It is no surprise that Major General Michael Laurie of the Defence Intelligence Service (DIS) has admitted that the “dodgy dossier” on Iraqi WMD was a deliberate piece of spin for war. The DIS were furious about the dossier at the time it was written, and tried to rein in MI6 and the FCO, and particularly chief lie-writer John Scarlett.
It is five years since I published in Murder in Samarkand this FCO insider account, given to me in 2002 while I was Ambassador in Tashkent:
“You’re wondering why we signed up to it? Well, I can promise you it was awful. The pressure was unbelievable. People were threatened with the end of their careers. I saw analysts in tears. We felt, as a group, absolutely shafted. Actually, we still do. You know, I think that we are all a bit ashamed that nobody had the guts to go public, resign and say that the WMD thing is a myth. But MI6 really hyped it. The DIS tried to block it, but they couldn’t.”
(p. 60 in the US edition – I don’t have the UK edition on me).
It took eight years for DIS to get their revenge and expose Alistair Campbell’s naked lies. Of course, if you read my books you get the truth much quicker!!
blair should hang!
We can see who edited that document here:
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http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/blair.htm
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg00457.html
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10 Downing St and other government departments now publish documents in PDF format. They still ask the public to submit documents in MS Word format.
“They still ask the public to submit documents in MS Word format.”
Word retains a lot of information about the creator of a document, revisions and alterations to it, and some detail (perhaps just initials) of those responsible for the edits. You should be aware of this if you are sending out a document to anyone who you might not wish to examine this hidden data (recruitment agencies often insist on Word format for your CV so that they can add their own logo).
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The best solution is to convert to PDF (Google CutePDF for free software to do this) but aware of negative comment MS have introduced a tool for ‘scrubbing’ Word documents to remove this crap.
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preview.tinyurl.com/6h2f92j
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As a nice example of what can happen, a statement of election donations by New Labour in Scotland was leaked to the press, who examined the hidden data and found that the document had been created by the husband of Wendy Alexander (therefore its authenticity could not be denied) and that the heading on one column had been changed from the name of an organisation which could not legally donate to one which could. Oops! They got away with it anyway – the Electoral Commission, which appears to function as a firewall between politicians and the law, said that prosecution was not in the public interest.
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So I don’t entertain a lot of hope that Blair will hang, valid leaks or no.
Blair should not hang because the death penalty is wrong. The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein and his regime of terror. It wasn’t all down the Blair, parliament supported the military action also. The anti-war coalition contained and contains too many biased left wing views: anti-Israel etc. The truth is not a uniform shape. The dossier was definitely dodgy, sexed up and Bad Al Campbell will never escape the truth of what happened, nor will Blair. The only person at the time who had ever actually confronted Hussein’s thugs and their WMD ended up a victim of the lies and distortions.
Cut and paste the finished document into a new one is suppose to work.
Better still scan and send as an image but include some form of checksum.
Useful to detect alterations, SHA should do it.
‘The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein and his regime of terror.’
I am pretty sure that millions of Iraqis will disagree with you.
This is promissed to be interesting.
Thursday 9 June, 6.30-8pm
Old Theatre, Old Building
LSE Department of Law public lecture
A Fair Trial for the Human Rights Act
SPEAKER: Sadiq Khan MP
CHAIR: Professor Francesca Klug
Sadiq Khan will explain Labour’s approach to human rights.
Sadiq Khan is shadow lord chancellor and shadow secretary of state
for justice.
Info: [email protected] or call 020 7955 6043.
On a related side note to cover up, it is the anniversary today, of Rudolf Hess’ solo flight to Scotland.
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According to wiki, the truth of his motives are still officially hidden.
“‘The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein and his regime of terror.’
“I am pretty sure that millions of Iraqis will disagree with you”.
Not including the approximately 1.5 million Iraqis who are dead as a result of Blair’s “striking initiative with which I can be personally associated”.
