[casi] Blair defeats motion for inquiry into Iraqi WMDs

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/blai-j07.shtml

Blair defeats motion for inquiry into Iraqi WMDs

By Julie Hyland

7 June 2003

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The June 4 parliamentary debate on whether the government
had deliberately misled parliament and the British people
over Iraq¡¦s possession of weapons of mass destruction
witnessed an exercise in political cowardice by the
ostensible critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

For days the media had been filled with security leaks
confirming what the majority of people already knew, or had
suspected¡Xthat the government had deliberately lied about
Iraq¡¦s military capabilities in order to justify its
participation in an illegal war of aggression against a poor
and largely defenceless nation.

The Labour Party demonstrated its imperviousness to the
seriousness of such charges, however, closing ranks behind
the prime minister to defeat a Liberal Democrat motion
calling for an independent judicial inquiry into the
allegations and defeating it by 301 votes to 203.

In the end Blair had had a ¡§good day¡¨, the media
proclaimed, with only 11 Labour MPs supporting the
opposition motion. None of them thought to question what
Blair¡¦s victory actually said about the state of official
British politics.

Last September, the British government had released a
dossier purportedly containing up-to-date intelligence
information on Iraq¡¦s WMDs, which claimed Saddam Hussein
would be able to launch a chemical and biological strike
against the world within 45 minutes.

Yet, after nearly two months in which British and US troops
have occupied huge swathes of Iraq, detaining and
interrogating leading Ba¡¦athist officials and scientists,
no trace has been found of any chemical and biological
weapons arsenal.

According to the Daily Mirror, coalition troops have
searched 87 sites considered ¡§prime¡¨ areas for the
manufacture of such weapons by the US and Britain and found
nothing. Nineteen of these had been identified by the US as
¡§highest-priority¡¨ zones, but ¡§instead of chemical or
biological weapons, searchers uncovered a training facility
for Iraq¡¦s Olympic swimming and diving teams, a drinks
distillery and a factory making car licence plates,¡¨ the
paper reported. ¡§A feared weapons store was, in fact, a US
field artillery headquarters.¡¨

In his final report to the United Nations, delivered Monday
June 2, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix verified that a
three-month search of Iraq¡Xcut short by the US-led war¡Xhad
uncovered no evidence of WMDs.

Faced with such facts US officials had begun to dismiss the
significance of Iraq¡¦s military capabilities as a factor in
the decision to go to war. US Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said it was possible Saddam Hussein had destroyed
any illegal weaponry prior to the war¡Xa statement flatly
contradicting Blair¡¦s insistence as late as March 18 that
claims Iraq had already destroyed its weapons were
¡§palpably absurd¡¨.

Interviewed in Vanity Fair, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz said the issue of WMDs had been cited for
¡§bureaucratic reasons¡¨, an implicit acknowledgement that
the issue had been raised solely to provide a smokescreen
for US aggression aimed at establishing its hegemony in the
Middle East and seizing control of vital oil resources.

Just as damaging to Blair¡¦s case, anonymous senior figures
within Britain¡¦s intelligence services began briefing
against government. At least four different sources were
cited by the BBC as complaining that the government had
distorted intelligence material in effort to press its case
for war. The ¡§45 minute¡¨ claim in particular had been
inserted on the government¡¦s insistence, one had said,
despite unease amongst chief spies that the charge had come
from just one uncorroborated source.

Later, the Guardian newspaper ran transcripts of a
conversation it said had taken place between Britain¡¦s
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin
Powell in New York, just prior to the US Security Council
meeting on February 5. Correspondent Dan Plesch, from the
Royal United Services Institute think tank, claimed that
according to the security source who had given him the
transcript both had expressed serious doubts about the
quality of intelligence on Iraq¡¦s banned weapons
programme¡Xwith Powell allegedly telling Straw that he hoped
the facts, when they emerged, would not ¡§explode in their
faces¡¨.

The reports immediately reignited divisions over the war,
which had seen the government and much of the official
opposition parties arraigned against the majority of British
people.


Calls for judicial inquiry

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who had resigned over
the war, led calls for an inquiry. The lack of any evidence
supporting the government¡¦s claims over Iraq¡¦s chemical
arsenal proved that Blair had committed a ¡§monumental
blunder¡¨ in moving so quickly to military action, he said.

Pointing out that the attorney general¡¦s legal advice to
the government on justification for the war had been based
on the existence of WMDs in Iraq, Cook noted, ¡§If he
[Saddam Hussein] did not have those weapons, then that legal
base disappears.¡¨

Former International Development Secretary Clare Short went
even further. Short had supported the government on the war,
but resigned shortly afterwards complaining that the prime
minister had misled her as to future plans for Iraq,
specifically over the role of the United Nations.

In an interview with the Telegraph she said, ¡§I have
concluded that the PM had decided to go to war in August
sometime and he duped us all along. He had decided for
reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to
create this sense of urgency and drive it: the way the
intelligence was spun was part of that drive.¡¨

Short suggested that Blair¡¦s efforts to win UN backing for
military action were a charade. The prime minister had
entered a secret pact with President George W. Bush in
September 2002 to go to war in the spring, she said, and
everything that the government had done was in order to
justify that predetermined course.

In addition, the prime minister had deliberately targeted
the French government¡¦s objections to war without a UN
mandate in order to build up a war frenzy, she said.

Presenting a parliamentary motion for an independent inquiry
into the allegations. Liberal Democrat leader Charles
Kennedy said, ¡§I suspect that in presentational terms,
Number 10 has gone for the greatest, most arresting
presentation of the facts, but that in itself may have had
the very unfortunate effect of misleading certain people.¡¨


Blair¡¦s response

In response, the government attempted to dismiss the charges
as simply the rantings of the usual antiwar dissenters,
motivated by pique over the government¡¦s triumph in Iraq.

Blair insisted that responsibility for the dossiers of
evidence presented by the government on Iraq¡¦s capabilities
rested with the Joint Intelligence Committee, which includes
the heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other senior intelligence
figures. The security leaks suggesting the government had
doctored intelligence material or expressed private
misgivings as to its veracity were the work of ¡§rogue
elements¡¨ within the security services out to get the
Labour government, Labour¡¦s John Reid told the Times
newspaper. Reid¡¦s remarks were backed up by chief whip,
Hilary Armstrong, who claimed skullduggery was afoot in the
intelligence world.

Reid¡¦s intervention threatened to backfire in the
government¡¦s face. It is one thing to accuse the prime
minister of being a deceitful toady of Bush, hell-bent on
dragging the country into an illegal adventure, and quite
another to impugn the motives of Britain¡¦s spies¡Xspooks,
snoops and assassins they may be, rogues never.

Pressed on whether¡Xif the government truly believed itself
to be the target of a faction of the state¡Xit should not
immediately convene an inquiry, Reid backtracked.

There is no doubt that elements within Britain¡¦s security
services were extremely dissatisfied with the government¡¦s
presentation of intelligence reports, especially since
virtually all of them have proven worthless and have made
the British intelligence service into something of a
laughing stock. And some at least considered Blair¡¦s
support for a US-led war reckless and contrary to Britain¡¦s
own interests in the Middle East.

Divisions exposed

The row points to fundamental disaffection within broader
sections of the British establishment. During Wednesday¡¦s
parliamentary debate Blair had gloated at his critics,
¡§They said there would be thousands dead. They said it was
my Vietnam. They said that the Middle East would be in
flames.¡¨

Blair implied that all of this had proved to be nonsense,
but the death toll already runs into thousands. According to
the Stop the War coalition, the number of reported civilian
deaths caused by the US/UK intervention currently stands at
a minimum of 5,434 and it continues to mount¡Xfrom
unexploded ordinance bombs, the lack of basic amenities and
poor sanitation¡Xand most significantly from direct
confrontations between the Iraqi people and coalition
forces.

Reports indicate growing social unrest, including riots,
against US/UK forces that are seen as a force of colonial
occupation. Every day brings fresh reports of British troops
being returned to barracks or investigated on charges of
abusing Iraqis and US forces firing on and killing civilians
and being targeted in return.

Sections of the Labour Party fear that Iraq may yet prove to
be Blair¡¦s Vietnam. Short referred to concerns at the
growing instability in Iraq, warning, ¡§Baghdad is a
disaster. Everything is wrecked. It is completely
violent.... The whole humanitarian system can¡¦t work
because it¡¦s all so dangerous and disorderly.¡¨

As to the Middle East, a study released June 3 by the Pew
Global Attitudes project found that the war in Iraq has
caused anti-American sentiment to reach an all-time high
worldwide, especially in Muslim countries.

Even Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the conservative
Daily Telegraph and a supporter of the war, was moved to
complain, ¡§The Prime Minister sent British troops and
sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit ... and it
stinks.¡¨

Hastings noted with concern the US administration¡¦s ¡§new
round of sabre-rattling against Iran¡¨¡Xwith whom Britain
has sought to cultivate friendly relations¡Xespecially given
that it had been unable to secure any kind of stability in
Afghanistan and now Iraq.

News commentators had noted that should the prime minister
prove to have misled the country, he would have to resign.
In parliament, former Labour chancellor Dennis Healey
reiterated that such a charge, if proven, was a resigning
issue.

In the end Blair was able to win the day in Parliament by
making clear that he was not the only one that stood to lose
out. In a parliamentary vote March 18, the government had
comfortably won its resolution to support British
participation in the war by 412 to 149 votes, with just 52
abstentions.

That vote was taken despite the fact that it was already
clear that the entire case against Iraq was built on a
tissue of lies, buttressed by Orwellian doublespeak, in
which occupation became liberation and war peace.

The issue of weapons of mass destruction was the casus belli
through which the government sought to defy popular
opposition to the war and jettison international law.
Advised that the US policy of ¡§regime change¡¨ was illegal,
and could open the government up to charges of war crimes,
Blair had to maintain that Iraq¡¦s military capability
presented such a pressing and immediate threat that a
preemptive strike was necessary for world security.

To this end, the truth was bent and even manufactured to
suit the government¡¦s political end of joining with the US
war drive in an attempt to carve out a new sphere of
interest for British imperialism in the Middle East.

Pulling the threads of the lie over WMDs, then, would cause
the entire ball to unravel¡Xunmasking not only the prime
minister and his US allies but also the utter perfidy of
much of the Labour Party.

And if the prime minister could be held to account for his
deceit over Iraq, what about all the other lies and
deceptions practiced by the government on a daily basis?

And so parliament upheld its right to continue lying and
deceiving the British people, agreeing only that the charges
over WMDs should be investigated by two committees¡Xthe
Joint Intelligence Committee and a cross-party Intelligence
and Security Committee¡Xboth of which will meet in private
and can be relied upon to produce a whitewash.

The issue is by no means sidelined, however. New revelations
continue to emerge daily. And though the party hierarchy can
intimidate Labour MPs, few outside parliament will feel
restrained from calling the prime minister and his coterie
the liars that they are, and demanding they be held to
account.

See Also:


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