Western European News Digest
Lord Hutton To Call Tony Blair in Kelly Probe
The probe into the death of senior British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly opened Aug. 1 with the announcement from presiding Lord Hutton, former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, that he intends to call Prime Minister Tony Blair to testify, along with Blair's spinmeister, Alastair "Spinocchio" Campbell, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, senior officials in the Ministry of Defence, several senior BBC officials, and others, including Dr. Kelly's widow, Janice, who is reported to possess a dossier drawn up by Kelly in the last hours before he died. She has reportedly given that dossier to Hutton.
Hutton Inquiry Opens, Political War Breaks in London
As if to underscore the fever pitch in political circles as the Hutton inquiry opens Aug. 1, The Guardian's security affairs editor, Richard Norton-Taylor, writes an excellent commentary on the inquiry, which commentary is published twice in the same issue, on the same op-ed page, with significantly different, but revealing intent: "Lord Hutton Must Grasp the Nettle," with the subtitle, "Dr Kelly cannot be pushed aside for the sake of a happy ending," and the second, "Prisoner of Whitehall," with the subtitle, "Dr Kelly's treatment was a disgrace. Hutton must not ignore it for the sake of a happy ending." The second version, in bold-face, states "Kelly knew more than mostin fact, it is difficult to exaggerate his credibility."
Norton-Taylor demanded that Hutton focus on the central question: "What got Kelly into trouble?" The answer is that Kelly was becoming increasingly skeptical of Tony Blair's harangues about Iraqi WMD, and "this was not just a skeptical scientist questioning claims by politicians and their advisers. Kelly was a world-renowned scientist," with extensive experience in Russia, and at least 30 trips to Iraq. Blair/Whitehall tried to "control him and use him" for their purposes, but Kelly refused to play their game.
Norton-Taylor adds, "it is no secretit had not been for well over a yearthat the intelligence and security services, including MI6, questioned the whole notion of an Iraqi dossier. There was little or nothing new to say; certainly, there was nothing to justify a preemptive strike against Iraq.... Kelly knew more than most about the real, as opposed to exaggerated, threat posed by Iraq's past banned weapons program.... He was reflecting wide concerns in the intelligence community which he served.... The difference between Kelly and the intelligence establishment is that the latter gritted their teeth, covered their ears, and persuaded themselves that how their political masters chose to abuse its work was up to them."
Then: "It would be bizarre if Lord Hutton's inquiry does not examine this background to Kelly's apparent suicide. For this vital issuethe manipulation of intelligence for political ends, to justify an invasion of a foreign countryis linked, morally at least, to the scientist's death."
Blair Faces Grilling from House of Commons Inquiry
Another flank opened against Tony Blair on Iraq, as the House of Commons Select Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) released a new report charging that the Iraq war has impeded, rather than helped the global war against terrorism. Blair had repeatedly insisted that toppling Saddam, would make Britain safer. The report authors assert the opposite, as reported by BBC on July 31 and by Richard Norton-Taylor, in The Guardian Aug. 1..
The FAC warns: "The war in Iraq might in fact have impeded the war against al-Qaeda," especially as it would strengthen al-Qaeda's appeal to Muslims, particularly in the Gulf region. The report insists that Britain rebuild relations with allies, especially France, following the disagreements over Iraq, in order to fight terrorism more effectively.
The report has other criticisms, asserting that UN weapons inspectors in Iraq had not verified the accuracy of British and U.S. intelligence about Iraq's WMD: "We conclude that Iraq's cooperation with weapons inspectors was limited and ... insufficient, but that UNMOVIC and the IAEA were reporting improvements in Iraqi cooperation, and some evidence of actual disarmament by Iraq, by early March 2003." It would have been "highly desirable" to have obtained a further UN Security Council resolution before the attack on Iraq.
Top British terrorism expert Paul Wilkinson, University of Aberdeen, is quoted in the British press as saying that all the time, money, and energy spent in fighting the war in Iraq, would have been better spent in rebuilding Afghanistan.
British Minister on Tony Blair's Cowardice
Clare Short, who resigned as Britain's International Development Minister soon after the Iraq war was launched, authored a scathing critique in the July 30 Guardian focussed on the breach of international protocol on occupation and reconstruction in the conduct of the war in Iraq. Titled: "Blair's Lack of Courage," her piece made the following points:
"The advice that I, and the Department for International Development, gave to the Prime Minister was that we should internationalize the reconstruction effort as quickly as possible.... The legal position is laid down in the Geneva Convention and Hague regulations. They provide that occupying powers have a duty to keep order, keep civil administration functioning and provide for immediate humanitarian need. They have no powers to engage in major political, economic or constitutional reform. They also have no power to bring into being a sovereign government since they hold no sovereignty. Only the UN can do that....
"When the Prime Minister pressed me to remain a member of the government, he promised that the UN would be given the central role in reconstruction. I was much criticised for staying, but decided that although the war was unstoppable it was possible to organise a proper international effort to rebuild Iraq.
"At the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in early April, I worked to persuade ministerial colleagues from France, Germany and other countries which had been opposed to the war that, whatever past differences, we should reunite to help Iraq reconstruct.... But the U.S. was not interested in internationalizing reconstruction.... There was a complete failure to prepare for the Geneva Convention obligations.... But the U.S. brushed the idea aside and it was quietly dropped.... The U.S. was sneeringly hostile to the UN, arguing that it was not willing to undertake the cost of military action and then to hand over Iraq to the UN. Jack Straw talked shockingly of France and Germany having made the wrong call and not being allowed to 'get their snouts in the trough.'
"The Prime Minister therefore took personal charge of the drafting of Security Council resolution 1483. This was passed on May 22. It recognised the coalition as occupying powers and, very unusually, gave them equal authority with the UN in establishing the Iraqi interim authority. In practice even this resolution has been breached with Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator who has taken over from Gen. Garner, making the decisions with the UK and UN trotting along behind.