That’s about a quarter of the number of Jews supposed to have been killed in the Holocaust. (More than a quarter if you add the 500,000 children whose deaths Madeleine Albright thought were quite acceptable, the other casualties of the sanctions, the defenceless soldiers running away from Kuwait who were butchered on the Highway of Death…)
Danj – Just to put the record straight – The anti-war movement is NOT anti-Israel, the anti-war movement and in fact the majority of Israelis are against the Zionists who govern, control and contain Israel. In much the same way the Zionist via the main media, think-tanks and pressure groups control American thinking.
In early 2001 when the decision was made to invade Iraq by American leaders, I can name at least twenty Zionists who were in key positions in America, who were intent on destroying the political Ba’ath Party in Iraq founded by Syrian intellectuals. The Ba’ath party from its inception preached ‘a people’s war’ against the Zionists.
All the ‘evilness’ of Saddam was done with the support of the West. Saddam was encouraged to murder Iraqis. In 1991 America and Britain allowed and armed Saddam to move against his people and use the Republican army to smash the people of Basra, Nasiriya and elsewhere in Southern Iraq. The West encouraged Saddam to put in place rationing and curfews much in the same way as the West encourages despot leaders in Bahrain and Yemen to torture and contain a popular uprising today. All this to support the Zionists and their elite that control our lives.
Blair is a murderer of innocent Iraqi children supported by his wife, a president of Dr Barnardo. Blair deceived the British public, he is a war criminal and MUST be tried for lying us into war, a holocaust, a genocide, mass murder and an Iraqi massacre.
Incidentally, who do you think said this?
“Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations”.
Actually, it was Edmund Burke in 1756. Conservatives do occasionally get something right.
I deleted that, Anno. If you bang on about “the zionist global banker class”, you can gerdly exort others to “get real”.
Tom….I am quite sure that those poor helpless soldiers who were running away to Iraq after spending a couple of weeks happily murdering,raping and looting in Kuwait got what was coming to them !
@Uzbek in the UK. Our erstwhile Secretary of Defence said ‘Iraqui mothers will one day thank us for what we have done’ – Geoffrey Hoon. Not bloody likely.
@Tom Welsh
Agree with you. This is by someone who really knows what happened.
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/madeleine-albright-we-think-the-price-is-worth-it-by-felicity-arbuthnot/
To be honest I myself supported the war against Saddam when it has just started. Growing up in Uzbekistan and being oppressed by Uzbeki ‘Saddam’ I thought it was a good sign to remove dictatorship. Of course I, as millions of others, did not know what was coming. I do not think that at present anyone believes that war in Iraq had anything to do with ‘humanitarian intervention’. It is clear that the war was just for oil revenues.
I personally do not believe in International system that defends sovereignty of states that are run by gang of thugs. However; Iraq has clearly demonstrated that bringing democracy to where there are no grounds for it is impossible task. Great changes to the system are coming. In few years time US will completely lose their dominant position and states like China, India, Brazil, Russia will start making their point clearer and clearer. Arguments in defence of democracy will lose sense completely. All sides will be driven by will to dominance.
Frazer they might have got what was coming to them, but what had the whole of Iraq got to do with that issue, saddams army was retreating and destroyed, why, after a ten year no fly zone and idiotic mishaps, was it necessarry to bomb Baghdad and kill hundreds of thousands, if you wanted that one man.
The reasons were false, Parliament lied to and deceived. Active service men and women have gone to war on force of a lie and they died for it. I for one like to thank Major general Lawrie, it must have weighed heavily on his mind. Blair Straw, Goldsmith and Cambell should now all be going to the Hague, and that buffoon Hoon.
‘Blair Straw, Goldsmith and Cambell should now all be going to the Hague, and that buffoon Hoon.’
This will never happen. Mr Blair is nowadays a Peace Envoy to the Middle East. In times of great disturbances in that region he is travelling all over the world and offering ‘million quid’ advices to bankers, politicians, thugs on how to be successful. If I had few million quid I would have paid for a place at his public speech. Not because I appreciate him or his policies, but just to hear what he says. Whether or not he is teaching his audience on how to kill millions of people and having no responsibilities for this whatsoever.
