This post claims BBC bias in its reporting of the run up to the 2003 Iraq War and the compilation of the Dossier that gave the case for war.
It also explains why, in my opinion, that is ‘bias’ and the effect such bias has upon not only politics but also the literal life and death issues for not just the troops fighting the wars but also the civilians in the UK who face serious threats from Islamic terrorism that could be the result of the BBC’s false claims.
It also highlights one of the major advantages the BBC has….it has the platform to keep repeating its ‘Legend’ until that legend becomes ‘Fact’.
The post is long.
‘Ludlow, who was rather an enthusiast for liberty than a fanatic in religion—that brave man, who hated Cromwell more than he did Charles I., relates that the parliamentary forces were always defeated by the royal army in the beginning of the civil war.
…….Cromwell said to General Fairfax: “How can you possibly expect a rabble of London porters and apprentices to resist a nobility urged on by the principle, or rather the phantom, of honor? Let us actuate them by a more powerful phantom—fanaticism! Our enemies are fighting only for their king; let us persuade our troops they are fighting for their God.”
“Give me a commission, and I will raise a regiment of brother murderers, whom I will pledge myself soon to make invincible fanatics!”
He was as good as his word; he composed his regiment of red-coated brothers, of gloomy religionists, whom he made obedient tigers. Mahomet himself was never better served by soldiers.
But in order to inspire this fanaticism, you must be seconded and supported by the spirit of the times.
Who creates that ‘spirit of the times’?
Who is it that ‘manufactures the consent’ that gives the nod to certain people of a certain ideology that they have just cause for complaint and although the methods adopted may be wrong the Cause is great, just and honourable?
The BBC.
The BBC is one of the most powerful media organisations in the world…all the more so because of the inherent ‘trust’ and credibility vested in it that gives its output so much more authority and veracity….so much clout.
The BBC does not act alone….but it provides the cover for its fellow travellers to act under. It prevents open debate and discussion by suppressing information that is contrary to its agenda, if the information gets out it does all it can to discredit the messenger and by association the message.
Many political, cultural and social changes are ‘forced’ upon the people by an ‘elite’ who can do almost what they like because the people are denied a real voice in what happens in their own country.
That Voice should be provided by the BBC…but not only does the BBC not challenge ‘Power’ it actively suppresses the Voices of opposition who do want to challenge that ‘Power’.
Fanaticism can only thrive in an environment that is friendly to it.
Mao said ‘The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fishswims in the sea.”, Thatcher told us that the terrorist needs the oxygen of publicity, the Taliban are invisible because they ‘are the people’, they are able to do what they do because the local people in Helmand support them even if for a variety of reasons.
The Muslims terrorist, insurgent, militant or extremist has thrived for over a decade, not only in Muslim countries but in the West as well, and not only because they are able to hide ‘as fish’ in their own community.
Their biggest ally is the western intellectual, the Liberal apologist for Empire and all that, the socialist who makes friends with anyone who is an enemy of capitalism. These groups give support and encouragement to the Muslim extremist. They are spread throughout society in positions of power and influence…in the media, in government, in academia, in schools and local government.
Orwell spells it out better than I could in this tract which describes the same groups of people pre-war and their inability to grasp the danger they were in:
‘They could not struggle against Nazism or Fascism, because they could not understand them. Neither could they have struggled against Communism, if Communism had been a serious force in Western Europe. To understand Fascism they would have had to study the theory of Socialism, which would have forced them to realize that the economic system by which they lived was unjust, inefficient and out of date. But it was exactly this fact that they had trained themselves never to face. They dealt with Fascism as the cavalry generals of 1914 dealt with the machine gun – by ignoring it.
Even when they had begun to grasp that Fascism was dangerous, its essentially revolutionary nature, the huge military effort it was capable of making, the sort of tactics it would use, were quite beyond their comprehension.
This vein of political ignorance runs right through English official life, through Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, consuls, judges, magistrates, policemen. The policeman who arrests the “Red” does not understand the theories the “Red” is preaching…… There is reason to think that even military espionage is hopelessly hampered by ignorance of the new economic doctrines and the ramifications of the underground parties.
It is important not to misunderstand their motives, or one cannot predict their actions. What is to be expected of them is not treachery or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable.’
The BBC is one of those who ‘do not understand’, who are ignorant…in this case of Islam and the realities preached in the name of that ideology….and they are ‘unteachable’ as to the effects of allowing such an ideology to flourish and expand in a secular or non-Muslim State.
