Ephems will shortly be intermittently AFK* for a variety of reasons so please don’t expect any blog posts or responses to comments for a while.
Meanwhile we sit and shiver in sub-zero London and wonder whether our daughter in snow-bound New York is going to make it onto her flight to Heathrow. Global warming? Pah, humbug. Lord Lawson must know something that we don’t.
Many thanks to all those of you who have contributed to lively debates on this blog during the year, and especially those who have challenged my more opinionated and partisan posts. No-one has so far convinced me that our peculiarly British form of preventive detention (Indeterminate sentences for Public Protection or IPPs) can be justified under any civilised system of justice; or that Tony Blair didn’t mean it when he appeared to say that if he had known that there were no WMD he would have had to think of a different, equally bogus, reason for attacking Iraq; or that we’re doing more good than harm in Afghanistan or that if we withdrew all British forces tomorrow, the Pakistan régime would collapse, handing over its hydrogen bombs to al-Qaeda (I don’t see the Americans pulling out just because the British did); or that if we all try hard enough we can prevent the planet warming up to more than 2 deg.C; or that Tony Blair is a middle east peace envoy when he very obviously isn’t; or that Labour promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty (or, even if it did, that any government of sound mind would have dared to hold one); or that when government spending is keeping the economy alive (just) pending the long awaited renaissance of demand and supply in the private sector, cutting government spending is a jolly wizard idea — don’t they teach them economics at Eton?; or that Britain will sink beneath the waves if we don’t pay off our national debt within three weeks of the next election; or that al-Megrahi should have been left to rot in his Scottish prison until he died — or that there’s no room for doubt about his share of guilt for the Lockerbie bombing; or that Tony Blair — why do I keep coming back to the old rogue? — would have made an absolutely spiffing President of Europe, even if such a job existed, which it doesn’t; or that if we keep on fighting the War on Drugs, we’ll eventually win it, any more than we did in Iraq or will in Afghanistan; or that everyone in the country watches a programme called, weirdly, “Strictly”, or that anyone I know watches ‘the X Factor’. But on all these great matters, Ephems’s meat and drink in the past year, I readily acknowledge that I could be wrong, and on some of them I hope I am.
So I wish a happy Christmas to those visitors to this site who are of a religious disposition and members of the appropriate sect, and jolly holidays to the rest: and to everyone, my best wishes for a much better year in almost every respect than 2009 has been. It’s a relief to say goodbye to this low dishonest decade (no, I know 2010, not 2009, will officially be the end of the decade, but at least 2009 marks the end of the Noughties. Good riddance to it!).
*AFK: Away from Keyboard (but you knew that really).
Brian
Does Tony Blair realise that in a couple of sentences in a religious affairs interview with one Fern Britton on television, he has blown what’s left of his defence on the Iraq war out of the water?
‘”If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?” Blair was asked. He replied: “I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]“. Significantly, Blair added: “I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”‘ (Guardian, 12 December 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/12/tony-blair-iraq-chilcot-inquiry)
Some of the evidence already given to the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq war has sought to distinguish between, on the one hand, President George Bush’s concentration on régime change as the main purpose of invading and occupying Iraq, and, on the other hand, Tony Blair’s realisation that compelling Iraq to obey UN resolutions requiring Iraq to get rid of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was the only objective capable of securing UN authority for the use of force. He also appeared to understand that UN authority might well be a necessary condition for getting the support of parliamentary, media and public opinion in the UK and the rest of the EU for going to war. Admittedly this version of events doesn’t explain why Blair, having failed to secure UN authority for the use of force, nevertheless went ahead and committed British forces to fight alongside the Americans in the attack on Iraq; more than one Chilcot witness has pointed out that when UK efforts to get UN approval failed, Blair still had the option, even at that late stage, of refusing to allow British participation in the US military action on the perfectly honourable grounds that his proclaimed condition for participation — UN authority — had not been satisfied. Blair was forced to try to square this circle by devising a far-fetched and almost universally unconvincing legal fable according to which Security Council resolution 1441, read with earlier UN resolutions passed in the context of the first Gulf war, contained an implicit authority for using force against Iraq without the need for further UN authority. As Hans Blix, the senior UN weapons inspector at the time, writes in the Guardian of 14 December 2009:
In these circumstances [the UK] developed and advanced the argument that the war was authorised by the council under a series of earlier resolutions. As Condoleezza Rice put it, the alliance action “upheld the authority of the council”. It was irrelevant to this argument that China, France, Germany and Russia explicitly opposed the action and that a majority on the council declined to give the requested green light for the armed action. If hypocrisy is the compliment that virtue pays to vice then strained legal arguments are the compliments that violators of UN rules pay to the UN charter.
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/14/blair-iraq-regime-change-inspections]
So all this depends on Blair’s fundamental position that WMD and what was still widely believed to be Iraq’s failure to get rid of them were his, and Britain’s, justification for the war. Blair had repeatedly acknowledged that in international law war could not be justified by the desire for, or desirability of, régime change. He had even claimed, until the last moment, that Saddam Hussein could still save his régime and continue to rule Iraq if at that eleventh hour he were prepared to comply with the UN’s demand that he disarm. (That must have caused some consternastion in Washington!)
Now, in his religious affairs interview, he admits for the first time what so many had always suspected: that even if he had known at the time that in fact Saddam had no WMD, he would still have “thought it right to remove him”: and, even more damningly, that in that case “you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.” Never mind that by his own admission, without the WMD justification the Security Council would never have authorised a war — the Council wouldn’t even authorise it at that time even when there were still apparent grounds for believing that Iraq had WMD. In his interview with Fern Britton Blair never mentions the question of international law or the absolute obligation to act in accordance with it.
A letter by a certain Ronnie Paris in the Guardian on 13 December 2009 sought to defend Blair’s reply to Fern Britton on the grounds that Blair had only said he would still “have thought it right to remove” Sadam even if he had known that Saddam had no WMD — not that he would necessarily have agreed to take part in military action to remove him in those circumstances. But Blair’s admission that without WMD and disarmament as justification for war, he “would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat” makes it clear that he would still have gone to war to remove Saddam: if he had meant only that he would have thought it right to do so but would not have taken any military steps to achieve it, why would he have needed to think up and deploy “different arguments” for removing him? In any case, the theme running through the whole interview echoes a familiar Blair mantra: “In the end, you’ve got to do what you believe is right.”
The only possible conclusion to be drawn from Tony Blair’s reply to Ms Britton is that his real purpose in committing Britain to the war was régime change (just as régime change was George W Bush’s openly avowed purpose — illegal, but at least honest); that he based his campaign for UN approval on WMD only because he knew it was the sole legal justification for the war that the Security Council might eventually recognise and approve, even though by their haste in resorting to war Bush and Blair forfeited any hope of UN legitimacy; and that had he known or believed that Iraq had no WMD (as of course turned out to be the case), he would still have gone to war, having dreamed up some other excuse for it, the nature of which, six years later, Mr Blair has apparently not yet worked out.