Frazer
they say that a clever man will be known by his answers and a wise one by his questions. Your interjections are usually short and to the point but the overall impression is unfavourable. Sounds like you believe in collective punishment. And, that raping and looting are capital offences (assuming the soldiers were guilty). Do you know if the Iraqi soldiers were conscripts, or guns-for-hire like our glorious armed forces? Assuming they weren’t conscripts, did they have realistic alternatives to joining the military in order to feed their families? Your vision is black and white.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iksqQHy6vEA
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Now with the wisdom of years
I try to reason things out
And the only people I fear
are those who never have doubts
Save us all from arrogant men,
and all the causes they’re for
I won’t be righteous again
I’m not that sure anymore
(Billy Joel – Shades of Grey)
Mark – people will see what they want to see. I personally think that there is kind of knee-jerk hostility to Israel among the coalition that assembled back in 2001 – you know the kind of Chomsky type approach that was perhaps once ok but now just comes across as bonkers. This comes across also, unconsciously perhaps, in your phrase, ‘the Zionist elite who control our lives’ which unfortunately echoes anti-Semitic tropes from the past about conspiracies among Jews for global dominance. Tom Welch’s phrase, ‘supposed to have been killed (above)’ also gives the game away, that is, it indicates a certain, shall I say, prejudiced attitude. Most sane people believe that millions were killed, it is not a supposition. Some contributor to the blog has obviously gone a step further as Craig saw fit to delete his comment – more evidence.
One further point to Uzbek. You may be right in that the reckless and murderous means extinguish any morality or point in the end. (Russia though will not be competing with the US – Putin can’t even start his car!)
MEN of MILITARY MIGHT
In July 2002 Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff was firmly AGAINST committing British troops to an Iraq war after the US had issued a formal request for British troops to join military operations against Iraq. Many senior Naval officers I knew were also at the time very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court in the Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government.
Military leaders including General Sir Michael Jackson knew of the time spent in the Balkens making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. They have no intention of ending up in adjoining cells next to him in the Hague.
They expressed their concerns with Attorney General Lord Goldsmith who had taken a firm stand on the illegality of striking Iraq at the meeting of July 23, 2002. He was supported at the time by Deputy Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who had represented the UK at meetings of the UN preparatory committees for an international criminal court and was recognized as one of the foremost experts on the subject of aggression. She would later resign – Bless her.
Even so after the meeting Admiral Sir Michael Boyce was given a week to present Prime Minister Blair with the proposed battle plans.
Mr Blair was fully aware that the “decision” taken by the Security Council was to “await further reports” and then “to consider the situation” and the 1 page summary given to the cabinet on March 17th 2003 omitting Goldsmith’s qualifying conditions that the existing resolutions MIGHT only be sustainable IF there was clear evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation by Iraq.
The British military, wives, partners and families who lost their loved ones in Iraq are firmly with the British public in condemning the political war-mongers.
With thanks and gratitude to Robin Cook MP PBUH for making me aware of these facts and the deceit of British political leaders
Michael Howard who could not even bring himself to acknowledge Robin’s brilliant analysis of the Scott report and arms to Iraq, one of his famous moments in the House of Commons. Howard at the time remarked he believed the Iraq invasion was right because “the prize of a stable Iraq was worth striving for”, forgetting of course that over 300,000 Iraqi children would die, be maimed, young girls & boys disfigured,lose their limbs, be orphaned and many more remain traumatised to this day.
Danj
I am fully aware of confirmation bias, people believe what they want to believe, yes, and some people reject the truth for exactly the same reasons.
I am not aware of anyone here mentioning ethnic background or culture or even religion and I have only referred to an ideology which I personally believe was founded on terrorism and is a system that fosters apartheid and racism. I also believe the UN resolution on this system that declared Zionism as ‘racial discrimination’ should stand because growing evidence exists as proof.
