Thursday 3 July 2003

Blair government blames BBC for crisis over Iraqi war lies

Number 10 is loosing its marbles, they've gone stark raving potty! It's like me writing a load of old cobblers on this site (which I do anyway) and then blaming you, my one dedicated reader, for my own arrogance, lack of judgement and general idiocy!!!! Say what you want of this site but you could never accuse me of that! This Blair guy and his minions are living in cloud-cuckoo land if they think they can blame the BBC for their own cock-ups!

He can't run and he can't hide, no matter what he says the truth is gaining on him, and when it catches the Right Honourable Tony Blair, it's going to take a huge chunk out of his behind! Now that will be something to record on Video! I can't think of anyone I know who thinks he's telling us the truth, as proof I just asked the builders on my scaffolding what they thought and to a man they said they thought he was a "lying twat" so there you have it dear reader, 5/5. If I were the Cronies I'd be more than a little perturbed, what with MS Word, senior Sources and the BBC giving the game away it's a wonder Blair hasn't been forced out already.

Which brings us to the next problem! The only real alternative is a man who makes so great an impact on people that they can't even be bothered to use his full name he's Mr. Abbreviated; IDS. Talk about a political system being in the doldrums! We need to breathe some life and some honesty back in our government. We've had this parliamentary/monarchial crap for a few hundred years and where has it gotten us? The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, and have you tried catching a train to anywhere recently?

If you ask me the system isn't working properly, but then who am I except an insignificant blogger...


Any magician will tell you that misdirection is the first principle of sleight-of-hand tricks. The aim is to conceal what you are doing by getting everyone to look elsewhere.

One must conclude that Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Director of Communications Alastair Campbell aspires to the art of political legerdemain, but isn’t as good at it as he thinks.

His vicious attack on the BBC and its journalist Andrew Gilligan is seen by most observers as a transparent attempt to divert attention from the embarrassing disclosures made during the Foreign Affairs Select Committee investigation into whether the government distorted intelligence to justify war against Iraq.

Campbell, like his boss Blair, initially refused to testify before the inquiry but decided that this stand was untenable. The government was being asked to answer for the veracity of two intelligence dossiers, one produced in September last year and one on February 3, under Campbell’s direct supervision as head of the Iraq Communications Group.

Top government personnel, including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, had acknowledged that the second “dodgy dossier”—largely plagiarised from a doctoral student’s thesis—was a political embarrassment for which Campbell must carry the can. On top of this, Campbell had been accused by an intelligence source cited by the BBC of having “sexed-up” the first intelligence dossier, particularly by adding the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes notice.

In his June 25 appearance before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FASC), Campbell first attempted to downplay the significance of the “dodgy dossier” so that his admission that a mistake had been made in not attributing sources could be portrayed as a purely technical error. This meant side-stepping the fact that alterations had been made to the PhD thesis of the student, Ibrahim al-Marashi, such as changing the assertion that Iraq funded foreign “opposition” groups to a claim that it funded “terrorist” groups.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell singled out the dossier as vital proof of Iraqi guilt during his speech to the United Nations Security Council. However, Campbell described it as “interesting”, but “very, very different” in “their breadth and in their intended impact” to the September dossier. “The dossier in September 2002 was one of the most important pieces of work developed during the entire build-up to the conflict,” he said, and was “a serious, thorough piece of work setting out why it was so vital to tackle Saddam and WMD.”

Campbell was largely allowed to get away with this initial stage in his damage limitation exercise by a committee that spent a great deal of effort portraying Blair as the unfortunate victim of his advisor’s incompetence. Even Campbell’s incredible statement that “The changes that the Chairman referred to on the text were made by people thinking they were making changes to make more accurate a Government draft,” passed without comment.

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