WMD dossier may come back to haunt Govt.

[Bernie Gunther]

Ooh, the Independent is just full of good news this morning.

Tony Blair, who narrowly defeated a recent parliamentary attempt to call an inquiry into the Iraq war, is facing a new threat from Washington, where victorious Democrats are expected to call British witnesses as they launch congressional investigations into the war.

"Now we are the majority party and we can hold hearings," said a senior member of the staff of John Conyers, who in January will become chair of the House Judiciary Committee. "We can hold any number of hearings."

Democratic Senators are also expected to seek hearings aimed at throwing light on how Downing Street and the White House co-ordinated efforts to claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. All the claims that led to war, from allegations that Saddam was reconstituting a nuclear weapons programme to his alleged links with al-Qa'ida, could come under examination. Unlike their counterparts in Britain, congressional committees have the crucial power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

source

 

[weltweit]

I am not sure I hold out much hope for anyone getting punished and it is not as if many politicians even feel the responsibility to go when they make mistakes, that whole class of people seem to have developed the teflon idea that nothing sticks to them, Tony Blair is the worst at knowing how to avoid answering the most basic questions.

I sometimes get the impression that you have to be a pathalogical liar to stand any hope in politics these days which is why I like the joke :

Q: How can you tell when a politician is lying?

A: Their lips move!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, we can still hope.

What I'm hoping for is that those who one strongly suspects conspired to lie to the public and parliament in order to promote an illegal war do get punished, if only by losing office and being humiliated, but ideally by going to jail for perjury or whatever (and that those sentences are added on to the cash for peerages ones wherever appropriate) as a deterrent to future politicians.

 

[weltweit]

It is a worthy hope that is for sure but is there any precedent for it, I mean well perhaps you have a point indeed, a couple of tories have done jail time for lying under oath, I am thinking of Archer and whatever the other one was a privy councillor anyhow.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I'm not actually sure if it is a crime to lie to the Hutton inquiry, even if the case the New Statesman is making can be proven. I seem to recall that it was constituted a bit oddly and not under the full rules.

But it would certainly not look good.

 

[weltweit]

It certainly should be a crime to lie (as in WMD 45 minutes) to the British people, I personally think that is more important than to lie under oath.

But even there politicians have precendent, their advertising billboards and the suchlike at election time do not come under the same legistlation that ordinary commercial advertisers have to follow.

Basically a company has to pretty much tell the truth and not be misleading when they are selling their products, the politicians exempted themselves from that legislation ... that requirement ... meaning of course that they can *avoid the truth and be misleading* when they are selling their products.

Pure Hypocracy but that is the people we are dealing with, the people whose arrogance allows them to presume to rule us.

 

[TAE]

If nothing else this could exclude a few Blairites from the upcoming leadership contest.

 

[oake]

Why not?

Before it starts, we should not criticise because it has not started.
When it starts, we should not criticise because it has not finished.
After it's finished, we should not criticise because it is now history.

I was just trying to clarify which Spiked article BG was referring to.

I have no problem with criticism of Hutton, but the one I linked seems to be saying that Hutton had no right to examine the actions of elected politicians, which struck me as a strange position to take.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Apologies for derailing the thread by having a go at Spiked. (I meant the Mick Hume quote near the beginning of webster article)

If you don't mind though, I'm going to try limit myself to on-topic stuff to avoid further derailment.

 

[oake]

Apologies for derailing the thread by having a go at Spiked. (I meant the Mick Hume quote near the beginning of webster article)

If you don't mind though, I'm going to try limit myself to on-topic stuff to avoid further derailment.

My fault for following up your throwaway remark. Apologies.

 

[laptop]

I'm not actually sure if it is a crime to lie to the Hutton inquiry, even if the case the New Statesman is making can be proven. I seem to recall that it was constituted a bit oddly and not under the full rules.

A search for "Hutton Inquiry" perjury turned up only people hoping that it applied.

"Hutton Inquiry" oath turns up:

The Hutton inquiry, with its inability to subpoena witnesses or hear evidence on oath, proved a poor substitute for a coroner's full investigation.

The notorious medics' letter to the Guardian, 28/09/04

But yes, it still doesn't look good

 

[weltweit]

"Poor substitute for a coroners investigation."

There are a lot of clever people in whitehall who have the ability to set inquiries so that they get the result they want.

Kelly was a brave man, a man who went to Iraq unarmed to inspect their most secret weapons programs, this was a man who was answering emails about how he wanted to get back to Iraq just hours before we are lead to believe he threw in the towel and took his own life.

It does not make logical sense.

The man who knew the truth about Iraq and WMD, who was blowing the whistle because he was appalled at the lies being fed to the British people, such a man does not give up and commit suicide NOT .. NO WAY.

This was one of the darkest days of the present administration. It shows just to what lengths some of them would go to silence dissent of their world view.

It stinks now just as it stank then.

 

[Idris2002]

It does not make logical sense.

The man who knew the truth about Iraq and WMD, who was blowing the whistle because he was appalled at the lies being fed to the British people, such a man does not give up and commit suicide NOT .. NO WAY.

Suicide rarely does make logical sense.

And the argument from personal incredulity is a logical fallacy - to weak a basis to convict anyone for.

Let's hound Blair for the crimes we know he's guilty of, shall we?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Let's hound Blair for the crimes we know he's guilty of, shall we?

I think tactically this is the right approach and one which I'd encourage anyone who feels the urge to hound Blair and his various cronies to pursue.

By alleging something you can't prove, you just provide material for the usual accusations of 'conspiracy theory'

By sticking to stuff that has a reasonable chance of being proven, and its not like there's a shortage of stuff like that (see the latest allegations that Blair was involved in a massively fraudulent BAE deal with Tanzania for another example) then there's every chance that if those in a position to investigate with the law behind them can corner the fucker, information may also emerge that allows proof of various stuff that one can only speculate about at present.

 

[Idris2002]

Is that the deal where Tanzania bought an inappropriate military air traffic control system for twice the price of a more suitable civilian model?

Feck's sake.

It'd be great if he was led away in chains one day. I suspect though, that we may yet wake up one morning to hear military music on the radio, and the state broadcasting service announcing that the government of national salvation (trading name of Blair PLC) has invoked the Civil Emergencies bill. . .

 

[lostexpectation]

I just never gotten how the 45 minutes claim made it into blair speech and onto the front pages, it was so flimsey... there must be have more plausible halftruths re iraq wmd why that one.

 

[laptop]

I just never gotten how the 45 minutes claim made it into blair speech and onto the front pages, it was so flimsey...

Journalists and editors who don't actually read beyond the first paragraph of what's in front of them