Your ‘hostility’ towards Israel I believe is a grass roots accrual of despair and pain towards settlement, theft of land and ‘kettling’ on a grand scale towards Palestinians and nothing whatsoever to do with global conspiracies and certainly not a belief without basis.
Fair enough Mark. Your post Men of Might is basically how I see that particular point as well, and how, I am sure, the historians will one day write it up. I am and will be reluctant though to view Israel as the sole and unique aggressor in the various disputes in that region. Something occurred yesterday, for example, that made me think: the reporting of the fact that the Israeli supreme court overturned the judgement in the case of Ivan the Terrible, determining that it was unlawful. There cannot be many, if any states, in that region who would adhere to legal processes in that way. There are many points that can be made like this: for example, where are the protests about Syria, and about what it is up to presently? The Baathist regime there is based on terror, yet those who scream the most about Israel are completely silent.
@Mark Re Lord Boyce – ‘In the crossbenches stands Lord Boyce, former British Chief of Defence Staff. In a “defence” debate with his peers on 22 November 2007, he spoke of blood on the deck of the Ministry of Defence; fellow warriors have been pleading for the weapons and leaving almost empty handed. Brown without an ‘e’ is in the frame. The register of peers’ interests show that this ex-sailor [Lord Boyce] holds a remunerated directorship in VT Group plc. This little business sells warships to Her Majesty’s Government, among other boys’ toys. Hansard records no declaration of his possible interest in the hardware central to the debate.’
General Lord Guthrie GCB, LVO, OBE, DL and Chief of Defence Staff before Lord Boyce, filled the chamber with his honeyed voice. This soldier had a similar view to the sailor. Now, the register shows him to be a part of Colt Defense LLC. Assault rifles is its stock in trade and security services another string to a deadly bow. Few “defence” companies can neglect an “industry” which is third only to oil and killing in Iraq, and which is yet another facet of the supreme international war crime from which all other crimes flow. Hansard – no pecuniary interest in this debate was declared by him.’
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Requiem for Law and Principle in Britain
http://dhalpin.infoaction.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=2
‘I have looked beneath the Western propaganda that is pumped out in favour of the Zionist State and which demonises and marginalizes the Palestinian’. The Zionist state has a name: it is called Israel. ‘Western propaganda?’ which propaganda? Evidently there is much ‘propaganda’ which demonises Israel and which ignores crimes against Israeli civilians, particularly the 2nd Intifada – bloody, deadly and indiscriminate. Sure you can point to crimes from all sides, so long as you do.
“we are all a bit ashamed that nobody had the guts to go public, resign and say that the WMD thing is a myth.”
Dr. David Kelly did have the guts to go public, and paid the supreme price for that act of integrity.
Craig. It’s very silly of you to demonise Blair without putting any blame on the parliamentarians who believed him. You don’t like me demonising the Zionist bankers who utilise interest to manipulate the world because you’re scared they’ll put you out of business if you don’t extend your woolly liberalism to them. Stay unreal. We like you the way you are, but we’ve moved on.
Anno, I know that Islam has greater restrictions upon interest than either Christianity or Judaism. However, I can see that the practice of charging interest would appeal to any banker, Zionist or otherwise. Without evidence, I am at a loss to know which bankers are or are not Zionist, and which bankers are or are not inciters of war for profit.
Canspeccy, Dr Kelly didn’t go public. He went to the BBC, who then disclosed their source.
The evidence is the war against Islam which is counter productive to humanity and world peace, our own reputation and liberal diversity of human understanding.
Our people and politicians do not believe that the destruction of Islam is essential to human survival, but UK policy blatantly delivers that creed in its bombs, bullets and feet on the ground.
Between the people and the government is a dark force which overrides all common sense and reason. I would not expect that force to advertise its criminality. It thrives under the front of liberal democracy and fiscal wisdom.
There is no evidence that feeding sheep’s brains to cows will do them any harm is the argument of the zombie. Yes you are human and yes you are alive, but you don’t appear to have noticed the scared looks in the people around you’s eyes.
Shill on, Clark, nice try.