The Liberal Way to Run the World: “Improve” or We’ll Kill You

Global Research
John Pilger

What is the world’s most powerful and violent “ism”? The question will summon the usual demons, such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged,” because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism.

In his 1859 essay, On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mills described the power of empire. “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,” he wrote, “provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required. The French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville also believed in the bloody conquest of others as “a triumph of Christianity and civilization” that was “clearly pre-ordained in the sight of Providence.”

“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature — its conviction that it represents a superior form of life [while denying its] self-righteous fanaticism.” He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which Blair promised to “reorder this world around us” according to his “moral values.” At least a million dead later – in Iraq alone – this tribune of liberalism is today employed by the tyranny in Kazakhstan for a fee of $13 million.

Blair’s crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions.

This has been principally the project of the liberal flame carrier, the United States, whose celebrated “progressive” president John F. Kennedy, according to new research, authorized the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962. “If we have to use force,” said Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State in the liberal administration of Bill Clinton, “it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” How succinctly she defines modern, violent liberalism.

Syria is an enduring project. This is a leaked joint US-UK intelligence file:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces ... a special effort should bemade to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup demain [sic] incidents within Syria,working through contacts with individuals ... a necessary degree of fear ... frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention ... the CIA and SIS should use ... capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

That was written in 1957, though it might have come from a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, A Collision Course for Intervention , whose author says, with witty understatement: “It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence sources have been in Syria for a considerable time.”

And so a world war beckons in Syria and Iran. Israel, the west’s violent creation, already occupies part of Syria. This is not news. Israelis take picnics to the Golan Heights to watch a civil war directed by western intelligence from Turkey and bankrolled and armed by the medievalists in Saudi Arabia.

Having stolen most of Palestine, viciously attacked Lebanon, starved the people of Gaza and built an illegal nuclear arsenal, Israel is exempt from the current disinformation campaign aimed at installing western clients in Damascus and Tehran.

On 21 July, the Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland warned that “the west will not stay aloof for long ... Both the US and Israel are also anxiously eyeing Syria’s supply of chemical and nuclear weapons, now said to be unlocked and on the move, fearing Assad may choose to go down in a lethal blaze of glory.” Said by whom? The usual “experts” and spooks.

Like them, Freedland desires “a revolution without the full-blown intervention required in Libya.” According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were civilian targets. These included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UICEF report on the children killed, “most [of them] under the age of ten.” Like the destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, these crimes were not news, because news as disinformation is a fully integrated weapon of attack.

On 14 July, the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, which opposed the Gaddafi regime, reported, “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under Gaddafi.” Ethnic cleansing is rife. According to Amnesty, the entire population of the town of Tawargha “are still barred from returning [while] their homes have been looted and burned down.”

In Anglo-American scholarship, influential theorists known as “liberal realists” have long taught that liberal imperialists – a term they never use – are the world’s peacebrokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole nations for autopsy, they have identified “failed states” (nations difficult to exploit) and “rogue states” (nations resistant to western dominance).

Whether or not the regime is a democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. The same is true of those contracted to do the dirty work. In the Middle East, from Nasser’s time to Syria today, western liberalism’s collaborators have been Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while long discredited notions of democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest, “as required.” Plus ca change...

War crimes: Why should Bush, Blair and Obama be exempt?

FirstPost
R. Jagannathan

Should Bush and Blair face trial?

By any normal definition, they would fit the definition of terrorists. They can decide to attack whoever they choose and cause untold human suffering. They can bomb and bury hundreds of unnamed enemies that would be called genocide in any saner world. And they can even order assassinations of specific people, including their own countrymen.

But we are not talking al-Qaeda or LTTE or any such group that everyone considers beyond the pale. They are, in fact, the leaders of the free world – America and Britain.

Thus far, nobody beyond fringe Left groups has had the gumption to tell it like it is. Now, a widely-respected Nobel Peace Prize winner has done what no one else has: call George W Bush and Tony Blair to account for the sufferings of the people of Iraq and other countries they launched a war against.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa recently pulled out of a leadership summit in Johannesburg when he heard that Tony Blair would be addressing the meeting. His reason: Both Bush and Blair went to war in Iraq on the basis of a lie – that they had detected weapons of mass destruction in that country, which turned out to be false – and must thus answer for their crimes (Read what he wrote in The Observer here).

Tutu, a leading light of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and a key member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, appointed to investigate human rights abuses during the White racist regime, believes that there is a good case for trying both George Bush and Tony Blair before the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

If African despots and Eastern European ethnic cleansers can be hauled up before the international court, why not Blair and Bush?

