Harry's Place

The Chicot Inquiry is a waste of time. Instead, it should be refocused on discovering why poor intelligence, double-agent translators, inept logistics etc. led to the British having to withdraw in disgrace from Southern Iraq.

Far more important for our long-term interests are what ‘lessons have learned’ for COIN and counter-terrorism operations in the future.

Of course Saddam is known to have was pursuring CBN technology as last 1997, i.e. four years after being required to dismantle it.

Of course the invasion was a mistake.

It’s ridiculous how the reporting can’t be bothered to point out that all this is old news covered in the Butler Inquiry. Shameful.

They should have asked the tories to show them the receipts for the chemical weapons plant they sold Saddam Hussein.

He had chemical weapons as the tories sold them to him, but they knew he had got rid of them.

“All of it suggested that Saddam had stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so.”

this isn’t a very effective rebuttal. blair wasn’t saying to the public “Saddam has stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so!!!!!!!” since, well, that doesn’t really justify an invasion.

i’m aware that i’m open to charges of whattaboutery here, but to justify a war, you need… some kind of justification. saddam being an evil man isn’t enough.

>> He had chemical weapons as the tories sold them to him, but they knew he had got rid of them.

Lee, d’you have anything to say about: a) your legal qualifications; b) Alister Cooling?

TIA

You’ve lost this one. Which means that you’ve lost everything.

Butler sat and waited for a journalist to ask The Question, and was left dumbfounded when none of the spineless hired help did so. But some of them seem to have grown backbones since then.

“They should have asked the tories to show them the receipts for the chemical weapons plant”: Lee Bee: That is so Now Show satirical material, circa 2003.

Only funny because it’s true, amie.

We are only two days in, and we have already “learned” that (for the benefit of the American market) there was no link to 9/11, that there were no WMD, and that Saddam Hussein would have been toppled by an internal coup anyway.

The one and only argument advanced for British participation in the Iraq War was the existence of Iraqi WMD (not a “programme”) capable of deployment within 45 minutes against the British bases on Cyprus. No one bothered to ask why Iraq would want to attack those bases, and in any case the whole thing was totally false.

I say again, Lord Butler sat and waited for a journalist to ask The Question, and was left dumbfounded when none of the spineless hired help did so. But some of them seem to have grown backbones since then. Why don’t the rest?

And why doesn’t everyone who admires the American neoconservatives ask what it is about them that makes them so attractive to Tony Blair, of all people? If he loves them so much, then why do you?

I’m pretty much with Awaywi Wimmin other than I’d also add lack of political will.

After the initial Invasion our – the British – contribuition to operation Telic was lackluster and distinctly marginal comared to the US’s, even prorate for the 5:1 respective US and British populations.

The Yanks did the vast bulk of the heavy lifting in Iraq and the British were essentially defeated. Major General Andy Salmon, the British commander in Southern Iraq, handed over to American forces in March of this year, not Iraqi.

The same theme may well play out in Afghanistan.

amie, it was originally part of a Bill Hicks routine about the first Gulf War. Still evergreen though, after nearly 20 years. Like Morecambe and Wise with André Previn, it’ll never go stale.

Yes I’m disappointed, though not surprised, by the coverage of the inquiry. The reporting has been completely different to the actual evidence, which again is causing a disconnect with the public.

I knew this would happen, of course, but it really takes the biscuit that there was all that bullshit before the inquiry about this being an opportunity for the public, and families of those killed, to find out the truth of whether anybody had lied. Clearly they have no intention of allowing that to happen.

Hard to believe Roger Alton is the editor of the Independent these days. I guess it shows you everyone has a price.

David Lindsay:

Lord Butler sat and waited for a journalist to ask The Question, and was left dumbfounded when none of the spineless hired help did so.

What is The Question?

The British involvement in and hasty retreat from Basra was a disgrace start to finish.

First recall that the British Army took ages to penetrate Basra proper the with Baghdad falling almost before Basra did!

Once British Armygot into Basra they set about in the best traditions of the FCO trying to determine which Shia militia could be bought off or brought over from the Iranian side and upon realising that these usually familiy led tribal organisations could not be bought off they started to pay them to just leave well alone.

This racket proved a boon to the thuggish Shia Islamist militias who came to run Basra for the time that it was officiallt under “British” occupation.

Tactically the military leadership was more than inept throughout and exposed the PBI (poor bloody infantry) to all kinds of dangers which meant that casulties were much higher than they needed to be).

Eventually the Army was cornered into its main compound in Saddams palace. Very occasionally did they dare to venture out.

Then on the arrival of Brown into office all pretense that the British were doing anything other than paying off the Shia militias ended with a hasty retreat being beaten to Basra International airport after they had bought off the militias ensuring that the retreat was not turned into an outright rout.

Meanwhile sharia law was being practiced in Basra with women getting flogged and unobservent Basrawi getting various body parts lopped off of killed in broad daylight.

It was only later that the US Army and the Iraqi Army launched a massive and bloody campaign after the British handover (hasty retreat) that the area was brought under a semblance of central government control and the militias and gangs were run out of Basra.

Meanwhile the FCO and MI6 tried to run the poorest sham of a counter operation by raising the spectre of Arab seperatism in Iran’s Khuzestan party by wasting massive amounts of covert monies on the Al Ahwazi Liberation Front. A pathetically laughable fake outfit that took in many including Peter Tatchell and this Blog as a “genuine seperatist movement.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDFLH60ex6o

here is a caller from Dezful in Khuzestan to one of these fake seperatists where he takes the piss … belive me its hilarious.

Here are a fake flag of “Al Ahwaz” as part of a laughable youtube effort at provoking insurgency in Khuzestan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1MU9sG0EkI&feature=related

here is Al Ahwaz TV straight out of the UK offices of World Television. Also paid by the FCO.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ahwaziasslii

all paid for by the FCO.

Funny how one no longer hears about those losers.

The poor performance of the British Army and the FCO is what the focus of an enquiry should be about not yet another rehashing of why its was so terribly wrong to depose a blood thirsty dictator who had weapons of mass destruction and had already used them against the Iranians and Kurds.

Any of the dumb pr*cks at the Guardian and the Independent remember a place called Halabja? What do they suppose killed 5,000 civilians there … rose scented perfume?

Hard to believe Roger Alton is the editor of the Independent these days. I guess it shows you everyone has a price.

A copy of Who’s Next?

We are only two days in, and already we have “learned” that (for the benefit of the American market) there was no link to 9/11, that there were no WMD, and that Saddam Hussein would have been toppled by an internal coup anyway

Britain always said there was no operational Al Qaeda link, the evidence shows that the government was indeed getting intelligence that Iraq had WMD right up until the invasion, and there was no such claim about an internal coup.

So you’re wrong on all counts.

The one and only argument advanced for British participation in the Iraq War was the existence of Iraqi WMD (not a “programme”) capable of deployment within 45 minutes against the British bases on Cyprus.

Wrong again. We learnt from the inquiry that the government never made this claim about hitting Cyprus, and what’s more the 45 minute claim was an unremarkable piece of intelligence that was not part of the debate before the war – the period of time it took to launch weapon is irrelevent really. Obvious if you think about it.

This is what has come out of the inquiry so far.

Mike, keep telling yourself these things, dear. Some of us are old enough to remember all the way back to 2002/3. You’ve lost this one. Which means that the Harry’s Place and Euston Manifesto Tendency has lost everything. Of course, the only purpose of this Inquiry is to lynch Blair. Quite right, too.

L.R., “Did Blair lie Britain into war?” Butler had been all ready to say “Yes”, and was left stunned when no one from the media bothered to ask.

Much as I hate dragging all this up again, what is clear so far (and was clear from the Butler enquiry), is that the quality of the intelligence and the hard evidence for Saddam’s actual posession of WMDs was nowhere near as compelling as Blair claimed at the time. As one person put it, “where there were question marks they put exclamation marks”, or as someone else said “they sexed it up”.

I’m not sure if it actually counts as “lying” but I wouldn’t call it “honest” either.

“The poor performance of the British Army and the FCO is what the focus of an enquiry should be about not yet another rehashing of why its was so terribly wrong to depose a blood thirsty dictator who had weapons of mass destruction and had already used them against the Iranians and Kurds.”

Terrible though Saddam was (WHEN HE WAS OUR ALLY — sorry, I had to go there), your list of what was wrong with British army performance in Basra has nothing to do with it. The simple and obvious point is that the liberation of Iraq had terrible consequences because the people who instigated it were culpably fuckwitted.

“the evidence shows that the government was indeed getting intelligence that Iraq had WMD right up until the invasion”

OMG, another country has WMD: we must invade them.

“what’s more the 45 minute claim was an unremarkable piece of intelligence that was not part of the debate before the war”

and that’s what we like to call “a lie”.

I am not listening or reading much about this enquiry because minds were made up long ago. It has already on the first day descended into a farce with people in clown masks and props covered in fake blood demonstrating outside the building in which the evidence will be heard. This is not a review of facts nor a discovery of the truth but a theatre.

Between 1991 and 2003 Iraq was bombed almost daily by U.S.A.F and or the R.A.F. Hardly a peep in those years from those who now discover they are outraged by ‘what has happened in Iraq’. The U.N. Oil for Food Programme? I do not think we will hear about that scandal.

Far from teetering on the verge of being ‘overthrown by an internal coup’, Saddam had seen off Thatcher, Bush Snr, Major, and Clinton. All he required for survival was patience. There were no circumstances for hope that his reign of terror would end quietly.

Iraq has had two elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein, held against a background of violent international terrorism. It would be well to learn who considers multi party elections, or simply any elections in Iraq, to be wrong in kind and principle.

The Liberation of Iraq was forced by events on an American President who rejoiced in his ignorance of the outside world. He was in part elected (if at all) by those who instincts were always isolationist in character. The aftermath was almost certainly capable of being managed much better than it was. Extremism and international terrorists set off bombs among the unemployed and did other callous actions which have, by some jujitsu of logic, been laid at the feet of the Coalition by the ‘not in my name’ faction. In post liberated Iraq, but never beforehand, they have discovered the perfect object for the vicarious expression of guilt which is a strange corollary of the triumph of modernism in the west, creating the weirdest of sights, liberal democrats arm linked through arm with fascists.

Not surprised that the Independent has got stuck into this. I am no Blair supporter, but think he made the right call on Iraq – the implementation is something else. Particularly absurd is soldiers having penknives confiscated when they had to travel on commercial flights. Could MoD not have chartered the plane and flown it from Brize Norton?

As for Saddam’s WMDs, the question that those who say “there were no WMDs” (i.e. almost the entire BBC, Indy, Stoppers and soft Left) have to answer is where did the 20 tons of nerve gas (including a lot of VX) that nearly got released by Al Qaeda in Amman come from?

I had an absurd argument with someone who would not address this issue, finally in desperation accusing the US of supplying it. The US does not have VX and uses binary chemicals that are only mixed when the round is fired to make the deadly product. VX is particularly difficult to make, and if Saddam did not make it, then there are others in the ME who did, and their facilities would be very difficult and expensive to hide.

There is significant intelligence that Saddam had chemical weapons, that he moved it out of Iraq when he realised the invasion was coming, and that the Russians helped him move it to Syria and the Bekaa valley in Lebanon.

When I have mentioned all this before, I have been met with almost universal derision. Some of the deriders are not quite so sure now.

It has never been clear to me exactly what lies Blair supposedly told.

There would have be verifiable direct quotes from Blair and conclusive evidence that he knew they were false. What, if anything, are his lies of that sort?

L.R., … oh, what’s the point? Perhaps the Report will enlighten you? Then again, probably not.

When is there going to an inquiry into how enormously rich Blair has become as his reward for lying this country int war?

It has never been clear to me exactly what lies Blair supposedly told.

It has never been clear to his accusers either. That’s why there has never been the sniff of a trial.

The best (and I use that word with caution) chance of Blair ever being brought to account for anything is for the lack of planning for the aftermath of the war in Iraq. But putting him on trial for something like that when there are still mass-murderers like Mladic loose in the world would be an insult to the victims of the latter.

Much as I hate dragging all this up again, what is clear so far (and was clear from the Butler enquiry), is that the quality of the intelligence and the hard evidence for Saddam’s actual posession of WMDs was nowhere near as compelling as Blair claimed at the time. As one person put it, “where there were question marks they put exclamation marks”, or as someone else said “they sexed it up”.

I’m not sure if it actually counts as “lying” but I wouldn’t call it “honest” either.

Not really. The whole of the intelligence establishment, including the foreign office officials that gave evidence, believed Iraq had WMD. They had intelligence for this from many different sources, one from Saddam’s inner circle. If you put that together with Iraq’s public behaviour it would have been compelling.

You’re getting bogged down on this dossier business which is nonsense. When reports say the overall picture was “patchy”, it simply means they didn’t have detailed descriptions of where and how the weapons were stored. It doesn’t mean the intelligence that weapons were there was patchy. Intelligence by its nature is always patchy.

In the event Britain waged the war not on intelligence but on the unaccounted for materials in the UN reports, many of which were found after the war.

The poor performance of the British Army and the FCO is what the focus of an enquiry should be about not yet another rehashing of why its was so terribly wrong to depose a blood thirsty dictator who had weapons of mass destruction and had already used them against the Iranians and Kurds.

Yup, spot on.

The Brits also had too much of a holier than though attitude towards the Yanks on the conduct of CRO – Counter Revolutionary Operations – or low intensity warfare. Too much condescending received wisdom about US ineptitude and the Brits being doyens.

Northern Ireland wasn’t a particularly good template for Iraq , and that took us 3 times as long as it should have to sort out and Malaya was along time ago and had different quite dynamics – Malaya took officially 12 years – 1948 -1960 in reality more like 20. Aden had the closest similarity to Iraq and that was a British defeat.

“There would have be verifiable direct quotes from Blair and conclusive evidence that he knew they were false. What, if anything, are his lies of that sort?” – L.R. 6.00 p.m.

Exactly so. One of the most repeated quotations is still the one which was said to have been the crucial point of the interview carried out by Mr Andrew Gilligan with the late Dr David Kelly, the infamous ‘Campbell’ allegation. Much less well known or rehearsed by anti-war critics is Dr Kelly’s on air response to a direct question during his final meeting with M.P.’s on the Parliamentary Select Committee. Asked if Saddam should have been removed Dr Kelly answered at once without hesitation “Yes.” Kelly believed Saddam had the means and the willingness to make and use chemical and biological agents and was a danger to the region. (These known opinions of Dr Kelly’s make the conspiracy theories surrounding his subsequent death nonsensical.)

Doubtless the Iraq enquiry will not consider either why Ralph Ekeus was replaced by Hans Blix after pressure at the U.N. from Russia and France, both countries with very active ties to Iraq prior to 2003. Ekeus discovered in 1992 that Saddam had an on-going nuclear programme, completely unsuspected at the time. He was superb at resisting the Iraqi counters to the U.N. inspectorate (of which Dr Kelly was a member) and uncovered much about the regime’s WMD. Perhaps that is why he had to go.

“The Brits also had too much of a holier than though attitude towards the Yanks on the conduct of CRO – Counter Revolutionary Operations – or low intensity warfare. Too much condescending received wisdom about US ineptitude and the Brits being doyens.
Northern Ireland wasn’t a particularly good template for Iraq , and that took us 3 times as long as it should have to sort out and Malaya was along time ago and had different quite dynamics – Malaya took officially 12 years – 1948 -1960 in reality more like 20. Aden had the closest similarity to Iraq and that was a British defeat.” – Nick (in South Africa) 6.50 p.m.

This is pure armchair generalship. You have heard of one or two things and must be certain the rest of the world knows it. You fail to back up this stereotypical portrayal of “The Brits” with anything other than the kind of blather heard in saloon bars before closing time.

You fail to mention the three wars Britain conducted (successfully) throughout the 60s and 70s. War is not an end in itself but part of policy. After the fall of Saddam the required policy was not there and in consequence the terrorists blossomed.

The Butler Report showed that far from sexing-up their report to the JIC and Cabinet they performed reasonably well given that it was the first time they have ever been asked to such a thing, the difficulties in obtaining reliable intelligence from inside a fascist dictatorship which is what the Baathist regime clearly was. it was these weaknesses that went unexplained or understood by those receiving this intelligence report that has caused a bit of fuss.

Blair for his part as anyone (even Boris Johnson stated so on Questiontime) who bothered reading Hansard was that his last speech for war was based on regime chage. As that regime presented a clear and present danger.

If you want to lay the blame and ‘guilt’ for the Iraq war at any one mans door, then that man can only be Saddam Hussein.

The headlines today declare that Blair was told there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction 10 days prior to the invasion of Iraq. This was according to evidence provided by Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office’s director-general of defence and intelligence in 2003.
The implication of the headline is that the war could have been stopped, even at this late stage, given this dramatic development. This was certainly the line taken by the BBC News editorial team last night in the latest episode of Dyke’s revenge.
The problem with this argument is that Sir William added this ” “There was contradictory intelligence, so I don’t think it invalidated the point about what weapons [Saddam] had. It was more about their use. Even if they were disassembled the [chemical or biological] agents still existed.”
So the intelligence data received 10 days prior to the war confirmed that Saddam DID have WMD materials, AND that they might not be useable on the battlefield aginst Coalition forces.

it is hard to see how this intelligence could actually be regarded as anything other than a tremendous boost for those justifying and planning the invasion.

The headlines today declare that Blair was told there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction 10 days prior to the invasion of Iraq. This was according to evidence provided by Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office’s director-general of defence and intelligence in 2003.
The implication of the headline is that the war could have been stopped, even at this late stage, given this dramatic development. This was certainly the line taken by the BBC News editorial team last night in the latest episode of Dyke’s revenge.
The problem with this argument is that Sir William added this ” “There was contradictory intelligence, so I don’t think it invalidated the point about what weapons [Saddam] had. It was more about their use. Even if they were disassembled the [chemical or biological] agents still existed.”
So the intelligence data received 10 days prior to the war confirmed that Saddam DID have WMD materials, AND that they might not be useable on the battlefield aginst Coalition forces.

it is hard to see how this intelligence could actually be regarded as anything other than a tremendous boost for those justifying and planning the invasion.

‘…….“All of it suggested that Saddam had stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so.”

this isn’t a very effective rebuttal. blair wasn’t saying to the public “Saddam has stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so!!!!!!!” since, well, that doesn’t really justify an invasion. …..’

As it happens, this would count as a huge breech of the UN resolutions on WMD.

I’m sorry to see the literal mind triumph over the ironic yet again (i.e. ‘they’re not card carrying al-qaeda members’, ‘he never actually said the holocaust was a lie’, ‘zarqawi, bin laden and saddam never actually engaged in public mutual felatio, therefore blah blah’..) .

amie, it was originally part of a Bill Hicks routine about the first Gulf War. Still evergreen though, after nearly 20 years. Like Morecambe and Wise with André Previn, it’ll never go stale.

#####

I still miss the humour of Bill Hicks, the best comedian of all time.

If only he had been around before the Iraq War.

“what’s more the 45 minute claim was an unremarkable piece of intelligence that was not part of the debate before the war”

This is spot on, regardelss of David Lindsay’s attempts to rewrite history. I remember the day the Stanadrd carried this story, followed by the Scum the next day. It was a two-day wonder at the time (circa Nov 2002 as I recall).

So pivotal was the 45-minute claim, Blair didn’t even mention it when he opened the war debate in the HoC on the even of war in March 2003 (the only time in this country’s history that MPs have been given a chance to vote on whether the country should go to war). The 45-min claim gained retrospective notoriety only after Gilligan’s misreporting in May 2003.

DL may be old enough to remember all the way back to 2003, but this just means his willingness to misrepresent cannot be attributed to old age. Which begs the question, are we looking at personal integrity issues, politcal bias or denial?

Butler, Hutton and the select committee investigations had a level of access to prviate emails, contemporaneous meetings minutes and top secret intelligence that is unprecedented in this country’s history. And the best the “Blair lied” camp can come up with is that he didn’t allow enough room for doubt.

Pitiful.

Let’s look examine their (il)logic: they claim Blair lied, and the nature of his ‘lie’ was to say Iraq possessed WMD when he knew they didn’t. Given the strong likelihood of a coalition victory, what this actually means is that Blair claimed something he knew would be proven false once coalition troops had defeated Saddam.

So he lied, knowing his lie would be discovered. A two-term PM with unprecedented polling figures and known and criticised for his populist approach was effectively committing political suicide to fight a war based on a lie he knew would be discovered in a matter of months.

This is the “Blair lied” case, and to say it is risible is to show it far more respect than it deserves.

Just out of interest Brownie, I can recall Tony Blair assuring us that there was evidence that, if we knew about it, would have made us far more hawkish on Iraq. Secret evidence, stuff we couldn’t be told for national security reasons.

Maybe he revealed it and maybe he didn’t, but as I recall he said it during that national interview with Paxman we all watched – I may be wrong, it was a while ago. He asked the entire nation to take him at his word, as I recall.

Did anything come of that?

RE: What is The Question?

The question is: why doesn’t Loon-dsay take his meds like a good boy?

Just out of interest Brownie, I can recall Tony Blair assuring us that there was evidence that, if we knew about it, would have made us far more hawkish on Iraq. Secret evidence, stuff we couldn’t be told for national security reasons.

Maybe he revealed it and maybe he didn’t, but as I recall he said it during that national interview with Paxman we all watched – I may be wrong, it was a while ago. He asked the entire nation to take him at his word, as I recall.

Did anything come of that?

Actually I don’t remember that. But I would suppose he was talking about the MI6 source in Saddam’s inner circle and the intelligence like that just ten days before the war that said Saddam maintained biological weapons. Wouldn’t you find all of this intelligence compelling given the circumstances of the time, i.e inspections and the threat of war?

“Adam
26 November 2009, 8:50 pm

‘…….“All of it suggested that Saddam had stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so.”

this isn’t a very effective rebuttal. blair wasn’t saying to the public “Saddam has stocks of illegal weapons material which, if not immediately usable, could be rendered so!!!!!!!” since, well, that doesn’t really justify an invasion. …..’

As it happens, this would count as a huge breech of the UN resolutions on WMD.

I’m sorry to see the literal mind triumph over the ironic yet again (i.e. ‘they’re not card carrying al-qaeda members’, ‘he never actually said the holocaust was a lie’, ‘zarqawi, bin laden and saddam never actually engaged in public mutual felatio, therefore blah blah’..) .”

yes, we must certainly invade countries for possibly breaking UN sanctions…

the pro-war lobby has to accept either that the political establishment was incompetent or that they lied in preparing and executing this war. there is no third option. the wmd were not there.

i lean towards option one, as it goes. the lack of planning for what to do after toppling the regime was and is a total disgrace.

yes, we must certainly invade countries for possibly breaking UN sanctions…

Following hot on the heels of DL’s misrepresentation of the 45-min claim, we have exhibit B in the antis attempts to rewrite history.

“Possibly” breaking UN sanctions? There speaks a ‘mum’ who has never clapped eyes on the text of 1441, a resolution adopted unanimously by the UNSC that found Iraq in material breach of past resolutions, ceasefire terms codified in res. 687 and its activities with regards to WMD.

I think you may be “possibly” about half as informed as you think you are, which is no great sin in itself, but please desist with these assumptions that the rest of us are as poorly-read around this subject as you appear to be.

the wmd were not there.

The case for war is not predicated on the *existence* of WMD, but Iraq’s continued non-compliance with UNSCRs and breach of Gulf I cease-fire terms. Res. 1441 provided a “final opportunity” for Iraq to comply, an opportunity that not even Hans Blix could claim Iraq seized.

Tell me, mum, what sort of opportunity is it that follows the “final” kind? The “this really, really is your last chance this time, Saddam, so it is” variety?

Whilst you’re mulling that one over, you might want to consider how it is that you are able, today, to announce with such surety that Iraq did not have WMD. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that there was a war and we got to look for ourselves, would it? Point being, without a war to remove Saddam and thereby eliminating the one barrier to discovering the truth about Iraq’s WMD capability, we’d still be wondering whilst Blix’s team chased their tails around the Iraqi desert and you and you ilk campaigned for yet another most final of final opportunities for Iraq to comply.

The main evidence you cite in your case against war – there was no WMD – only exsits because there was a war. Mums aren’t supposed to peddle logical fallacies.

Just out of interest Brownie, I can recall Tony Blair assuring us that there was evidence that, if we knew about it, would have made us far more hawkish on Iraq. Secret evidence, stuff we couldn’t be told for national security reasons.

Well, this is the very nature of intelligence. It has an interpretative quality and one expert’s reading may not chime with another’s. I’m not saying that a Lib Dem govt. in receipt of the same intelligence seen by Blair couldn’t have made a case NOT to go to war. But this is not nearly the same as claims Blair lied. He gave greater credence to certain pieces of intelligence than he did others. He may have done this becasue he genuinely believed it, because it suited his political agenda or a mixture of the two. The truth is probably the last. Just as any decision NOT to go to war would have transparently political undertones (or is it overtones – I never know which?)

This is the nub, isn’t it? The decision to go/not go to war is necessarily political, whatever the intelligence might tell you, whatever the military and security imperatives. Blair shares some blame for his futile attempts to de-politicise the decision and make it about intelligence alone, but equally opponents of the war need to climb down from those high-horses and stop insisting that support for the war necessarily renders one a fool or a knave (and accept that their own positions are similarly informed by the politics, at least to some degree).

I’m trying to be straight, here. Blair over-egged the pudidng, as in, he used what he had to make the best possible case for war, albeit what he had was sincerely believed. But this falls miserably short of the government saying things it knew to be wrong at the time it was saying them (Gilligan’s fantasy), and please spare me the notion that oppoenets of war came to their conclusions based upon a sober consideration of all avaialble facts, rather than as a result of their own intellectual cherry-picking.

@2:03 and 2:34 am: Brownie at his best.

Larkers

This is pure armchair generalship

True, but then if my post was ‘armchair generalship’ why is your repost not guilty of the same charge by exactly the same measure?

I was nothing more than an infantry Lieutenant, but then that gives me more military experience than anybody in any Blair or Brown Labour cabinate, and quite possibly any Labour cabinate since the days of Denis Healy.

The sort of chaps attracted to the Labour party rather tend to eschew military service – the whys and wherefores of which is a topic itself worthy of unpacking.

Oh and remember, Liddell Heart was only a Captain.

You fail to mention the three wars Britain conducted (successfully) throughout the 60s and 70s.

Northern Ireland – debatable, we didn’t really start clearly wining there until the 80s after the Republican ‘diet’ was faced down. Borneo – a clear British win against the Indonesian military, and pretty well conducted, Cyprus – a distinctly mixed bag, Oman – clear British win and very well conducted, Aden – a retreat. There are a few others, none particularly relevant vis a vis Iraq or Afghanistan in the naughties.

Lee, Alistair Cooling and your qualifications…

Nick, ‘winning’ in Northern Ireland was always contingent on the republicans recognising the ultimate futility of their strategy. Police primacy in 1977-9 probably marks the watershed of the containment required to do that. No serious military historian considers Basil Liddell Hart a military guru, and the lack of personal military experience of Labour politicians now or in the past has no bearing on their capacity to make informed decisions on strategy. Indeed, the concept that you need to be a an ex-soldier to be allowed to make decisions on military matters is explicitly anti-democratic. If you want to challenge this government (or any other) on those grounds, find out where their policies diverged from the military advice they were given by the Chief of the General Staff and other senior military officers, and on what grounds it did so. Without doing that, there is no substance to this ‘politicians-vs-soldiers’ criticism beyond mere political point-scoring.

The whole subject of Iraq seems to attract comment which, to put it mildly, is less than objective, and the British military role is no exception. The British withdrawal from Basra was conducted with American agreement as part of the Multi-National Force structure (which is also why the British handed over to the MRF command, i.e. Americans). What the Americans did not have to do was supplant British forces – there was no US army mechanised brigade sent to Basra to replace the British.

The British were hamstrung in Basra by the political restrictions placed on them by the willingness of the Iraqi government to confront Sadr’s JAM militia; given that Maliki was initially dependent upon support from Sadr in parliament, this should not be surprising. These restrictions meant that British military operations to confront JAM in Basra were restricted (e.g. the scaling-back of Operation Salamanca to the smaller Operation Sinbad in 2006). The continuing need to confront that militia led to a planned joint British-Iraqi offensive in 2008, which the US command knew all about. That offensive was then subverted by Maliki’s sudden willingness to confront the JAM in Basra without full consultation with the British *or* the Americans in March 2008, an offensive which was only successful in the end due to British and US military support.

As for the allegation that the US had to send troops to do what the British should have done, this sprang from the fact that the US troops present in Basra were mentoring teams sent down with their parent Iraqi units. This is a classic example of the kind of double-standard that abounds over the comparitive performance of the British and US troops in Iraq; when similar mentoring units of 1st Btn The Irish Guards were deployed north from Basra to Baghdad in 2007, nobody jumped on that as an example of how the Americans were having to be bailed out by the British.

The same double-standards can be seen at work in the Baghdad slum of Sadr city which was dominated by the JAM. US forces were continually denied the ability to operate there by Iraqi poilitical restrictions, to the great irritation of numerous American commanders, until in the end Sadr City was liberated by Iraqi forces with even less evidence of US military involvement than there had been British involvement in the final clearing of Basra. It is clearly not necessary to resort to a thesis of American incapacity to explain the situation in Sadr City, so why is a similar thesis of British incapacity required in Basra?

The answer is that by 2008 everything was being viewed through the prism of the surge; by handing Basra to Iraqi control and withdrawing to the airport, the British were in effect continuing the strategy of ‘handing over to Iraqis’ which had been US policy before the surge. This led to what the British colonel commanding the last battalion in Basra accurately described as ’strategic dissonance’, and left them vulnerable to criticisms driven by the intensely partisan debate over the surge in Washington, a debate which (after years of apparent failure in Iraq) was enormously partisan and acrimonious. Criticism of the British tended to originate from officers, officials and commentators who identified themselves with the surge, strangely enough.

Compounding this was the sense amonst some US officers that assertions of British superiority in Counter-Insurgency Operations (COIN) had been over-sold and then falsified in Basra. The problem with that is that US themselves knew their COIN performance in Iraq in 2003-2006 had been counter-productive. As a direct result they had undergone a period of painful self-examination leading up to the re-writing of US COIN doctrine under General Petraeus who was then given the job of succeeding in Iraq using it. Previous British criticisms of US COIN performance were therefore validated by the US Army’s own response to them; the crime of the British officers who made any such criticism was not that they were wrong, it was because they were British.

I was going to post more on the subject of this week’s inquiry to establish The Obvious Guilt of The War Criminal B-Liar, but my last one was long enough, and I think Larker’s first post (26 November 2009, 5:40 pm) nailed it.

Der Whigphilosophie der Geschichte.

Thank you. I admire your posts enormously and can add nothing more.

the lack of personal military experience of Labour politicians now or in the past has no bearing on their capacity to make informed decisions on strategy

Precicely my point – one does not need to be a General to make informed comment about strategy, Larkers is the one who seemed to think you do.

Indeed, the concept that you need to be a an ex-soldier to be allowed to make decisions on military matters is explicitly anti-democratic.

I agree entirely.

That doesnt detract from my observation about the validity of unpacking why those that reach prominence in the Labour party seem to be those that eschew the military…or possibly those with a military background avoid the Labour party. Personally I suspect it’s something of both.

Irish Guards were deployed north from Basra to Baghdad in 2007, nobody jumped on that as an example of how the Americans were having to be bailed out by the British.

Possibly because the Yanks had well over 10 times the number of troops in country than the Brits did. In March this year all major British formations withdrew from Iraq save for some cooks and bottle washers and special forces. The UK Southern TOAR was handed over to the US; there is no getting away from that.

Your last paragraph is a fair point.

TAOR – Tactical Area of Operations

Yes, Rentoul is fighting a lonely battle at the ‘independent-minded’ Independent. Good for him.

All this conscience-clearing navel-gazing is destructive, not instructive.

Why on earth we grab on the words of every opiner as the LAST WORD when it suits our own narrative is not a testament to free speech but to our gullibility. The Newsnight reports of the last two nights typified this with their “smoking gun” angles. All aided and abetted by a graphic of a red-lipped/chinned Blair, echoed on Bush’s chin. Looks like their graphic boys weren’t up to adding the legs of an Iraqi child coming out of the B & B mouths.

C’mon kids, you can do better.

Nick, this is not a reply intended as ad-hominem criticism of you. Feel free to charge my mess bill at the bar in retribution.

My point was that you (and I) may have more direct military experience than anybody in the Blair or Brown cabinets, but this doesn’t stop you voicing opinion of the British role in Basra which is (in my opinion) demonstrably partisan and, in terms of objective military history, ill-informed. As for the background of Labour politicians, Ernest Bevin had a fairly typical background as a trade union leader before he entered the Atlee cabinet; it didn’t do his strategic judgment or his role as a lynch-pin of collective western security any harm.

Back in my day we deployed to Northern Ireland without sufficient body-armour, radios, night-vision equipment, medical equipment, etc under a Tory government which included figures who had personal military experience. Yet where was the public outrage about under-equipped troops then? Not in the Daily Mail, that’s for sure.

The personal military experience of politicians is a red herring and should be ignored by anybody outside the Mail or Telegraph searching for yet another irrelevant partisan gripe about the crimes of New Labour. It’s not as if there aren’t enough valid criticisms to be made.

Ref arnoldo:

Good point:

‘The problem with this argument is that Sir William added this ” “There was contradictory intelligence, so I don’t think it invalidated the point about what weapons [Saddam] had. It was more about their use. Even if they were disassembled the [chemical or biological] agents still existed.”
So the intelligence data received 10 days prior to the war confirmed that Saddam DID have WMD materials, AND that they might not be useable on the battlefield aginst Coalition forces.

it is hard to see how this intelligence could actually be regarded as anything other than a tremendous boost for those justifying and planning the invasion.”‘

QUITE!

But of course if the ‘intelligence’ fits the message, it’s A.OK to twist it and then interpret and use its ‘inevitable’ conclusions. Whereas if it’s Blair’s ‘inteligence’ – well, that’s different!