The BBC provides the ‘sea’ that the terrorist swims in, they provide the intellectual, cultural, social and political, as well as the legal, justifications for Islamic extremists to operate under safely.
The BBC provides the ‘Spirit of the Times’ that justifies and ‘understands’, though doesn’t condone, murder in the name of Islam.
It provides the oxygen of publicity and pro-Islamic coverage and anti-Western rhetoric that lends authority, credibility to the Divine Sanction the terrorists already believe they have.
The BBC opposed the Afghanistan War from the beginning and then moved on to do its utmost to prevent the Iraq War from starting.
This opposition and the barrage of negative coverage about the war altered the Public’s perceptions about the legality and the wisdom of the whole enterprise….this resulted in the government becoming reluctant to put the necessary resources into fighting the war as to do so would have the likes of the BBC again turn its guns upon them and yet more negative ‘press’ and huge public pressure.
The effect of this was that an under resourced army had insufficient men and equipment, as well as lack of will, to carry out the tasks set for it such as securing Basra….this continued into the Afghan theatre of war where such shortages meant that the Taliban roamed at will and re-established themselves becoming ever stronger with the possibility that we will be forced out of Afghanistan shortly with our tail between our legs.
The second significant effect was that the BBC’s coverage….which worked to label the war illegal whilst at the same time accepting Muslim claims that their own actions were purely a response to not only ‘illegal’ wars but also to decades, if not centuries of western imperialism and oppression of Muslims countries…..legitimised extremist’s actions and terrorism to a large extent as well as providing credibility and authority to those recruiting more extremists or terrorists.
This continuous justification and legitimisation of Muslim grievances led to thousands of Muslims flocking to Iraq and the prolonging of a very nasty war of terror after Saddam’s regime had fallen….as well as thousands more recruits to Al Qaeda and its subsidiaries around the globe all believing they had ‘just cause’.
The most extreme example of the BBC’s eagerness to damn the war was the exchange between Andrew Gilligan and John Humphrys on the Today programme concerning the claim that Iraq had biological or chemical weapon systems that could deploy within 45 minutes.
This claim saw the resignation of BBC Director General Greg Dyke, the implementation of the Neil Report and wholesale changes of procedures including the setting up of the BBC journalism college.
The BBC was found to be at fault for allowing the exchange to occur by the Hutton Inquiry, and though accepting the blame the BBC has ever since worked to change the public’s perceptions about those events and now blatantly claims it was right all along….that the government did know the claims about the 45 minute deployment time was wrong and had been included purely to ‘sex up’ its case for war in its ‘dodgy dossier’.
The latest attempt has been by the ex-editor of Today at the time of these events, Kevin Marsh, who has written a book, Stumbling Over Truth: The inside story of the sexed-up dossier, Hutton and the BBC, and who has been doing the rounds….I heard him on Richard Bacon’s show last Thursday …..Marsh claims that Gilligan was telling the truth.
However, Marsh is not.
Rentoul in the Independent…1….2…3
‘Kevin Marsh’s book, Stumbling Over Truth, tells of his time as editor of the BBC Todayprogramme in 2003 when it broadcast Andrew Gilligan’s report about the Iraq dossier. It is a savage condemnation of how a cabal of people in positions of power, their certainty reinforced by groupthink, sexed up an important piece of work, including in it things that they knew were wrong.
I refer to Marsh, Gilligan and their superiors at the BBC. Rarely has a book intended to make the case for one side in a controversy been so damning of the case it seeks to defend.’
Before I get into this here is a quote about the inclusion of the 45 minute claim from Dr Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons section in the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff:
“The important point is that we at no stage argued that this intelligence should not be included in the dossier…..We thought it was important intelligence.”
Gilligan had embellished his story and Humphrys put the stamp of his authority upon it ensuring that it was headline news in every paper on every breakfast table the next day…and altering forever how people judged the legality of the war, the government’s execution of the war and just as significant, giving a boost to recruiters of Muslim terrorist organisations.
Here is the relevant part of that exchange between Gilligan and Humphrys:
JH: The government is facing more questions this morning over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Our defence correspondent is Andrew Gilligan. This in particular Andy is Tony Blair saying, they’d be ready to go within forty five minutes.
Andrew Gilligan (AG): That’s right, that was the central claim in his dossier which he published in September, the main erm, case if you like against er, against Iraqand the main statement of the British government’s belief of what it thought Iraq was up to and what we’ve been told by one of the senior officials in charge of drawing up that dossier was that…..
actually the government probably erm, knew that that forty five minute figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in.