Wrote Tutu: “On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go to the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers’ circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush’s chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?”

To be sure, the US can’t hauled up before The Hague because it is a superpower and hence makes it own rules. Moreover, the US has decided not to allow its nationals to be tried by any court outside the US for international crimes.

But Tutu is not one to pull his punches. Pointing out that over 110,000 Iraqis have been killed since Bush went to war in 2003, Tutu says that “on these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in The Hague.”

To which, Blair could only manage the usual arguments – that the decision to invade Iraq was based on information they had of weapons of mass destruction at that time, and which later turned out to be false.

The Guardian quotes him as saying that Tutu is “completely wrong” on Iraq. “I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu’s fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown. And to say that the fact that Saddam massacred hundreds of thousands of his citizens is irrelevant to the morality of removing him is bizarre.”

But Blair was being disingenuous in pretending that Tutu was ignoring Saddam Hussein’s murderous side. What Tutu pointed out was that “the cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering,”

The more important issue is this: can the powerful sit in judgment on the less powerful, when they will not play by the same rules they impose on others?

To date, the French and the Brits have paid no price for the depredations of their colonial enterprise, including many countries in Africa and Asia.

Even today, the US continues to believe it can order any assassination, and use any weapon, to strike at anyone it decides is a threat to the US.

Tutu is, in fact, being circumspect in singling out only Blair and Bush, when President Obama continues to tread the same path of unilateral killings in the name of tackling terror.

Apart from the well-known assassination of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan, the US has over the last eight years killed possibly upto 3,000 people in Afghanistan through drone attacks on suspected militants, and as many as 15 percent of these killings may not even be terrorists or militants. That means 450 murders of possibly blameless people (read here)– collateral damage in this war on terror.

If Bush and Obama are not accountable for these wrongful deaths, who is?

The US also maintains a list of people who can be assassinated on the same ground – as a potential terror threats – and the list can include American citizens too.

The Washington Post reported in 2010 that the CIA had put Anwar al-Awlaki, an American al-Qaeda militant who is alleged to have attempted to bomb a Detroit-bound airline, on a “kill or capture” list.

Little wonder, al-Awlaki was assassinated in October 2011. Killing American citizens needs sanction directly from the US President, and Obama apparently sanctioned his killing.

When Obama gave the go-ahead a year earlier, the Post quoted CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano without irony: “This agency conducts its counter-terrorism operations in strict accord with the law.”

Anthony Gregory, writing for the Center for Research on Globalisation portal, quotes a Reuters report confirming the existence of a secret group that authorises such assassinations.

“American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

If there is no law establishing this assassination committee, one wonders why the CIA thinks it is operating within the four corners of the law. The only purpose of the group apparently is to generate the kill list, and the only safeguard is Obama’s signature, if the killing of an American citizen is involved. Killings of non-Americans can apparently be done by the committee, at will.

Archbishop Tutu’s comments may have jarred sensibilities in the US and Britain, where the powerful are used to sitting in judgment rather than being judged themselves, but it is clear that his call for trying Bush and Blair does not go far enough.

President Obama’s actions and assassination panels cannot be exempt from the world’s scrutiny and may not be some day.

Nothing, of course, is going to happen now. But Tutu’s truth cannot remain buried forever in the shifting sands of international power equations.

Why I had no choice but to spurn Tony Blair

I couldn't sit with someone who justified the invasion of Iraq with a lie

The Guardian
Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu: pulled out of a seminar which Tony Blair was scheduled to attend. 

The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilised and polarised the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.

Instead of recognising that the world we lived in, with increasingly sophisticated communications, transportations and weapons systems necessitated sophisticated leadership that would bring the global family together, the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand – with the spectre of Syria and Iran before us.

If leaders may lie, then who should tell the truth? Days before George W Bush and Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, I called the White House and spoke to Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, to urge that United Nations weapons inspectors be given more time to confirm or deny the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Should they be able to confirm finding such weapons, I argued, dismantling the threat would have the support of virtually the entire world. Ms Rice demurred, saying there was too much risk and the president would not postpone any longer.

On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

But even greater costs have been exacted beyond the killing fields, in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.

Has the potential for terrorist attacks decreased? To what extent have we succeeded in bringing the so-called Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds closer together, in sowing the seeds of understanding and hope?

Leadership and morality are indivisible. Good leaders are the custodians of morality. The question is not whether Saddam Hussein was good or bad or how many of his people he massacred. The point is that Mr Bush and Mr Blair should not have allowed themselves to stoop to his immoral level.

If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?

My appeal to Mr Blair is not to talk about leadership, but to demonstrate it. You are a member of our family, God's family. You are made for goodness, for honesty, for morality, for love; so are our brothers and sisters in Iraq, in the US, in Syria, in Israel and Iran.

I did not deem it appropriate to have this discussion at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg last week. As the date drew nearer, I felt an increasingly profound sense of discomfort about attending a summit on "leadership" with Mr Blair. I extend my humblest and sincerest apologies to Discovery, the summit organisers, the speakers and delegates for the lateness of my decision not to attend.

THE IRAN WAR PATH HAS RESUMED: With Another ‘Colin Powell Moment’?

Global Research
Finian Cunningham

Must be true.  Here's the cartoon

You know when Western powers are getting trigger happy towards Iran again because the mainstream media propaganda machine starts cranking out lurid scare stories.

The latest wheeze is based on “computer-generated drawings” allegedly depicting a nuclear explosion blast chamber that Iran has allegedly been using to test mini nukes. The drawings were provided “exclusively” to the Associated Press news agency by an unnamed official from “a country tracking Iran's nuclear program, who said it proves [sic] the structure exists”.

Don’t you just love the way “unnamed sources” are quoted, who go on to “prove” their own unverifiable claims?

The AP story has since been picked up, predictably, by all and sundry Western media [1].

Not only are the stories illustrated with computerised images of the alleged blast chamber, there are also mathematical details of chamber dimensions, design and structure.

A good rule-of-thumb is that when western media and unnamed “diplomats” assiduously provide “details” on suspect installations, then it is a sure sign of desperation to convince the wider public about otherwise dubious claims.

The template for this kind of disinformation stunt was the presentation by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2003 before the United Nations Security Council. Then, in a contrived performance that smacked of sheer theatre, Powell presented audio recordings and satellite images to testify that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was a piece with then British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s hysterical assertion that Iraq had the capability of launching such weapons “within 45 seconds”.

In sonorous tones, Powell declared to the world: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”

All of the supposed “solid sources” claimed by Powell (and Blair and George W Bush) were later shown to be fabrications or spurious. Powell for one lied through his teeth. But based on his performance, the US and Britain launched a nine-year war of aggression on Iraq that claimed over one million lives and bequeathed that country with a heinous legacy of ongoing internecine violence, poverty, destruction and widespread cancer-causing depleted-uranium contamination.

Incredibly, far from being shamed over committing war crimes and being complicit in war crimes, Western governments and media continue to repeat the same cynical charade of weapons of mass destruction on Iran.

Less than three years after Colin Powell’s disgraceful moment of mendacity before the eyes of the world, the New York Times ran a story alleging that Iran had nuclear warheads. The claim was based on images obtained by unnamed American intelligence officials allegedly from a stolen Iranian laptop. That story was later exposed by investigative journalist Gareth Porter to be a ludicrous fabrication because the images were actually of redundant North Korean missiles.

It is with this kind of track record of war crimes and blatant fabrication that the latest “exclusive” story of a secret Iranian nuclear blast chamber must be assessed – a story based on computer drawings supplied yet again by ubiquitous unnamed sources. Debunking such disinformation is not enough. Given the seriousness of consequences from publishing this disinformation, Iran or some international citizen body should be filing a legal case against Western mainstream media for inciting illegal wars.

It should be noted that the latest nuclear allegation against Iran comes only days ahead of the second round of the P5 + 1 negotiations set to take place on 23 May in Baghdad. Ominously, it is being mooted in the Western media that if Iran does not make a major concession, that is stop its legally entitled civilian nuclear energy programme (a highly unlikely concession), then the Western powers or their Israeli subcontractor of terror will move to a military option. In this context, of concern is the recent build-up of military forces by the US and its proxy autocratic monarchy states in the Persian Gulf.

The move this week by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states to form a closer military union – citing Iran as a regional threat – can be seen as an American closing of ranks in advance of a possible attack.

The dissemination by Western media of “evidence” of Iranian nuclear weaponisation takes on an even more sinister purpose, with shadows of the “Colin Powell moment”.

Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent

cunninghamfinian@gmail.com 

Notes

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/13/drawing-may-provide-insight-into-iran-nuclear-intentions/ 

Iraq inquiry: Government ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated WMD threat

The Telegraph
Rosa Prince

Tony Blair’s government ‘intentionally and substantially’ exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein ahead of the war in Iraq, a former senior British diplomat has claimed.

Tony Blair's govermnet accused of telling 'lies' about Iraq's WMD potential

Carne Ross, who was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the United Nations, accused the former government of issuing “lies” to the public about the dictator’s capacity to launch weapons of mass destruction.

He said that it was a "disgrace" that ministers failed to exhaust all peaceful options before going to war against Iraq.

"There was no deliberate discussion of available alternatives to military action in advance of the 2003 invasion," Mr Ross added.

"There is no record of that discussion, no official has referred to it, no minister has talked about it, and that seems to me to be a very egregious absence in this history - that at some point a Government before going to war should stop and ask itself, 'are there available alternatives?"'

Giving evidence before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, Mr Ross said that “nuanced” intelligence about the threat from Iraq was “massaged” into "more robust and terrifying" messages about Saddam’s supposed WMD.

Mr Carne, who served at the UN between 1997 and 2002, claimed that the British and United States governments were fully aware that there was no “substantial threat” from Iraq ahead of the war.

He said: "It remains my view that the internal Government assessment of Iraq's capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public Government documents during 2002 and 2003.

"Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq's WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat.

"At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings."

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, Mr Carne said, the presentation of the intelligence relating to Iraq changed significantly.

The now notorious claim in the “dodgy dossier” of September 2002, which implied that Saddam had the capacity to launch WMD within 45 minutes, had “no basis in firm intelligence”.

"This process of exaggeration was gradual, and proceeded by accretion and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty,” he said.

"But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies."

Former MI5 Boss: Pre-War Iraq 'Was No Threat To U.K.'

Guardian

Operation "Shock and Awe" in Bagdad

Iraq posed no threat to the UK when then prime minister Tony Blair took Britain to war there, former MI5 boss Dame Eliza Manningham Buller has said.

The one-time security service boss has spoken out about the conflict previously, revealing the reservations she had about it at the time.

But in a new interview, she told the Radio Times: "Iraq did not present a threat to the UK. The service advised that it was likely to increase the domestic threat and that it was a distraction from the pursuit of al Qaida. I understood the need to focus on Afghanistan. Iraq was a distraction."

Ms Manningham-Buller, whose three Reith Lectures begin this week on BBC Radio 4, said it was "for others to decide" whether the war was a mistake.

But she added: "Intelligence isn't complete without the full picture and the full picture is all about doubt. Otherwise, you go the way of George Bush."

She also described Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as "a horror" but appeared torn about military interventions like the current Nato foray into Libya.

"It's very difficult - do you just stand by and watch people being murdered?" she said.

Asked about Britain's friendlier approach to Col Gaddafi in the recent past, she replied: "There was a point to cosying up to him, to get him to forfeit his stockpiles of WMD (weapons of mass destruction). It was the right thing to do. But yes, you do have to be aware of who you're dealing with."

Defending MI5 against suggestions that it could have prevented the July 7 terror attacks on London, she said: "In intelligence, you can know of someone, without knowing exactly what they are going to do. The next time there is an attack, the same could be true - though I hope it won't be."

And in a bleak warning about future British bombings, she said: "I assume there will be. This isn't a 'war' you win in a military sense, and you can't anticipate everything."

Memo reveals intelligence chief's bid to fuel fears of Iraqi WMDs

Sir John Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee
before serving as head of MI6 from 2004 to 2009.

Guardian
Chris Ames

Sir John Scarlett wanted dossier to strengthen case for war

The senior intelligence official responsible for Tony Blair's notorious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proposed using the document to mislead the public about the significance of Iraq's banned weapons.

Sir John Scarlett, who as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee was placed "in charge" of writing the September 2002 dossier, sent a memo to Blair's foreign affairs adviser referring to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional".

The memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act, has been described as one of the most significant documents on the dossier yet published.

The disclosure supports the evidence of the former intelligence official Michael Laurie, who told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war that it was widely understood that the dossier was intended to make a case for war and misrepresented intelligence to this particular end.

The role of the Joint Intelligence Committee is to present impartial intelligence-based advice to ministers. Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications, told Scarlett that the dossier's credibility depended on it being seen to be the work of Scarlett and his team of experts.

But the 2004 Butler review found that the published dossier had presented a more certain case on Iraq's weapons than was set out in the committee's reports. In spite of this, Scarlett went on to be head of MI6.

Scarlett's memo was sent to Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, in March 2002 after an early draft of the dossier had been drawn up covering four countries with "WMD programmes of concern": Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, had commented that the paper "has to show why there is an exceptional threat from Iraq. It does not quite do this yet." In response, Scarlett suggested that the dossier could make more impact if it only covered Iraq. "This would have the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional," he wrote.

Iraq dossier drawn up to make case for war – intelligence officer

Guardian

Newly released evidence to Chilcot inquiry directly contradicts Blair government's claims about dossier

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor.