The mystery, therefore, is why Blair should have made this suicidal admission in an interview given just a few weeks before he’s due to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, and soon after some at least of the evidence to the Inquiry had offered him a partial defence against one of the most damaging accusations against him (namely, that his very early promise to Bush of UK participation in an eventual war against Iraq had been recklessly unconditional; it’s now clear that Blair did impose a correct and proper condition for British participation in the war, i.e. that it should have UN approval in advance, although it’s still not clear just how clearly that vital condition had been spelled out to the Americans). Now Blair has deprived himself of any credit or defence even on that count.
Perhaps the explanation, as so often with Tony Blair, is the simple one: his infinite capacity for convincing himself of his own rightness, which he sees as the sole justification and indeed criterion for action. He can’t accept, apparently, that even his judgement is fallible: that he is capable of being wrong: that he ought to listen to those who disagree with him about the rights and wrongs of what he wants to do: and that the leader of a democracy has an absolute, unqualified obligation to obey the law. Deciding what you believe is “right” and then devising arguments that can be used to justify your decision is a sure recipe for disaster. He still, evidently, doesn’t get it.
Brian
27 October 2009: Me to Guardian Letters: submitted for publication
Sir,
I enjoyed George Monbiot’s proposals for Tony Blair’s future (Making this ruthless liar EU president is a crazy plan. But I’ll be backing Blair, October 27), but was sorry that Monbiot joined the many commentators who erroneously describe Blair as the “Middle East peace envoy”. According to the statement of June 27, 2007 by the Quartet — the US, Russia, the EU, and the UN — on Blair’s appointment, “As Quartet Representative, he will:
- Mobilize international assistance to the Palestinians, working closely with donors and existing coordination bodies;
- Help to identify, and secure appropriate international support in addressing, the institutional governance needs of the Palestinian state, focusing as a matter of urgency on the rule of law;
- Develop plans to promote Palestinian economic development, including private sector partnerships, building on previously agreed frameworks, especially concerning access and movement; and
- Liaise with other countries as appropriate in support of the agreed Quartet objectives.”
How much if any success Mr Blair has achieved in these challenging but specific tasks since June 2007 I don’t know, but as the Americans stressed publicly at the time, it’s a strictly limited mandate almost entirely unconnected with the peace process — just as it’s a bit of an exaggeration to describe as “President of Europe” an appointment as President (or more accurately in English, Chair or Chairperson) of the EU Council of Ministers, whoever gets the job.
Yours sincerely
Brian Barder
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
________________________________
28 Oct 09: Me to Guardian letters
THIS MESSAGE IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION
FOR THE GUARDIAN LETTERS EDITOR FROM SIR BRIAN BARDER
Yesterday I submitted to you a letter for publication (copy below) pointing out that George Monbiot, in his article in yesterday’s Guardian, had wrongly described Tony Blair as the “Middle East peace envoy” whereas the Quartet’s statement of his appointment, which I quoted, showed that his mandate was to encourage foreign investment in Palestine and related matters — nothing to do with the ‘peace’ process.
You haven’t published my letter in today’s Guardian, as of course is your right, and I don’t complain about that. But instead you have published a letter from a Jonathan Smith which describes Mr Blair as “UN envoy in the Middle East” and accuses him of not understanding “that the basic requirement for a mediator is a transparent neutrality…”, etc. Had you published my own letter, it would have been clear that Mr Blair is the envoy of the Quartet, not of the UN, and that he is not in any sense a ‘mediator’. Thus a large part of Mr Jonathan Smith’s letter is beside the point, being based on mistaken assumptions about Tony Blair’s role. I am baffled by your choice of such an obviously flawed letter for publication, especially as you had the origin and exact text of Blair’s terms of reference in front of you in the letter which I had submitted, but which you chose not to publish. (Perhaps you chose not to read it, either?)
I hope that you or the Readers’ Editor, to whom I am copying this, will now publish in the Corrections and Clarifications column corrections to George Monbiot’s reference yesterday to Tony Blair as a ‘peace envoy’ and to Jonathan Smith’s letter’s references to him as a ‘UN envoy’ and a ‘mediator’, since all three descriptions are wrong and misleading. The fact that the ‘peace envoy’ error is so common right across the media surely makes a correction all the more desirable, especially as it has a bearing on current discussion of Mr Blair’s candidature for President of the EU Council of Ministers?
I may put a copy of this message on my blog for the amusement of its readers, but I’ll defer doing so until either I have your response, or else the errors concerned are corrected in the Guardian’s Corrections column, in which case I’ll acknowledge that in my blog.
Regards
Brian Barder
___________________________
8 Nov 2009: me to Guardian letters and the Guardian readers’ Editor
Dear Guardian Letters and Readers’ Editors,
With reference to my message below, to which I have had no reply, and the relevant corrections not (I think) having been published, please now see http://www.barder.com/2180.
If you didn’t copy my original message to George Monbiot when you received it, I would be obliged if you would forward this one to him now.
But I still remain inexplicably loyal to the Guardian!
Best wishes,
Brian Barder
____________________________
11 November 2009: Guardian Readers’ Editor’s office’s researcher to me
from Readers.Editor@guardian.co.uk
reply-to Readers.Editor@guardian.co.uk
to Brian Barder
date 11 November 2009 17:22
subject Re: Tony Blair: not a ‘peace’ envoy
Dear Sir Brian,
Many thanks for your email and your request for correction.
The announcement by the Quartet of the appointment of Tony Blair as Middle East envoy placed his role directly in the context of “advancing the search for peace in the Middle East”. His remit does not include negotiation between the parties, but it is intended to move the region toward peace in line with the Quartet’s aims: “As representative, Tony Blair will bring continuity and intensity of focus to the work of the Quartet in support of the Palestinians, within the broader framework of the Quartet’s efforts to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the roadmap.” The means are described in the passages you quote, but the ultimate aim is (explicitly) broader. Therefore I do not think the reference to Blair as “peace envoy” in George Monbiot’s column requires correction.
On your second point, Tony Blair is not “UN envoy” and I will pursue a correction on that point.