Downing Street, our source says ordered a week before publication, ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting and ordered more facts to be er, to be discovered.
JH: When you say ‘more facts to be discovered’, does that suggest that they may not have been facts?
AG: Well, erm, our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published, made the Intelligence Services unhappy, erm, because, to quote erm the source he said, there was basically, that there was, there was, there was unhappiness because it didn’t reflect, the considered view they were putting forward, that’s a quote from our source and essentially, erm, the forty five minute point er, was, was probably the most important thing that was added. Erm, and the reason it hadn’t been in the original draft was that it was, it was only erm, it only came from one source and most of the other claims were from two, and the intelligence agencies say they don’t really believe it was necessarily true because they thought the person making the claim had actually made a mistake, it got, had got mixed up.
AG: Well the forty five minutes isn’t just a detail, it did go to the heart of the government’s case that Saddam was an imminent threat and it was repeated four times in the dossier.
John Humphrys claims Blair said Saddam ‘threatened us all’…..
JH: Twenty eight minutes to eight. Tony Blair had quite a job persuading the country and indeed his own MPs to support the invasion of Iraq; his main argument was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all. None of those weapons has been found. Now our defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, has found evidence that the government’s dossier on Iraq that was produced last September, was cobbled together at the last minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the Security Services.
Gilligan confirms the statement that the Government was ‘lying’……
JH: Are you suggesting, let’s be very clear about this, that it was not the work of the intelligence agencies.
AG: No, the information which I’m told was dubious did come from the agencies, but they were unhappy about it, because they didn’t think it should have been in there.
AG: But you know, it could have been an honest mistake, but what I have been told is that the government knew that claim was questionable, even before the war, even before they wrote it in their dossier.
Marsh claims that Gilligan only made the claim that the government lied once…and that it was a mistake…however he repeated it on a later BBC programme…and in the Daily Mail…..so not just a slip of the tongue.
A later interview on the BBC:
AG: Em, now, you know, what I thought to be honest was that that eh, that claim was wrong in good faith. Em, but er, what my intelligence service source says is that em essentially they were always suspicious about this claim, they did not want it to appear in the document.
Presenter: So, I mean the implications that the, that Downing Street asked for it to be hyped up to help convince the doubters.
AG: Yeah, and, and they’re not very happy……But the 45 minutes was very important because it went to the heart of the Government’s case that Saddam was an imminent threat.
What were the issues raised by the BBC in these interviews?
1. That the government knew that the 45 minute claim was wrong.
2. That the 45 minute claim was central to the case made for war.
3. That the intelligence officers were not happy with the claim being included.
4. That the single source for the claim was a problem.
5. That Saddam threatened the UK directly.
Gilligan claims that the government knew the 45 minute claim was wrong but proceeded to include it anyway in order to sex up the dossier. He also insists repeatedly that the 45 minute claim was central to the government’s case against Saddam.
Both claims are nonsense.
In the intelligence the 45 minutes was at the top end of the suggested time for weaon deployment….the quickest they believed the weapons could be deployed was in 20 minutes…this was not in the dossier….if they were sexing it up they would have used the 20 minute figure….they would also have included a reference to the possibility of a weapon using smallpox as suggested by David Kelly himself…this was not included in the dossier as there was inadequate intelligence to back it up.
Greg Dyke himself admits in his autobiography that he had lunch with a senior intelligence officer who said that he had complete confidence in the reliability of the 45 minute intelligence.
What did the 45 minute claim mean anyway?
It referred to battlefield weapons not strategic missiles…in other words weapons that would be used against ground troops….in other words there was the possibility that they could be used against any Allied invading force.
Far from being ‘sexed up’ the dossier was providing a warning to any reader that should the invasion go ahead Saddam might use chemical or biological weapons and he may be able to deploy them so quickly that he couldn’t be stopped, with obvious dangers for Allied troops.
So not sexed up but a warning about the dangers of the war…the complete reverse of sexed up.
Was the claim ‘central’ to the dossier’s case for war as Gilligan repeatedly claimed?
No. It was a very small part of the dossier…it was mentioned three times….but other intelligence had similar repeat mentions but the BBC doesn’t highlight those…..Uranium sourced from Niger, Saddam’s attempts to conceal weapons, that Saddam attaches great importance to possession of WMD, that Iraq could deliver chemical and biological weapon attacks, and the human rights infringements including the use of chemical weapons…all repeated several times.
