[A-List] UK state: under the US cosh

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

This little critique is good as far as it goes, which is not far at all. The
truth of the matter, which most ordinary people can and do readily
appreciate, is that Tony (aka Bush's poodle) was effectively coerced into
following Bush into war. The "special relationship" was always based upon a
rather tawdry Cold War bargain between Washington and London in which the
latter would maintain the pretence of being a world power by standing aloof
from Europe and hanging on to its colonial assets as best as possible,
whilst behaving like head prefect with respect to the US's global
schoolmaster. Anti-communism did much to paper over the cracks in that
alliance, but the Soviet collapse accelerated the growing recognition of
Europe's strategic importance to both states. Nevertheless the architecture
of hegemony, beginning with the loans incurred during the First World War
and extending through "Lend-Lease", the financial crises of 1947, 1957, 1967
and 1974-6 and culminating in the IMF conditionality of 1976 and the further
erosion of "sovereignty" achieved under the liberalising regime of Thatcher
has rendered British autonomy even harder to muster. Sure, Blair is to blame
for this fiasco, and he should be held to account for what he has done.
Quite properly, Tam Dalyell called him a war criminal. But the fact of the
matter is that the British state is, though much of the time under duress,
an instrument of US global repression. That Blair did not stand up to the
pressure emanating from Washington is his ultimate betrayal, but one that he
shares to varying degrees with his predecessors of the last 80 years.

-----

Blame the masters, not the servants

Downing Street bullied the spooks to get the war dossier it wanted

Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday February 3, 2004
The Guardian

On September 2 2002, the Hutton report reminds us, I quoted in the Guardian
a source who told me: "The dossier will no longer play a role. There's very
little new to put in it." The next day, Tony Blair, just back from a visit
to George Bush, said the government would publish a new dossier on Iraq's
weapons programme. My source was completely wrong on his first point,
completely right on his second. He knew what was in the existing dossier and
the weak case it made for military action against Iraq.

He could not believe that the government could use a dossier based on what
little British intelligence really knew about the state of Saddam Hussein's
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programme to justify war.

The answer, we now know, is that Blair and his closest advisers were
determined to abuse intelligence to produce a document to try and convince
parliamentary and public opinion to back an invasion of Iraq. A train of
events was set in motion leading to the greatest scandal involving the
intelligence agencies in modern times.
The scandal is all the greater since the published dossier was used to
support a decision which, according to senior Whitehall officials, was made
not as a result of anything it contained, but simply because of Bush's
decision to go to war. It is inconceivable, they say, that Blair would have
allowed Bush to go to war on his own. Whatever Bush does, Blair is not far
behind. But that position, the prime minister learned yesterday, is not
always comfortable. Bush's decision to set up an inquiry into the issue of
intelligence and Iraqi WMD left Blair with no choice but to set up his own.

A UN security council resolution supporting an attack on Iraq would have got
Blair out of a corner. But as the chances of that were thin, a convincing
dossier painting a picture of an Iraq building up a dangerous arsenal of WMD
that threatened British interests was essential. The intelligence agencies
were told to come up with scarier information than the original dossier
contained. Robin Cook and Clare Short, who both saw the intelligence
reports, said last night it would be unfair to blame the agencies for
exaggerating the threat.

There is ample evidence from what the Hutton inquiry heard - though the
former law lord chose to ignore it - showing how Downing Street, notably
Alastair Campbell, succeeded in persuading intelligence chiefs to "sex up"
the dossier. The dossier, Campbell told the inquiry, had to be "revelatory,
we needed to show it was new and informative, and part of a bigger case".

Hutton notes that a draft of the preface to be signed by Blair contained the
phrase: "The case I make is not that Saddam could launch a nuclear attack on
London or another part of the UK (he could not)." It was taken out of the
published version. That was a sin of omission. There was plenty left in
Blair's preface - and the dossier - that has a hollow ring to it now.
Saddam's WMD programme, Blair said at the time, "is active, detailed and
growing. The policy of containment is not working".

Just as the CIA was bullied by elements in the White House and the Pentagon,
here senior intelligence officials succumbed to pressure from Downing
Street. They say the hyping up was done by the politicians, not by them.
There is, however, one glaring example for which intelligence chiefs, as
much as ministers, have yet to answer. The claim that Iraqi forces could
deploy chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes is made more than
once in the dossier, most emphatically in Blair's preface. Scarlett told the
inquiry the claim referred only to short-range, battlefield weapons, not
long-range missiles as the dossier implied. Sir Richard Dearlove, head of
MI6, reflected his frustration just once - telling Hutton that MPs'
criticisms of the way the 45-minute claim was described in the dossier were
"valid".

Whitehall officials now privately admit it was dishonest to describe the
45-minute claim as "recent intelligence", since it could have been gleaned
from old Iraqi military manuals. "Why now and why Saddam?" asked Ann Taylor,
chair of parliament's intelligence and security committee when she first saw
the dossier. The same questions were being asked by intelligence chiefs. The
fight against terrorism was far more important, and an attack on Iraq would
make it more difficult, a view echoed yesterday by the Commons foreign
affairs committee.

The intelligence agencies are servants to their elected political masters.
Blaming them for bowing to Downing Street's demands would be a bit rich.
These are the issues an inquiry must address. They are more crucial at a
time when Blair has adopted Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, whose
success or failure - and legality - will depend on accurate, not
politicised, intelligence.

· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor.