ETERNAL VIGILANCE

BBC Exposes Blair's Intelligence Manipulation

Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent
Monday March 21, 2005
The Guardian

The BBC last night gave another sign that it is determined to maintain its editorial independence by screening a Panorama programme strongly critical of Tony Blair's manipulation of thin intelligence, on the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
In the programme, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, was reported as having told Mr Blair that Washington had fixed policy on a war against Iraq and was going to fit the intelligence around that policy.

Despite the humiliation of losing its director general, Greg Dyke, over its allegations concerning David Kelly, the government arms control officer, the film contained powerful condemnation of the government.

It included interviews with former officials who had already broken in public with the government's Iraq strategy. It also quoted extensively from leaked documents first revealed by the Daily Telegraph.

In the most startling revelation, the programme claimed that at a meeting on July 23 2002, Sir Richard said a war was inevitable, adding that the facts and the intelligence were being fixed round the policy set out by George Bush's administration.

The claim was based on several reliable sources, Panorama said.

It claimed that Sir Richard briefed Mr Blair that the quality of intelligence sourcing for some claims made in the run-up to the publication of the intelligence dossier was developmental, adding: "The source remains unproven." Nevertheless, Mr Blair told MPs two weeks later: "The intelligence picture they paint is one accumulated over the past four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative."

The programme also claimed that British intelligence was unable to convince neutral members of the UN security council, such as Mexico, of the dangers of Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

The programme quoted Adolfo Zinser, former Mexican ambassador to the UN, referring to a meeting with MI6. Mr Zinser said: "I asked them: 'Do you have full proof of the existence of these weapons at any one of these particular sites that you are referring to? The MI6 officers told me: "No."

Mr Zinser added: "It was very clear they didn't have proof, they had circumstantial evidence of a funny behaviour, of a suspicious behaviour. But I knew that ... because that was what we were getting from the [UN] inspectors."

The programme also interviewed Sir Stephen Wall, Mr Blair's former European adviser, who said of the legal case for war: "We stretched the legal argument to breaking point, and the fact that we do not have authority does set a dangerous precedent."

Sir Stephen also alleged that No 10 wilfully misrepresented remarks by the French president, Jacques Chirac, on the eve of war to suggest that France would never support a second UN resolution necessary to go to war.

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Editor's comment: Just as you have already suspected, the whole gang has been in collusion right from the start. Now an excerpt on this from Agence France Presse, quoting from the BBC program:

Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned as leader of the House of Commons over Iraq, claimed that the threat of weapons of mass destruction was not the prime minister's true reason for going to war.

"What was propelling the prime minister was a determination that he would be the closest ally to George Bush and they would prove to the United States administration that Britain was their closest ally," Cook tells the programme.

"His problem is that George Bush's motivation was regime change. It was not disarmament. Tony Blair knew perfectly well what he was doing.

"His problem was that he could not be honest about that with either the British people or Labour MPs, hence the stress on disarmament."

And additionally from the BBC today:

Iraq, Tony and the truth

BBC One, Sunday, 20 March 2005, 22:15 GMT

Tony Blair once said: "Most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy and I am." And he insists he played it straight over taking Britain to war with Iraq.

Last Summer the Prime Minister made an impassioned plea to draw a line under the Iraq issue, saying

"No one lied. No one made up the intelligence... Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty. That issue of good faith should now be at an end."

But allegations that Mr Blair misled the country persist. On the second anniversary of the Iraq war, Panorama reveals how several of the claims he made in public during the build up to the war - and afterwards - conflict with what we now know was going on behind the scenes, as evidenced for instance by government officials and documents.

These cover the Prime Minister's statements about the quality and quantity of intelligence that he said showed beyond doubt Saddam was continuing to make chemical and biological weapons; that he was confident of getting the explicit support of the UN Security Council for invasion, that he would be bound by the rule of international law; and that his stated objective was disarmament not overthrowing the Iraqi regime.

Click here to download or view a transcript of the Panorama programme

We note that the BBC immediately drew the wrath of a most prominent Member of Parliament for airing this documentary. Good job, BBC, we salute you.

This shows what happens when, as the late Senator Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois once said, "When you feel the heat, you see the light."

Let's hope that Tony Blair sees the light most clearly and resigns now. And, hopefully, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will take the hint and follow suit.

The heat is on, boys, and we are turning it up a few notches by recalling an observtion of Samuel Adams,

“…It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate minority keen on setting brush fires in people’s minds…”

If the lapdog and subservient media in the US would do their jobs and uphold their responsibility to the people to disseminate the truth, we just might get the attention of these scoundrels so they are on notice that the jig is up.

In the immortal words of the great American, James Madison,

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."

And, also, John Adams,

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

The primary danger to liberty is the nature of government itself. The government has become fascist in nature and has been for quite some time. Therefore, we are duty bound to defend our country against the tyrants and usurpers who have wrested control of the government from its lawful guardians and to restore it to its original jurisdiction.

Government is to be the servant of the people, as are the corporations chartered by the government. When either or both fail in this chief design they need to be dissolved and new institutions erected to take their place.

We will close on this with the words and admonition of the great American patriot and contemporary of the Founders and the Revolutionary period, Patrick Henry.

“What will you do when evil men take office? When evil men take office, the
whole gang will be in collusion! They will keep the people in utter ignorance
and steal their liberty by ambuscade!”