to two other BBC journalists whose names were put to him by the FAC (one of whom, it turned out, had recorded the interview), but to several more reporters. The picture is of a man who had suppressed his doubts last September, only to feel growing disquiet in the aftermath of war as it became clear how wrong the Government's claims on Iraqi WMD had been..." Independent on Sunday Bit by bit, the real Dr Kelly emerges from the shadows

    July 28 ~ Had he reneged on a deal?

    "The tape of his interview with the Newsnight journalist Susan Watts is now under lock and key, pending its submission to Lord Hutton's judicial inquiry, but the words read by an actor on the programme are a virtual transcript. "It is beginning to look as if the Government's committed a monumental blunder," Dr Kelly says of the most controversial claims in the September dossier - that Iraq had links to al-Qa'ida, and that it could deploy WMD within 45 minutes of the order being given. Of the latter, he says: "It was a statement that was made, and it just got out of all proportion. They were desperate for information ... that could be released. That was one that popped up and was seized on, and it's unfortunate that it was.
    "That's why there is the argument between the intelligence services and the Cabinet Office/No 10 - because they picked up on it, and once they've picked up on it, you can't pull it back from them." He goes on to say that in the week before the dossier was put out, many people were expressing unease about questions of accuracy and emphasis. At no point, however, was Mr Campbell named by Newsnight, as he was by Mr Gilligan in The Mail on Sunday, precipitating the row which resulted in Dr Kelly's death.
    ..........Tom Mangold, a family friend, wrote: "David never liked the MoD, he used to complain bitterly about them." ....... On Friday the ministry denied that it had threatened Dr Kelly's pension, or told him action could be taken under the Official Secrets Act. The Independent on Sunday asked whether his security clearance had been discussed, but the MoD refused to comment.
    When ......Dr Kelly said he did not think he could have been the source, and the MPs swung on to his side. Had he reneged on a deal? It is impossible to say, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he was less than truthful with the committee - denying, for example, that he had met Gavin Hewitt, the third BBC journalist, which he had done. ......
    "It wasn't as if the MoD were saying, 'You're our man, we're supporting you to the hilt'," said Professor Hay. "He was being fed to everyone as being the person probably responsible for the Government's difficulty ... If he felt he had been less than truthful before the committee ... [and] had been caught dissembling and not being absolutely truthful, I would have thought this would create huge conflicts for him."
    But did this lead David Kelly to kill himself? That is a question for Lord Hutton and the coroner, but it goes to the heart of the Government's case for going to war. How far the law lord will want to travel down that path remains to be seen." Independent on Sunday

    July 28 ~ Noose tightens on Blair

    Yesterday's Scotland on Sunday "... A spokesman for the inquiry said it was vital that any relevant Downing Street records be passed to Lord Hutton in order to establish the role of ministers and officials in the events that led up to Kelly's suicide shortly after his identity was leaked.
    The Downing Street meetings would have been attended by Blair's communications director Alastair Campbell, chief of staff Jonathan Powell and political adviser Sally Morgan. Insiders also claim Kelly may have been alluded to in e-mails and telephone calls which are routinely logged.
    Yesterday Lord Hutton met Kelly's grieving family privately to discuss how his forthcoming inquiry into the death would proceed. There were reports last night that Kelly's wife Jan may have kept a record of the days running up to his suicide that could tell the full story of his treatment by the government. Hutton's intervention was backed by one of Kelly's closest friends, Professor Alastair Hay, who believes Blair was intimately involved in the affair. He said the handover of such materials was essential and a spokesman for the Hutton inquiry said Hutton would expect nothing less. ..."

    July 28 ~ "the zeal with which the Prime Minister and his aides seized on every piece of intelligence, however insubstantial, ultimately did their cause - which was noble - a disservice.

    The campaign to persuade the public of the case for war became conflated with the long-running saga of "spin". As we have noted in this column before, the trouble with the allegation against Mr Campbell was not that it was true - it was not - but that it rang true.
    Nobody, we can suspect, grasped all of this more fully than Dr Kelly himself before his death. What precisely drove him to a lonely end may or may not become clearer in the course of Lord Hutton's inquiry. But it is easy to imagine a man of great eminence in his field, annoyed at what he saw as a distortion of the subject he knew most about, taking matters into his own hands with the media (perhaps wishing he had done so more "honourably" at the time the dossier was published).
    Perhaps his intention was to set the record straight, and - to those who knew him in the curious demi-monde he inhabited - clear his own name of what he perceived to be a violation of the truth. Perhaps, too, the pride that led him to do that - the pride of a distinguished public servant - had as its flipside a sense of shame which led him to self-destruction. ..." Sunday Telegraph Opinion

    July 28 ~ Pilger on the lying of governments - and Mr Blair

    Pilger.com
    "..The conscious nature of Tony Blair's lies and distortions over Iraq is now clear. Collectors will have their favourites. Mine is his statement in parliament on 29 January that "we do know of links between al-Qaeda and Iraq". As the intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed, there were no links, and Blair would have known this. Looking back, this lie sought to justify his statement, in October 2001, that there would be "a wider war" against Iraq only if there was "absolute evidence" of its complicity in 11 September. Of course, there was no evidence, and Blair must have known that, too.
    On 12 March, he told parliament that France "is saying, whatever the circumstances, it will veto a resolution" to invade Iraq. Two days earlier, President Jacques Chirac had said the very opposite: that if Iraq failed to co-operate with the UN inspectors, "it will be for the Security Council and it alone to decide the right thing [and] war would become inevitable". It was this deception that disillusioned even Clare Short.
    Blair's festival of lies has shocked some people: those who still believe that their elected representatives tell the truth. Perhaps they are prepared to tolerate some "fudge", but not deliberate lies, especially those, such as Blair's, that lead to the criminal killing of thousands of people."

    July 27 ~".. something far more important was happening. Mr Blair was on a delicate mission to rearm Japan"

    The Scotsman "...His goal: to persuade the world's second-richest nation to break from its post-war pacifism and take its place as a signed-up member of the war against terrorism. In Japan, this issue has touched every sensitive nerve in the country. Two atomic bombs and the bitter memory of its imperial past has left it with a "never again" attitude deeply ingrained in all generations. As a matter of pride, the economic giant has remained a military pigmy: a policy known as the Yoshida Doctrine. Instead of joining the arms race, it diverted its money to stoking its post-war economic "miracle" and rose from its agrarian knees. Japan is the only country in the world to have formally renounced war. Its constitution is founded on pacifism and it has repeatedly refused America's requests to reinstate its army. But world events are now sucking the Japanese back into the martial orbit, reluctantly and agonisingly. It is at this juncture that Mr Blair entered, to give Tokyo direction. ..." Tony Blair's aim: to give Japan back its military teeth Link to the Scotsman article

    July 26 ~ Soldiers who want to go home are needed to work for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton Corp.

    "...Soldiers say most of their work involves civilian contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton Corp. The company has contracts to haul fuel, and 319th members are riding along as armed escorts. "The main reason we're still here is to support Brown and Root," said Sgt. 1st Class David Uthe, 45, of Augusta." Reserves wanting to leave Mideast Augusta Chronicle.

    July 24 ~".. Those who bash Gilligan, in the mistaken belief that he is merely the emanation of the anti-war BBC, are doing the Government's work for them.

    Alastair Campbell and his poodles on The Times want to give the impression to the public that this is all a war between various puffed-up members of the media/political class, their monstrous egos clashing like thunderheads. That wholly obscures the truth. What really happened was that Andrew Gilligan, and two other journalists, found that the leading expert in Iraq's WMD programmes was alarmed at the spin being put on intelligence data. The Government's response was ruthlessly to publish his name, in the hope that he would knock the story down. That enterprise failed, in tragic circumstances. ..." Boris Johnson in the Telegraph

    July 23 ~ BBC says it has a tape of Dr Kelly criticising Number 10

    "..... Susan Watts, the science editor of Newsnight, recorded her conversations with Dr Kelly, parts of which were later broadcast anonymously as a "source", using the voice of an actor. The report, which was broadcast on 2 June, suggested Downing Street had been "desperate" to find information to justify its stance on a war against Iraq. Referring to the claim Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, the source said: "It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion, They were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information which could be released. That was one that popped up and it was seized on and it's unfortunate that it was. "That's why there's an argument between intelligence services and the Cabinet Office and Number 10, because they picked up on it and ... you can't pull it back." Independent

    July 23 ~ "Tony Blair vehemently denies any involvement in the decision by the Ministry of Defence to name Dr David Kelly

    as the source of the BBC's claim that the threat from Iraq was exaggerated. So if his communications man Alastair Campbell did it, Blair claims he didn't know. In any case he has also said that the Ministry of defence was the 'lead agency' in the affair.
    Effectively then, he has potentially thrown his Secretary of Defence Geoff Hoon to the wolves. An intriguing way to spend the period of 'reflection' that Mr Blair urged us all to observe; his is spent crying 'not me gov!' So already, even before the Judicial inquiry has sat for one minute, the house cleaning has begun. " Jon Snow's Channel 4 news update last night andsee also Today's Telegraph

    July 23 ~ Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, have apparently been killed

    in a fierce gun battle after they were cornered in a house in the northern city of Mosul. Scotsman

    July 22/23 ~ There were no rules for the American jailers.