With best wishes,
Charlotte Dewar
Researcher, readers’ editor’s office
_________________________________
12 November 2009: me to researcher, Readers’ Editor’s office
For Ms Charlotte Dewar, Readers’ Editor’s office, from Sir Brian Barder
Dear Charlotte,
Thank you for your ingenious defence, in your email of yesterday (below), of George Monbiot’s description of Tony Blair as a, or the, “Middle East peace envoy”. I’m afraid, however, that I don’t buy it. Of course the appointment, like any appointment by the Quartet, was by definition “in the context of” or “within the broader framework of” the Quartet’s overall objective of bringing peace to the region: but to say that this makes Blair a ‘peace envoy’ is a bit like saying that when my butcher sells me a leg of lamb “in the context of” the preparations for a dinner party tomorrow, that makes the butcher my cook, or, even more improbably, my wife. In any case, it’s unnecessary to engage in minute textual analysis and interpretation of the Quartet’s announcement of the appointment when its scope has been publicly (and brutally) defined by the leading member of the Quartet with the explicit agreement of at least two of the other three members:
MR. MCCORMACK: …The urgency of recent events has reinforced the need for the international community, bearing in mind the obligations of the parties, to help the Palestinians as they build institutions and economy of a viable state in Gaza and the West Bank, able to take its place as a peaceful and prosperous partner to Israel and its other neighbors.
To facilitate efforts to these ends, following discussions among the Principals, today the Quartet announces the appointment of Tony Blair as the Quartet Representative. Mr. Blair, who is stepping down from office this week, has long demonstrated his commitment on these issues.
As Quartet Representative, he will mobilize international assistance to the Palestinians, working closely with donors and existing coordination bodies; help to identify and secure appropriate international support in addressing the institutional governance needs of the Palestinian state, focusing as a matter of urgency on the rule of law; develop plans to promote Palestinian economic development, including private sector partnerships, building on previously agreed frameworks, especially concerning access and movement; and liaise with other countries, as appropriate, in support of the agreed Quartet objectives.
As representative, Tony Blair will bring continuity and intensity of focus to the work of the Quartet in support of the Palestinians within the broader framework of the Quartet’s efforts to promote an end to the conflict in conformity with the Roadmap. He will spend a significant time in the region working with the parties and others to help create viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians, a robust economy and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people. Tony Blair will be supported in this work by a small team of experts based in Jerusalem to be seconded by partner countries and institutions. The Quartet representative will report to and consult regularly with the Quartet and be guided by it, as necessary….
QUESTION: Tony Blair’s mandate is apparently limited to this institution building. Does he have any authority to do actual political negotiating for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, Mr. Blair’s focus will be on building those Palestinian institutions which will form the basis of a Palestinian state. And I would say that without those institutions and without those institutions being developed, you’re not going to have a Palestinian state. So the idea of the political negotiations and the building of the institutions within the Palestinian state are really of almost equal importance as you’re not going to have a Palestinian state in the absence of one of those two, success in one of those two areas.
So Secretary Rice and President Bush are going to focus on the political negotiations, as they have, and Mr. Blair is going to focus his considerable talents and his efforts on building those Palestinian institutions. I daresay that that is going to be a — take as much time as he is ready to devote to the issue, and I know that he is ready to devote a considerable amount of time to building those institutions.
So I would expect that you can — you would continue to see the same basic breakdown or division of labor in trying to bring about a more peaceful Middle East, bring about a Palestinian state. And Secretary Rice will focus intensely and President Bush will focus intensely on those political negotiations, advancing the Israeli-Palestinian track, advancing the Israeli-Arab track in those negotiations. I’m sure that Secretary Rice and Mr. Blair are going to talk. Of course, they’re going to need to communicate very closely not only though the formal mechanism of the Quartet, but I would also expect on a more informal basis as well.
[State Department press briefing, Sean McCormack, Spokesman, June 27, 2007[ (Emphasis added)
http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/jun/87471.htm
And:
US to keep Blair out of Middle East
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Daily Telegraph: 12:01AM BST 20 Jul 2007Tony Blair was told by the United States yesterday that he had no authority to tackle political negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians as he spent his first full day as special envoy to the Middle East. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, insisted that America would retain leadership of the "political track" while Mr Blair would work on raising funds for the Palestinians, as well as building their economy and infrastructure.
It was the clearest account yet of the former prime minister's role in the Middle East on behalf of the international Quartet - the European Union, United Nations, the United States and Russia. He will be more an envoy to the Palestinians than a peace envoy.
"I think his mandate was made clear by the Quartet when they issued the statement," said Miss Rice. "There is also a political track that for a variety of reasons the United States is committed to lead in co-ordination with the Quartet."
Mr Blair's role "is something that is completely complementary and if we all work together, and there is plenty to do, perhaps we can finally deliver," she said.
While she couched her comments amid lavish praise for Mr Blair, it amounted to a diplomatic snub after his representatives had earlier made clear he wanted to play a key role in peace negotiations.
Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, who is understood to have been put out by Mr Blair's appointment, backed Miss Rice, saying Mr Blair's mandate is to "build the Palestinian institutions".
Miss Rice was speaking before Mr Blair attended his first full meeting of the Quartet in Lisbon. "I know that Tony Blair is an experienced, capable, historic figure and he's going to bring an energy to the international commitment to a Palestinian state that is capable for its own people," she told Sky News. "There is a very good sense that his dedication now to helping the Palestinians build the institutions of statehood, to move forward on economic development and to press forward on helping to create a strong Palestinian partner is very well timed as we try to move forward toward the establishment of a state." (Emphasis added)
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1558029/US-to-keep-Blair-out-of-Middle-East.html]
The same remarks are reported similarly at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469639/Rice-Im-charge-Middle-East-peace-Blair.html.
And:
[Former Russian prime minister] Mr Primakov’s remarks added to the controversy over Mr Blair’s new job which has turned out to be a lot less ambitious than first forecast. Instead of a Middle East envoy empowered to negotiate peace terms between Israelis and Palestinians, the mandate was trimmed to one in which the former prime minister would be the Quartet’s representative to help to build the economy and institutions of the Palestinians. At the time of the appointment last month, Mr Blair’s people made clear he was itching to extend the scope of the mandate to include peace building. But following his first meetings this week with officials from the Quartet, as well as Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Blair now appears to have accepted the mandate in spite of its limitations. “Mr Blair is happy with the mandate as it will allow him to do the job that he wants to do,” a spokesman for his office said. (Emphasis added.)
[Daily Telegraph, 12 Jul 2007]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1557271/Russians-sceptical-over-Blairs-Middle-East-role.html
It’s superfluous, after quoting such unambiguous textual evidence, for me to recall watching on CNN television a press conference on the middle east at the UN at which Condoleezza Rice, then US Secretary of State, presided at a long table on the platform, flanked on both sides by about 14 or 15 officials of various kinds, each a specialist in some specific aspect of the negotiations. Tony Blair was at the far end of the table on Ms Rice’s right. Various reporters tried to ask Blair questions relating to the peace process but in every case Condoleezza Rice deflected the question to herself and answered it. It was more than half an hour into the press conference before someone at last asked a question about institution-building in Palestine and Ms Rice finally allowed Mr Blair to answer it — the first time Blair had been permitted to utter a single word. Throughout this time Tony Blair’s face, occasionally shown in close-up, looked unmistakeably grim.