The case for war was made on the basis that Saddam had breached UN Resolution 1441 and had failed to co-operate with the UN inspectors and had continued to produce or attempt to produce WMD….it was not made based on the speed at which he could deploy battlefield weapons.
Humphrys went on to ’embellish’ Gilligan’s report by claiming that the dossier said that Blair’s ‘main argument was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that threatened us all.’
That was not what Blair said….the dossier stated that Saddam presented a danger to British interests….that would most probably mean Saudi Arabia and its oil fields which Saddam wanted to take over as he had tried to with Kuwait’s….and possibly a danger to British bases on Cyprus which had come into range of Saddam’s new rockets.
Were caveats removed as Marsh says?
Look at the dossier…it has many caveats suggesting that the intelligence has uncertainties….this dossier was for the consumption of MPs who would then vote on the decision to go to war…they are all experienced people who would understand that no intelligence can be 100%.
Gathering intelligence inside Iraq is not easy.
Saddam’s is one of the most secretive and dictatorial regimes in the world.
What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.
Intelligence reports make clear that he sees the building up of his WMD strategic interests, and in particular his goal of regional domination. (Emphasising the future threat not saying absolutely current)
This intelligence cannot tell us about everything. However, it provides a fuller picture of Iraqi plans and capabilities. It shows that Saddam Hussein attaches great importance to possessing weapons of mass destruction which he regards as the basis for Iraq’s regional power.
As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has: ….These judgements reflect the views of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).
Intelligence rarely offers a complete account of activities which are designed to remain concealed. The nature of Saddam’s regime makes Iraq a difficult target for the intelligence services.
Intelligence, however, has provided important insights into Iraqi programmes and Iraqi military thinking. Taken together with what is already known from other sources, this intelligence builds our understanding of Iraq’s capabilities and adds significantly to the analysis already in the public domain.’
The dossier was stressing the importance Saddam placed on WMD as much as the hard intelligence.
It is clearly also saying that intelligence was difficult to obtain and that the final analysis was a matter of ‘judgement’ and provided ‘insight’ as much as hard intelligence.
Did Dr David Kelly say the things Gilligan claimed, in the manner Gilligan claimed and was he involved in the actual writing of the dossier or the intelligence process?
DK: I was not involved in the intelligence component in any way nor in the process of the dossier’s compilation.
My discussions have been entirely technical and factual and although the “45 minute deployment” issue has obviously been raised I have always given the honest answer that I do not know what it refers to and that I am not familiar with an Iraqi weapons system that it matches.
I can only conclude one of three things. Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who truly were intimately associated with the dossier; or he has assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles.
(As Kelly was Gilligan’s ‘single source’ for the story it would seem only the first conclusion can be possible).
Just how good as a weapon’s inspector was Dr David Kelly?
‘Among his fellow inspectors Dr Kelly was considered the consummate inspector. They admired him tremendously for his very effective interviewing technique; his encyclopaedic knowledge; and his determination to out the truth about the former Soviet and Iraqi biological weapons programmes. Put another way, David’s colleagues were somewhat in awe of his skills as an inspector’.
What did David Kelly think of the Dossier?
‘I had no doubt about the veracity of it (the Dossier) was absolute….It is an accurate document, I think it is a fair reflection of the intelligence that was available and it’s presented in a very sober and factual way….it is well written.’
“I was personally sympathetic to the war because I recognised from a decade’s work the menace of Iraq’s ability to further develop it’s non-conventional weapons programmes…..We were 100% certain that Saddam had a biological weapons programme.”
Did, as the BBC claim, the scientists or intelligence people have a deep unease about the 45 minute claim?
DK: I do not feel “deep unease” over the dossier because it is completely coincident with my personal views on Iraq’s unconventional weapons capability.
Dr Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons section in the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff:
BJ: The important point is that we at no stage argued that this intelligence should not be included in the dossier.
Q. Right.
BJ: We thought it was important intelligence. I personally thought that the word used in the main body of the text, that the intelligence indicated this was a little bit strong but I felt I could live with that,
As to claims that Alistair Campbell was completely ‘gung ho’ about the project and willing to say and do anything to get approval for the war here is a quote from a communication with Sir John Scarlett that suggests that was not so:
‘Please find below a number of drafting points. As I was writing this, the Prime Minister had a read of the draft you gave me this morning, and he too made a number of points. He has also read my draft foreword, which I enclose (he will want another look at it before finally signing it off but I’d appreciate your views at this stage).
He said he thought you’d done a very good job and it was convincing (though I pointed out that he is not exactly a “don’t know” on the issue).’