    Robert Fisk in the Independent on THE UGLY TRUTH OF AMERICA'S CAMP CROPPER, A STORY TO SHAME US ALL It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during interrogation.
    "Sources" may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable. This story is also about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of them "while trying to escape". But most of all, it's about Qais Mohamed al-Salman. Qais al-Salman is just the sort of guy the US ambassador Paul Bremer and his dead-end assistants need now. He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in 1976, then returned after the "liberation" with a briefcase literally full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's infrastructure and water purification system.
    He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did until 6 June this year. ... (Read Robert Fisk's article)

    July 22/23 ~ One problem faced by the BBC is the government's effort to undermine its case before the Hutton inquiry.

    Guardian "....While Tony Blair has been keeping a dignified silence on his tour of the Far East, others at home have been doing his dirty work.
    As part of the concerted attempt to exploit what Downing Street believes to be growing nervousness within the BBC over its handling of the Iraq dossier crisis, Mr Mandelson appeared on the Today programme yesterday and accused the BBC's governors of making a "crass error" by backing the corporation's managers. .....branded Gilligan "rather shifty" and a "loose cannon" on Today, the programme which carried the initial allegations.
    The irony of Mr Mandelson's intervention in support of Downing Street's director of communications, Alastair Campbell - whom he still blames for his own second departure from the cabinet - was not lost on Clare Short. The former international development secretary said on the same programme: "Dr Kelly, and we don't know what the pressures that were mounted on him, has recently died and then we're getting someone like Peter Mandelson, who can only be briefed by No 10... widening the assault on the BBC.
    ....Insiders believe the corporation must be sure these were Dr Kelly's exact words, to justify its robust defence. One source close to the director general Greg Dyke said: "There is total unity among the top people that we are doing the right thing."...." (full article)

    July 22 ~ Questions for Hutton

    Guardian Letter "As Lord Hutton ponders the remit of his inquiry into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death (Judge to outline scope of inquiry, July 21), he might consider this written reply by Mr Blair to a question by one of his fiercest Labour critics, Glenda Jackson MP. She asked him which government official and which minister took the decision to insert the assertion that weapons of mass destruction could be deployed in 45 minutes in the foreword, the executive summary and the draft of his Commons speech of September 24 2002, on the September 2002 dossier.
    Mr Blair replied: "The dossier, including the executive summary, was drafted by the chairman of the joint intelligence committee and his staff, and they were responsible for including the 45 minutes intelligence. The foreword was prepared by my staff in Downing Street in the normal way. It was signed off by me, but members of the JIC had the opportunity to comment on it. My speech to the House of Commons was written in the normal way and reflected what was in the September 2002 dossier which was being debated in the House on September 24 2002." (Hansard, July 11)
    Lord Hutton needs to know which specific staff in Downing Street were involved; and to ask Mr Blair when he gives the evidence he has now promised to give, who proposed giving the prominence to the 45 minute claim, and why he agreed with it when he signed off the dossier. This goes to the very heart of who told whom to do what in respect of that fateful dossier.
    Dr David Lowry Stoneleigh, Surrey

    July 22 ~"No 10 overruled defence chiefs in leaking Kelly's name to Press

    Downing Street overruled senior Ministry of Defence officials who wanted to protect the identity of David Kelly and prevent him appearing before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, according to Whitehall sources. Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, is expected to be questioned by the judicial inquiry into Dr Kelly's death over whether he sided with Downing Street on the unmasking of the government scientist. Dr Kelly is understood to have been given guarantees from the MoD that his identity would remain secret. The revelation calls into question Downing Street's assertion that the MoD took the lead in dealing with Dr Kelly after he admitted he had met Andrew Gilligan, the BBC journalist who claimed No 10 had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraqi weapons. " Independent

    July 21/22 ~ "the heat has now been turned upon the BBC". Why has it?

    Guardian article by Rod Liddle "Pummelled and buffeted by New Labour pundits, compliant backbenchers and select committee chairmen, the director-general will have felt it a concession which could now be granted without further damage being done to poor David Kelly. But that may not be correct. For a start, it leaves Andrew Gilligan in public disagreement with a man who is now dead and cannot, therefore, defend himself. And paradoxically, for that very reason, it is an argument which Gilligan and the BBC will find difficult to win. But in every other respect, the corporation has got it right throughout this appalling imbroglio. It stood by its journalism and its journalists - not out of arrogance, as some have alleged, but because it knew that what they had reported was accurate and important..."

    July 21/22 ~".... the War of the Jacksons: in one corner, Robert Jackson, Dr Kelly's Tory MP, who calls down imprecations on the BBC; and in the other, Glenda Jackson, who, being a Labour MP, naturally wants the prime minister to go.

    Jackie Ashley's article in the Guardian "....There is nothing wrong with resignations, in general. But there is when they avoid the need for harder questions being confronted, as should happen now. Who is this aggressive, attack-dog media and political culture supposed to be helping? Not the politicians, who can no longer rely on reasonable electoral turnouts; not the BBC, which should now be worried about government vengeance; not the press, judging by newspaper sales. Normal people hate what has happened to the nasty, nutty Westminster world. And here's something else to reflect on: while Dr Kelly's death is tragic, several thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed by the war on Iraq which, we were told, was to disarm Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons, and the "imminent threat" they were said to pose, remain as elusive as ever. "

    July 21 ~ " I am aware, of course, that people are going to have to take elements of this on the good faith of our intelligence services."

    We should not be distracted from Mr Blair's statement on Iraq in the House of Commons Tuesday 24 September 2002, nor will we forget that he knew then what we all know now...that the 45 minute detail was uncorroborated, thought unwise and yet emphasised deliberately by Number 10 Andrew Gilligan's Today report said "a senior official" had told him the claim that Saddam Hussein's "military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them" had been "included in the dossier against our wishes because it wasn't reliable". (BBC)

    June 21 ~ "as the weeks pass, it seems undeniable that the Bush administration grievously miscalculated the human and financial costs of the American occupation."

    New York Times "That failure, which is starting to register with Americans of all political persuasions and promises to become an election issue, cannot be easily dismissed with glib assurances of better days to come or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's favorite refrain that the war ended just weeks ago. This exercise in American power is going to be a lot longer and bloodier than President Bush ever said...."

    June 21 ~ "We are lawyers and legal workers opposed to the war in Iraq because we believe it was unlawful.

    We call for the publication of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith's advice in its entirety, which was used by the Government to justify going to war.
    No inquiry into the government's interpretation of intelligence will be seen as credible without the publication of this advice, as the advice must have been based in part on the intelligence asessment at that time.
    Michael Mansfield QC and 75 other barrister, solicitors and legal workers. London SW1"
    From a letter in Independent yesterday.
    See also the letter in the Guardian before the war.

    July 21 ~John Humphrys was scathing about Robert Jackson's charge that the BBC should take responsibility for Dr Kelly's death

    "That seems to me to be nonsense," he said. "After all, it wasn't we who named Dr Kelly; it wasn't we who called him before an inquiry, a committee; it wasn't we who thrust him into the spotlight. To suggest that somehow it's all our fault is bizarre."
    Asked about the mood at the BBC, Mr Humphrys replied: "Obviously, a man is dead and people have responded as you would expect. They [the BBC] feel very strongly that, whatever happens now, Dr Kelly's family has to come first. It's moved beyond the day-to-day political nonsense." Independent
    On Monday's Today Programme, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ Boris Johnson said "I'd like to know why Alastair Campbell had such a fantastically dominant role ....I'd like to know why Dr Kelly was assured that his name would remain confidential and told that he would not have to appear before the Committee.. The Committee's behaviour was odd. ....Gilligan's story has been validated....it would not have been brought before the public without Andrew Gilligan."

    July 21 ~ Dr Kelly's evidence to FASC on July 15

    Transcript of Dr Kelly's evidence Although there are several references to the 45 mins issue - Dr Kelly is never specifically asked for his professional opinion on the matter. "I cannot recall" and "I cannot remember" and "I find it very difficult to think back" are phrases that can give an impression without categorically confirming or denying.

    July 21 ~ David was treated in the most despicable way by the Government

    Independent "The BBC's admission may give Mr Blair a much-needed breathing space before the inquiry, to be led by Lord Hutton, a senior law lord, reports in six to eight weeks. But the investigation will also have some searching questions for the Government - notably whether Downing Street tipped off the press about Dr Kelly's identity, thereby setting in train the events that led to his death. Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's director of communications, is expected to leave his post after the inquiry reports. Friends say he has lost his appetite for the job because of the tragedy but is determined to clear his name before he quits. Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of news, confirmed Dr Kelly was the principal source for Mr Gilligan's report. "The BBC believes we accurately interpreted and reported the factual information obtained by us during interviews with Dr Kelly." He added: "We continue to believe we were right to place Dr Kelly's views in the public domain. However, the BBC is profoundly sorry that his involvement as our source has ended so tragically.".....Dr Kelly's brother-in-law, Derek Vawdrey, accused the BBC of using a dead man to defend itself. He said: "It's all very well for the BBC to come out with this now, when David cannot answer back. So much for protecting sources. "David was treated in the most despicable way by the Government, he was treated in a bullying way by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and it is my opinion that is what directly led to his suicide."