You’ll know that the new US administration, having inherited the lead role in the Quartet with responsibility for the middle east peace process, has actually appointed a “peace envoy” for the middle east, in the person of former Senator George Mitchell. It’s not easy to explain how this could have been done without an obvious conflict with Tony Blair’s role if Blair was already the Quartet’s “peace envoy”. Indeed, in September when President Obama met the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas, and then held his first trilateral meeting with the two leaders, he was “joined by Secretary Clinton, General Jones, Tom Donilon, and [George Mitchell]. For the trilateral meeting, the President was joined by Secretary Clinton, General Jones, and [George Mitchell]. In their meetings, Prime Minister Netanyahu was joined by Foreign Minister Lieberman, Defense Minister Barak, and National Security Advisor Arad. President Abbas was joined by Secretary General Yasser Abed Rabbo, Negotiations Affairs Department Director Saeb Erekat, and Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.” If it had been the case that Tony Blair was the Quartet’s “peace envoy”, how could he have been excluded from these key meetings? Clearly he’s not, and never has been. I’m astonished that the Guardian, with all the expertise on the middle east that’s available to it, should have even considered contesting the point.
In the light of all this irrefutable evidence, would the Guardian now care to reconsider its decision not to publish a correction of Mr Monbiot’s reference to Tony Blair as a “peace envoy”? In view of the direct bearing that all this has on the choice of a President (Chairperson) of the EU Council of Ministers, it would seem obviously desirable to publish that correction without further delay. When you’re in a hole….
Until I hear further from you, I shall postpone putting an addendum to http://www.barder.com/2180 on my website to take account of your email of yesterday and this reply.
Regards,
Brian (Barder)
12 November 2009
___________________________________________
Corrections and clarifications: Corrections editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 25 November 2009
A letter (Outraged by the Blair pitch project, 28 October, page 33) said that Tony Blair had been proclaimed United Nations envoy in the Middle East. Mr Blair acts on behalf of the “Quartet” comprising the UN, the United States, Russia and the European Union.
____________________________________________
12 November 2009: me to Guardian Readers’ Editor
from Brian Barder
to Siobhain Butterworth <reader@guardian.co.uk>
date 12 November 2009 12:47
subject Re: Tony Blair: not a ‘peace’ envoy
12 Nov 2009
Dear Siobhain Butterworth,
My reply (below) to Charlotte Dewar, addressed to the email address given in her message (Readers.Editor@guardian.co.uk), has been returned as undeliverable (“Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 No such user“).
Might I ask you to pass the message on to Charlotte — or, better still, deal with it yourself?
Thanks.
Regards,
Brian Barder
12 November 2009
_______________________________________________
23 November 2009: me to Guardian Readers’ Editor
from Brian Barder
to Siobhain Butterworth <reader@guardian.co.uk>
date 23 November 2009 18:04 subject Re: Tony Blair: not a ‘peace’ envoy
From Sir Brian Barder for the Guardian Readers’ Editor
Dear Siobhain Butterworth,
Please refer to my exchange of emails with your colleague Charlotte Dewar, and my messages addressed to yourself, reproduced below.
As I have still had no reply to either of my messages of 12 November, and since to the best of my knowledge you have still not corrected the Guardian’s erroneous descriptions of Tony Blair’s middle east role to which I have alerted you, with extensive supporting evidence, I now propose to place the document attached to this message, comprising copies of the principal messages to and (in one case) from your office, on my website (http://www.barder.com/). I shall also make a suitable comment on our exchanges with a link to the texts of our emails in my blog, as a follow-up to my blog post at http://www.barder.com/2180.
If there is any further comment you would like me to include in addition to the text of Ms Dewar’s brief email of 11 November, I shall of course be glad to add it. In that case, I would appreciate an early reply with any text you want me to add. If I hear nothing from you by, say, the start of working hours on Friday, 27 November, I shall take it that you have nothing further to say and I’ll then go ahead and put the attachment to this on my website.
Whether you choose to reply or not, I assure you that I have no intention of stopping either my subscription to the Guardian or my flow of letters submitted, with fluctuating degrees of success, for publication in it!
Regards,
Brian Barder
23 Nov 2009
________________________________________________
23 November 2009: Do Not Reply at Guardian.co.uk to me
from DoNotReply@guardian.co.uk
reply-to DoNotReply@guardian.co.uk
to Brian Barder
date 23 November 2009 18:04
subject Thank you for your email:
Re: Tony Blair: not a ‘peace’ envoy
Thank you for emailing the office of the Guardian’s readers’ editor, Siobhain Butterworth. We can’t reply to every email but we do read them all.
Please excuse the automated response but we want to let you know what happens when we hear from you.
Corrections: it is the Guardian’s policy to correct significant errors as soon as possible, other errors may be corrected at our discretion. It helps us work quickly if you identify the article by providing the date, headline and page number or a link to it. If you have emailed us with a request for a correction we will not usually send you a response unless the article directly affects you. Corrections generally appear in the paper’s daily Corrections and clarifications column and/or online within a few days. A full archive of corrections printed in the paper is available online:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/correctionsandclarifications
Complaints: if you have written with a complaint or comment about the Guardian’s journalism I will reply to you if I intend to review it or plan to write about it in my weekly column.
Other queries and requests: if you have written to us about an advertisement, a missing section, an issue relating to the circulation of the newspaper, a technical problem you are having with the website, a reader offer, a competition, or if you have a general query, we will pass your email to the relevant department.
Please note that this mailbox is open to all Guardian journalists.
Best wishes
Siobhain Butterworth
Readers’ editor The Guardian
T +44 (0)20 7713 4736
This email has been automatically generated. Please do not reply to this email
_______________________________
All right, Ms Butterworth. I can take a hint.