Was the 45 minute claim just ‘cobbled together’ into the dossier at the last minute?
From Sir John Scarlett’s questioning:
JS: ‘The 9th September assessment that intelligence indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20 to 45 minutes – that was the wording, the sense of which was accurately reflected in the redrafting on the 17th September of the dossier. That is the point I am making. They went back to the intelligence, the original intelligence, which contained no caveat of uncertainty. They went back to the way in which it was phrased in the 9th September assessment and they redrafted their main body of the dossier to come into line with that, which it had not been before, including the words “intelligence indicates that”.
Q. You say there was no element of uncertainty in this intelligence?
JS: Report, yes.
Did the fact that the intelligence came from a single source mean that it was not reliable or ‘good’ intelligence?
JS: You are talking as if the assessors sit there and operate in a vacuum. They do not. They are assessing individual intelligence reports against the background of their knowledge. This was a point of precision which was being given, a timing which was being given for the first time with precision, to an assessment which already existed about the capability of the Iraqi armed forces in this area. That is what assessment is about. There is too much emphasis on sources, single reporting. Assessment is a much more complicated thing than that and it takes many aspects into account, as has been explained many times to this Inquiry.
Are there serious repercussions resulting from false allegation s being bandied about by the Media?
Q. Would you agree that the more serious the allegation, the greater the care which you would expect the BBC to take to ensure that it can be properly supported?
A. Yes.
Q. These were exceptionally serious allegations, were they not?
A. Well, I think one thing I should make clear is that I do not think the programme or indeed the BBC, in those early weeks, ever took the wording of the 6.07 broadcast or that phrase within the 6.07 broadcast to be the definitive version of the allegations that we were making……. So I think the mindset on the programme, and I think this continued for some time afterwards, was that the definition of this item, in the BBC’s view, were the scripted versions of it and the 6.07 was something that had strayed from what we believed to be the core allegations we were making or that our source was making.
Q. Leaving aside the mindset of the programme, you very fairly accept the audience would not necessarily have perceived it the same way?
A. Indeed.
Q. In practice it is the most dramatic and gravest allegation which will attract the most attention rather than the allegation which is scripted?
A. Depending on how often it is repeated and how many people hear it, yes.
Q. Yes. But if you make a sufficiently dramatic allegation, other media will catch on to it, will they not?
A. They may do, yes.
Q. They are professional followers of each other’s copy, are they not?
A. They are.
Q. Now, you have already I think agreed in your earlier evidence, and indeed I think it is implicit in the evidence you have given today, that the 6.07 allegation that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes point was wrong before putting it into the dossier was, in fact, going to strike people as an exceptionally grave allegation. I think you have accepted that?
A. It clearly had that effect.
Q. Yes. It was an attack, was it not, on its face, on the integrity of those who had been involved at the highest levels in the production of the dossier?
A. In the way it was phrased, it clearly would have had that effect.
And Lord Hutton’s final say:
The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media. Where a reporter is intending to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper should ensure that a system is in place whereby
his editor or editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report and to whether it is right in all the circumstances to broadcast or publish it. The allegations that Mr Gilligan was intending to broadcast in respect of the Government and the preparation of the dossier were very grave allegations in relation to a subject of great importance and I consider that the editorial system which the BBC permitted was defective in that Mr Gilligan was allowed to broadcast his report at 6.07am without editors having seen a script of what he was going to say and having considered whether it should be approved.
The BBC here is admitting that its reporting false information would have serious repercussions as the audience were likely to be badly misled by Gilligan’s an Humphrys’ false assertions and that this would spread rapidly and powerfully as the rest of the media took up the story…and thereby potentially altering the whole perception of events and the war…and then to go on to have damaging effects on not only the politics but for troops on the ground.
This is Dr David Kelly’s pre-war assessment of the danger presented to the world by Saddam Hussein and his regime:
‘Only regime change will avert the threat’
The UN has been attempting to disarm Iraq ever since 1991 and has failed to do so. It is an abject failure of diplomacy with the split between France, China and Russia on the one hand, and Britain and the United States on the other, creating a lack of ‘permanent five’ unity and resolve., Iraq established an effective concealment and deception organisation which protected many undisclosed assets. In October 2002, Resolution 1441 gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disclose his arsenal within 30 days. He admitted inspectors and, with characteristic guile, provided some concessions, but still refuses to acknowledge the extent of his chemical and biological weapons and associated military and industrial support organisations – 8,500 litres of anthrax VX, 2,160 kilograms of bacterial growth media, 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agent, 6,500 chemical bombs and 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents remained unaccounted for from activities up to 1991. (Even these figures, it should be noted, are based in no small part on data fabricated by Iraq.)
