What We Think

Iraq War: The Guilty Men

NO
SO-CALLED weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. The main
justification for the war, that Saddam’s chemical, biological and even
nuclear weapons posed a threat to the world, was completely fraudulent.

Now two top-level inquiries, by the Senate Intelligence Committee in
the US and Butler here, completely shatter the Bush-Blair case for war.

The damning US Senate report shows that the CIA, using bogus
‘evidence’, cooked the intelligence books. The CIA’s assessment, it says,
is "the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the
nation".

All the blame is dumped on the CIA’s spymasters. The report clears Bush
and vice-president Dick Cheney of pressuring the CIA. They blame
"collective group-think". But how come it harmonised so well
with the Bush-Rumsfeld agenda?

One incident is very revealing. A CIA analyst urged his boss to warn
Colin Powell that ‘evidence’ of Saddam’s mobile bio-weapon laboratories
Powell was about to present to the UN general assembly came from a very
dodgy Iraqi source, codenamed ‘Curveball’. His boss told him: "This
war’s going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn’t say…
the Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether
Curveball knows what he’s talking about."

Unreliable ‘evidence’

The Bush regime was already mobilising for war. The CIA’s job was to
supply the required ‘evidence’. John Rockefeller, the Senate Committee’s
Democratic vice-chair, complains that the report "fails to fully
explain the environment of intense pressure in which intelligence
community officers were asked to render judgements on matters relating to
Iraq, when the most senior officials of the Bush administration had
already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly."

At least George Tenet resigned as CIA director – before Bush was forced
to sack him. Here, unbelievably, John Scarlett, chair of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, the body that served up the phoney intelligence
for Blair, has been promoted to head the secret security service, MI6.

Yet, as Butler shows, British intelligence chiefs are guilty of exactly
the same kind of falsification and deception as the CIA. Between them,
Scarlett and Blair ‘sexed-up’ the evidence published in the September 2002
dossier.

The intelligence chiefs played a shameful role in falsely justifying
war against Iraq. Ultimately, however, it is Blair and his ministers who
bear the responsibility for unleashing barbarous death and destruction on
the people of Iraq.

Scarlett should not be promoted, but sacked. The secret intelligence
services, which are a threat to democratic rights, should be abolished.

Blair must go

A genuinely independent committee of democratically elected
representatives from trade unions, community organisations and so on,
should be appointed to investigate the activities and the files of all the
intelligence services. Any agencies charged with responsibility for the
protection of the safety of the public should be open, publicly
accountable, and subject to democratic control.

Blair committed Britain to Bush’s course of military aggression. He
took the decision to join the imperialist invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Butler further exposes the deceitful manoeuvres used to justify this
indefensible action. It is time for Blair to go.