    July 21 ~ "The BBC have said that Dr David Kelly was the source of Andrew Gilligan's report

    that the government had "sexed up" the dossier on weapons of mass destruction last September. He was then, it follows from that, the alleged source of Gilligan's claim in the Mail on Sunday (and later repeated on other BBC outlets) that it was Alastair Campbell who had inserted the claim that Iraq could deploy WMD within 45 minutes. The BBC changed their line on refusing to name their source after permission from Dr Kelly's family.
    So we are left with a dilemma. Do we believe Dr Kelly's or Andrew Gilligan's account of their conversation?...David Kelly's friend - the investigative reporter Tom Mangold - has told us that Dr Kelly used to laugh about the 45 minute claim privately. So it is likely he (Dr Kelly) didn't believe it. ..... "
    From Channel 4's newsletter. Read more
    From C4 News itself it appears that Andrew Gilligan had also had confirmation of the 'sexing up' from a souce at No 10 - 60% of the source was Dr Kelly - the other 40% from other sources - including the No 10 connection.

    July 21 ~ ".. the point is, surely, is the weapons of mass destruction issue has all along been a matter of life and death.

    More civilians died in allied bombing and the liberation of Baghdad than were killed in New York on September 11, 2001. Many British servicemen have died and American soldiers are being killed almost every day in what is now turning into a vicious guerrilla war. And of course, perhaps tens of thousands of poorly-equipped Iraqi conscripts died as they were crushed by the greatest military machine in the history of human conflict.
    Dr David Kelly is by no means the first casualty of this war, and he will certainly not be the last. But his death was the moment when the Westminster village, at war with itself, suddenly woke up and realised the extent to which it has been obsessed only with itself and its petty vanities and squabbles. It is now seeing the war for what it is: a deadly game where innocent people die. ..." The Sunday Herald has four articles each of which is worth reading.

    July 20 ~ the Ministry of Defence admitted that it had privately given Dr Kelly's name to three newspapers on July 9.

    This contradicted earlier claims by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, that there had been no such breach of confidentiality. Telegraph".... In an interview with The Sunday Times on July 9, the day before his name appeared in several papers, Dr Kelly said that he had been assured by the MoD that "the whole thing would be confidential". But he had just received a phone call warning him that his identity would be in the following day's papers. He added: "I feel as though I have been through the wringer." Last night, Pam Teare, the MoD's director of news, admitted that far from protecting Dr Kelly's identity, she had confirmed his name to reporters who rang her on July 9. "As we have said all along we didn't release the name but we made it clear to media callers and to Dr Kelly that if someone put the right name to us we would be obliged to confirm it - end of story."

    July 20 ~" a man who knew much about nuclear and chemical weapons, but too little about the brutal, self-serving warfare of modern British politics"

    Quentin Letts adds: "Say a prayer, if you go to church today, for a man who knew much about nuclear and chemical weapons, but too little about the brutal, self-serving warfare of modern British politics. Say a prayer for David Kelly because he was a frightened man, but a brave one. The rest can go hang themselves."

    July 20 ~ "He had dealt with the duplicity of the Iraq government...what did he see within his own government that made him.. take a knife to his own wrist?

    An emailer echoes the thoughts of many of us, " I don't often weep over the death of someone I do not know , but today on hearing that David Kelly had been driven to suicide I wept. Reading his obituary you hear of a dedicated scientist with a sense of humour and great integrity. He had dealt with the duplicity of the Iraq government during his time as weapons inspector without problems, and was looking forward to returning to Baghdad. What did he see within his own government that made him decide that "This was really not the kind of world he wanted to live in.", and take a knife to his own wrist?
    I am greatly saddened. We can only hope that the whole dirty business of "sexed-up" dossiers, and other New Labour lies, are at last exposed by the death of this good man."

    July 19/20 ~ Andrew Mackinlay has apologised to Dr Kelly's family

    But Geoff Hoon, on Radio 4's PM programmeon Saturday afternoon, maintains that offering his own resignation would be inappropriate.

    July 19/20 ~ Police have confirmed that Dr David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence adviser at the heart of a vitriolic battle over the Government's Iraq dossier, died after slashing his wrists.

    Telegraph "Dr David Kelly's body was found with a knife and painkillers Acting Supt Dave Purnell said Dr Kelly, whose body was formally identified this morning, bled to death from a cut to his left wrist. A knife and a packet of Co-Proxymol painkilling tablets were found where Dr Kelly's body was discovered yesterday morning at Harrowdown Hill, around five miles from his home in the village of Southmoor. Mr Purnell said that detectives do not believe that anyone else was involved with Dr Kelly's death..."
    "Although Downing Street urged people not to rush to judgment, attention was increasingly turning to Mr Campbell's role in the affair. The inquiry is certain to centre on how he and Mr Hoon thrust Dr Kelly, a civil servant, into the spotlight...Friends said he was angry and deeply unhappy about the way he was questioned by the MPs. Dr Kelly said he was not the source and the committee concluded that he probably was not. The MPs criticised the Ministry of Defence for using him as a "fall guy". Richard Ottaway, a Conservative member of the committee, said that spin doctors had used Dr Kelly as a distraction from the row over weapons of mass destruction. He said that political machinations could have resulted in Dr Kelly's death. "

    July 19/20 ~This attempt at moral blackmail will not do.

    "....The prime minister, in his address to Congress, declared that history would forgive him and President Bush, even if WMD were never found in Iraq, because of the undoubted bestiality of Saddam Hussein and his regime. We are challenged to admit that without the war Saddam would still be in power, able to terrorise both his own people and his neighbours.
    This attempt at moral blackmail will not do. The issue is not whether the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein. Of course it is. It would also be a better place without Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro and a host of other tyrants and despots, but there is no intention of the British government to support wars in order to get rid of them.
    Nor did Tony Blair call for an invasion of Iraq during the first five years of his prime ministership, when Saddam was as evil as he was last year. During that period the prime minister supported the strict enforcement of sanctions and the no-fly zone that had been the policy of the Clinton administration in Washington and the Major government in London.
    What changed was George Bush's arrival in the White House and 9/11. Thereafter Blair recognised that in order to retain the confidence of the new president, and to ensure British influence in Washington, he would have to support regime change in Iraq and the new doctrine of pre-emptive wars...." Malcolm Rifkind in the Guardian

    July 19/20 ~ "The tone was not aggressive at all." Donald Anderson, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chairman (Labour )

    "....Another member said: "We did what we had to do..."......
    Eric Illsley, another member, was implicitly critical of aggressive questioning of Dr Kelly by Andrew Mackinlay...." Guardian Chastened MPs prepare for fallout

    July 18 ~ MoD "mole" missing - body found: Channel Four News email

    "Did he take his own life? Was he killed, did he die of a heart attack? Dr David Kelly was a government scientist who specialised in chemical and biological weapons and who had served as a UN weapons inspector. He went missing from his Oxfordshire home yesterday at 3pm. At 9.20am this morning a body fitting his description was found in woodland that he was wont to walk to from his home. By any test for his wife and two daughters an utterly tragic turn of events.
    But this is a death with ramifications whose limits it is almost impossible at this stage to divine. For he was the crucial witness in this week's House of Commons Select Committee investigation in to the causes of war with Iraq. He was identified by the MoD, for whom he worked, as the man who told a BBC correspondent that Tony Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell had 'sexed up' the September dossier of intelligence against Iraq. The ferocious battle between Number 10 and the BBC located Dr Kelly in the very epicentre of the 'who said what to whom' saga. It's a measure of how much pressure the government was already under to call a full judicial inquiry, that just such an inquiry has now been triggered by Dr Kelly's presumed death, when official identification is made on Saturday. " More details on this story here: http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/07/week_3/18_kelly.html

    July 18 ~ Military proceedings against two Britons held in Guantanamo Bay has been suspended

    pending talks between legal authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, Downing Street has confirmed. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith will begin negotiations with American authorities over the fate of Feroz Abbasi, 23, from London, and Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham. (Channel Four News)

    July 18 ~The Associated Press on the disappearance of Dr Kelly and the finding of a body this morning

    "Dr David Kelly left his home at around 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) Thursday after telling his wife he was going for a walk, officers said, and family called police when he failed to return by 11:45 p.m. (2245 GMT) that night. The body was found at 9:20 a.m. (0820 GMT) Friday, police said.
    Officers said Kelly's family had described the disappearance and failure to make contact with anyone as "out of character.''
    Kelly appeared before a Parliamentary committee earlier this week to face questions over the BBC report, which said government aides gave undue prominence, in an intelligence dossier published last September, to a claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice." http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2003/7/18/latest/13084Policesea&sec=latest
    Richard Ottoway, an opposition Conservative politician told Sky television. "At the end we concluded he had been given rather bad treatment by the government. So let us hope nothing sinister has happened here. But it does bring into question exactly what the government thought it was doing by putting him up as a witness on its behalf".

    July 18 ~ "We witnessed today the baring of teeth, and an unpleasant personal attack on an individual who dared to publicise material that was not favourable to government."

    Anne Lambourn who, like many of us, has followed the Campbell/BBC row most carefully and with grave concern, has written an open letter to the Chairman of the foreign affairs select committee (FASC) Donald Anderson, Labour MP for Swansea. Extract: (Read letter in full)

    July 18 2003 ~ Durbin would not name the person, whose name emerged in the secret hearing, but a U.S. official said National Security Council weapons of mass destruction expert Robert Joseph was involved in discussions with the CIA about the speech.