There are indications that the programmes continue.
Iraq continues to develop missile technology, especially fuel propellents and guidance systems for long-range missiles. Iraq has recovered chemical reactors destroyed prior to 1998 for allegedly civilian activity, built biological fermenters and agent dryers, and created transportable production units for biological and chemical agents and the filling of weapons. Key nuclear research and design teams remain in place, even though it is assessed that Iraq is unable to manufacture nuclear weapons unless fissile material is available.
War may now be inevitable.
Some of the chemical and biological weapons deployed in 1991 are still available, albeit on a reduced scale. Aerial bombs and rockets are readily available to be filled with sarin, VX and mustard or botulinum toxin, anthrax spores and smallpox. More sophisticated weaponry, such as spray devices associated with drones or missiles with separating warheads, may be limited in numbers, but would be far more devastating if used.
The threat from Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons is, however, unlikely to substantially affect the operational capabilities of US and British troops. Nor is it likely to create massive casualties in adjacent countries. Perhaps the real threat from Iraq today comes from covert use of such weapons against troops or by terrorists against civilian targets worldwide. The link with al-Qaeda is disputed, but is, in any case, not the principal terrorist link of concern. Iraq has long trained and supported terrorist activities and is quite capable of initiating such activity using its security services.
The long-term threat, however, remains Iraq’s development to military maturity of weapons of mass destruction – something that only regime change will avert.
The Butler Report on the Iraq War Intelligence
Sorry, don’t go along with this at all. I remember very distinctly the 45 minute claim was what converted me to support the invasion. It was not true. I followed the Hutton enquiry closely – the final decisions bore no relevance to the evidence that had been presented. I am no defender of the BBC, but in this case the government was even worse.
Why did the 45 minute claim convert you to support the war….as opposed to all the other evidence?
The speed at which weapons deploy had little relevance to the actual reason for the war….and should have made you more wary about the war…as it meant Saddam could use WMD against invading troops….it was a warning not a ‘sexing up’.
Whether or not it was true is irrelevant here……it is whether the government believed it to be true, as well as the intelligence service……it is more than clear they did believe it….the BBC lied.
You really should read the post, I don’t believe you have…or you are ignoring the evidence.The outcome of Hutton was clearly based on abundant evidence that points out that the 45 minute claim was believed and therefore the BBC made a false allegation.
Wrong, ALL the evidence available to the UN inspectors and to our intelligence grunts on the ground pointed to a massive series of errors on the part of those who ESTIMATED (incorrectly) the theoretical number and type of weapons Saddam had. They massively over estimated and then that estimation “morphed” into a figure the west fixed upon as fact. ALL the evidence showed that Saddam had NO useable WMD whatsoever and what MIGHT have been left over from 1991 would have been rendered inert by the laws of physics and the passage of time.
I took my news in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, from ALL over the media, the internet, from left and right wing sources and from secret backchannels I know privately.
The fact is, we KNEW Saddam had no WMD capability and the WMD reason was spun as rationale for the public to get behind. It was all 100% BULLSHIT and our intelligence grunts knew it. Blair knew it and the JIC knew it too.
There were a LOT of serious reasons why Iraq had to be invaded, Saddam Toppled, a central bank created, their oil then re-sold in Dollars and lots more besides, but of all the reasons? WMD was not one of them.
It was an illegal invasion under UN conventions. We were NOT under ANY threat from Saddam’s (alledged) WMD at all. “Saddam was not a threat to us, or indeed her neighbours.” this was the telling line from the September 2002 Dossier which Al Campbell had removed from that dossier when he chaired the “presentation” meeting of the JIC to decide how to disseminate the intelligence to the public.
They knew Iraq was no threat. They also knew that they could not invade once the UN had finalised the search and concluded that Saddam HAD complied with the UN’s demands to disarm. 4 more months and the invasion would never have happened. So they had to lie and invade anyway.
And if the BBC had not been so flimsy, they would have told the truth and prevented enormous war crimes from taking place.
In your research, you might have questioned why Hans Blix was chosen to head this UN commission charged with finding out whether Saddam had WMD or not.
Did you know that this was the same man who was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1981 to 1997, and was in charge of overseeing inspections of the country’s nuclear programme. During that time, the Iraqis managed to hide an advanced nuclear weapons development programme from the IAEA? It was only discovered after the Gulf War in 1991.