"If the Prime Minister had only had more courage, reconstruction in Iraq would almost certainly be more advanced and the U.S. and U.K. at less risk of getting bogged down in an unpopular and costly occupation."
Tony Blair Dodges Stampede over Iraq Policy
There was "a herd of elephants" in the press room July 30 when Prime Minister Tony Blair gave his press conference, wrote Damian Whitworth, parliamentary correspondent for the London Times, but Blair managed to ignore all of them. Blair sidestepped, and refused to discuss, all the issues that were on people's minds, and would only focus on his so-called "accomplishments" on the domestic economic front.
But the "herd of elephants" include the death of senior British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly; the non-existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction allegedly threatening Britain; the likely imminent demise of Blair chief spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, aka "Spinocchio"; and "Tony's Future," or, how long Blair himself will still be in office.
Whitworth stresses that Blair would only call on journalists favorable to him, and/or to the "New Labour" project. He writes that a grinning Blair closed the press conference with the words, "Have a happy holiday!" as he headed off for vacation in Barbados, which should go over like a lead balloon in Britain since Aug. 6 is the day of Dr. David Kelly's funeral, a day of solemn national mourning in the country.
A Scent of Profumo Affair in Weapons Inspector's Death
"The Suicide of Dr. Kelly Has Resonances of Profumo Affair," Richard Ingrams wrote in the July 27 Observer weekly. He commented: "A long-running political scandal; a Prime Minister who has been in office too long under fire; an apparent scapegoat who commits suicide; a senior judge appointed to investigate. To oldies like myself, the current situation has echoes of the Profumo affair, and the sensational events of the summer of 40 years ago."
That sex/espionage scandal, centering on Defense Minister John Profumo, led to the fall of the Harold Macmillan government in October 1963.
The Widow's Diary
Reports emerged in the last week that the wife of British weapons inspector David Kelly "may have kept a devastating record of his final hours," and that this "explosive account" contains material damaging enough to "force Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon to quit," the July 27 Mail on Sunday reported.
The paper reports that Lord Hutton, the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, who is heading the inquiry into Kelly's death, visited Janice Kelly at her home in Oxfordshire July 26. Reportedly, the senior Law Lord asked Mrs. Kelly to tell him all she knew about the days leading up to her husband's death.
On July 23, she had been visited by Defence Minister Hoon, and the possibility is that he demanded to see her "dossier" on the final hours before Dr. Kelly's death, the Mail on Sunday notes. According to the paper, she refused to show Hoon this material, but instead is arranging to have it made available to the Hutton inquiry.
A separate commentary in the paper, by Peter Hitchens, says the key thing to be determined now is what Kelly meant when he wrote, soon before his death, that he had been targetted by "dark actors." Hitchens surmises, that Prime Minister Tony Blair and his entourage undoubtedly know what these words mean, as they unleashed a vicious operation against Kelly, the which is now blowing up in their faces.
Debate Spreads in Europe over Devolution in Iraq
Intense debate is erupting in European policy circles, think tanks, and media about the "ambulant" Empire, stumbling from one disaster to the next. Among those taking a leading role in the debate are American academics and strategists. Indicative of the debate are the following:
* Former Georgetown University professor, the 76-year-old American, Norman Birnbaum, gave an interview to the German weekly Stern, in which he emphasizes the legacy of Nazi crown jurist Carl Schmitt in Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's thinking. He closely compares the U.S. warhawks' policies, with a drive to establish a "totalitarian empire."
"People behind and around Bush are still very much underestimatedthey are really dangerous. They don't give a shit about what others think. It's irrelevant for them, it's peanuts. And, therefore, Wolfowitz can saysorry folks, the thing with WMD in Iraq, this was just a practical pretext to go to war. That is the chutzpah of the Imperialists.... It may sound crazy for otherswhat Wolfowitz saysbut for him it is all very rational."
Wolfowitz began his career, says Birnbaum, as a war theoretician; he learned from the German philosopher Carl Schmittwho ideologically prepared fascismwhom Wolfowitz studied assiduously. He wants American hegemony. Wolfowitz thinks in perspectives. The Iraq war is just a small first step. It was not just the Mideast, but he wants to teach the Chinese a lesson. China, Wolfowitz knows, in 20 years will be a danger. But he knows you can't just march into China. He therefore prepares a "new cold war against China." Wolfowitz and the crowd around him, they are totally "self-righteous, arrogant and are dangerously aggressive."
* Paul Kennedy, in an op-ed in Spain's El Pais on the "Imprisoned Empire," recommends that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, and Perle should all spend their vacations reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and a book by Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism [the U.S. edition has a different subtitle ed.]. The latter describes the big scramble for Africa in the 1880s and 1990s. Kennedy makes clear that the British Empire stumbled from one war, from one occupation, into the next. When they occupied Egypt, under Gladstone, the British told everyone that in a short time they would establish order, end fundamentalism, initiate economic development, and so on. The withdrawal announced by Gladstone took 70 years, Kennedy shows, and thereby draws parallels to today's situation.
* On July 24, a 20-minute feature was broadcast by the German-language TV channel 3Sat (Switzerland, Austria, Germany), on the spiritual fathers of the neo-conservatives. In the program, German historian H.A. Winkler stressed that Leo Strauss, the student of Carl Schmitt, is the spiritual father of the American neo-cons, and that his idea that only a tiny elite should rule the masses on the basis of an advantage of knowledge. "Strauss is of the opinion that it is permissible for a political philosopher to hide the truth from the masses, and to liefor the sake of the common good," says Winkler. "And this conception has been adapted in the context of the Iraq War by the neo-conservatives."
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