Nick, re: troop levels. There were also more British troops in Basra than there were Americans when MiTT teams of the 82nd Airborne were sent there with their parent units in the Iraqi 1st Division. The parallel with 1st Irish Gds remains valid; they were also sent as MiTT teams with their parent Iraqi units into a US TAOR where they were outnumbered by the US troops involved.

Yet only one of these is an example of nationality A coming to the rescue of their incompetent ally, B. The different conclusions involved spring from the political context, not the military one.

Der Whigphilosophie der Geschichte

My point was that you (and I) may have more direct military experience than anybody in the Blair or Brown cabinets, but this doesn’t stop you voicing opinion of the British role in Basra which is (in my opinion) demonstrably partisan and, in terms of objective military history, ill-informed.

Well I beg to differ; I think the numbers deployed speak for themselves, our ‘teeth’ arms did well in the invasion on the Al Faw and in Basra and its environs. After that, the follow through and the Brit’s commitment was very clearly half hearted and our precipitous pull out was dictated by political imperatives, not the operational situation. I’m not sure that my case on this is partisan; I would have made the same critique had the Tories been at the helm, as I have done about the Falklands war, which almost certainly wouldn’t have happened in the first place but for the appalling and addled brained John Nott (an ex Gurkha officer) defense review of 81.

The personal military experience of politicians is a red herring and should be ignored by anybody outside the Mail or Telegraph

I agree with some qualification. I think it distinctly unhealthy that there is seemingly a disdain for military service in the present day – cabal of Lawyers – Labour party, or that the Labour party is not able to attract those who have served. I think that is a matter separate from the UK military commitment and performance together with the support it received Iraq; though of course it may be indirectly related.

I am not, nor have I ever argued that comment on matters military – especially on strategic matters – should be the preserve of those who have served. That seemed to be Larker’s silly armchair General dig.

Anyway, separate again, the shambles that has been and is UK military procurement really does need to be sorted and personally I think civilians are by far the best placed to address this.

Tangentially related:

My father was in the RAF nearly 40 years and his biggest pay rise came under a Labour govt.

My maternal male relatives were nearly all miners, and their biggest pay rise came under the Tories.

Funny old world.

@2:03 and 2:34 am: Brownie at his best.

Agreed. Brownie has been largely superb on this thread.

For all my disagreements with Blair over other matters, the one thing I’m overwhelmingly glad he did do is to help liberate the people of Iraq.

Nick, I suspect we are in agreement re: personal military experience of politicians, and I would also largely agree with your analysis of the impact of John Nott’s spending cuts except to say that the organ grinder should also deserve some criticism by the same token.

Now to the areas of disagreement. I don’t think it’s possible to argue that the British response to the Sadr revolt in 2004 was ‘half-hearted’ unless you want to criticise the US for their similar approach at the same time which ended up in two negotiated settlements with Sadr which evidently achieved little, judging by the behavior of his militia over the following years.

I think it’s certainly possible to criticise the force levels and political commitment in 2006-2008, but that criticism does not work against the British in isolation. The real lack of political will was on the behalf of the Iraqi government who demonstrated no willingness to confront the Shi’ite militias until 2008 and hindered British plans to do so (e.g. Operation Salamanca in 2006 and the premature ‘Charge of the Knights’ operation in spring 2008 which forestalled a similar British-Iraqi plan intended for later in the year). You might be interested to learn that US commanders had similar problems, notably over dealing with JAM in Sadr City which is why I return to that parallel.

The failure of Iraqi institutions in 2004-07 is more relevant to the failure to defeat the insurgents than western force levels in isolation, as the US discovered in their TAOR again and again in the same period until they recruited local tribal allies in the Sunni tribes (not available in Basra) and Iraqi forces began to play a more meaningful role (also not available in Basra until 2008).

Sorry about continuing my monopoly of the comments, but I should have pointed out that my characterisation of Nick’s views as ‘partisan’ sprang from the American political context which shaped the critiques of British military performance by pro-surge US commentators (and I include Kilcullen in that, even though he’s Australian).

“Sorry about continuing my monopoly of the comments ..” – Der Whigphilosophie der Geschichte 4.39 p.m.

Apology not accepted. They are extraordinarily absorbing.

Nick. I was stressed. Apologies. I have nil military experience and would be a severe liability in service. You could quite easily creep up on me in a tank.

Reading you posts took me back to my childhood and listening to my Uncle Jack or my father’s friends talking about El Alemein, Anzio or the Russia convoys. None of them thought themselves brave, but were. All I can think is, it must be different if you were there.

I read yet more calls today for Blair to be charged with war crimes. I despair, I really do.

Larkers,

Do as I do. Don’t read them.

Larkers, thanks for the kind words. As a yardstick for the mainstream media, I stopped watching ‘Question Time’ in 2003 when the torrent of ignorant hysteria became too much for me. I watched a bit the other night to see how much things had changed. They hadn’t. When Melanie Phillips is the voice of reason, you know things are bad.