It was, however, the events of the previous day that set the standard for how the rest of the war was to be conducted by the doughty liberators of Iraq.

This was the attack on Dora Farms outside Baghdad where some Iraqi whispered into his phone that Saddam Hussein was visiting his children. Down hurtled four 2000-pound bunker-busters and 40 cruise missiles. There were high fives in the White House situation room at news of a mangled Saddam being hauled from the rubble. It all turned out to be nonsense, like most military bulletins out of Iraq. The bunker busters all missed the compound. Saddam Hussein wasn’t there. Uday and Qusay weren’t there. Fifteen civilians died, including nine women and a child.

History, written by the victors of course, does not record their names. And so it went.

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Largely trampled beneath the deeply unedifying flurry of handbags that we must now call Bullygate was the announcement that the Prime Minister is to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War on March 5. However, lost in the distant mists of time B.B. (Before Bullygate), was Gordon Brown’s launch of a pre-emptive strike on the Inquiry.

On February 19, 2010 at approximately 15:27 GMT explosions were heard in the Chilcot Inquiry. Special operations commandos from Number 10’s News Management Division, infiltrated throughout Westminster, called in the early air strike.

Getting his retailiation in first, Brown announced ‘the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not the reason he backed the invasion of Iraq’. ‘History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,’ said Winston Churchill. Brown hopes to ape him.

Mr Brown said weapons were not his prime motivation, and instead it was Iraq’s persistent disregard for United Nations’ resolutions which “put at risk” global security.

Ah, yes. Respect for international law and the will of the international community (or at least the five permament members of the UN security council) are important considerations. Although, how a disregard for United Nations’ resolutions in this instance puts global security at risk if we discount WMDs is for much more morally flexible minds than mine.

And isn’t it fortunate that Gordon now reveals he didn’t regard Saddam an imminent threat, just as that argument is shown (once again) to be a stinking pile of mendacious horseshit. If only Brown had had a quiet word in Alastair Campbell’s ear back in 2002, all of this unpleasantness might have been avoided. Brown seems to have had no consideration of Iraqi human rights (as Blair later tried to twist it) and admits Saddam could have stayed in power if only he’d come clean about the weapons he didn’t have.

If anything, Brown’s case for cluster-bombing children is even weaker than Blair’s. At least Blair tried to convince us of some threat that needed countering. Brown makes the deaths of – at the very least – 100,000 people, the destruction of a country, and the debasement of UK foreign policy sound like an early bed time for disobedience. I have children who have a ‘persistent disregard’ for what they’re told. God help them if I take up the Brown Doctrine.

Mission Accomplished.

Still, should Brown win the election I for one look forward to him taking to new theatres his intolerance of countries whose flouting United Resolutions ‘put at risk’ global security. What are the chances, do you think?

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Donald Rumsfeld weeded out from those going to help the reconstruction of Iraq anyone who could speak Arabic, on the grounds they would be pro-Arab. As a result, it took the Americans 18 months to realise that when marines held up the flat of their hand to oncoming cars to signal them to stop, they were actually using the Iraqi hand-signal for “come forward”. That’s why so many families in cars were shot.

Weren’t we told that we were invading because we are pro-Arab? You know, human rights, Saddam is a monster and have a look at this shredder? Still, no regrets.

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…newspapers do not always report fairly or accurately and [...] I always tried to take decisions in the best interests of the country…

Poor Geoff, suffering so at the hands of nasty newspapers. It’s good that he’s finally come to the conclusion that newspapers aren’t always the benign collaters of the public record, however late in the day it might be. He clearly thought ‘45 MINUTES FROM DOOM‘ headlines and the hounding of Dr David Kelly showed newspapers acting ‘fairly or accurately’. He’s certainly never felt compelled to make a public statement to the contrary. But then he did have a filthy hand in both squalid affairs.

Still, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents etc.

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(You remember Iraq, don’t you? That place out east that this is all about in the first place. It’s easy to forget that what with all these politicians’ fragile egos, reputations and book sales to worry about).

It seems that, seven years after the war, achieving democracy in Iraq remains very much an ‘aspiration’ (New Labour, after all, loves a good ‘aspiration‘; they’re so pleasingly lacking in concrete and promise). When giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, Blair said: ‘It is too early to say right now whether the Iraqi democracy will take root and will function effectively, although… there are really hopeful signs.’

Really hopeful signs?

Last month, an unelected commission held over from the early days of the US occupation of Iraq, the Justice and Accountability Commission, issued a shocking ruling banning more than 500 candidates from taking part in the election, including a number of members of the current parliament running for reelection… Secular politicians, nationalists, former Baathists with low-level positions, dissident Baathists who left the party in the 1970s (such as Allawi and Mutlaq), and many others are painted as blood-stained criminals and “Saddamists.” The fact that Maliki has descended to such bitter and petty name calling signals that the prime minister has abandoned any pretense of trying to rise about sectarianism to become a national leader. For the election, at least, Maliki has thrown his lot in with the pro-Iranian clique. *

The Justice and Accountability Commission is run by Ahmed Chalabi. He, for those who don’t remember, was the Iraqi exile and ‘convicted fraudster‘ who helped supply the piss poor intelligence on Iraq’s WMD that made the ‘case’ for war. Funny how all the comedians with a hand in doing that are still around and doing well.

