Maine Owl

H/T to Harry Shearer for item on March 22 edition of Le Show

Now it can be told Harry Shearer mentioned this March 20 story from the Guardian:

Intelligence made it clear Saddam was not a threat, diplomat tells MPs
Government left 'paper trail' in build-up to war
More facts still to come to light, says former envoy
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 20 March 2009

A former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a "paper trail" that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.

Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: "A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know." ... He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it "very clear" that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers ...

This reminds me of a go-round I had with John C. McAdams, associate professor of political science at Marquette University a few years ago. McAdams had castigated people who claimed "Bush lied" in the Iraq war run-up on a Wisconsin Public Radio phone-in program:

McAdams: People who, who, who use the "Bush lied" argument, it seems to me, are, are just completely heedless of any standards of, of, of telling the truth or making a plausible argument? um, you know, Let?s make a list of those who believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction: Russian intelligence, French intelligence, British intelligence, Tony Blair, the CIA, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John Kerry. And somehow we?re supposed to believe?

This was a popular conservative tactic that McAdams used here: assert that "everybody agreed" Saddam had WMD and follow that with an impressive list of countries whose intelligence services said he did.

The problem is, it's just an exercise in naming countries. The supposition that "intelligence" in these countries really "agreed" with Bush on Iraq is a canard.

At the time, HERE, I noted that German intelligence believed no such thing with regard to the fabricator Curveball, upon whose vaporous assertions Colin Powell's February 5, 2003 U.N. presentation was based. Now we have even more evidence that what the real intelligence high-level British officials kept secret in fact showed Saddam did not have WMD pointed at the U.K., contrary to the popular notion of a "45-minute" threat promoted by Prime Minister Blair and reiterated by President Bush during late 2002 and early 2003.

Five years ago today we were protesting one year of killing, maiming, destruction, and looting in Iraq. The worst was yet to come.

Teach-in to be held Saturday March 21 1-5pm at the UU Church, 120 Park Street, Bangor

Here is the full 18-minute sixth anniversary press event at the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine:


All teevee stations covered this event.

There were brief statements on the significance of the anniversary from five of the sixteen organizations co-sponsoring the "New Organizing Strategies for the Obama Era" teach-in on Saturday, March 21st from 1-5 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 120 Park Street in Bangor. Come and show your support for continuing to build the movement for peace, justice and a sustainable environment.

In order of appearance in the video: Ilze Petersons, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine; Mary Ellen Quinn, Pax Christi; Ryan Tipping-Spitz, Maine People's Alliance; Lee Davis, Orono Peace Group; and Al Larson, Veterans for Peace.

Two days after the 6th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, sixteen Maine organizations are co-sponsoring a teach-in entitled "New Organizing Strategies for the Obama Era" on Saturday, March 21st from 1-5 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bangor. The teach-in is free and open to the public but pre-registration is suggested. Click below for more information:

Clare Short: "There was no Cabinet debate in run-up to war"

The first 19 days of March 2003 were a period of historic breakdown of international law under the insistence of U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. There is still a strong reluctance of officials in successor administrations to discuss the realities of that period.

According to a Sunday story at the U.K. Mail Online,

REVEALED: 'There was no Cabinet debate in run-up to war,' says Short as Government refuses to release minutes

The Government is refusing to release minutes of Cabinet meetings before the Iraq War because they would reveal there was no discussion on the issue.

Details surrounding two crucial meetings on the eve of the conflict were laid bare for the first time yesterday when former Cabinet Minister Clare Short, who was present at both, gave a full account of what happened. ... Former Cabinet Minister Clare Short says there was NO cabinet debate in the run up to war. ...

At the last Cabinet meeting, no debate on the legality of the war was allowed and Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, said brusquely: 'That's it.'

A major issue before the U.K. Cabinet in March 2003 was Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's advice on the legality of the war. The original advice (not later watered-down versions) was released during the Spring 2005 Blair re-election campaign.

The original advice is a profoundly interesting document. It contains strong doubts about the legality under international law of invading Iraq, and a hinky theory of how it might be considered to be legal. It is no wonder that Blair wished to pass right over this uncomfortable discussion because he would have had to explain why the underlayment of international law was to be removed.

Essentially this thin strand of legality depended upon weapons of mass destruction being found after the fact and the action being precisely limited to eliminating an extant threat from such weapons. This territory has been covered in previous posts HERE and HERE.

Of course, no such weapons existed (as was believed by the leaders, even at the time). So the entire foundation of the war is vapor and it's perpetrators are criminals under any possible reading of the Nuremberg Principles. Yet no one seems concerned about any implications this may have for current policy, or about punishment of those responsible.

After all these years, it seems that every possible obstruction to public knowledge about this important history remains in place. For the U.S. part, the Obama Administration has no interest in even mentioning illegality of the war in the first place let alone what consequences for current policy that illegality should inform.

I'm reading and re-reading President Obama's Friday speech right now. I can't see that the invasion has been framed by the president as anything other than a "precious opportunity to the people of Iraq" and a fight "against tyranny and disorder" where the "United States pursues no claim" on Iraqi "territory or ... resources."

This is downright Orwellian, completely in concert with Colin Powell's perfidy in suggesting that Iraq's resources would be "held in trust for the Iraqi people" while U.S. planners envisioned "rapid privatization," and an army of American thieves arrived to plunder the Iraqi treasury and the U.S. taxpayer alike.

The history of the true underlying nature of the invasion--which was and remains the taking of Iraq for the purpose of powerful interests centered in the U.S. and U.K.--rapidly is being buried with a backhoe. The most profound and supreme associated crime of the destruction of the Iraqi society and people over six years continues to be nearly unmentionable, except in the most appallingly detached terms.