    Reuters "...It wasn't Tenet who named anyone, but in response to questioning, other agency officials said that the conversations were with Robert Joseph of the National Security Council staff," a U.S. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
    Meanwhile, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent to Africa in February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had sought uranium there, took issue with the Bush administration's version of events. Wilson disputed White House contentions that he reported that officials in the African nation of Niger said Iraq wanted to contact Niger officials to buy nuclear weapons materials. In an interview posted on Thursday on the TIME.com Web site, Wilson said the Niger official he mentioned in his report was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerian intermediary who asked if the official would discuss "commercial" sales with Iraq. The Niger official declined to do this, Wilson said.
    Wilson dismissed Tenet's suggestion that this meeting supported Bush's claim in the January speech: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the president alleged? These guys really need to get serious...."

    July 18 ~"The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information

    and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, ... much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. ..
    ...In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully....
    The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise. ....
    ..In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe. The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
    The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy....it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms. " Guardian story

    July 18 ~ A senior military source who foresaw British forces in Iraq for a long time told the Guardian: "Conflict is much cheaper than post-conflict."

    Cost of occupation: £5m a day - human cost extra
    "Up to £150m a month to keep troops in Iraq adds to strains on government"
    "The cost to British taxpayers of invading and occupying Iraq will be far in excess of £5bn, with £1bn being spent even before the first shot was fired, defence sources said yesterday. This far exceeds the size of the special "war chest" which the Treasury has offered. .... the latest figures from the MoD suggest that a prolonged commitment in Iraq could be a drain on scarce resources at a time when the government is under mounting pressure to prove that public services are improving. Defence sources said the cost of the six-week war, including ammunition, lost equipment, accidents and fuel, had yet to be calculated. About £1bn was spent deploying weapons systems and troops to Kuwait and aircraft to the Gulf, and "desertifying" Challenger battle tanks before operations had even started, a defence official said. The Treasury puts the cost of keeping Britain's forces in postwar Iraq at a slightly more conservative £120m a month ..."

    July 18 ~ John Maples MP, opposition member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, disassociates himself in disgust from the report from a private meeting with Andrew Gilligan which called Gilligan an unsatisfactory witness.

    Mr Maples told Jon Snow in this evening's Channel Four News that he and other opposition members of the Committee had not been present and that he regarded the meeting today as a hijack with the intention of making out that Andrew Gilligan had changed his story. Mr Gilligan says he was treated in a most personal and hostile manner by those government members of the Committee - and most certainly has not changed his version of events.
    The Guardian says: "The BBC journalist insisted that he had not changed his story, and said that Mr Anderson had "deliberately misinterpreted" his evidence.
    "This was an ambush by a hanging jury with only one opposition member present for the relevant section of the meeting," he said.
    "Donald Anderson has deliberately misinterpreted my evidence, and I have asked for the transcript to be published to make this clear. "The Labour members of the committee were determined to find fault with my story, but did not do so. I defended my journalism with vigour, pointing out, among other things, that many of my source's allegations have been corroborated by other evidence." A statement issued by the BBC tonight defended Mr Gilligan, and accused the committee of launching "personal attacks" on him...."

    July 17 ~ We are now a client state

    Guardian article today by David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor Britain has lost its sovereignty to the United States (external link)
    ".....The row over scraps of British material used for public propaganda purposes - alleged uranium from Niger, alleged 45-minute Iraqi missile firing times - shows, if nothing else, that MI6 does still run independent spying operations. But it obscures the big truth: the policy-determining, war-fighting intelligence on which Britain depends is all American. .......Britain has just invested a wildly over-budget £1.25bn in rebuilding Cheltenham. Yet it brings us no independence. Braithwaite again: "The US could get on perfectly well without GCHQ's input. GCHQ, on the other hand, is heavily reliant on US input and would be of little value without it."
    Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, recently - and somewhat drily - let it slip to the foreign affairs committee how the US wears the trousers in the intelligence marriage. America receives all the intelligence that Britain gathers, he said. "On our side, we have full transparency." Britain, on the other hand, merely "strives to secure" transparency from its supposed partners.
    .... Britain can no longer fight a war without US permission. Geoff Hoon, Britain's defence secretary, said humbly last month that "the US is likely to remain the pre-eminent political, economic and military power". Britain would concentrate, therefore, on being able to cooperate with it. "It is highly unlikely that the UK would be engaged in large-scale combat operations without the US," he said. As Rumsfeld brutally pointed out, however, the US could easily have fought the Iraq war without Britain.
    ....Britain cannot protect its citizens from US power. Blair faces an outcry as he flies into America because the US refuses to return two British prisoners for a fair trial; rather, they have to face a Kafkaesque court martial at Guantanamo Bay. ..."

    July 17 ~ Britain did not go to war to overthrow an evil regime, or even to control WMD. It went to war to keep on the right side of Washington.

    The Guardian story by Martin Kettle (external link): "....The crucial passage occurs on page 87 of Stothard's diary-style narrative of the war. It comes as the author reflects on the political thought processes that had gone into the crafting of Tony Blair's widely admired speech at the start of the vital eve-of-war Commons debate on March 18. Stothard's reflections are contained in a relatively long passage, but it deserves to be quoted in full:
    "Has Tony Blair become some sort of reckless crusader over Iraq? He (i.e.Peter Stothard in his book "30 Days" ) thinks not. In September 2002 his analysis of relations between Washington, London and Baghdad was clear and cold. It rested on six essential points to which he and his aides would regularly return: "These six points - when scribbled on the back of an envelope or set out on a printed page - are not exceptional. What is exceptional is the certainty required to follow their logic. It is Tony Blair's certainty that has been the surprise for many Labour MPs."
    Stothard sells himself short here. The six points are exceptionally important. First, because of the date. Second, because of the clear implication that Blair is the source of them (if he is not, then Stothard is sexing up his own dossier). And third, because it shows how passive British policy really was. Britain did not go to war to overthrow an evil regime, or even to control WMD. It went to war to keep on the right side of Washington."

    July 17 ~"The architect of New Labour's prominent tabloid support, Alistair Campbell, is under heavy fire. His 'dodgy dossier' is being seen by many in the media world of New Labour's final descent into apparent arrogance and patronising complacency."

    From an article on Wednesday in American Daily: "Labour Resume"

    July 16/17 ~ On a day which has seen the 147th US soldier killed in Iraq (equalling the total for the 1991 war) just what do Iraqis make of their invaders and occupiers?

    Channel Four have carried out a poll in Baghdad. " The findings are startling and in many respects very surprising." You can find the survey results website at: http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/07/week_3/16_poll.html Three in four of Baghdad's residents say the city is now more dangerous than when Saddam Hussein was in power. Two in three fear being attacked in the street. Most think we went to war to grab Iraq's oil. Yet despite these deep concerns, only a minority oppose the Americans and British invasion, and as few as one in eight want the invaders to leave the country straight away.

    July 16 ~ US "... the very point of massive tax cuts: breaking the bank so as to kill social programs."

    It was a point made very well by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer when pressed on the issue. Congress, Fleischer said, would have to reform programs accordingly. He didn't say "kill," which would have been more appropriate.
    Corporate America has spent billions lobbying for deregulation of its activities and for privatization of everything from the health system to education to national parks and forests to Social Security -- a situation that would lead to ownership and control by the corporate sector and a tiny handful of the super rich of virtually every aspect of society....
    ...With country and culture in the hands of a very few, democracy perishes. The great American Experiment would end not through internal weakness, but via carefully crafted "neoconservative" strategy from without, to be replaced by something resembling, more than anything else, medieval feudalism, only set in a high tech world. According to the plan now in place, "we the people" are to be the new serfs. As Thom Hartmann noted: "We're entering a new and unknown but hauntingly familiar era.".... "
    This article from Bill Withers at informationclearinghouse.info makes depressing sense.

    July 16 ~ A group of former intelligence officers in the United States is calling on Vice President Dick Cheney to resign.

    They are accusing him of misleading President George W Bush and the American public, by overstating the case for going to war with ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. ....the Bush administration continues to maintain that by sourcing British intelligence, the president's claim was "technically correct".
    But the assertion has failed to impress critics.
    "I find statements like that from the senior leadership of the two countries as incredibly arrogant," said Andrew Wilkie, a former Australian intelligence officer. Now, a group of former US intelligence officers are pointing the finger firmly at Vice President Cheney. They say the President's number two should carry the can for aggressively overstating the case for war.
    "If you look at Cheney's speeches, he's way out ahead of all the other American statesmen and officials in saying Saddam Hussein has a nuclear capability, he's reconstituting it, he said in August and by and guess what, on the 16th of March, he has already reconstituted it. No evidence to support that," said Ray McGovern, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
    So far, Mr Cheney has avoided comment on the scandal. But it was his office that dispatched a former US diplomat to the country of Niger in February 2002, and that diplomat concluded that Saddam Hussein had not been trying to buy uranium from the authorities there. ...." http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/americas/view/44618/1/.html

    July 16 ~ Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter has released a new book, accusing President George Bush of illegally attacking Iraq and calling for "regime change" in the United States at the next election.

    Ritter said Bush lied to the American people and Congress about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; .... Ritter, a former U.S. Marine, was a weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He has been a vocal critical of the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.
    Ritter said he wrote Frontier Justice, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwacking of America " (external link to Amazon) to educate people. ...Ritter argues that "the United States carried out an illegal war of aggression." ....... At the news conference, Ritter accused France and Germany of failing to get a Security Council or General Assembly resolution calling the war illegal and demanding a U.S. withdrawal. Ritter had kind words for Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said ElBaradei was "much more honest" than Blix about appraising Iraq's nuclear weapons and the threat they posed. (Wire reports)" http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=8&id=266537

    July 16 ~ "... the administration has a problem with the truth"

    Washington Post (external link) ".... CIA Director George J. Tenet will be pressed hard for greater clarity when he testifies before the intelligence committee in a closed session. "This is a very serious issue that should be dealt with in a very serious way," Edwards said. In "some ways the administration has a problem with the truth." ...
    ....on Thursday, ... British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally in the war, addresses a joint session of Congress. ...
    ....the public is growing increasingly concerned about the mounting casualties among U.S. troops in Iraq. Americans are split over whether Bush exaggerated intelligence reports to justify going to war, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll..."

