This is the moment when Jonathan Powell admitted that Downing St was set on war irrespective of whether Saddam had WMD or not. This admission contradicted all the carefully constructed lies of key war criminals David Manning, Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell himself.
The implications of this passage could not be more stark. The aim was war. Whether or not Iraq had WMD was irrelevant. There was no interest in knowing the truth about WMD. Indeed to know the truth would be negative.
A ten year old could understand the crucial importance of what Powell said here. But the hand picked committee of pro-war cronies failed completely to pick up on it.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: I mean, Sir David Manning and
8 Sir Jeremy Greenstock both said, but differently, that
9 they would have liked to have had more time, but you
10 don’t agree with that?
11 MR JONATHAN POWELL: No, we asked for more time repeatedly
12 from January onwards of the President, and we got more
13 time in each case. Eventually, by the time we got to
14 midMarch, he wasn’t going to give us more time and the
15 French veto knocked any chance
16 SIR RODERIC LYNE: He wasn’t going to give us more time. If
17 we had had more time, if the inspectors had had longer,
18 there had been longer to build up the picture and you
19 had continued these extraordinary diplomatic efforts
20 that you described, would there not have been a chance,
21 at that stage, of actually gathering the international
22 support that we had not managed to gather by then?
23 MR JONATHAN POWELL: No. I mean, if you think about it,
24 Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. We were
25 wrong. The intelligence was wrong. So, no matter how
82
1 long you had carried the inspections on, they weren’t
2 going to find anything, and, from what we know of
3 Saddam, it is extremely unlikely that he would have
4 cooperated. So we would have been in exactly the same
5 situation for months and months and months. There would
6 have been no discovery of weapons of mass destruction,
7 but 8
SIR RODERIC LYNE: But one way or the other they might have
9 built up a more convincing picture, if they had had more
10 time.
11 MR JONATHAN POWELL: A convincing picture of what?
12 SIR RODERIC LYNE: Well, a picture to convince the people
13 who weren’t not convinced by our arguments in March.
14 MR JONATHAN POWELL: But if there weren’t weapons of mass
15 destruction, we wouldn’t have been able you are
16 asking me in retrospect, “Would we have had more time?”
17 The answer is more time would have achieved nothing.
18 SIR RODERIC LYNE: Thank you very much.
‘Look, just as an example, here’s the title of a Times article from 1977:
Caroline Moorehead (18 April 1977). “An exclusive club, perhaps without power, but certainly with influence: The Bilderberg group”. The Times.’
Angrysoba- the date of this article is interesting. The leading light in Bilderberg until 1976 was Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands. However in 1976 the Lockheed bribes scandal broke, and Bernhardt was implicated in it. As a consequence, his Bilberberg links could no longer be ignored, and the group for the first time attracted some press attention, most of it negative. With it’s secrecy blown, Bilderberg didn’t meet in 1976 at all-and there were probably some members who, seeking to cover their tracks, wanted it wound up entirely.
The Group reconvened again in April 1977 (note the date of Moorehead’s article) and the Torquay session that year attracted some media interest as a result, espcially in the UK, where the event was hosted.
My take on Bilderberg is that, from the late 70s until the end of the Cold War, Bilderberg was nothing more than a rich man’s talking shop. For example, in the late 70s/early 80s two of the most prominent attendees from the UK were Lords Home and George-Brown; windbaggery personified!).
However, the fact remains that, for the first 20 years of it’s existence , Bilberberg was very influential in setting Europe on an ‘Atlanticist’ path-and this influence remained almost completely hidden from European electorates. There is also cicumstantial evidence to suggest that, since the early 90s, it has once again become highly influential, as the new ‘Euro-Atlantic structures’ ie NATO & the EU, have expanded their spheres of influence.
BTW I wouldn’t trust what Chip Berlet says about Bilderberg, or almost anything else. Daniel Brandt at Namebase is right on the money in labelling him an extremely slippery customer.
Geez. I need a new mouse. The scroll button caught fire from overuse of skipping past Neo Joseph and his Zionist apologist bile.
Mark, thanks for that. I might look a little more into the subject.
Is this the same Mark who I was discussing Koestler and Hilberg etc… with on the “Angrysoba Doesn’t Like This Blog” thread?
If it is, I wonder what your take on the guy who came in for round two of Koestler and was swinging in defence of Ernst Zundel?
David Manning “was at Blair’s side throughout the build-up to the Iraq war & was sent to Washington (as British Ambassador) soon after the Iraq invasion in 2003 (Manning is also an ex British Ambassador to Israel).
The Times: November 16, 2008
Tony Blair’s former Iraq aide (Manning) joins defence giant (Lockheed Martin)
http://tinyurl.com/ya37fbf
Manning has also taken a job on the advisory board of Hakluyt, a private intelligence firm partly staffed by former MI6 officers. (Hakluyt was set up by former MI6 agents in 1995).
Manning also works as a part-time adviser to princes William and Harry….
The system stinks…..
The Bilderberg group is an interest group. There are many. Big deal.
They meet in secret because they attract the attention of crazy people.
‘They meet in secret because they attract the attention of crazy people.’
Meeting in secret also means Bilderberg provides a perfect platform for insider dealing. Given that crooks like Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands, and Conrad (‘Lord’) Black have been prominent attendees in the past, that’s another possibility anyone with an open mind should consider.
Angrysoba- yes I’m the same Mark. Life is too short for me to trawl thru another comments thread and identify the person you’re referring to. However I’ll accept that Koestler’s Khazar origins thesis is open to misuse by anti semites- something he was aware of, and specifically warned against in the appendix to the paperback edition of ‘The Thirteenth Tribe’ that I read 30 years ago.