Brian
Some more random reflections prompted by events of the past week or so:
The commentators’ consensus on Gordon Brown’s apparently successful teasing of David Cameron at PMQs on Wednesday about his and other Cameroons’ Eton educations (“[Tory] inheritance tax policy seems to have been dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton”) is that Labour has been reduced to playing the class war card, and that this is somehow deeply reprehensible. “We can join in condemning Brown for trying, with his demented smirk, to let slip the dogs of class war,” writes Minette Marrin in The Sunday Times. Surely a little bit OTT? Some media comments seem to have missed the point that the reference to Eton’s playing fields echoes the Duke of Wellington’s famous (but probably apocryphal) remark that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”, which was actually a compliment to Eton, or at any rate to its playing fields. Anyway, what’s wrong with accusing the toffs on the Tory front bench of having been brought up in a rarefied and privileged subsection of society — Eton, the Bullingdon club, and all that — which makes it difficult for them to empathise with the problems of ordinary people? No-one is saying that every Tory front bencher is a toff, or that there are no toffs in the Labour leadership. But the sad fact is that class pervades almost every part of life in Britain (or at any rate in England), although it’s considered a bit off to mention it in polite society; and it’s an indisputable fact of their fundamental founding principles and historical records that the Conservative party exists primarily to defend and promote the interests of the upper and upper middle classes — the landed gentry, the industrialists and financiers, the employers, the businessmen and entrepreneurs: in general, the rich; while the Labour Party, originating in and still perfectly properly linked to the trade union movement, is there to defend the interests of the working and lower middle classes — the employees and the unemployed, the public sector workers, the public services on which the have-nots depend, the most vulnerable and defenceless in society: in general, the poor and the less well-off. Why else do the Tories try to insist that the most urgent problem facing Britain is the enormous budget deficit and national debt, while Labour sees tackling unemployment and accelerating recovery from the recession as a much more pressing requirement? All right, New Labour has often forgotten, blurred or even betrayed that basic Labour mission, but the generalisation about the fundamental difference between the two parties remains valid. The squeamish and mealy-mouthed can bleat all they like about the wickedness of fighting the class war, especially if the fight is laced with humour as it was by Brown on Wednesday (who was his script-writer?). But it goes to the heart of our politics and there’s absolutely no reason not to say so.
* * * * *
Like almost everyone else on this side of the Atlantic, I feel very sorry for Gary McKinnon, the autistic computer hacker who’s likely to face extradition to the United States, there to be tried (and if convicted, as seems likely since he admits most of the charges, imprisoned) for inflicting serious damage on the Pentagon’s computer security systems. However, anyone with an open mind reading the statement by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, in parliament on 1 December, and his comprehensive replies to questions on it, explaining in detail why he has simply been legally unable to intervene to prevent McKinnon’s extradition, is bound to conclude that the case against extraditing the man doesn’t really stand up. Johnson had cogent replies to all the doubts, complaints and worries constantly aired in the media as reasons for blocking the extradition. The issues have gone through exhaustive examination in court after court at every available level, always with the same result. There is still a possibility of judicial review and another appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (nothing to do with the EU), and Johnson promises not to let extradition go ahead until both processes have been exhausted. But the final outcome looks bad for Gary.
One issue that surely calls for further debate is the apparent one-sidedness of the US-UK Extradition Treaty under which the Americans are applying for McKinnon’s extradition. The Tory front bencher Damian Green (yes, he of the home office mole and his leaks) confronted the home secretary with what looks on the face of it to have been a damaging admission by the lady who’s now the government’s chief legal adviser and was then a minister of state at the home office. According to Green, –
Baroness Scotland, the Government’s Attorney-General, said in 2003:
“when we make extradition requests to the United States we shall need to submit sufficient evidence to establish ‘probable cause’. That is a lower test than prima facie but a higher threshold than we ask of the United States”. [Official Report, House of Lords, 16 December 2003; Vol. 655, c. 1063.]
The question of the material difference, if any, between prima facie evidence and probable cause is legally intricate, and goes to the heart of the criticism of the treaty. But here too Alan Johnson spelled out what seemed to me a convincing case for rejecting the view that the treaty is unfairly tilted against the UK and in favour of the US. Altogether Johnson’s performance on all this was exemplary: calm, reasoned, patiently and conscientiously dealing with all the points raised. Only once did he seem to show irritation, when he complained of being “patronised” by “Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)”, an undoubted toff, and not just on the evidence of his famous moat. The home secretary, equally famously a former postman, is in no danger of being accused of toffery, which may explain why he objects to being patronised by those who are.
* * * * *
Perhaps the biggest shock of the week, though, has been the unexpected sacking of no less a personage than Malcolm Tucker, the prime minister’s infamous press secretary in the brilliant BBC political series The Thick of It, written by Armando Ianucci. As one of the reviewers of the Sunday papers in the oddly-named Andrew Marr Show this morning (6 Dec 09), Ianucci accurately summed up what had happened to Tucker by saying that he had “been resigned”. Tucker is an undisputed monster, yet it was impossible not to feel just a little sorry for him watching his face contort as he saw on a television set in the minister’s office the “breaking news” strapline announcing that he had resigned (he hadn’t). Ianucci did however remind Andrew Marr that only the first part of a two-part episode of The Thick of It had so far been broadcast, hinting broadly that we might not have seen the last of the tyrannical, foul-mouthed press secretary. Tucker, we’re repeatedly assured, bears no resemblance whatever to any No. 10 press secretary past or present, alive or dead. You’d better believe it.
* * * * *
In an aside during the Andrew Marr Show press review, Mr Ianucci made a casual remark to the effect that the evidence given so far to the Iraq Inquiry had confirmed the suspicion of firm decisions having been taken to use force against Saddam but repeatedly being denied until the eve of the war. I’m sure Ianucci is much too busy to sit for hours watching or listening to the Iraq Inquiry hearings, but he surely can’t be too busy to spend a few minutes reading my recent blog post that argues the opposite? The evidence given to the inquiry by Tony Blair’s principal foreign affairs adviser at the time of the run-up to the war did indeed provide a convincing defence against the charges that Blair had taken the firm decision to go to war with Iraq months before any such decision was announced, or that he had given George W Bush an unconditional undertaking that we would go to war alongside the Americans. But this was not evidence of a British diplomat’s slavish deference to his political master, nor obedient willingness to defend to the death everything Blair had said and done, as Ianucci seemed to assume: for the official concerned went on to tell the inquiry that in his view, and contrary to Blair’s, the UN inspectors should have been given more time to complete their work in Iraq before the decision was taken to invade: and, even more wounding for Blair, that Blair had had the option at the time, since all peaceful means of getting rid of Iraq’s supposed WMD had not yet been exhausted, of refusing to allow British forces to play any part in the American military action. Nothing slavish about that!
Brian
Two weeks ago, the UK press ran a sensational story about a patient, diagnosed by medical specialists as having been for years in persistent vegetative state (PVS) with no consciousness or ability to communicate, discovered through a state-of-the-art scanning system to have been fully conscious throughout, and now enabled to communicate through a specially designed computer keyboard. The Guardian‘s account, published on 24 November 2009, began:
For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen. Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years.
Then a neurologist, Steven Laureys, who decided to take a radical look at the state of diagnosed coma patients, released him from his torture. Using a state-of-the-art scanning system, Laureys found to his amazement that his brain was functioning almost normally. “I had dreamed myself away,” said Houben, now 46, whose real “state” was discovered three years ago, according to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel this week. Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, published a study in BMC Neurology earlier this year saying Houben could be one of many cases of falsely diagnosed comas around the world. He discovered that although Houben was completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it was just that he was unable to communicate the fact.
Houben now communicates with one finger and a special touchscreen on his wheelchair – he has developed some movement with the help of intense physiotherapy over the last three years.