    July 16 ~ " If my son had died fighting a war because someone threatened our country I would still feel proud of him and my PM.''

    Reported in the Indian Express "Andrew Kelly, of the British Army's Crack Parachute Regiment, died in a shooting accident at an army base in southern Iraq on May 6, just weeks after his 18th birthday. His father Robert Kelly wrote to Blair on Monday in the most personal criticism yet at his decision to take Britain to war.
    ''My son died because the wrong decision was made,'' he said. ''If we hadn't declared war, my son would be alive today. If my son had died fighting a war because someone threatened our country I would still feel proud of him and my PM.'' ..."(Reuters)

    July 16 ~ "Scott Ritter and Hans Blix, meanwhile, continued to dispute Bush's version of events In Washington"

    No light in Iraq tunnel: Troops to stay put (external link) ".....Bush defended the quality of CIA intelligence as he tried to calm the growing storm. "I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence. And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence," he said.
    Former UN arms inspectors Scott Ritter and Hans Blix, meanwhile, continued to dispute Bush's version of events. "The entire case the Bush administration made against Iraqis a lie," Ritter told reporters at UN headquarters, while Blix told Denmark's Politiken daily that Washington, London and their allies had ignored his advice on Iraq's banned weapons..."

    July 16 ~ "I am not the source" Dr David Kelly

    Dr David Kelly, who works in the MoD's counter-proliferation and arms control secretariat, told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee he did not believe that he could be the source of comments made by the BBC's Andrew Gilligan. ... "From the conversation I had I don't see how he could make the authoritative statements he was making from the comments that I made ...I do realise that in the conversation I had there was reinforcement of some of the ideas that he has put forward ""
    MPs on the committee claimed he had been "set up" by the Ministry of Defence.
    When Dr Kelly was asked by the committee if the dossier had been transformed by Downing Street communications chief Alistair Campbell, he said: "I don't believe that at all".
    According to the Guardian report (external link) "The BBC has always said that Gilligan had known the "senior intelligence source" whom he relied on in his report for several years. When Dr Kelly first came forward and admitted he had briefed Gilligan, the MoD initially stated that he had known Gilligan for a few months, later changing this to years. Today, Dr Kelly told MPs that he met Gilligan for the first time less than a year ago in September 2002, and then on two subsequent occasions....The BBC has refused to confirm or deny whether Dr Kelly was the main source of Gilligan's story. When he gave evidence to the committee, Gilligan said he had met with a number of contacts to discuss Iraq's weapons. Dr Kelly, the former head of microbiology at MoD research centre Porton Down, has advised the ministry on Iraq, WMDs and weapons inspections for the last decade. ."
    Channel 4 comments: "The government has tried to produce the source for the BBC report that claimed that the September Iraq war dossier had been 'sexed up'. The only problem is that when the man appeared before a committee of MPs today he was unable to establish that he was the source, indeed he may have done exactly the opposite. And once again, as we report tonight, it's a sideshow compared with the continuing embarrassment that the government is suffering over the disproved claim of Niger's attempt to sell uranium to Iraq."

    July 15 ~On Saturday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press corps that Bush had "moved on" from this controversy. Not so fast, said the New York Times editorial board.

    "... The paper of record for the Western world published an editorial on Saturday entitled "The Uranium Fiction." The last time the Times editors used language this strong was when Bush, in a moment of seemingly deranged hubris, tried to nominate master secret-keeper Henry Kissinger to chair the 9/11 investigation..." See The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet from Truth Out org

    July 15 ~".. a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset"

    Read The Uranium Fiction, published in the NYT extract:"the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do. ...... A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson 4th, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue. Mr. Wilson has said he is confident that his concerns were circulated not only within the agency but also at the State Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday, confirmed that the Wilson findings had been given wide distribution, although he reported that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high officials had not been directly informed about them by the C.I.A. The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat.

    July 15 ~ Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war

    Upping the ante for Kim Jong Il from informationclearinghouse about the Pentagon Plan 5030, a new blueprint for facing down North Korea
    "...Within the past two months, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered U.S. military commanders to devise a new war plan for a possible conflict with North Korea. Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war, some senior Bush administration officials tell U.S. News. Adm. Thomas Fargo, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, and senior Pentagon planners are developing the highly classified plan. The administration insiders, who are critical of the plan, say it blurs the line between war and peace. The plan would give commanders in the region authority to conduct maneuvers--before a war has started--to drain North Korea's limited resources, strain its military, and perhaps sow enough confusion that North Korean generals might turn against the country's leader, Kim Jong Il. "Some of the things [Fargo] is being asked to do," says a senior U.S. official, "are, shall we say, provocative."

    July 15 ~ World leaders reject Blair's move over military action

    By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent of the Independent (external link) " Tony Blair was rebuffed yesterday over attempts to give international backing to military action to topple the brutal leaders of failed states like Iraq.
    A summit of 14 world leaders refused to endorse a joint statement which proposed waiving the legal ban on intervening in foreign states if governments failed to protect their citizens from repression or "state failure". The original draft, revealed by The Independent on Sunday, said: "Where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." But the passage was cut from the final communiqui amid fears that it could have provided justification for the war in Iraq and give carte blanche to Western powers to intervene in countries around the world. The final document instead stressed "the crucial importance of international co-operation in responding to humanitarian crises". It said: "We are clear that the UN Security Council remains the sole body to authorise global action in dealing with humanitarian crises of this kind."
    .... Speaking at the end of a three-day Progressive Governance Summit in Surrey, Mr Blair refused yesterday to link proposals for reforming international law with the war in Iraq, but called for new international "rules" to govern intervention in failing states. ....
    .....The leaders, including the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schrvder, New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, and the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chritien, said that "the global challenges of poverty, protecting the environment and human rights, promoting development and peace and combating terrorism require a step change in the confidence and capacities of our global institutions. These must be based on respect for international law and founded on multilateralism."

    July 15 ~"we were aware that, on Iraq, every word we said was going to be taken down and, if possible, used against us. "

    James Naughtie in the Today Programme newsletter:
    "....One question above all became important.
    The committee said it couldn't establish how it was the the famous 45-minute claim had been given "undue prominence" in the September dossier (a prominence which Jack Straw told the committee in evidence he regretted). So was it the Joint Intelligence Committee itself which had given it that emphasis? The committee hadn't answered the question. Could Mr Hoon? He couldn't. When a minister starts answering a question that hasn't been asked, or starts an answer with the word "Clearly....". You know what's coming. We went round the question about five times, and answer came there none. Was it worth it? Of course it was. We could have talked about a dozen other things and skimmed across the surface. Sometimes it's better to pause and dig down a little.
    For producers and presenters alike this is a tricky time, though we're helped by the BBC taking the unshakeable line that we were right to broadcast Andrew Gilligan's original report. Nothing in the last few days has made that decision seem less justified than it did at the time."

    July 15 ~ Private Lynch, symbol of a fictitious war

    Article from the Sydney Morning Herald " The rescue of Jessica Lynch defined the Iraq war - and now defines what it was not, writes Malcolm Knox.
    Private Jessica Lynch has amnesia. The soldier, now reportedly in hospital, can bear witness neither to what happened nor what didn't. Lynch remains the governing metaphor for the war, which, like her, is less a substance than an absence, a portrait drawn in silhouette. Just as Lynch is coloured around by what did not happen to her on April Fool's Day, what is not happening in Iraq is growing clearer by the day....
    ...When the telemovie is screened, Lynch's amnesia will be relieved and she can become, at last, what Michael Moore might have predicted as her destiny: a fictitious character rescued fictitiously from a fictitious war to which she had been sent by a fictitious president, as seen by an audience who can't remember. " (Read in full)

    July 15 ~ Last year, the Israelis produced a "dossier" culled from captured Palestinian documents, "proving" that Arafat was directing "terrorism" against Israel. The papers, mistranslated and doctored, proved nothing of the kind. But after Tony Blair's mendacious "dodgy dossier" before the Iraq war, who are we to criticise Israel for its lies?

    Robert Fisk's disturbing article in today's Independent: "What Israel does to Palestine, we are doing to Iraq"

    July 14 ~ "George Tenet, making him the fall guy, does not resolve the question or make go away the questions about the overall intelligence .."

    Seattle Post Intelligencer (external link) Democrats pressed yesterday for an investigation of how the Bush administration used intelligence in the months before the war with Iraq, brushing aside CIA Director George Tenet's claim that it was his fault a disputed report about Baghdad trying to buy uranium from Niger made it into the State of the Union address. "George Tenet, making him the fall guy, does not resolve the question or make go away the questions about the overall intelligence and why the administration clearly had this political tug of war over the kind of information they were presenting America," Sen. John Kerry D-Mass., said on CNN's "Late Edition." "That is only going to be answered by the White House...."

