LORD BUTLER’S report on how Blair’s government tried to build support
for Bush’s imperialist war on Iraq showed that government and state
officials lied about the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction.
The report gave detail of ‘flawed’ intelligence and showed how the
‘dodgy dossier’ with its ludicrous ’45-minute attack’ warning grossly
exaggerated the case for war.
Butler however – like an evangelist promising "Though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." – decided nobody was to
blame! Even John Scarlett, the former head of the Joint Intelligence
Committee and now head of MI6 escaped with his job if not a snow-white
reputation. So did New Labour’s Blair, Straw and Hoon.
In the USA, a Senate hearing is trying to pin all the blame for the
Iraq war and its increasingly deadly and unpopular consequences on its
intelligence services. CIA director George Tenet resigned for
‘intelligence failures’. After Butler, no-one in government or state
service felt under pressure to resign.
But all the redeeming power of Butler can’t hide what’s been happening
since the invasion of Iraq. Any idea that the "handover of
sovereignty" in Iraq would make the occupation more acceptable to
Iraqis have faded fast.
The US air force’s war on Fallujah continues, with a sixth air strike
on 18 July. It killed 14 Iraq civilians in a poor area of the city,
including women and children – the US military claimed al-Qa’ida-linked
militants were there "just moments before."
But this attack was ‘approved’ by Iraq’s interim prime minister Iyad
Allawi. US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage said the Iraqi
government has been "fully informed". "We didn’t just
strike off on our own. A sovereign nation had to agree."
Obviously he agrees with his boss Colin Powell’s view that Iraq had
sovereignty but some "of that sovereignty they are going to allow us
to exercise on their behalf…"
Iraqi people are now suffering under this occupation and opposition is
growing. There has been a ‘seamless transition’ from direct imperialist
control to rule through an isolated Iraqi stooge regime.
Anger at attacks such as the carpet bombing of Fallujah will grow.
Butler may have absolved Blair but history will not.
