Bunker Buster

To borrow a joke from Spike Milligan: As the zoo keeper said when the trussed-up gorilla arrived – it was bound to come.

It’s been said during the election campaign that the war in Iraq and the legality thereof has been the dog that wouldn’t bark. Or, if you’ll permit me, the cluster bomb that didn’t explode.

But then the Attorney General’s advice on the legality, or otherwise, of the war was finally, inevitably leaked.

According to the leaked documents, the Attorney General had six caveats in his original advice:

· It was the UN’s job, not that of individual states, to decide if Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions;

· The use of UN resolution 1441 to justify war might be deficient because it did not include the phrase “all necessary” to enforce it;

· A second UN resolution was needed in 2003 to make the looming war legal;

· Earlier UN resolutions against Saddam could not easily be revived to justify the invasion;

· The UN weapons inspectors were still doing their work and had found no banned weapons;

· The US position on legality did not apply to Britain because Congress had voted President George Bush special war-making powers.

Which, if true, gives lie to the statements from Jack Straw that the Attorney General’s advice was “unequivocal“.

In an attempt to further muddy the waters, Straw turned up on Radio 4’s Today programme. It was a performance of cynical, mendacious obfuscation even for him. To the credit of John Humphrys, the interviewer, Straw didn’t get away with it this time.

Humphrys: It was the view of the Attorney General in that document on the 7th of March that it was the United Nations, – not Mr Blair, not the United Kingdom Government that should rule on resolution breaches – that was the view that he expressed.

Straw: I am not confirming the contents of what is alleged to have been…

H: Well, it makes this a very difficult conversation because you can put up any number of smokescreens, can’t you?

S: With great respect, I am not confirming what is alleged to have been in a leaked document. Everybody knows…

H: Are you denying it? Are you denying what’s in this document? I’m sorry, I’m not going to let you get away with that because if you are not denying it I and the listeners to this programme are entitled to assume it’s accurate, aren’t they?

S: No, they’re not entitled to assume it’s accurate either.

Straw can’t deny the veracity of the document leaked to the Mail for risk of being caught in a lie. But, according to him, in the absence of a denial, neither are we entitled to think that the document is accurate. It’s a familiar New Labour trick – just because Tony Blair won’t confirm that his youngest son has had the MMR vaccine, don’t think you’re entitled to believe he hasn’t had it. I think we can be pretty sure that the leak to the Mail is accurate.

It was a pretty inept performance from Straw or a very good one from Humphrys, I’m not quite sure. At one point Straw even told Humphrys to “keep his hair on”, to which Humphrys replied, “It’s a serious issue and I’m trying to be serious about it”. A chastised Straw agreed: “It’s very, very serious issue, alright?”.

In his last question to Straw, Humphrys raised something that came out of Tony Blair’s interview with Jeremy Paxman which Guido Fawkes picked up on:

Humphrys: Tony Blair said last week, “I don’t believe we had any option but to disclose the name of Dr David Kelly”. That is what he said last week to Jeremy Paxman. On the 22nd of July 2003 he said, “I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly”. Can you reconcile those two statements?

Straw: Yes I can, because in one case he uses the first person singular and in the other case he uses first person…

H: Ah. Oh, right. So when he says “I” he doesn’t speak for the Government then, there is no collective Government responsibility is there?

There you have it: Jack Straw thinks you’re a jerk. It’s got to be one of the most weaselly, cowardly answers to a question since Bill Clinton said, “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. If the Government are going to face more of these questions this week, they’d do well to send Straw back to his constituency. (Listen to the Straw interview here. RealPlayer required.)

But this is how they get away with it. By hair-splitting and weasel words are the deaths of thousands wiped from the slate. It seems to be the Labour line to take that by obfuscating, over-complicating and playing fast and loose with the facts of the matter – in order that the public, craving its football and its tits, will find all this boring – it will all go away.

Blair, still misrepresenting the French position over a second UN resolution, said:

At the time, unable to get the second resolution, unable to get any resolution with an ultimatum that was going to force Saddam to comply, I took the view it was better to remove him.

But wasn’t Saddam already complying? Weren’t weapons inspectors inside Iraq at the time, destroying those few missiles left? Blair gave further clues to explain his actions in an interview in the Independent:

What I object to is people trying to frame the decision in terms of my integrity rather than in terms of the fact that I was faced with the situation where there were 250,000 troops down there. Saddam wasn’t fully co-operating with the UN inspectors, he remained in breach of the UN resolutions and yet I couldn’t get a second UN resolution with an ultimatum.