In September 2006 I wrote a post for this blog (at http://www.barder.com/568):
“Persistent Vegetative State”: some background to last week’s story
September 9th, 2006
Last Friday (8 Sept 06) the Guardian ran a (perhaps deservedly) sensational front page story announcing that “For first time, doctors communicate with patient in persistent vegetative state: Brain scans showed woman was able to imagine playing tennis and walking round her flat”…. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1867567,00.html]
I went on to express surprise — in 2006! — at the failure of the Guardian‘s September 2006 story –
…to connect the latest developments with the extensive work already done on Persistent Vegetative State issues over many years, and its implications for patients who have been diagnosed as being in PVS. A world expert and author of break-through research on the subject is Professor Dr Keith Andrews, Director of the Institute of Complex Neurological Disability at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in Putney, London (on whose governing body I was privileged to sit for some years). An early and still centrally important paper on PVS by Dr Andrews and his collaborators was “Misdiagnosis of the vegetative state: retrospective study in a rehabilitation unit” (Andrews K, Murphy L, Munday R, Littlewood C., British Medical Journal, 1996; 313: 13-16). Based on his studies of a sizeable sample of patients referred to the Royal Hospital after having been diagnosed by specialists elsewhere as being in PVS, Dr Andrews concluded (in the words of a later article) that –
Out of 40 patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, 17 (43%) were later found to be alert, aware, and often able to express a simple wish. The study is one of the largest, most sustained analyses of severely disabled people presumed to be incapable of conscious thinking, communication, or awareness of their surroundings. The author, London neurologist Dr. Keith Andrews, said, “It is disturbing to think that some patients who were aware had for several years been treated as being vegetative.”
So in 2006 I was citing a paper on PVS published in 1996 about the disturbing frequency with which patients were being misdiagnosed as being in persistent vegetative state when in fact they were fully or partially conscious, and could often be enabled to communicate using recently developed techniques.
Once upon a time newspapers kept a clippings library to enable their writers to refer back to earlier material about an apparently new story that they were about to write. Now Google News — and their own hard disks — could easily do that job of elementary research for them. Yet they still regularly announce the invention of the wheel with a fanfare of trumpets. The hacks really ought to have a notice stuck to their computer monitors bearing the legend: “There is nothing new under the sun”. It’s as if the collective consciousness of the media is itself in persistent vegetative state.
But the really worrying moral of this curious tale is that at least 13 years after the publication of a major article about the common misdiagnosis of patients wrongly thought to be in PVS, and techniques for re-establishing communication with a high percentage of them, patients are still, in 2009, being wrongly diagnosed. Each time a patient is rescued from this nightmarish imprisonment in his or her own body, conscious but unable to communicate, the medical triumph is trumpeted as if such a thing had never happened before. The question we should be asking is how many other misdiagnosed patients are languishing in their mental prisons, listening to their doctors and relatives discussing whether to turn off their life support machines? How many life support machines have been switched off while the patient lies there, unable to communicate his awareness of the fate about to destroy him? And lest anyone should suppose that a person trapped in such a nightmare would surely welcome death as a merciful release, it’s worth remembering that not one of those rescued by Dr Andrews from their misdiagnosed condition, and able at last to describe the experience of the captive years, ever said that he or she would rather have died.
Update [pm 5 Dec 09]: Comments by Tony Hatfield and Peter Harvey (below) discuss serious doubts about the genuineness of the technique, known as Facilitated Communication or FC, used to enable Rom Houben, the subject of the current reports, allegedly to communicate. The links helpfully supplied by Tony in his comment point to a mass of evidence that this is either a hoax or a sad case of self-delusion, and that the texts supposedly being typed out by the patient are actually being composed by the facilitator holding Houben’s finger to peck at the letters on the flat keyboard, supposedly in response to faint twitches that she claims to detect in his finger. The video clip of this process seems to me to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the unfortunate Mr Houben is not in any sense doing the typing or even controlling it. It seems unlikely therefore that this patient can in fact now communicate, and doubtful whether any particular level of consciousness has really been detected in his case, although the jury is still out on that.
However, as to the restoration of communication, the almost certain lack of credibility of this case, and apparently of FC generally, can’t be taken as discrediting well documented cases of patients wrongly diagnosed as in PVS and ultimately found not only to have been conscious at some level throughout, but also to be able to communicate, however laboriously, by blinking, or exerting slight pressure of a heel, elbow, ball of a thumb, or other part of the anatomy, on a button that operates a buzzer — one buzz for ‘yes’, two buzzes for ‘no’, or whatever. These cases are, I believe, well documented and not seriously challenged. In the case of the researches conducted by Professor Dr Keith Andrews at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability, referred to in my 2006 blog post and quoted above, Keith Andrews and his assistants several years ago developed a ‘SMART’ (Sensory Modality Assessment and Rehabilitation Technique) kit that used stimuli of all five senses, even including taste, in order to try to identify some means by which a supposedly vegetative patient might be able to do enough to answer a question ‘yes’ or ‘no’: a twitch, a slight pressure, a blink, a frown. Once that’s established, the rest follows: the patient can communicate words by indicating ‘yes’ when the correct letter of the alphabet is read out, and so on. Computers using predictive text can then speed up this process. I don’t think that ‘locked in syndrome’ can seriously be dismissed as illusory, or that it can never be unlocked by techniques such as those discussed. Below is a selection of the comments on one of the websites referred to by Tony Hatfield which appear to bear this out. But in any case the purpose of this post is not to suggest a verdict on the genuineness or otherwise of the particular Houben case which has revived media interest in the whole subject in recent weeks, nor of FC generally, but rather to point out that there’s a long history of research and clinical practice in this field, including some virtually indisputable successes, going back for well over a decade. Even if the Houben case were, improbably, to turn out to be genuine, it certainly wouldn’t be the first of its kind, as much of the mainstream media has been suggesting.
Here are some of the relevant comments, with their URLs for those wishing to check:
Locked-in syndrome is a condition, usually caused by a brainstem stroke but also sometimes caused by traumatic brain injury, in which the patient is fully aware and awake but unable to communicate because nearly all voluntary muscles are paralyzed. Usually, locked-in patients can only blink their eyes. From my perspective it is a fate worse than death. The most famous case of being locked-in is Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist who developed locked-in syndrome after suffering a stroke in 1995. Bauby could communicate through blinking his left eye, which was the only part of his body over which he had any control left. Amazingly, he was able to dictate slowly and painfully his experiences by blinking when the correct letter of the alphabet was reached by the person transcribing his memoirs, which were published as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and later made into a movie.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.phpI work in brain injury advocacy, and have been active in the young people in nursing homes campaign here. I know of several people discharged from hospital with PVS diagnoses who are now clearly, independently communicating (in a couple of cases, become peer support leaders/advocates around YPINH [Young People In Nursing Homes] issues themselves)
Posted by: Maria Strong | November 25, 2009 6:08 AMhttp://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.php#comment-2100686
I don’t think adaptive technology is advanced enough, but one twitch for yes, two for no, seems doable. If human fingers could detect the twitch, technology would be able to.