In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government's claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given."

He continued: "Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not 'to make a case for war'. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used."
Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was "frequently inquiring whether we were missing something" and was under pressure. "We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction],
generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country."

The document is one of a number released by the Chilcot inquiry. They include top secret MI6 reports warning of the damage to British interests and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the UK if it joined the US-led invasion of Iraq.

However, a newly declassified document reveals that Sir Kevin Tebbit, then a top official at the Ministry of Defence, warned the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in January 2003 that the US would "feel betrayed by their partner of choice" if Britain did not go along with the invasion.

Despite its concerns, MI6 told ministers before the invasion that toppling Saddam Hussein "remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies".

Laurie's memo raises questions about the role of Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who later became head of MI6.

Surprise, Surprise! Iraq War Was About Oil

Freedom's Phoenix
By Ray McGovern

April 22, 2011

Afghanistan may be the graveyard of empires, but Iraq is home to a graveyard sense of humor. Iraqis wonder aloud whether the U.S. and Britain would have invaded Iraq if its main export had been cabbages instead of oil.

However obvious the answer, a remarkable array of American pundits and pseudo-savants have resisted giving the oil factor any pride of place among the motives behind the U.S./U.K. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. To this day, the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) continue to play the accustomed role as government accomplice suppressing unwelcome news.

So, if you don’t tune in to Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now or read the British press, you will have missed the latest documentary evidence showing that Great Britain’s Lords and Ladies lied about how big oil companies, like BP, lusted after Iraqi oil in the months leading up to the attack on Iraq.

Oil researcher Greg Muttitt’s new book Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq presents that evidence, since Muttitt had better luck than American counterparts in getting responses to his Freedom of Information requests.

After a five-year struggle, he obtained more than 1,000 official documents which — how to say this — do not reflect well on the peerage, the captains of the oil industry, and the government of Tony Blair.

On April 19, the British Independent published a major story about these disclosures, which America’s FCM have avoided like the plague.

Quoting the released British documents, the Independent showed BP salivating over an expected windfall of Iraqi oil, with the saliva politely sponged up by Foreign Office functionaries. From the Independent:

“The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq ‘post regime change.’ Its minutes state: ‘Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there.’ …

“Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had ‘no strategic interest’ in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was ‘more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time’ … it [BP] was willing to take ‘big risks’ to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.”

Of course, BP was singing a different tune for the average folks. Lord Browne, then-BP chief executive, insisted on March 12, 2003, a week before the invasion of Iraq: “It is not, in my or BP’s opinion, a war about oil.”

The official documents, however, offer a contradictory account. Gosh, would BP officials lie?

The minutes of a similar meeting with BP and Shell on Oct. 31, 2002, reinforce the point. They show then-British Trade Minister, Lady Symons, agreeing that British oil companies must not lose out in competing for Iraqi oil, particularly “if the U.K. had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the U.S. government throughout the crisis.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair was equally disingenuous in his public remarks. On April 19, Democracy Now ran a brief clip in which British author Muttitt called to mind Blair’s assurances to a TV audience on Feb. 6, 2003, six weeks before the war: “The idea that we’re interested in Iraq’s oil is absurd, it’s one of the most absurd conspiracy theories you can imagine.”

Muttitt pointed out that, as Blair was saying this, a secret (until now) Foreign Office document setting out British strategy toward Iraqi oil asserted, “Britain has an absolutely vital interest in Iraq’s oil.”

The London Mail Online on April 20 summed up the contradictions with classic English understatement. It noted that the flurry of meetings between oil executives and the Labour government in late 2002 “appear to be at odds with their insistence Iraq’s vast oil reserves were not a consideration ahead of the March 2003 invasion.”

Back in Washington

America’s FCM have yet to acknowledge this latest embarrassment of how fully its prominent members were wrong about this oil issue as they queued up behind the Bush/Blair invasion in 2002-2003. Top pundits echoed Blair’s dismissal of the oil motive as a “conspiracy theory.”

Instead the FCM agreed that the “preemptive war” was needed to protect Americans from Iraq’s WMD and stop Saddam Hussein’s collaboration with Osama bin Laden – even if there were no WMD stockpiles and there was no collaboration.

The war’s defenders also sprinkled in some noble sentiments about advancing human rights and spreading democracy. If the “no blood for oil” argument was mentioned, it was put on a tee so it could be easily swatted away by the Bush administration.

For instance, on Dec. 15, 2002, “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Croft asked then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “What do you say to people who think this [the coming invasion of Iraq] is about oil?” Rumsfeld replied:

“Nonsense. It just isn’t. There — there — are certain … things like that, myths that are floating around. I’m glad you asked it. I — it has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.”

