Tuesday, 19th January 2010
'Going to war on an assumption'
10:53pm
A propos Jonathan Powell’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, discussed below, the hanging jury of the media predictably reported it this morning with a misleading gloss. The Times was typical when it claimed:
'Britain went to war against Iraq on an ‘assumption’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, Tony Blair’s closest adviser told the Chilcot inquiry yesterday.'
But Powell specifically said that Britain did not go to war because it believed Saddam possessed WMD. As he told the inquiry:
In Iraq, the case was that he was in breach of UN Resolutions on weapons of mass destruction. The will of the UN had to be enforced and that was the case for action in Iraq [my emphasis].
This is what Powell actually said about the ‘assumption’ that Saddam had WMD, and how...
Erich Segal
6:22pm
I have just returned from the funeral of my friend Erich Segal, who died suddenly last Sunday at the age of 72. Erich was best known for having written the novel Love Story, which was turned into a box-office smash movie. His talents were very much more prodigious than that. Not only did he write other novels and screenplays, including the Beatles’ filmYellow Submarine, but his main distinction was as a professor of Latin and Greek literature at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the author of a number of scholarly books in that vein. He was also at one time a competitive distance runner (and TV commentator on the Olympic Games), which made the subsequent ravages to his body by Parkinsons Disease which trapped him for more than two decades – and which he bore with such stoicism and...
A disproportionate response?
2:20pm
The unfolding mega-disaster in Haiti has exposed in the most sickening form the utter uselessness of the UN. Of course, it must be acknowledged that the UN is itself one of the victims of this tragedy, with more than 100 of its staff said to have been killed in the earthquake and its aftermath. And yes, the wholesale destruction of Haiti’s already fragile infrastructure means that the difficulties in getting supplies to the people are exceptional.
Nevertheless, the key problem appears to be a total absence of leadership, so that no-one is taking control of the situation. Haiti’s own government is unable to do this; until yesterday, America was taking a back seat waiting upon the UN to do the business. But the UN has conspicuously failed to do so. As a result, while the countries of the developed world have...
Iraq War Inquiry Derangement Syndrome (ctd)
1:34am
As Iraq War Derangement is ramped up daily to fresh pitches of irrationality and hysteria in the media coverage of the Chilcot inquiry, Nick Cohen’s article in the Observer is a must read. His conclusion, watching the latest attempt to nail Tony Blair for the crime of ‘taking us to war on a lie’ of which the appeasement crowd have known for a certainty that he is guilty since before Saddam’s Baghdad statue fell and that Blair, not Saddam, is the real war criminal, is spot on:
...The fifth disappointment in a row will drive them closer to the edge. Sir Oliver Miles, former ambassador to Libya, has already predicted that the inquiry will be open to accusations of ‘whitewash’ because two members of the Chilcot panel are Jews. He's not alone. I have had an allegedly left-wing journalist
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