He also reported to the UN in December 2002 that 10,000 litres of chem./bio substances KNOWN TO HAVE EXISTED in previous inspections were unaccounted for.
So when you write WE KNEW – speak for yourself.
10,000 liters of various chem/bio weapons… most of which was BLA, which was made up from accounts (I have seen the paperwork) estimated from the number of facilities, number of employees and given an assumed perfect manufacturing capability in Iraq at the time.
They actually produced half of that. Many of the KNOWN TO EXIST weapons, never actually did exist.
What happened was Saddam lied in 1990-1991 to the UN about what he produced prior to 1990. The UN discovered his lies and rightly decided that they could not trust what he said, so they used what information they had from international intelligence sources to commit to a thorough forensic audit of all the accounts and audits of the orders from all known international suppliers of Iraq’s then prohibited WMD programmes.
From this they committed to forensically examine ALL the known facilities in which the chemical and biological weaponry was manufactured and stored, Much of which was not stored properly and this led to much of what was discovered being in a “less that useful” condition. In other words, inert.
These audits produced a fairly accurate figure of what Saddam’s people actually produced. BUT the UN knew Saddam had lied about some of his capability, and so, to be on the safe side, a theoretical maximum of all the possible manufacturing capability was estimated in 1992. This estimate was banded about the UN for a few years and then when Saddam’s cousin defected in 1995, he took the truth with him to America. The UN had destroyed everything. However, the UN could not account for these “unnacounted for” stocks from the estimate. The estimate slowly “morphed” from an estimated figure to a believed figure with nothing but rhetoric to back it up.
By the time Clinton attacked Saddam in 1998, this estimated figure became the west’s “official” figure which had to be accounted for.
Even IF this false figure had been true, which is wasn’t, The type of chemical and bio weapons listed had a known shelf life. The longest of which was 10 years, under perfect conditions. By the time the invasion happened, ALL the (alledged) “unnacounted for” stocks of WMD were useless as battle-field weaponry and we KNEW that Saddam had NO usable WMD capability whatsoever.
i believe the government sexed up the dossier, but thats what governments do, and they got caught out
Al Beeb also sexed up its leftist slant on reporting it, but thats what Al beeb does, and they got caught out
some poor man took his own life because of these 2 institutions, shame on them both
Robin Aitken in his book “Can We Trust the BBC?” puts the blame ,for Dr. Kelly’s suicide,squarely at the BBC’s door.
I have read elsewhere that Aitken
has an ‘axe to grind’ but even if that
is true I highly recomend his book to any here who haven’t allready read it
The BBC relies on the fact that most people won’t delve deeper into the stories that are presented to them the way they are. This enables them to develop their own agenda for their own purposes – dominating world media and being a force for propaganda. One can’t expect any journalists, especially those not specialists in their field, to understand the complexities of global interaction. The tendency is to reduce issues to a basic premise, which is what they mostly understand, and present this as ‘the truth’.
So we had the myth that the war on Iraq was entirely to counter the threat of Saddam’s WMD . Unless one is prepared to study what was really going on in the Muslim world at the time, then understanding the real context of what taking out Saddam was about can’t be reached.
Just to judge for yourself the paucity of the information fed to you, for whatever reason, how many of you know that Hans Blix, the man charged by the UN at the time to uncover Saddam’s WMD, was the same man who either ‘failed to uncover’ Iraq’s nuclear programme, or looked the other way, while it was being developed during the time he was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1981 to 1997? It was only discovered after the Gulf War in 1991. Which was why the US and UK did not want Blix leading the UN inspection team this time around.
Now knowing this, don’t you think if the media failed to make this public knowledge at the time, they did so because either they were ignorant of it themselves, or had an agenda in concealing it?
To really understand the issues related to the attack on Saddam, I would suggest reading a book called the High Cost of Peace by Victor Bodansky for starters. Saddam was a player who wanted to dominate the Muslim world, among others, and was a sponsor of terrorism to achieve his ends. One can think that taking out Saddam was a message to the rest of the dictators and dubious regimes with similar aspirations to say ‘ just see what happened to Saddam, and know this is going to come your way if you persist.
Remember how quickly Gaddafi, as one example, suddenly became a ‘good boy’ following Saddam’s demise? The only thing was Bush could not make this reason public. It had to allow these similarly aspired dictators and despots to back off quietly. The only thing that messed up this message to the Muslim world was our media, our BBC, for not having the vision to understand the implications of what more was involved, and dealing with it differently. What they did instead was further empower these despots and vilify the reasoning to counter the threat to our society.