Gee, what kind of person would suggest that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might take the country to war with so much as a thought in their heads about locking down control of Iraq’s vast oil reserves?

Cheney, of course, understood the geopolitical importance of oil before he joined Bush in running for the White House. As CEO of Halliburton in autumn 1999, Cheney had observed that:

“Oil companies are expected to keep developing enough oil to offset oil depletion and also to meet new demand. So where is the oil going to come from?

“Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of 90 percent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”

Since the Iraq invasion, several Washington insiders have blurted out the suppressed Realpolitik about the strategic value of oil.

As early as May 2003 (in the heady days of “Mission Accomplished”), then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz nonchalantly responded to a question about why Bush attacked Iraq, but not North Korea, by noting that Iraq “floats on a sea of oil.”

At that early stage, Wolfowitz apparently still thought the Iraq war would be the “cakewalk” predicted by his neoconservative colleague Kenneth Adelman. With the war supposedly won – and with Americans famously tolerant of the behavior of winners – Wolfowitz might have thought some candor wouldn’t raise many eyebrows.

At that point, the Bush team still harbored hope that convicted felon/conman extraordinaire Ahmed Chalabi could be put in power in Baghdad, open the door to Western oil companies, and — not incidentally — recognize Israel.

Wolfowitz, Adelman, and the neoconservative crowd would have been wiser to temper their hubris with a smidgeon of common sense. The notion that Chalabi had, or could garner, a significant following in Iraq was a pipe dream.

The State Department conducted a poll of Iraqis in 2003, finding Chalabi to be the only listed political leader whose unfavorable ratings exceeded his favorable ones. And small wonder. Chalabi and his wealthy family had left Iraq in 1956.

(As a benchmark for those who might remember, 1956 was two years before the New York Giants baseball team broke my heart by leaving the Polo Grounds and moving to San Francisco.)

Despite Chalabi’s lack of Iraqi roots, the neoconservative movers and shakers in Washington and Baghdad still helped get him appointed in 2005 as Deputy Prime Minister and Chair of the Iraq Energy Council, which directed Iraqi oil policy. Chalabi was also in and out as acting Oil Minister.

Insiders Reveal Oil Role

Bush’s first Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who was fired in late 2002 after disagreeing with Bush on tax cuts and Iraq, was one of the first insiders to detail the administration’s Iraqi oil obsession, tracing it back to the days after Bush’s inauguration as Bush’s advisers planned how to divvy up Iraq’s oil wealth.

O’Neill told author Ron Suskind for his 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, that Bush’s first National Security Council meeting just days into his presidency included a discussion of invading Iraq. O’Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this.”

Subsequent disclosures have corroborated O’Neill’s account about the importance of oil in Bush’s calculation. Though Freedom of Information requests in the United States have been nowhere near as successful as those in London, one did hit pay dirt.

A FOIA lawsuit forced the Commerce Department to fork over some documents of Cheney’s Energy Task Force documents from March 2001, including a map of Iraqi oilfield, pipelines, refineries, terminals, and potential areas for exploration. There also was a Pentagon chart titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” and one chart detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects.

Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks gave Bush and Cheney the political opening they needed to turn their designs on Iraqi oil into reality. And the two also began linking Saddam Hussein and his fictional stockpiles of WMD to al Qaeda.

Suskind wrote, “Documents were being prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, Rumsfeld’s intelligence arm, mapping Iraq’s oil fields and exploration areas and listing companies that might be interested in leveraging the precious asset.”

“The desire to ‘dissuade’ countries from engaging in ‘asymmetrical challenges’ to the United States … matched with plans for how the world’s second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world’s contractors made for an irresistible combination, O’Neill later said,” according to Suskind.

One oil executive confided to a New York Times reporter a month before the war on Iraq, “For any oil company, being in Iraq is like being a kid in F.A.O. Schwarz.”

As the years wore on and the Bush administration struggled to control the violent resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, other prominent Americans began acknowledging the obvious importance of oil in the U.S. calculation for war.

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan in his 2007 book The Age of Turbulence wrote: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

In a talk at Stanford on Oct. 13, 2007, former CENTCOM commander Gen. John Abizaid seconded Greenspan. “Of course it [Iraq] is all about oil,” Abizaid said.

Not Exclusively Oil

But the motivation to attack Iraq was not solely oil. Nor was it solely to acquire permanent or “enduring” military bases. Nor was it only to make the Middle East safer for Israel.