    July 14 ~ "..we have yet to see any credible evidence in support of either claim"

    Chicago Sun-Times "... A key part of the president's sales job on the weapons of mass destruction was to convince us that Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute Iraq's nuclear weapons program, a particularly frightening threat when coupled with the assertion that his government was linked to the terrorist threat of al-Qaida. Four months after the start of the war, however, we have yet to see any credible evidence in support of either claim...
    What we have said is it should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech," Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "People cannot conclude that the information was necessarily false."
    I guess that means that unless we can prove that it's false, it still might be true, even though the people we pay to assess these matters don't believe it is.... ."

    July 14 ~"The former chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, renewed his attack on Mr Blair, saying the prime minister had made a fundamental mistake in claiming Iraq had weapons capable of being fired in 45 minutes..."

    ( Guardian today - extrernal link) "...He said Mr Blair had over interpreted the intelligence made available to him.
    But the leader of the Commons, Peter Hain, also insisted that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and rejected calls for an independent judicial inquiry.
    Speaking on GMTV, he said: "I do not think that there is any greater justification for an independent inquiry... we are going to find, I believe, the weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the world and were used against other parts of the world. I think in the end history will judge that this was the right thing to do." Mr Hain did not repeat Downing Street's carefully crafted formula that ministers are confident weapons of mass destruction programmes and their products will be found. He conceded that Mr Blair was facing a particular problem of trust with the electorate, but said it reflected a wider disengagement between politics and the electorate. .. Mr Hain robustly defended the British claim that it had not shared all its intelligence, including the uranium claim, with the US, insisting that British evidence on Saddam's search for uranium came from a third intelligence agency. Mr Blair defended the attack on Iraq on moral grounds at a progressive governance conference in London. ...... "

    July 14 ~ Ruling council in symbolic first step

    Guardian
    13 Shia, five Sunnis, five Kurds, a Christian and a Turkoman line up to steer path to democracy Michael Howard writes, " Iraq's new governing council, a 25-member body appointed by US and British officials, held its inaugural meeting yesterday in a move seen as the country's first tentative step towards democracy since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The council, formed after two months of often tense negotiations with the occupying coalition, will have the power to name ministers and direct policy, and it is expected to help draw up a new constitution for postwar Iraq. ..."

    July 13/14 ~ "So entangled are they in their own spin that they can't see what is obvious to everyone in the land".

    (Sunday Herald) ".... Alastair Campbell should already have resigned, as should a few others, the better to clear their names of any complicity in what Clare Short called this 'honourable deception'. Books with that title are already being written and they will likely conclude that the second Iraq war was Britain's greatest military and diplomatic disaster since Suez.
    Blair and his director of communications, Campbell, put in the performances of their lives before their respective select committees, ducking and diving and mangling meaning as if their political lives depended on it. Which they do. But they are holed below the water line. Their case for going to war against Saddam Hussein -- that his WMD posed an imminent danger -- is simply no longer tenable. So entangled are they in their own spin that they can't see what is obvious to everyone in the land.... "

    July 13/14 ~ "No more fudges A WMD inquiry is imperative now " - Leader in Sunday's Observer

    ".... We must be convinced that the information on which our governments go to war is impartially gathered and impartially presented before the lives of combatants and civilians are put at risk.
    Were those standards of proof met before war was launched against Iraq? Or were we simply fed misinformation, exaggeration and half-truth over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? A worrying picture is emerging. ....
    We have seen no evidence of Saddam's alleged capacity to deploy WMD within 45 minutes. Now, there are serious questions over claims that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Niger, a claim central to the Government's original case that his weapons of mass destruction represented a threat to world security. (See warmwell's Niger page)
    Following the admission by the CIA's director that he did not believe this claim, we must be told how it became so central to arguments deployed by Britain and the US.....
    Only a full public inquiry can answer these questions and the broader issues of the case for war. " http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,997370,00.html

    July 13/14 ~".. a war which seemed to be driven by a handful of Republican neo-conservatives. "

    an article from the Sunday Herald "The government's entire case for the war was effectively scuttled last week by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who admitted that there had been no major new evidence of WMD before the invasion of Iraq. So, why then the rush to war? Why wasn't the UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, allowed to continue his inspections? Where was the real and present danger to British and American national security? It was all to do, Rummy said, with seeing old evidence through the 'prism' of September 11. He may know what he means but I'm damned if I do. ...
    This is why the situation is so dangerous for Blair and why some of his own MPs, like Brian Donohoe, are saying he may have to resign. This remains unthinkable to the Westminster village. But if it comes to a choice between the integrity of the Labour Party and the integrity of Tony Blair, who is to say which way most Labour MPs would jump? "

    July 12/13 ~ "Meanwhile in Australia the Prime Minister John Howard has apologised for using the claim as part of his justification for invading Iraq

    -- the latest in a growing list of public apologies political leaders around the world have had to make for over-selling the case for war...this as Clare Short for one, now says Tony Blair should resign..." (Channel 4's news update email)

    July 12/13 ~ Bush "considers Iraq Uranium matter closed"??

    Bush said. "I've got confidence in George Tenet. I've got confidence in the men and women who work at the CIA and I look forward to working with them as we win this war on terror." Tenet shouldered the blame. Where it really lies is another matter. Tenet's words were a "carefully scripted mea culpa" according to John Solomon of the Associated Press . Bush says the CIA had reviewed his address and did not raise any alarms. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has said, "The president has moved on."
    Words fail us.
    The CIA tried for months to substantiate the British allegation on which the claim that Iraq had sought nuclear materials from Africa was based. They were unsuccessful. The State Department intelligence analysts believed the intelligence was "highly dubious." Yet neither the CIA nor the State Department stopped Bush from making the claim in a single sentence of his annual address to the nation.
    That Mr Blair is now claiming that the story was substantiated by a different source is extraordinary.

    July 12/13 ~ "..the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US (for good reasons, which I have given your committee in private session)," Jack Straw's letter to the foreign affairs select committee

    "A judgment was therefore made to retain it."

    July 12/13 ~ Blair told to refuse his US honour

    Alison Hardie in the Scotsman on Saturday: " Tony Blair was last night under intense pressure from the Labour benches to turn down a prestigious Congressional Gold Medal from George Bush, the United States president, as the political fall-out from the Iraq conflict continued to bedevil the Prime Minister.
    ..... The decision to award the Prime Minister the highest accolade the US can confer on a foreigner has been approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but no formal ceremony will take place when Mr Blair visits Washington on Thursday.
    As rumours swirled around Westminster, President Bush continued to face post-Iraq troubles of his own. Last night, the CIA director, George Tenet, accepted responsibility for the false claim that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa. Mr Tenet said his agency should have removed the accusations - originally passed to the US by British intelligence - from the president's State of the Union address. He added: "The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included." ...(i.e."The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." )
    (See http://www.news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=758722003 and also the NIGER page, on warmwell since March 20, about the fact that the document linking Niger with Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium had been forged )
    Mr Bush said in his January speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

    July 8 ~ The committee concluded that the shoddy way in which this "dodgy" dossier was put together "undermined the credibility of their (the Government's) case for war and of the other documents which were part of it".

    Telegraph today No 10's hype merchants hit the fast spin programme " There was no direct criticism of the BBC anywhere in the report. The BBC's refusal to be cowed by the unprecedented barrage of attacks from the Government has surprised those inside and outside the corporation. Reading between the lines of the report, it is clear the committee came to the conclusion that the Government had exaggerated the case for war." Read in full

    July 8 ~ The newspapers report the House of Commons' foreign affairs select committee conclusions

    Blair criticised on Iraq dossiers George Jones, Political Editor of the Telegraph writes," Tony Blair suffered a setback yesterday in his efforts to show that he did not overstate the case for war in Iraq when a committee of MPs said the "jury is still out" on his claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction...."
    Blair told: it's time to answer vital questions is the Guardianheadline "... a Labour dominated Commons committee posed a series of unexpectedly sceptical questions about Whitehall's prewar intelligence assessment. Far from giving Tony Blair's defence of his government's conduct an easy run, the Commons foreign affairs select committee listed four unanswered questions over claims made in the September dossier about Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes and his missing missiles. As expected, the committee formally acquitted Mr Blair's communications director, Alastair Campbell, of "improper influence" or "sexing up" the dossier by knowingly inserting false claims that Saddam's weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order, and doing so against the advice of intelligence officials. But they still want ministers to say if they continue to believe that claim is accurate. ..."
    BLAIR SLAMMED OVER IRAQ DOSSIER The Mirror
    "45-minute attack claim blown apart And he DID misrepresent case to MPs PM to face fresh quiz on 'dodgy' dossier
    TONY Blair waged war on Iraq with no "clear intelligence" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them, a damning report said yesterday. The Defence Ministry document blew apart repeated claims by Mr Blair that Saddam could deploy chemical and biological warheads within 45 minutes."
    The BBC report quotes from other papers' reports. In the Times Peter Riddell and Philip Webster write:" Trust in Prime Minister slides as dossier row with BBC rages.. PUBLIC support for the war in Iraq and trust in Tony Blair have fallen sharply over the past month with the killing of British and American troops and the row over the Government's dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons, an opinion poll for The Times finds today. ..."