Yes, I always thought that Iraq was about pour encourage les autres. It also drew the fanatics to one place where they could be killed.
Would we be any better off if we’d left Hussain alone? That’ s the question the BBC always avoids.
People on here probably know that I despise the bbc. Andrew Gilligan was trying, at the time, to determine the truth. I suspect that this was an uphill struggle, given that Alastair Campbell was the brick wall in front of him. And I have a very low opinion of that particular person. Regardless of Mr Humphrys and the other arseholes embedded in the bbc, Mr Gilligan was shining a light on the inner workings of the Labour Party and how it conducts business. As a typical socialist body it used all the tools that such people consider legitimate; lies, obfuscation, dissembling, distortion, distraction, emotional appeals, etc. Mr Blair misled us and if we had been allowed to have a say in things, I don’t believe we would have voted to go to war in Iraq. I don’t care what people now say about weapons of mass destruction because I recall that the Israelis made short shrift of Gerald Bull and his WMD. Mr Blair and Mr Bush made a decision to crush Iraq and nothing that we, the plebs, had to say was going to dissuade them. I hated the bbc reportage of the ‘war’ at the time but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it was an unnecessary war perpetrated by megalomaniacs, with the active support of people such as Mr Campbell, Straw, Hoon and many others in the Labour Party. The Conservative Party is complicit in that they did not offer any opposition to this behaviour whatsoever. There are war criminals out there who should be brought to justice.
…but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it was an unnecessary war perpetrated by megalomaniacs
I want to make the point that it was possibly ‘an unnecessary war’ for the excuses given at the time, but only because the real reasons couldn’t be announced publicly. As the ‘High Cost of Peace’ makes clear, Carter knew what was going on in the Islamic world, but chose to close his eyes to it, knowing that he would face exactly what Bush faced if he should try to tackle it. It was and is not an unnecessary war, it is one that has become even tougher to fight because of the path of appeasement that has been entered on for the time being instead. The real conflict will now be a lot bigger, thanks to too much focus on whether there was recognised WMD or not, and what constitutes real WMD.
Consider this – if the Muslims stopped supplying oil to the West, or made the price well out of reach for our society to continue, can you consider oil – or the non supply of it, to be a weapon?
What do you think the West should do if that was a real threat? Just say okay it’s your oil and you can do what you like with it, and we’ll just let our society go to pieces?
Congratulations on the research into this saga.
However the whole process of the “public review” of these recent wars highlights the misconception of a democracy and the involvement of the electorate in the hands on “management” of foreign affairs.
The BBC, the dominant news organisation, sees itself as the public conscience and representative of the public more than just a news reporter.
The motivation put in documentation to take a decision of whether to commit Forces to combat in Parliament is “face value” information.
The real reasons are complex and convoluted and all shrouded in a “need to know” environment of foreign affairs and intelligence driven information.
Lets have a crack at the real reasons;
1. The Arabian Middle East is probably the largest supplier of oil to the 1st World. The primary producer has been Saudi Arabia.
2. Sadam Hussein embarked on 2 wars against his neighbours. The first resulted in the 1st Gulf War. During this war he fired missiles into both Saudi Arabia and Israel. He subsequently engaged in a prolonged and deadly war with Iran.
3. Hussein conducted a brutal campaign against his own people in Northern Iraq. He used chemical weapons in more than one attack.
4. There was evidence (see the detail from Kelly et al) that he was expanding his chemical and biological capability in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions.
5. Saudi Arabia has always been a major Geo-political partner of both the USA and Britain because of its strategic oil reserves.
6. Saudi rulers have come under threat internally by subversive elements including the families of bin Laden who wish to acquire the wealth generated by Saudi oil reserves.
So we have a Geo-political scenario whereby major oil suppliers of the West are under threat by individuals whose sole motivation is greed and power. As has been pointed out over many decades the West has never successfully ensured that it is in a position of independence from energy supplies in the Arabian Middle East.
Based on the above, everyone of us has to trust that our leaders will make sensible decisions based on Geo-political and strategic information which includes waging war.
The BBC management is so obsessed with their own self importance and their perception that they are representatives and conscience of the people that they truly believe that the they and the people should make the ultimate decisions like this. Democracy in of itself entrusts elected leaders to make decisions based information before them. Much of the information is restricted and always will be. Democratic systems allow for those in power to be judged by the electorate.