Wednesday, September 24, 2003David Irving
comments: I WAS ashamed as an
Englishman during the first Gulf War, and
I was even more ashamed during the second,
but at least I can now show it, as I have
this website to speak from. Lord Hutton's
Inquiry has succeeded, where the
parliamentary processes and the Foreign
Affairs Committee have failed, to drag out
of the men at No 10 Downing Street and
their cronies and acolytes the grim story
of how the prime minister Tony
Blair, once a barrister and "officer
of the court", tricked, lied, and connived
their way into launching a war that nobody
else here wanted against the innocent
people of Iraq. We had long suspected
what was revealed yesterday in Court 73 --
the same courtroom, incidentally, in which
I, single-handed, for three months fought
the evil liars in the Lipstadt Trial in
2000. The facts reveal the abyss of deceit
into which the Blair Government has
stumbled.
They dictated to their Intelligence chiefs
precisely what intelligence "facts" they
needed them to furnish
They changed the title of the final
Intelligence report from "Iraq's Programme
for weapons of Mass Destruction" to the
rather sexier "Iraq's Weapons of mass
Destruction." Nobody yet has been
killed or maimed by a programme. IF ever there was a case for people to
be put on trial for this deceit, and for
the crimes against peace which resulted,
and for the tens of thousands of innocent
people killed and injured most horribly by
our engines of war, it is here. These British
ministers, and particularly Geoffrey
Hoon, the ever-smirking defence
minister (above, another ex-barrister),
lied and lied again to deceive their
electors -- that we now know. A new Inquiry must now
be held however to answer the question,
why? Senator Edward
Kennedy, not a politician for whom we
have in the past felt much affection,
plunged his pudgy finger deep into the raw
spot a few days ago: he alleged in a
Washington speech that of every $4 billion
spent by the US military on this war,
half is being hived off to pay
bribes and corrupt payments to foreign
politicians (remember Turkey!) to persuade
them to do Washington's bidding. We have argued all along
that money -- greed -- is the only human
explanation for Blair's deceits, and
equally for the extraordinary failure of
Her Majesty's opposition, the Conservative
Party, to oppose the war. If you can quietly
furnish $30 million, through front
organisations and money-laundering
outfits, to pay off the Conservative
Party's overdraft -- for it has been paid
off, most mysteriously -- and a similar
amount to the Party in power, then you
have in effect purchased an entire country
(and 50,000 fine British fighting troops
as well) for the price of a small fighter
plane. A new Inquiry, now. Headed by a senior
Judge, not a politician, with great powers
to call for documents and witnesses.
Nothing less will satisfy the British
voters.
David
Irving starts a new US tour this
Fall 2003. Locations include: Atlanta, New
Orleans, Houston, Arlington (TX), Oklahoma
City, Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon),
Moscow (Idaho), Sacramento, Las Vegas,
Salt Lake City, Denver, Chicago,
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville. The
theme is comparisons - Hitler, Churchill,
Iraq, war crimes law, and Iraq.
[register
interest]
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17
deleted words turned Saddam into
aggressor By Michael Evans, Defence Editor THE Government's dossier on Iraq
was changed at the last minute because one of
Tony Blair's key advisers said it gave the
impression that Saddam Hussein would only
launch chemical or biological weapons if he was
attacked. This painted the Iraqi leader as a
defensive, rather than an offensive threat, which
was not the intelligence picture the Government was
portraying in the rest of the dossier. The disclosure that the sentence referring to
Saddam's possible response to an invasion was
removed at the last moment was revealed during
cross-examination of John Scarlett, chairman
of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The change of mind about a sentence of 17 words
in what was supposed to be the final draft of the
dossier, published on September 24 last year,
followed an e-mail from Jonathan Powell, the
Prime Minister's chief of staff. Dated September 19 and timed at 15.45pm,
three-quarters of an hour after the deadline set by
Mr Scarlett for any last-minute comments, Mr Powell
wrote: "I think the statement on p19 that
'Saddam is prepared to use chemical and
biological weapons if he believes his regime is
under threat' is a bit of a problem." Mr Powell said that this backed up the "Don
McIntyre [sic: Donald Macintyre political
columnist for The Independent] argument
that there is no CBW (chemical biological weapons)
threat and we will only create one if we attack
him". The e-mail concluded: "I think you should redraft the para.
My memory of the intelligence is that he has set
up plans to use CBW on Western forces and that
these weapons are integrated into his military
planning."
CROSS-EXAMINED by Andrew Caldecott, QC, for
the BBC, Mr Scarlett said that he decided to remove
the sentence, but he denied that it was solely in
response to Mr Powell's e-mail. He and the
assessment staff in the Cabinet Office looked again
at the intelligence and realised that there was no
JIC assessment which made it clear whether they
were defining Saddam's chemical weapons threat as
defensive or offensive. There was also recent reporting which was not
reflected in the final draft which placed Saddam's
"attachment" to chemical weapons in the context of
his perception of his regional position. So he
decided to remove the sentence before sending the
final draft of the dossier to the printers. Mr Caldecott said that it looked as if the
dossier was changed at the last moment to remove an
express suggestion that Saddam was a defensive
threat and to leave the implication that he was an
offensive threat. Mr Scarlett disagreed. Asked if he accepted that a document could be
transformed by omission, Mr Scarlett replied: "Of
course it's important what you take out as well as
what you put in." Mr Caldecott expressed astonishment that the
change was made despite the fact that the 17 words
"had appeared in the September 11 draft approved by
the JIC, had appeared in the September 16 draft
approved by the JIC and had appeared in the
September 19 draft and approved by the JIC".
The toughest questioning came over the issue of the
45-minutes intelligence. Mr Caldecott asked Mr
Scarlett whether he had made clear to the Prime
Minister that this deployment timetable for Iraq's
chemical and biological weapons referred to
battlefield munitions, not strategic (long-range)
missiles. Mr Scarlett replied: "There was no
discussion with the Prime Minister that I can
recall that the 45-minute point was in connection
with battlefield or strategic systems." He acknowledged that the intelligence about
Iraq's ability to deploy weapons of mass
destruction did not specify which systems. But the
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) had assessed that
it was most likely a reference to multiple rocket
launchers with a range of 20 kilometres, or
artillery with a range of 40 kilometres. Mr Caldecott remonstrated with Mr Scarlett that
there was a clear difference between "casualties
and range"; and newspapers on September 25, after
publication of the Government dossier, had run
headlines which referred to Iraq having the
capability to hit British bases in Cyprus. Mr
Scarlett said that the misinterpretation had only
been a "fleeting moment". It was not his job, he
said, to correct inaccurate headlines. Mr Scarlett was questioned in minute detail
about the linguistic changes to the dossier in the
different drafts, some of which had been suggested
by Alastair Campbell, the outgoing Downing
Street Director of Communications. He insisted that
he had editorial control over the dossier, and
denied there had ever been any "tensions" between
his staff and Downing Street. No one had minded Mr
Campbell's suggestions, he said. One of the 16
points raised by Mr Campbell was over the
45-minutes intelligence. Mr Scarlett said that the executive summary in
the September 16 draft included the judgment that
chemical and biological weapons "could be ready for
use within 45 minutes of an order to do so". But
the main text said that they "may" have that
capability. "This was clearly an inconsistency which was
unbalanced and needed to be addressed," Mr Scarlett
said. The DIS, he disclosed, had already raised
this question, and the language was "tightened",
removing the inconsistency. Copyright 2003 Times
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