So much for the ‘really hopeful signs’ for Iraqi ‘democracy’ (does that jackass even read the newspapers, do you think?) How are things for ordinary Iraqis? Let’s have a look…

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and ­Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years…

Just super. Anyone see ‘really hopeful signs’ there? And to think Tony’s worried about his toxic legacy.

* Thanks to Mr P for the link.

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I didn’t see much news in the last couple of weeks but the headlines from the Chilcot Inquiry managed to waft their way to my holiday bolthole. Claire Short and former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmhurst may have got the applause but for me the stars of the inquiry so far have been two other faces from the squalid past, namely Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

The word that sprang to mind when seeing the pair is reduced. Look at Tony Blair, his tan skin pulled tight like the soiled sheets of a deathbed, the tear of his mouth revealing the bones underneath. With his invisible, inept, and ineffectual peace mission to the Middle East going nowhere fast, Tony has been reduced to whoring handbags for Louis Vuitton.

Now, I know he’s paid a shedload of cash for what he does but does he look happy to you? Intellectually hollow speeches to an endless parade of nodding dogs. The moody accounting. The handbags. Does the money make up for all the crappy, empty jobs he has? Speaking as someone who was once paid quite well for a job I loathed and which made me utterly miserable, I hope not. It would be some small punishment.

But then, as we saw from his evidence to Chilcot, Blair is a man of cast iron certainties. He’s not one for expressing regret or remorse or for reconsidering (‘I’d do it again,’ he declared). He could probably shovel manure for a living and convince himself he’s king of the world. He’s to be envied in a way.

Then there’s Campbell. One thing that Campbell’s evidence to Chilcot revealed was the true nature of what he did (and still does) for Tony Blair. He was a turd polisher. They may have been Tony Blair’s turds (or high-level government government announcements if you want to mask the smell of what Blair squeezed out between 1994 and 2005) but turds they remain. Each morning Blair would drop another steaming load (or initiatives and back-of-a-fag-packet ideas, if you prefer) onto Alastair’s desk who would then get to buffing them.

And with hindsight he wasn’t actually that good at it, as the likes of the transparently awful presentation of the so-called evidence of Saddam’s WMD shows. Look at the automatic scepticism that policiticians’ utterances are met with now and tell me Campbell doesn’t bear a huge responsibility for it. It’s a measure of Gordon Brown’s desperation and impotence that he would put himself under Campbell’s influence. Once a confidante of presidents and kings, Campbell’s now reduced to bragging about all the work he does for charidee on his blog. His blog!

Is Alastair happy? Possibly not. There he is reduced to near tears on the Andrew Marr show. Was his emotional display (if that’s what it was) triggered by the deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children and hundreds of British troops? Not a bit of it. Campbell welled up over some perceived slight over his ‘latest work of fiction’, the precious, precious little love.

The delicate flower thought Marr was linking his latest novel to the piss poor Iraq dossiers. I might be a bit slow but I didn’t make the connection. I imagine most people merely thought, ‘Oh God, Campbell’s bashed out another awful book. He’s going to be unavoidable while he whores it’, rather than laughing at Marr’s supposed chutzpah. Still, it’s good to see that Campbell has a softer side. He isn’t just the strutting, jutting, hardman bully of popular legend but also a thin-skinned, whining little prat who can be brought to a breathless stop by Andrew bloody Marr. Campbell’s now trying to cover himself by quibbling over the number of civilian casualties as quoted by Marr. As if there is any number that shows him and his former boss in any favourable light whatsoever.

Campbell should be grateful. In a universe where morality worked properly he wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without being subjected to a thick hail of sputum. Instead there he is, going wobbly over some gentle questioning from an establishment bum-kisser. Still, it won’t have done the book sales any harm.

Anyway. Back.

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One of the most vivid details to emerge from the [David] Kelly affair was that Alastair Campbell had used a pin held in the palm of his hand to control his temper while testifying to the foreign affairs committee. Each time he felt the explosive urge, the story went, he would squeeze on the pin and the pain would distract him from the immediate provocation. Like many stories about Campbell, this one wasn’t entirely accurate – it was actually a paper clip – but the gist was true.

It’s good to know this man spent so long at the heart of government.

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Reading the high court judgment, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country, at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgment sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

But anyway. What’s Jordan been up to lately?

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…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

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[Iraq Inquiry chairman, Sir John] Chilcot repeated his insistence that evidence would be heard in public, and perhaps live on television, “wherever possible”.

But he said some sessions would remain behind closed doors, “consistent with the need to protect national security, sometimes to ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses”.

‘To ensure complete candour and openness from witnesses’. To be fair, it doesn’t take a genius to translate this. What Chilcot is saying, in other words, is some prominent members of the British Establishment cannot be trusted or expected to tell the truth in public. How marvellous.

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