10 Years After...

I'm not too well at the moment - my left foot is now the size of a mid-budget B&Q kitchen with fake mahogany wine rack - and so I have trouble sleeping. Last night I watched the recently restored cut of Heaven's Gate, and the unexpurgated version of John Woo's Red Cliff. My pretentious 7 hour movie marathon was inspired, in part, by my physical affliction, but the main motivation was to catch the early editions of our nation's newspapers and assess how they marked the 10th anniversary of Tony Blair's impassioned House Of Commons speech which greenlit the invasion Iraq. 

You won't be surprised that he isn't mentioned much at all. There's just an awful lot of guff about poor planning and benign intentions, both of which are lies. In order to siphon off resources the country needed to be broken. 

The Independent had a piece on the politics of pubic hair (I tease mine into a defiantly militant afro), whilst The Sun was all about Rio and his fitness programme. The Guardian, has an article on dozens having been killed injured as Sunni extremists targeted Shia civilians in a series of blasts across Baghdad, a violent consequence of the West's plan to divide and rule in this part of the world. 

The Mirror, however, had a retrospective of their war coverage, whilst Richard Sanders in The Maily Telegraph dismantled the myth of shock and awe.

A couple of weeks ago Nick Cohen wrote an article in The Guardian with the headline "Ten years on, the case for invading Iraq is still valid". It wasn't even the mindlessly callous headline which raised my hackles. It was the smug, self-satisfied expression of Nick Cohen in his postage stamp sized photograph accompanying the piece: his body oddly twisted toward the camera as if he has been caught mid-defecation. He suggests that ridding the world of the very evil Saddam Hussein was worth the bloodshed and infers that those who oppose the invasion are apologists for totalitarianism and terrorism. 

However, his selective cherry picking of historic events and their frames of reference means he doesn't address the fact that Saddam, like most of the despots across the middle east, was installed and supported by the CIA and MI6: his murderous offensives against the Kurds were supported by British and American governments, who also supplied the chemical and biological weapons.

Nick Cohen makes no mention of the 1.2 million dead. What do they matter, right? Presumably any display of empathy comes as the exclusive result of being a closeted Islamofascist.

"…spilling blood and spending treasure in other people's conflicts," was begun as a concerted effort to stabilise global energy resources by taking them out of the hands of an individual who used to be "our bastard" in the middle east.

So we've established that Mr Cohen is a dead-hearted vampire, but what did the papers have to say 10 years ago?

In January of 2003 Iraq's envoy to the UN protested that his country had no weapons of mass destruction.

"We remain ready to actively cooperate, as we have done in the past, to respond to any doubts," Mr Douri added. "We open all doors to Mr Blix and his team. If there is something, he will find it. We have no hidden reports. Iraq is clear of weapons of mass destruction."

In Baghdad, Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri called the Bush administration "warmongers".

"This evil administration and its ally, Mr Blair in Britain, have continued in their threats and aggression against Iraq," he said. "Their aim is not the weapons of mass destruction. These two governments know very well there are no weapons of mass destruction or related activities in Iraq. By controlling this region, they are dreaming of dominating the whole world."

But Our Tone had already made up his mind, cheered on by the mainstream media and Rupert Murdoch who Rupert Murdoch gave the proposed war his full backing to war, saying George Bush was acting "morally" and "correctly" and describing Tony Blair as "full of guts" for going out on a limb in his support for an attack on Iraq;

Daily Mirror Editorial, March 19, 2003
"Even though the Mirror disagrees strongly with Tony Blair over his determination to wage war on Iraq, we do not question his belief in the rightness of what he is doing. It is one thing to have principles others disagree with, another altogether to have no principles.

The Times, March 19, 2003
"This was a dogged attempt to change the minds of dissenting backbenchers, an attempt made against the headwind of the popular mood. It was a speech to admire for its willpower and its moral conviction rather than the elegance of its prose…"

Daily Telegraph Editorial, March 19, 2003
"In the Commons, as in every debating chamber, the side that wins the argument all too often loses the vote ... But any fair-minded person who listened to [Tuesday's] debate, having been genuinely unable to make up his mind about military action against Saddam Hussein, must surely have concluded that Mr Blair was right, and his opponents were wrong.

Independent Editorial, March 19, 2003
"[Tuesday's speech] was the most persuasive case yet made by the man who has emerged as the most formidable persuader for war on either side of the Atlantic.

"The case against President Saddam's 12-year history of obstructing the UN attempts at disarmament has never been better made ... Mr Blair made a coherent case ... that while disarmament and not regime change is the legal basis for the war, the prospect of the latter makes it possible to pursue the former with a 'clear conscience and a strong heart' 

The Sun Editorial, March 19, 2003
"With passion in his voice and fire in his belly, Tony Blair won his place in history alongside Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. In the most momentous speech of his political life he set out the pressing reasons why there must now be war on President Saddam.

"The ringing tones were from Churchill, the cold logic that of Lady Thatcher ... It was a stirring call to arms that was backed with precise, detailed and persuasive arguments ... [that] kept a possible Labour revolt in check [and] will have convinced the nation that war is just ...

It may well be that I'm a little tetchy at the moment, but it truly angers me that no-one has been taken to task for the destruction of a country and the theft of its resources. No-one. Indeed Tony Blair has been rewarded for his actions by being made Middle East Peace Envoy (!) and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton stock value doubled over the eight years he was Vice President, from approximately $5 million to over $10 million. Which means is about $5 per Iraqi death. Who says they didn't value the lives of the Iraqi citizens? The whole episode beautifully reveals both the West's foreign policy and the workings of our mainstream media: if you have resources they belong to us and our journalists will amplify the prevailing orthodoxy.

10 years on and what has been learned? 

1. The Irish are a righteous people, more engaged social commentators, and hold public officials to a higher standard than our own "free" press. They hurled shoes and eggs at Tony Blair at the first public signing for his memoirs in Dublin back in 2010. They also shouted: "Hey, hey Tony, hey! How many kids have you killed today?" Our Tone had to cancel the rest of his book-signing tour.

2. International courts work at the behest of Western Powers, thus the best way to get away with horrific crimes against humanity is to be a western politician.

3. The wealthy still send the sons and daughters of the poor to steal the wealth of people in foreign lands and then we make a limp half-hour BBC3 comedy about it. Written by the team who wrote Miranda. FACT.*

*See next blog