    July 6 ~ Blair speaks out for Campbell in WMD row:

    (Channel 4 news email update) "Tomorrow we finally hear the report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee into the way the Government handled intelligence in the run up to the war with Iraq.
    Although not intended, it has also become judge and jury in the hysterical spat between the BBC and the Government over allegations made on the Today programme. The row centres on the allegation that the Government inserted a claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes into the September dossier on Iraq's WMD programme despite "probably" knowing it wasn't true.
    The Prime Minister gave Alastair Campbell his full backing today in a newspaper interview for the Observer (external link to Observer) explaining that he felt the allegations made on the BBC were a personal attack on his (Tony Blair's) integrity.
    The pressure on Auntie is building, as the Select Committee is likely largely to side with Campbell in the row (whilst also criticising him over the second "dodgy" dossier and proving the BBC right on certain other aspects). " ( The Observer article)

    July 6 ~ Iraq is a world problem. It needs a world solution

    Matthew Parris in the Sunday Times
    "Saddam or no Saddam, it seems the occupying powers have a fight on their hands in Iraq. If a slow-motion disaster is to be avoided, then beyond Iraq's frontiers climbdowns are needed on all sides. The United States and Britain will have to relinquish sole ownership of the occupation. The rest of the international community will have to stop grumbling and join the occupying forces. Whatever the past, whatever mistakes may have been made, regime change must now be accepted as an honourable endeavour in whose success the whole world has a stake.
    I was utterly opposed to the war beforehand. I still think we should never have started down the road of intervention. But we're on that road now, and a good way down it. What is to be gained by moaning? The unwilling should now join the willing in trying to make the occupation - and ultimately the handover - work.
    There is no point in crowing

    July 6 ~ "We are not going to let him misrepresent our argument..."

    BBC news executives plan to publish a history of the dispute. An executive said: "Alastair will come out with some version of events to say: 'I was right all along'. He will construct the most aggressive soundbite he can. We are not going to let him misrepresent our argument." Intelligence chief accuses Blair of 'credibility gap' over WMD Independent "The remarks by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the joint intelligence committee, suggest that even if Downing Street wins its row with the BBC, questions about the origins of the Iraq war will remain unanswered."

    July 4 ~ Study deals a blow to claims of anti-war bias in BBC news

    Guardian (external link) "Downing Street's complaints about anti-war bias within the BBC appear to be disproved by an academic analysis that shows the corporation displayed the most "pro-war" agenda of any broadcaster. A detailed study of peak-time television news bulletins during the course of the Iraq war shows that the BBC was more reliant than any of its rivals on government and military sources. The findings, by academics at Cardiff University, give little support to the deep-rooted suspicions in government circles that lie at the heart of the row with the BBC. Instead, ahead of the report by the foreign affairs select committee into the government's use of intelligence, they give comfort to the corporation. ..
    .....Richard Sambrook, the director of news, said in a letter to Alastair Campbell, the director of communications at Downing Street, at the height of the row: "It is our firm view that No 10 tried to intimidate the BBC in its reporting of events leading up to the war and during the course of the war itself." "

    July 4 ~ The committee ... will complain it was given insufficient access to the full drafts of assessments by the joint intelligence committee.

    Guardian (external link) "Alastair Campbell, the government's communications director, has been provisionally cleared of the BBC's charge of "sexing up" British intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the foreign affairs select committee agreed yesterday. The committee came to its view, however, on the basis of the evidence presented to the committee, and will complain it was given insufficient access to the full drafts of assessments by the joint intelligence committee. It was unclear last night whether the decision to exonerate Mr Campbell was made unanimously or by the Labour majority on the committee acting alone. ...
    ...The committee will complain that they were given insufficient access to papers, prompting the Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, to renew his call for a judicial inquiry.
    In the Commons yesterday the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, said the prime minister had misled the Commons about the "dodgy dossier" on Iraq published under Mr Campbell's guidance in February. Mr Ancram said: "Whether deliberately, knowing that the document was a Downing Street concoction, or unwittingly because Mr Campbell had not seen fit to tell him, doesn't really matter.
    "On this the House had been ... comprehensibly duped".
    The home secretary, David Blunkett, immediately attacked the comments as "scurrilous, unsubstantiated and disgraceful".

    July 2 ~ "We also believe that psychopathic killers who take over nation states, brutalise their populations and threaten the peace of the world pose a serious threat to humanity"

    Not our own comment on the situation in Iraq but an extract from an open letter from 16 Labour backbenchers who supported the government on the war. They say they did not give their support to the crucial Commons vote on military action on the single issue of weapons of mass destruction. This is from the Guardian's article yesterday: Iraq BBC row blows up again which tells us that Ben Bradshaw himself draws on unattributed sources to claim that "many journalists in the BBC" agree with his criticisms.

    July 1/ 2 ~ Donald Rumsfeld is now seeking to internationalise the force in Iraq

    From the San Francisco Chronicle: (external link) "....Up to 20,000 international soldiers, to be led by Poland and Britain, will begin flowing into Iraq this month -- arriving through September -- said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Tuesday press conference with Rumsfeld.
    More international troops are being sought. "The more there are, the fewer of U.S. troops we have to have," Rumsfeld said, adding that he didn't know yet whether commanders will say they need more or fewer people in the total coalition in coming months. "But whatever it is, we will fill in with as many international forces as we can, and we will then be able to rotate some of our forces out and give them a rest."

    July 1/2 ~" While the Westminster village remains riveted by the Campbell-BBC pillow fight, it is the real war on the ground in Iraq that should be commanding our attention."

    Guardian "The six British soldiers killed last week, like the US servicemen under daily attack, are victims of an overbearing and inept occupation policy that is alienating ordinary Iraqis of all persuasions.
    Civilian deaths, particularly of demonstrators, are mounting. Basic services and basic rights are in scant supply, with neither democracy nor a reliable water supply on offer to Iraqis. The only advanced programme is for the privatisation of state industry. This occupation, which has no modern precedent, should be at the centre of political attention. Ending it needs to be at the heart of public activity. ..."

    July 1 ~" The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space

    that will allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory. Over the next 25 years, the new technology would free the US from dependence on forward bases and the cooperation of regional allies, part of the drive towards self-sufficiency spurred by the difficulties of gaining international cooperation for the invasion of Iraq. .." Guardian (external link)

    July 1 ~ "The BBC yesterday ignored Alastair Campbell's declaration of a temporary truce in the row over the Government's Iraqi dossiers

    by giving fresh details to a Commons inquiry as to why it was justified in running a story that accused Downing Street of "sexing up" the documents. ....... In its evidence to the Commons foreign affairs select committee, which is investigating the dispute, the BBC said that its source was "well-placed" and had a proven track record, having provided correct information that formed the basis of two previous stories. Although the source's identity was not disclosed to the committee, the BBC said it was also known to Richard Sambrook, the BBC's head of news, and Kevin Marsh, the editor of Today. It has also since been made known to Greg Dyke, the director-general...." Telegraph (external link)
    The Independent says, "The job of press secretary becomes extremely difficult if the press secretary, and not the department he serves, becomes the story and the subject of excessive attention..."
    Norman Tebbit says (also in the Independent) "To Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, for the BBC to attack New Labour is an act of treachery. The corporation has been staffed with Tony's cronies and assumed patsies. It has been protected, cossetted and privileged. So one element of the row is Blair's indignation that, after all his favours, the BBC should turn and bite the hand that feeds it..."

    June 30 ~ Greg Dyke, the BBC's director-general, has staked his reputation and that of the corporation on an "all or nothing" confrontation with the Government and Tony Blair's director of communications Alastair Campbell.

    Telegraph "....MPs on the Commons foreign affairs select committee predicted yesterday that their inquiry would clear Mr Campbell of the BBC's central charge - that he forced the intelligence services to "sex up" the Government's first dossier on Iraq.
    If the Labour-dominated committee finds in Mr Campbell's favour, there could be dire consequences for Mr Dyke and Gavyn Davies, the BBC's chairman, who has added his weight to the fight with No 10.
    ...... As the battle between the Government and the BBC escalated, with a fresh exchange of letters and accusations, it emerged that Mr Dyke played a central role in drafting the BBC's official response to Mr Campbell. A detailed note issued last Friday by Richard Sambrook, the BBC's head of news, was prepared in the director-general's presence, with Mr Dyke taking turns at the keyboard as it was being written. ......... Gilligan's case inside the BBC is understood to have been bolstered by his decision to tell Mr Sambrook the identity of the single intelligence source behind his story. The dossier he is preparing for the committee will include details of other claims made by his source which have not so far been reported by the BBC...."

    June 29/30 ~ BBC warns Alastair Campbell: repeat allegations and we'll sue

    Extract from the Scotland's Sunday Herald "....If we could sue Campbell we would too, but he has been careful to make his statements under privilege while giving evidence to the foreign affairs committee....the BBC has also authorised its defence correspondent to threaten legal action against a Labour MP who claims that he misled a Commons inquiry.
    In a separate development, a senior intelligence officer, who previously briefed the Sunday Herald that the government had misled the public and parliament, last night strongly rebutted Campbell's denial that he spun the case for war.
    "I previously said that there was absolute scepticism among British intelligence over the case for the invasion of Iraq. That is still the case. Campbell's claims that the dossier wasn't sexed up are utter rubbish...."

    June 29/30 ~ "US official who identified documents incriminating Iraq as fakes says Britain must have been aware of findings"

    Independent on Sunday Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat "...The retired US ambassador said it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report - drawn up by the CIA - which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the west African state of Niger, were forgeries. When he saw similar claims in Britain's dossier on Iraq last September, he even went as far as telling CIA officials that they needed to alert their British counterparts to his investigation.
    The allegation will add to the suspicions of opponents to the war that last week's row between the BBC and Tony Blair's director of communications Alastair Campbell was a sideshow to draw attention away from more serious questions about the justification for the war..."
    ( See also warmwell's page on the Niger forgeries) June 29/30 ~ "..Mr Campbell's battle with the BBC, which is damaging the government, will be seen for the smokescreen that it is." Times Leader: "... Whatever people think of the BBC, they don't like to see the government attacking it. They are also getting a glimpse of what really goes on. Mr Campbell is publicly doing what he has been doing in private for many years: bullying and blustering to get his way. No doubt he believes he is diverting attention away from the government's real problem on Iraq: the failure to find Saddam's weapons.
    The public does not care whether a particular piece of evidence was inserted by No 10 or by the head of the joint intelligence committee. What people care about is whether the government went to war on false grounds. As long as the search for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction remains fruitless, that fundamental question will persist. And Mr Campbell's battle with the BBC, which is damaging the government, will be seen for the smokescreen that it is..."

    June 28 ~ "I think the public are probably bored rigid with this already." Alastair Campbell.

    From the Channel 4 transcript of last night's extraordinary interview. On the contrary, Mr Campbell. The public is aghast.

    June 28 ~ Jon Snow: The answer to that question is - we do not know. And the reason we do not know is that there is obfuscation and diversion, part of which we are seeing played out right here before us.

    The fact is that MPs want to question the chiefs of the intelligence services, and should be allowed to do so. Instead you are preferring, you the government, are preferring a 'hole in the corner' operation with an intelligence committee which is not held in public, and which is answerable to the Prime Minister. ..." Read the full transcript of the Channel 4 interview with Alastair Campbell

    June 28 ~ Has Downing Street's assault on the BBC served to divert attention from the serious parliamentary inquiry currently under way over the war with Iraq?

    Nyta Mann, BBC News Online political correspondent writes "Has Downing Street's assault on the BBC served to divert attention from the serious parliamentary inquiry currently under way over the war with Iraq? Daft question: of course it has. Labour MPs are far from happy about the distraction, and not just those who opposed the war. ..." This point was also made by John Humphrys during his exasperated exchange with Ben Bradshaw on the Today programme this morning. Mr Bradshaw declined to answer any of the specific points made and returned again and again to the asserttion that the BBC should always check with the Press Office of Number Ten. John Humphrys pointed out that he had checked with a Minister. Listen again

    June 27/28 ~ Mr Sambrook's letter escalates the war of words between the government and the BBC.

    "In it, he gives a point-by-point rebuttal of the spin doctor's attack on the BBC. He says: "You will see that I do not accept the validity of your attacks on our journalism and on Andrew Gilligan in particular. ..." See BBC report BBC rebuts Downing Street attack Mr Sambrook's letter in full can be seen here.

    June 27 ~ Straw at the Select Committee:

    Channel 4 email tonight: "It's hard to recall any time in British history when the country has gone to war on the basis of intelligence information about the other side. Unlike 1991 Iraq had not invaded anybody, had not displaced anybody and was not in all conscience about to attack us. Hence what the security services had to tell us about Iraq was absolutely critical. And one core question is did they believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to fire in 45 minutes....."

    June 27 ~ The biggest problem for Mr Blair remains: if weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes, why were they not used and why have they not been found?

    The Independent today "'There is not a single fact in either dossier that is actually disputed' So said Tony Blair yesterday. Well then, what about ..." " The Niger connection
    Questions on the Government's claims that Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire uranium from the African state of Niger for his nuclear weapons programme were still unanswered last night. MPs asked Mr Campbell why the claim was said by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be based on "blatant forgeries". The claim formed an important part of the Government's dossier on Saddam's arsenal, providing evidence that the Iraqi dictator was attempting to build nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to the West. The Government has stood by reports that Iraq "sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa". British officials say the intelligence was based on multiple sources, despite the IAEA's verdict. Mr Campbell said yesterday that the questions could only be answered by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)..."
    Warmwell's page on the "Niger Connection".

    June 27 ~ " the bone of contention this week is not the invasion of Iraq or the validity of Mr Campbell's frantic search for a casus belli to bamboozle the Attorney-General and the Parliamentary Labour Party..."

    Simon Jenkinsin the Times today wants the BBC "commended for making such powerful enemies" :

    June 26/27 ~" The only thing worse than a world with the wrong international trade rules is a world with no trade rules at all.."

    "..George Bush seems to be preparing to destroy the WTO at the next world trade talks in September not because its rules are unjust, but because they are not unjust enough. He is seeking to negotiate individually with weaker countries so that he can force even harsher terms of trade upon them. He wants to replace a multilateral trading system with an imperial one. And this puts the global justice movement in a difficult position....let us campaign not to scrap the World Trade Organisation, but to transform it into a Fair Trade Organisation, whose purpose is to restrain the rich while emancipating the poor. And let us ensure that when George Bush tries to sabotage themultilateral system in September, we know precisely which side we are on. " George Monbiot in the Guardian on Monday

    June 26 ~ a major fracture in the chain of command

    "General Peter Wall down in Basra, Southern Iraq, says the perception amongst many Iraqis is that things are getting worse. A salutary recognition of a deepening truth, which emerges as the ghastly details of the killings and woundings of British troops last Tuesday begin to emerge. There seems to have been a major fracture in the chain of command and the men seem simply to have been left to hang out to die. .." From Channel 4 news update email

    June 26 ~ The chairman of the Commons public administration committee, Tony Wright, said Mr Campbell's answers had failed to resolve key issues.

    Mr Wright said he accepted Mr Campbell had not "messed about" with vital evidence. But he told BBC Two's Newsnight: "The question is did the intelligence sustain the case for war, even if that war did not have the backing of the United Nations? That is a pretty big test to set yourself." (see below)

    June 26 ~" if his critics are not lying, then certainly he and probably the prime minister are. It's as simple and as serious as that..."

    An emailer writes," Doesn't Alastair C just make one squirm. He has such effrontery - he needs to be cross examined by a lawyer, not just MPs. It will be interesting to see how the BBC stand up for themselves."
    It seems that the BBC are standing very firm. Here are three articles from the BBC today. Extract: (see in full)

    June 25 ~ Campbell's dossier denials:

    From Jon Snow's Channel 4 News update email: Read the expose that brought Alastair to heel here: http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/02/week_1/06_dossier.html

    June 21/24 ~ Anarchy engulfs the new Iraq

    Powerless Iraqis rail against ignorant, air-conditioned US occupation force writes Patrick Cockburn in the Independent on Sunday "..... The failure to get the electrical system working has become a symbol for Iraqis in the capital of the general failure of the American occupation to provide living conditions even at the miserable level they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein.
    ....... The main reason why Washington does not want to give up any power is the fear that this would ultimately open the way for a takeover by Iraq's Shia Muslims, who account for at least 55 per cent of the population and would probably win any free elections. Just outside the Mansour Melia hotel on the Tigris in Baghdad yesterday, a Shia religious leader in turban and dark clerical clothes called Sheikh Ahmad al-Zirzawi al-Baghdadi was leading several hundred demonstrators to Mr Bremer's headquarters. "We are not asking for American troops to withdraw, just free elections and the release of our leaders whom they have arrested," he said. But for President George Bush it would be deeply damaging if, in an election year, the successors to Saddam Hussein in Iraq turned out to be Islamic religious parties with possible links to Iran. .."

    June 20/24 ~We stayed to rule. They want to conquer and go

    Max Hastings in the Sunday Telegraph: ".... One of the gravest mistakes of American foreign policy is to suppose that intervening in places without a lasting commitment somehow makes it all okay. Unfortunately, it does not - as we saw in Somalia, as we see in Afghanistan, and as we are likely to see in Iraq. Everybody knows Kipling's first line about taking up the White's Man Burden. Some people are less familiar with the second: "In patience to abide."
    ......The US in Iraq today needs not more soldiers, but Sanders of The River and some boring old agriculturalists, tax experts and health professionals. Their role is not glamorous, but it is critical. The message is simple: either behave like proper imperialists, or stay out of the kitchen. If the US continues to believe that the role of superpower can be fulfilled solely through the exercise of military might, then it will rouse even greater global animosity than it faces today...."

    June 21/24 ~ The war ended 10 weeks ago, but neither peace nor freedom prevail as the US struggles to keep control

    says James McGowan in the Sunday Herald. "Although the war might have been won with relative ease, the peace is looking more fragile each day. Any goodwill felt by the Iraqis towards the allied forces has quickly evaporated and turned into anger and resistance.
    The Americans are becoming frustrated as the growing movements are now killing an average of one soldier a day. According to US Commander Lieutenant General David McKiernan, it has turned into 'a cycle of action, reaction and counter-action'.
    This equates to more than 50 US troops killed since President George Bush declared the war over on May 1 -- nearly half of the total number of US troops killed in the war itself. How long before the bodybag-adverse American public questions this strategy ? ..."

    June 21/24 ~ A "liberated" Michael Meacher speaks out against the US

    "....Everyone knows that George Bush is a Texas oil man, his family have long-term connections, nearly all his senior advisers and closest aides have connections to a very, very powerful oil industry,"he said. "“I think that is a relevant consideration. They believe in the oil business and the traditional way of generating power and if they gain personally that is a bonus." The Times on friday (external link)

    June 19/20 ~ ".. there is emerging evidence of the true scale of the Anglo-American killing, pointing to the bloodbath Bush and Blair have always denied. "