In my view it was an amalgam of ALL OF THE ABOVE plus a few others like vengeance and what the Chinese used to call “great-power chauvinism.” I am always surprised at those who take the position that just one of these motives was operative and insist on excluding others. Neither life, nor policy making, is that simple.

A few months after the war started, I coined the “acronym” OIL to address U.S./U.K. motives. I must put the term “acronym” in quotation marks, because Jon Stewart has rightly accused me of “violating the rules for acronyms” because O was for oil; I for Israel; and L for logistics (the military bases), Stewart insisted that OIL could not be the acronym if the “O” was one of the elements. It was a good spoof, meeting my desire to call primary attention to OIL. I still think the “acronym” performs a useful function as mnemonic.

Hopefully, we have already taken care of the oil motive in what is said above. How about Israel? Well, candor requires acknowledgment that the neoconservatives running Bush/Cheney policies had great difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of Israel on the one hand, and those of the U.S. on the other.

While this was clear from the outset of the Bush administration, specific evidence emerged in London at the Chilcot hearings on Iraq in January 2010.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke publicly about Israel’s input into the all-important Bush-Blair deliberations on Iraq in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. Inexplicably, Blair slipped up on his propensity for hiding important facts from the public and told some truth, though his indiscretion got little attention in America’s FCM. Blair said:

“As I recall that [April 2002] discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us [Bush and Blair], whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this.”

Blair’s remarks reinforced earlier ones by Philip Zelikow, a former member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002 that the “real threat” from Iraq was not to the United States. Rather, the "unstated threat" from Iraq was the "threat against Israel.” He added, "The American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell."

‘Enduring’ Military Bases

Then there are the “enduring” military bases, which used to be called “permanent” bases. Today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is engaging in not-so-subtle pleading with the Iraqi government to permit some American forces to remain at some large bases beyond the agreed end-of-2011 withdrawal date.

(Tom Engelhardt has an excellent commentary on these “enduring” bases in the introduction to an essay by Noam Chomsky at TomDispatch.com.)

To refresh memories of the Bush/Cheney approach to the base and oil issues, it might be helpful to recall one of President Bush’s more significant “signing statements.” In early 2008, Bush wrote that he did not feel bound by the Defense Authorization Act’s following specific prohibitions:

“To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq, “ or

“To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

I was reminded of Bush’s signing statement as I watched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Feb. 18 wordsmith a similar Obama administration approach to Afghanistan. Clinton said:

“In no way should our enduring commitment be misunderstood as a desire by America or our allies to occupy Afghanistan against the will of its people … we do not seek any permanent American military bases in their country.”

But who are we to believe? Just ten days before (on Feb. 8) Afghan President Hamid Karzai openly confirmed that the Obama administration has been in secret talks with him to formalize a system of permanent (or maybe “enduring”?) military bases in Afghanistan.

The Bush signing statement about bases and oil now seems emblematic, inasmuch as it points to the reasoning so many Americans have come to tolerate — and even endorse; that is, the concept that the first resource wars of the 21st Century were simply necessary to emplace military bases to ensure that U.S. gas stations don’t run dry.

After all, many of us already are paying more than $4 a gallon at the pump.

One can understand, without condoning it, that many Americans have become comfortable with the notion that we are somehow exceptional, and thus entitled to more than our proportionate share of the world’s natural resources.

The FCM are a very huge help in persuading Americans that it is okay to ignore the suffering and devastation inflicted abroad, because we have to protect our “way of life” from those who are just plain “jealous.”

Over the past decade, this mode of thinking has found expression in several interesting ways. Three examples that come to mind:

--“I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we’re going to kick some ass!” (Bush in the White House bunker, evening of 9/11);

--“Kick Their Ass & Take Their Gas!” (prominent placard held by Crawford Texans counter-demonstrating against supporters of Cindy Sheehan, August 2005);

--“We go to war for oil. It’s a good reason to go to war.” (Ann Coulter, speech at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, April 21, 2011).

And so it goes.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington, DC. He served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Blair 'misled MPs on legality of war' law chief who advised ex-PM tells Iraq inquiry

Mail Online
By Tim Shipman and Ian Drury

Uncomfortable: Lord Goldsmith was concerned Mr Blair
ignored his advice over the legality of the Iraq War

Tony Blair misled Parliament and the public about the legality of the Iraq War, according to explosive documents released last night.

Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said the then prime minister’s claims that Britain did not need a UN ­resolution explicitly authorising force were not compatible with his legal advice.

In testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, made public for the first time yesterday, Lord Goldsmith said Mr Blair based his case for invasion on grounds that ‘did not have any application in international law’.

MI6 was plotting the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly 18 months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, secret papers revealed last night.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of the spy service, sent three documents to Mr Blair’s top foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning on the issue in December 2001, one of which set out ‘a route map for regime change very openly’.

He said he felt ‘uncomfortable’ about the way Mr Blair ignored his legal rulings when making the case to Parliament.

Asked whether ‘the Prime Minister’s words were compatible with the advice you had given him’, he replied: ‘No.’

The shattering testimony is a watershed moment for the Iraq Inquiry, as it is the first time that Lord Goldsmith has directly contradicted Mr Blair. The claims will form the centrepiece of Mr Blair’s ­second grilling by the inquiry on Friday.

The written questions and answers from Lord Goldsmith’s second testimony to the inquiry, released yesterday, detail how the Attorney General was frozen out of government decision-­making over the drafting of Resolution 1441, which he eventually used to justify the war after months of pressure from Mr Blair and his closest aides.

The UK and U.S. tried to get a second UN resolution explicitly justifying an invasion but abandoned the effort when France threatened to veto their plans in the UN Security Council.

Campaigner: Reg Keys says Blair's
lying to Parliament was 'criminal' and
he should now be 'called to account'

But in his evidence Lord Goldsmith reveals that he had explicitly told Mr Blair that such claims were nonsense when they met to discuss the legality of war on October 22, 2002.

Lord Goldsmith says his advice ‘must have been understood by the Prime Minister’. Yet on January 15, 2003, Mr Blair told the Commons ‘there are circumstances in which a UN resolution is not necessary’.

On February 6 he repeated the claim on the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

Lord Goldsmith admitted that when he heard Mr Blair’s statements: ‘I was uncomfortable about them and I discussed my concerns with [then Foreign Secretary] Jack Straw.’

Reg Keys, whose military policeman son Tom was killed in Iraq, said of Mr Blair: ‘This was not lying to Parliament to push through a minor bill, it was to start a war. That’s tantamount to criminal and it’s high time this man was called to account.’

Mr Blair’s spokesman said: ‘Tony Blair will deal with all these issues in his evidence on Friday. The issue of the so-called unreasonable veto was not the basis on which Britain took part in the military action.

‘What Peter Goldsmith’s statement does is make it categorically clear that there was a proper legal basis for the military action taken.’

MI6 was plotting the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly 18 months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, secret papers revealed last night.

Sir Richard Dearlove, the then head of the spy service, sent three documents to Mr Blair’s top foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning on the issue in December 2001, one of which set out ‘a route map for regime change very openly’.

The Iraq Inquiry’s release of Sir David’s evidence, given behind closed doors last May, sheds light on the earliest-known discussions on the matter among Mr Blair’s inner circle.

Tony Blair 'to be called back' to Iraq war inquiry to answer questions about 'gaps' in his evidence

Mail Online
Tony Blair is to be recalled by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War to answer new questions about 'gaps' in the evidence he gave earlier this year.

The former Prime Minister is likely to be asked to clarify the political build-up to the 2003 American-led invasion.

He is also expected to further explain the legality of Britain's participation in the controversial war.

Sir John Chilcot will write to Mr Blair next month to ask him to attend a public hearing in early 2011, reported The Times.

During his six-hour testimony earlier this year, Mr Blair mounted a vigorous defence of the invasion and insisted he had no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein.

He denied he took the country to war on the basis of a 'lie' over the dictator's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

At the end of his session one member of the audience shouted: 'What, no regrets? Come on' while others heckled 'You are a liar', 'And a murderer'.

Sir John has previously explained that as his team pores through thousands of secret government documents relating to the Iraq invasion, should they find 'conflicts or gaps within the evidence' then they will recall witnesses.

Liam Fox, the current Defence Secretary, asked Sir John to recall Gordon Brown to the inquiry earlier this year after he was forced into an humiliating admission that he had slashed defence spending while British troops were at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The then-PM told MPs he had been wrong to tell the inquiry that defence spending under Labour was 'rising in real terms every year'.

In January, an unrepentant Mr Blair was heckled and jeered by families of Britain's war dead as he declared he had 'not a regret' about invading Iraq.

He made it clear he would do the same again and warned world leaders they may soon have to take similar decisions over Iran.

Despite the deaths of up to 700,000 Iraqis and 179 British troops, Mr Blair said he felt 'responsibility but not a regret' at the end of his six hours of evidence. There was no hint of remorse.

Saddam had been a 'monster' and it had been right to remove him even to prevent the 'possibility' that he could acquire weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair said.

He warned that Iran's nuclear weapons programme now poses an even greater threat.