The Iraqi Smokescreen

Tony Blair has once again tried to justify his decision to invade Iraq. Friday's speech was an attempt to re-frame the debate over Iraq, but it was a flawed one. You cannot hope to prevent attacks on your own integrity by making a speech containing lies and half-truths. Indeed, half-truths surround much of the war in Iraq and the war on terror. And many of them are currently unravelling.

Right from the start, Blair's speech attempts to mislead the listener. Early on he states :

Of course the opponents are boosted by the fact that though we know Saddam had WMD, we haven't found the physical evidence of them in the 11 months since the war. But in fact, everyone thought he had them.

The fact that those of us who opposed the war can state "we told you so" is slim consolation for our failure to stop a war which killed thousands, and may yet destabilise the region. By suggesting otherwise, Blair attempts to paint his detractors as petty people, where we are in fact angry.

That, however, is a small spin, and almost immediately eclipsed by the supposed fact : "Everyone thought he had them."

No we didn't. It was obvious well before the war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The weapons inspectors failed to find any evidence. The British and American intelligence communities provided plenty of evidence, but every piece that was checked on the ground was proved to be false. The Bush administration didn't believe they had anything usable - contrast the gung-ho attitude over Iraq with the cowardly, softly-softly approach to North Korea, possessed of perhaps two devices. The evidence wasn't even strong enough for the UK-US alliance to win a majority vote of the security council.

"Everyone thought he had them?" No we didn't. Many of us pieced together the evidence and managed to decide that two plus two did indeed equal four, and correctly decided that Hussein had nothing of any note. To suggest otherwise is, quite simply, a lie.

September 11 was for me a revelation. The purpose was to cause such hatred between Muslims and the west that a religious jihad became reality, and the world engulfed by it.

It seems unlikely that the British Prime Minister could have been so surprised by the 11th September 2001. While it is without doubt the single most public display of Al Qaeda's agenda, it was hardly a bolt from the blue. An attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre had already been made in 1993 - most of the terrorists responsible now languish in US prisons, their links to bin Laden well documented. Al Qaeda's attacks on US targets in Yemen, Kenya and Tanzania led President Clinton to declare bin Laden to be public enemy number one, and attempt (admittedly seriously flawed) strikes against his bases in Sudan and Afghanistan. Assassination plots or attempts against targets including Clinton, Benazir Bhutto, and the Pope were uncovered. And when the Manila hotel room rented by Ramzi Yousef (mastermind behind the first World Trade Centre attack) was raided, plans to crash an aircraft into the CIA headquarters in Langley were recovered.

It is terribly fashionable for political leaders to claim that the world changed on the day that the World Trade Centre fell, but the declaration of war was made long before. It is simply not credible that the British Prime Minister could have been unaware of that declaration of war.

Even less credible is that he could believe that the war in Iraq is justified by that atrocity. Blair is correct to say that "It is monstrously premature to think the threat has passed. The risk remains in the balance here and abroad." However, Iraq has never been anything more than an enormous distraction from the fight against al Qaeda. A politically motivated war against a weak enemy, something to play well to the jingoists back home.

The true cost of the Boy's Own adventure in Iraq is still not clear. Just this week NBC - hardly the most liberal of media outlets - produced a report that appeared on their web site under the title "Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind. They claimed that the US military on three occasions sought to attack the camp of a known al Qaeda terrorist, but were prevented from doing so by the White House.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

Now, Zarqawi is believed to be behind the murder of some 700 people in post-invasion Iraq, and may be connected to the Ricin plot uncovered in Britain in January. Far from supporting the War Against Terror, the obsession with Hussein has demostratably prevented action being taken against those who are a direct, immediate threat to us.

Such double speak is now common place. Bush and Blair fight for freedom against terrorism, while Bush supports coup d'etat in Haiti, does his best to block investigations into 9/11, and maintains an illegal detention camp in Cuba. The eventual release of five British citizens from the monstrous Guantanamo camp was greeted by howls of protest from the right-wing tabloids, for whom accusation is more than enough to prove guilt. In fact, all five were simply "released" into the legal custody of the British police. One of the five has already been released without charge, ample evidence of the strength of the American case against him. Meanwhile four more Britons are being held on the grounds that they would pose a "serious threat" if released. If the evidence to prove this exists, place them on trial. It is the delay in seeking justice while the men are held in accordance with neither US nor International law that is wrong, not the imprisonment of proven terrorists. It seems strange to me that US justice was deemed acceptable for Ramzi Yousef, but not for the hundreds interned at Guantanamo.

Tony Blair would love you to believe that the world is a straight-forward, easily understood place. Muslim terrorists attack America? British troops should attack Muslim dictators. Violent intervention in another country is justified, provided it is carried out by the good guys, and carries no risk of justifying the aggressive actions of other regimes. His flawed belief in weapons of mass destruction means that "everyone knew" they existed. His opponents are "misguided" even dangerous.

The truth is more complicated. Invading Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th, nor with fighting the perpetrators of that atrocity. It was clear long before the war that there was no strong evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and that the Bush administration didn't seriously believe in their existence. Unless, of course, you believe that Bush would have willingly antagonised a state that could threaten Israel with such weapons. There wasn't much sign of Blair's concern for the humanitarian impact of Hussein's regime during his first five years in power, nor during his years in opposition.

Iraq remains a politically motivated war with little justification, and that can't be changed by all Blair's rewriting history about what everyone knew, all his spinning about how the world changed, or the nature of the war against al Qaeda. That a year after the war started, Blair feels the need to make such a defensive statement about his decision speaks volumes about the pressure he feels under. That his justification is so transparently weak reveals why. This has nothing to do with a personal attack, as Claire Short appears to be basing her actions on. But the government must be held to account. The war in account has cost billions of pounds and thousands of lives, while distracting from the real threat of al Qaeda. If the government's case for war was as thin as it now appears, Blair must not be allowed to lie and spin his way out of trouble.

Graham Robinson. 10th March 2004.

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