A Post Grad is a student, Teribus. I know. I have
been one, periodically. You are not pointing out a detail, here. You are jumping
at shadows.

Whether he reckons the information was still valid or not, would and should
not be his call anyway. It has been proven since that it

was not, and 20/20 hindsight notwithstanding, we went to war on facts.
Facts at the time of 'going to press', as it were, are not necessarily facts;
history (and Donald Rumsfeld) has taught us this. There was widespread unease
abroad about these facts from the very start.

Naiveté was never my forte, Teribus. I am not so blind that I cannot see when
our leaders being evasive and downright untruthful from time to time. And not
just about the war. Spin and cover-up do not live by Iraq alone. We have grown
up in a World that spends its entire waking hours reading between lines, and we
are getting conditioned to accept everything we hear. About absolutely
everything. And simply because the World outside our window all sounds so
frightening. You should sit down and watch American television for a while, and
you will understand exactly what I mean.

In that television interview, to which I referred in an earlier post, the
good Doctor Blix talked about his life and work. Fairly normal enough interview,
in many respects, but in it, one got a brief retrospective insight into what
'Life As A Chief Weapons Inspector' was like in the time leading up to the
withdrawal.

Invoking the Colin Powell defence, Hans Blix, like every other person of
responsibility has a certain duty to maintain a united front. After all, there
was a time when everybody thought weapons of mass destruction were actually
there. Including him, when he first got the job. Whereas the likelihood curve,
over time, started to slowly descend. The expectation curve remained more or
less constant, and anytime it moved, it veered upwards.

He and his workers knew the situation on the ground. These fantastic claims
made by our Governments, about the nature of Saddam Hussein's nuclear and
biological programmes, and its state of readiness, were being increasingly
difficult to cash in. Poverty stricken Third World countries were being dragged
kicking and screaming to the UN to cast a vote for a war in a country that some
of them had hardly even heard of, so to speak. The 'known knowns', the 'unknown
knowns', and all the 'known unknowns' in between, were gradually getting drowned
in a sea of rhetoric, and, given that there was bucketloads of reasonable doubt
knocking about, it was starting to turn into a case of 'methinks thou dost
protest too much, Colin you old codger, you'

I have great respect for Dr. Blix. I would have had great respect for Dr.
Blix had he found anything concrete. I too would then have been able to
satisfy my misgivings, and be qualified therefore to argue the case for
invasion, definition of 'war-footing' required, or not.

We have 'liberated' a country that could well become a greater threat than
Saddam ever was, Teribus. Whatever about anything else, we are going to have a
bunch of angry Shi'ites on our hands with the next few months. And they will
more than likely be a democratically elected bunch of angry Shi'ites. And the
World is always a happier place, in my opinion, the less angry people there are
floating around it, democratically elected, or not.

And what, in real terms, has been accomplished? I am not a scaremonger in the
least, Teribus; I have a mundanely average sense of paranoia like most people I
would imagine, but I think the incumbents could be a tad trickier to contain.
Oops, there's that word 'contain' again.

I do actually have more hope for Iran. Perhaps it wont happen for them this
time around, but I think its' transition to 'Democracy' will have a
significantly shorter half-life than Iraq's will. They do have a reasonably loud
'moderate' opposition there. They only need organisation. And we don't need to
poison their water supply to influence that. Rome has no need to be built in one
day.

And now America won't send back all of the British prisoners on Guantanamo.
And whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of this decision, The British
Government is highly embarrassed at this development. I have heard the words
'concern for due process' raise its' ugly head already. That's the Alliance of
Equals for you.

You may believe that I live in Camberwick Green. And you may right. But it is
a darn sight better there, than this trumped up Trumpton where we are expected
to live.

 

… and Gareth…. Knock yourself out, ol' buddy. I wish you hours of fun over
the next couple of months as you search for Words of My Destruction. If you
don't find any within a certain space of time, will you 'bite' anyway, though?