Maine Owl

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.