Some thoughts on warmongering

So Geoff Hoon, former defence secretary (emphasis on defence secretary…. like don’t they have briefings?), only discovered about the 45 mins claim was when he read about it in the September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s weapons (emphasis should be on ‘dodgy’ dossier).

The only thing in the draft that, surprised is perhaps too strong a word, the only thing I had not seen before, in terms of my familiarity with the intelligence, was the 45-minute claim,” he said.

Furthermore

Mr Hoon said he was aware it had become an issue after the invasion, but said he had not realised why until he saw a Panorama programme more than a year later which included the newspaper headlines from September 2002 about the 45-minute claim.

How much more surreal can you get? He is defence secretary and he garners his information from a Panorama programme … more than a year later (he had been in Kiev at the time of the dodgy dossier reporting….again, didn’t he have briefings? Wasn’t he kept informed by his minions? Wouldn’t he have expected to have been kept informed?) . Was Hoon totally ensconced in that thing known as the Westminster bubble that he shut off the functioning of his brain? And/or is he just one lyin’ Hoon dog? In other words, Hoon comes across as clueless and spineless apparatchik but why should he think for himself when most of the thinking was done by the Whips office and NL headquarters. Combined with the fact that Hoon didn’t think it was a problem there wasn’t much of a debate in the Cabinet. Obviously, the issue of democracy didn’t concern Hoon!

Hoon’s answers about Lord Goldsmith’s legal opinion are rather odd. Remember, T Bliar, professionally qualified as a barrister. G Hoon, professionally qualified as a barrister. J Straw, professionally qualified as a guess what? All of them would know exactly what a legal opinion would look like. It would go into a full analysis of the various arguments including all the arguments that will be used against the position of the government. It would set out the relevant factual background. It would be a very long document full of detail argument. It would also look at the various pros and cons of different courses of action along with the potential risks.

What Goldsmith produced after a long history of being of the opposite opinion was a two page load of rubbish that reached an extremely glib conclusion. None of these clever people learned in the law spotted this. It never ceases to astound me at the level of servile gutless spineless behaviour at these democratically elected individuals whose intentions were dishonourable and whose actions have created a remote, opaque and distant government.

But one person who real disappoints me still is Nick Cohen. Why oh why, Nick! You were once a good leftie and then you spiralled down into the depressing depths of the pro-war ‘Decent Left’ (not ‘decent’ and certainly not Left!). His understanding that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a fascist state, where is the evidence? Along with the comparisons of Nazi Germany. He omits to mention the total destruction of the infrastructure of Iraq, and the erosion of women’s rights, so on and so on.

And of course…the oil where western vulture-esque companies circle the oil reserves ready to swoop in the name of privatisation and profit. The losers in this game being the Iraqi people as the stooge government is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the States. Yes, what about that comrade Cohen? Were the Iraqi people liberated by imperialism and ongoing occupation?

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