Hutton Enquiry: No trust in Blair

Blair has admitted that people don't trust him or his government. At a press conference full of evasion and condescension, Blair appeared unrepentant about the death of Dr Kelly - then jetted off to Barbados for a holiday few of his electors can afford.

Only 24% of people still trust New Labour, putting the hated Tories three points ahead of Labour in a YouGov poll (25 July 2003). No wonder the government, led by Alistair Campbell, virulently attacked the BBC, normally an obedient servant of the establishment, hoping to create a diversion from their problems.

Web of deceit

Now an unelected Judge, Lord Hutton, is beginning his enquiry into the apparent suicide of Dr Kelly, and the web of deceit that it exposed.

But meanwhile the deceit goes on. Blair no longer talks about finding actual Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq - the excuse for the war - but only of finding "programmes," meaning intentions to build WMD.

But Iraqi scientists still maintain that even the programmes were abandoned before the war.

A secretive US inspection claims to be uncovering "surprises" but will only talk about the Iraqi "deception programme" to bury these WMD programmes in the desert!

Of course, no one is asking why in the past the British and US governments secretly sanctioned providing Iraq with chemical and biological weapons capability; why the US sent intelligence and advisors to help Iraq use its weapons, or why the CIA backed Saddam coming to power in the first place!

No honest admission about the false claim that Iraqi missiles could be ready to fire at British bases in 45 minutes - Lord Hutton might not even examine this claim and the wider issues of the war on Iraq.

Meanwhile this war has lead to a guerrilla war in Iraq and impeded the fight against terrorism rather than helped it, as the Commons foreign affairs committee has just warned.

Human rights

What about the wider issue of the denial of human rights to the captives in Guantanamo Bay in this 'war on terrorism' which even the President of the Law Society condemned? What about the wider issue of the continuing torture and killings in Iraq - not by Saddam and his sons, but by the US occupying force, which Amnesty International has recently condemned?

The socialist condemned Saddam's regime when Britain and the US considered it an ally, and we condemn the British / US occupation of Iraq now. Whatever the Hutton enquiry produces, it will not rebuild the trust in a war-mongering government which is based on lies and deception.

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