Posted by: LW | November 25, 2009 10:23 AMhttp://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.php#comment-2101041
“I don’t think adaptive technology is advanced enough”
Oh yes it is. For years, Dr Stephen Hawking has been able to ‘talk’ just by twitching a single muscle. And he’s not alone, there are dozens like him who can use the same basic technology to communicate.
Posted by: sophia8 | November 25, 2009 11:10 AMhttp://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.php#comment-2101163
Indeed, the technology IS advanced enough. There are AAC devices that respond to tiny finger twitches, eye blinks, even gaze-tracking (i.e. all you have to do is scan the board and hold your gaze for a moment on the picture/word/letter you want). Cost is an obstacle to getting access to the more advanced systems, but they do exist. This man’s speech therapist ought to know that, same as she ought to know that FC is complete bunk.
Posted by: borealys | November 25, 2009 12:11 PM
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.php#comment-2101348Notably, though, [Professor Stephen Hawkings has] been declining lately. He can’t work the clicker as easily as he used to. He’s starting to have to use a form of communication that might be described as facilitated, though it’s not what’s shown in the video above. He works closely with an undergrad (who may, by now, be postdoc; I don’t know), who has gotten to know him well enough to be able to predict what he’s saying before he’s finished selecting the particular word. To avoid tiring Hawking, the student sometimes lists a series of words, stopping when Hawking indicates that he’s found the correct one. Notably, Hawking still has facial control, so people can read his emotions to some degree. Even so, it still takes considerable patience on the student’s part. It is very tedious compared to the facilitated communication triumphs that are sometimes claimed.
Posted by: Calli Arcale | November 25, 2009 12:48 PM
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/11/another_contender_for_the_worst_reportin.php#comment-2101442
Brian
Barely a week into the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq, two ex-mandarins’ evidence has pretty definitively acquitted Tony Blair of one of the gravest charges against him, and convicted him of another.
In the testimony by Sir David Manning, the prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser during the key period preceding the attack on Iraq in March 2003 and a major influence on policy at that time, Sir David repeatedly stressed that Blair’s promise to Bush that in the event of a US attack on Iraq Britain would join the Americans in the resort to armed force was always on the explicit condition that they would “go down the UN route” and assemble through the UN a coalition of allies acting with UN authority. The implication of this, whether or not it was ever made explicit, was obviously that force would be used against Iraq only when all diplomatic possibilities (i.e. through the UN) had been tried and exhausted. Force was to be the last resort.
Manning also made it clear that while the Americans had openly regarded the objective as ‘régime change’ — getting rid of Saddam Hussein — the UK side had always made it clear that régime change could not be a legitimate objective justifying the use of force if and when diplomatic efforts had been exhausted. The only objective in British eyes capable of winning UN approval was Iraqi compliance with numerous mandatory UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Iraq must rid itself of Weapons of Mass Destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological). However, it is now clear that in both Blair’s and Bush’s eyes, it was almost inconceivable that Iraq would comply with the resolutions so long as Saddam was in power, and they thought it highly unlikely that Saddam could be overthrown without the use of force, sooner or later. To that extent régime change and forcing Iraq to disarm in compliance with the resolutions came to virtually the same thing: you probably couldn’t have one without the other.
Sir D Manning’s assertion that Blair consistently laid down the condition of action through the UN for British participation in any future military action against Iraq is fully borne out by a re-reading of the so-called Downing Street Memos, the secret documents from March 2002 that have been leaked and are available in full on the Web (e.g. here). These papers have been widely interpreted as evidence that Tony Blair had firmly committed himself to British participation in an American attack on Iraq at least a year before the attack took place, and that in giving several public assurances right up to the eve of the attack that no decision had been taken to go to war with Iraq Blair had been lying. Manning’s evidence, and the Downing Street Memos re-read in the light of it, demonstrates that this is not so. Blair had always insisted on “going down the UN route” and as a result of his insistence that unless Bush went to the UN first Britain would not participate in the attack Bush decided to go to the UN, however reluctantly and despite strong pressure from the neo-cons and others in his administration not to do so.
It’s certainly clear from the leaked documents, and will no doubt be confirmed in other witnesses’ evidence to Chilcot in the coming days and weeks, that contingency planning for an attack on Iraq began in both Washington and London many months before it took place. But it was contingency planning only, not involving a firm decision to use force, anyway on the UK side. Since both leaders believed, reasonably enough, that Saddam would not even consider complying with the UN resolutions unless he could be convinced that non-compliance would lead to a military attack on Iraq, it was legitimate and logical to begin to deploy armed forces in Iraq’s neighbouring countries well before any decision had been taken to use them.
It’s also true that both Blair and Bush were clearly convinced that all attempts to secure Iraqi compliance with the resolutions without the use of force were highly likely to fail, so that in their eyes force was almost inevitable in the end. Because of this mindset, much of the drafting of the relevant documents tended to assume that force would indeed eventually be used, that Britain would participate once its conditions had been satisfied, and that to ensure that the use of force would be legal under international law (both for its own sake and also to bring the maximum number of allies on board while obtaining wide support from UK and to a lesser extent US domestic public opinion), it would be essential to act at all times in a manner best calculated to persuade the Security Council first to authorise a concerted peaceful effort to oblige Saddam to comply with the resolutions by disarming, and when that effort failed, to authorise the use of force to compel compliance – which in Bush’s and Blair’s minds also meant overthrowing him and his régime. In the eyes of the American neo-cons and hawks, the proceedings in the UN were purely for form’s sake: going through the motions to get the UN’s blessing, if possible, for what they reckoned would have to be done anyway. It’s fair, though, to believe that Blair genuinely wanted to exhaust all peaceful means of forcing Iraq to disarm (which would probably bring about régime change) before any resort to the use of force, partly to avoid the bloodshed and horror of war, but also because until peaceful means had been exhausted, the Security Council would not authorise the use of force. Despite some waverings, Bush basically decided to go along with this.
For all these reasons, a huge US-UK (especially UK) effort was made to secure a Security Council resolution demanding Iraqi compliance with the earlier resolutions, including full cooperation with the UN weapons inspectors whom Saddam was compelled to re-admit to the country, and making it clear that if Iraq was again guilty of a material breach of its obligation to comply, military action against him would follow. There was then a lengthy negotiation of the text of a draft resolution between the 15 members of the Council, involving at least one significant textual concession by those (mainly France, Russia and China) opposed to the use of force for the immediate future until the weapons inspectors had had much more time to complete their work, and a corresponding concession by the US and UK which wanted the resolution explicitly to authorise force as soon as Iraq committed a “material breach”. The result was resolution 1441, adopted unanimously by all 15 members of the Council — a remarkable triumph of mainly British diplomacy and a bright feather in the cap of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK’s Permanent Representative on the Council.
So on the charge of lying when he said that no firm decision to go to war against Iraq had been taken until the eve of the invasion, Tony Blair must be acquitted. On the charge that he committed himself to British participation in US military action against Iraq without laying down firm conditions for that participation, he must also be acquitted. Nothing in any of the leaked documents, nor in those made available by the Butler Inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war, contradicts the Manning evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on 30 November 2009 which supports those acquittals.
* * * * *
On the more serious charge, however — that Tony Blair took Britain to war before all possibilities of a peaceful solution had been exhausted and without the authority of the Security Council, Sir David Manning’s evidence is damning, especially when read alongside that of Sir Jeremy Greenstock on 27 November 2009. Here the verdict hinges in part, but not exclusively, on the proper interpretation of Resolution 1441. In his secret advice to the prime minister on 7 March 2003 the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, the government’s principal legal adviser, warned that it was doubtful whether resolution 1441 could safely be relied on as authorising the use of force against Iraq by any UN member state without a further resolution explicitly conveying Security Council authority for force to be used. Ten days later, on 17 March, Lord Goldsmith published in Hansard a different opinion, asserting that since Iraq had been found to have committed a ‘material breach’ of its UN obligations, the authority for the use of force in a much earlier Security Council resolution had been ‘revived’ by the terms of resolution 1441; and that if the Council had meant to require a further resolution before force could be used following a ‘material breach’, resolution 1441 would have said so, whereas all the resolution had actually required was that in the event of a report of a material breach, the Council would meet to ‘consider’ it, not to take a ‘decision’ on it. In his evidence to Chilcot, Sir Jeremy Greenstock amplified this argument in support of his own view that the war was ‘legal’ by referring to the ‘negotiating history’ of the text of 1441. During these negotiations, France, Russia and others had pressed for the inclusion in the text of a specific reference to the need for the Council to take a further ‘decision’ — i.e. to pass another resolution — before force could be used if another material breach was reported. The UK and US had resisted this, and the end result had been that 1441 had required the Council only to ‘consider’ the situation following a reported material breach, not necessarily to take a decision on it.
This argument for the interpretation of 1441 as authorising the use of force without the need for a further Council resolution has however failed to convince the great majority of authorities on international law. The Attorney-General himself warned in his earlier, secret, opinion that if the matter came before a court, it was doubtful whether arguments based on the negotiating history would be admissible since there were no impartial records of those negotiations. It is anyway contrary to common sense to assert that in promising to ‘consider’ the situation following a further material breach, the Council was denying itself the right to decide what to do about it. Under the Charter it is for the Security Council, not any member state or states, to decide when the use of force should be authorised. Above all, the UK had made the most strenuous efforts to get the Council to agree to a second resolution explicitly, or at least implicitly but unmistakably, authorising the use of force, but had completely failed to muster the necessary nine votes in favour of such a resolution, since a clear majority on the Council favoured giving the inspectors more time — perhaps six months — to complete their work before war could be justified. It is obviously difficult to argue that the Council, in adopting resolution 1441, had intended the resolution to convey authority for any member state to go to war with Iraq without the need for another resolution conferring that authority when a clear majority of the Council had refused to agree to precisely any such resolution. Not only the Attorney-General but also the FCO’s legal advisers, specialists in international law as Lord Goldsmith was not, had advised that going to war without a second resolution would be illegal — and therefore, as the deputy legal adviser said in her letter of resignation, would amount to the “crime of aggression”. To make matters worse for the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and for Tony Blair in No. 10, Ms Wilmshurst made it clear that she was not just expressing her own view:
My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UN security council resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March.
And just to give the knife a final twist, both Sir Jeremy Greenstock and Sir David Manning, both of whom had been active at the very heart of these great events, told the Chilcot Inquiry that in their own personal view the inspectors should have been given more time to complete their work before any member state resorted to the use of force. When Manning was asked whether the UK had had any options when its efforts to get a second resolution collapsed and the US prepared to go to war forthwith, he replied that of course we had: we had had the option of refusing to take part in the US invasion. It is rarely indeed that the former senior adviser to a prime minister publicly condemns his former master in such explicit terms.
On the balance of the evidence so far, therefore, Tony Blair stands condemned for having failed to stand by the condition he had laid down for joining the Americans in the attack on Iraq; for joining in the use of force before all other options had been exhausted, since force was not a last resort, even if the then Attorney-General’s and Sir Jeremy Greenstock’s interpretation of 1441 is accepted; and if it isn’t, for using force without the authority of the Security Council and thus in contraversion of the UN Charter and of international law — “the crime of aggression”.
The importance of this indictment is that it does not depend on any particular interpretation of resolution 1441. There was no need to go to war when we did, whether or not we did so with legal authority. The majority of Security Council members wanted the inspectors to be given more time before there needed to be a decision — by the Council, not by Washington or London — that the time had come to use force. Even if you accept the Goldsmith-Greenstock argument that resolution 1441 gave authority for the use of force (which few legal experts do), it doesn’t mean that using force when we did was justified; the case for regarding it as tragically premature is overwhelming. The Manning and Greenstock testimonies have surely put the matter beyond doubt.
Critics of the war in general and of Tony Blair and his Cabinet in particular need therefore to be careful about their targets. Continuing to denounce Blair for having committed us unconditionally to war many months before the decision was first announced will only muddy the waters: Blair has a strong defence against that charge. It will be more effective to concentrate on the issues where, anyway at this stage of the Inquiry, he has little or no defence available. He took us to war when it was unnecessary and inadvisable to do so, and probably in breach of international law into the bargain. That’s quite enough to be going on with.
There are other matters on which Tony Blair is convincingly accused of having lied: in misrepresenting the strength and volume of the intelligence indicating that Iraq had WMD; in promising not to go to war without the Council’s authority unless a majority in the Council was in favour of giving that authority but was frustrated by “an unreasonable veto”; in claiming that the French had said they would never in any circumstances at any time allow a Security Council resolution authorising the use of force to be adopted — and that this had prevented us from getting the second resolution we had sought, neither proposition being true. But before pronouncing judgement on these charges, we must await the further evidence that will be given to the Chilcot Inquiry. Meanwhile we can enjoy the luxury of watching the oral evidence live on streaming video, of watching past oral evidence and reading the transcripts of it, and of reading the written submissions, thanks to Sir John Chilcot’s insistence on maximum transparency in the face of Gordon Brown’s expressed preference for secrecy. Bravo, Sir John!
Brian