That’s 250,000 troops on a timetable with a scorching desert summer on the way. Notice the “fully” in “Saddam wasn’t fully co-operating” – that’s called nuancing. Weapons inspectors were in the country but Saddam wasn’t fully co-operating. Blair couldn’t get a second UN resolution with an ultimatum (again, read: Bloody Chirac).

And yet again, we have it rammed down out throats that the world is a better place without Saddam. YES WE KNOW. We’re told in that smug manner that if it was down to us Saddam would still be in power.

“I took the view it was better to remove him,” says Blair. What did he mean then, when he said this on March 2 2003?

If military action proves necessary, it will be to uphold the authority of the UN and to ensure Saddam is disarmed of his weapons of mass destruction, not to overthrow him. It is why, detestable as I find his regime, he could stay in power if he disarms peacefully.

It all boils down to this. Before he had his arm twisted by successive US administrations, Blair couldn’t give a toss about Iraq or its people. Or Straw, or Hoon and the rest of the happy wanderers. This is from a column by Mark Thomas in the New Statesman, December 2002:

The first early day motion (these are political statements which MPs can sign up to and support) condemning Iraq’s use of chemical weapons was issued on 24 March 1988. Did Straw support it? No. Neither did he support the first early day motion to mention Halabja by name, issued four days later on 28 March 1988. Nor did he put his name to the condemnations on the first, sixth and tenth anniversaries of the attack in March 1989, 1994 or 1998. Strangely, neither did Blair, Prescott, Blunkett, Cook or Hoon add their names to any of these condemnations of Iraq’s most notorious attack. Maybe they just all forgot their pens on those days.

“Perhaps they all decided to speak out against Iraq in the adjournment debate of 1988?” I hear you ask. No, not one of them.

Even when Straw was hardman Home Secretary, he certainly wasn’t much exercised by human rights abuses in Iraq, as Thomas explains:

The comedian and writer Jeremy Hardy was sent a copy of a Home Office letter refusing asylum to an Iraqi refugee in January 2001.

Although the individual seeking asylum had been detained and tortured, the Home Office letter read as follows: “The Secretary of State [then jack Straw] has at his disposal a wide range of information on Iraq which he has used to consider your claims. He is aware that Iraq, and in particular the Iraqi security forces, would only convict and sentence a person in the courts with the provision of proper jurisdiction. He is satisfied, however, that if there are any charges outstanding against you and if they were to be proceeded with on your return, you could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted judiciary”

None of them gave what was going on inside Iraq a second thought until it was politically expedient to do so. You’ll forgive me if I forego lessons in morality from such people. Blair wanted disarmament, yes, who didn’t? But he said Saddam could stay if he disarmed. So much for the moral case for war.

It’s not just the death and the suffering I can’t get past. It’s the (lesser) reason of the utter, bare-teethed contempt in which the public – not just those of us who were against the war – are held by these people. The ever-shifting reasons for war. The square-jawed “I believe it was right” homilies but the moral cowardice in being unwilling to stand up for those convictions by giving a straight answer or being open with the facts.

By now you’re maybe thinking, let it go, there’s more important things to worry about. But even if you’ve got what it takes to put the piles of bodies to the back of your mind, Iraq as an issue lies at the stinking heart of what remains of the British body politic. I’ve had more than one person laugh at me in the last few weeks because I was disappointed that a candidate canvassing for my vote on my doorstep had not been – shall we say – clear on the facts on a number of issues. “All politicians lie,” they said, “why are you surprised?” That all politicians lie is the perceived wisdom, but to fail to, to cease to , rail against that? Where does that leave us? We’ve seen politics with impunity at its rawest in the last couple of years – what does it say about us if we just switch the channel to check the lottery results?

Hold your nose and vote Labour, I’m told. But if I can’t make my feelings felt at the ballot box – a thin retribution, I’ll grant you – then where? Think of the good done – the minimum wages, the new deals and other sops to middle class consciences, they plead. But who answers for the dead and the maimed? No political party mentioned the human cost of the war today. Dead wogs butter no parsnips it would seem. But think of the new Iraq, I’m implored.

If New Labour is so proud of toppling Saddam’s regime, why isn’t it on their top 50 achievements? If we’re the good guys and the war was conducted for honourable reasons, why can’t we pay the Iraqi people the respect of counting their dead? Aren’t our leaders supposed to hold to higher moral standards than Saddam Hussein? Isn’t that why they said they had the right to do this – that Saddam’s regime was the dragon that needed to be slayed?

Why do such brave men hide behind “precedent”, and nuancing, and “I believe it was the right thing to do”. Release the legal advice. Honour the dead.

But they’re caught in the trap. Saddam Hussein may have killed less people than Stalin but that doesn’t make him the better man.

Vote Labour.