Daily Telegraph Journalist Coup exposes damaging pre-war FO documents- yet their leader writer exclaims-Mr Blair proved himself a Statesman.

 

It is with utter amazement that we learn of the contradictory manner in which the Daily Telegraph mishandled the opportunity to support its journalist by lighting the fuse to what would have been an explosive issue in the run up to the Labour Conference. 

 

 It is as if the proprietors of the Washington Post had sat on the Watergate scandal. The many readers of the Telegraph must be nonplussed by the behaviour of the Editor in allowing this great injustice to be perpetrated. [Or had he no choice - are the Bilderbergers involved- or misguided fair-play?]

 

When the truth is manipulated in this manner it can do no good to reputation of the Newspaper concerned who may wish at a later date expect its readers to agree that two and two makes four and not as you are asking your readers to agree that two and two makes five.   

 

Fortunately we have again to thank the Daily Mail and their respected political columnist Andrew Alexander for his article on Friday the 24^th September 2004.

 

Time to do your job,

Mr Howard.

 

Tony Blair now has more than just the horrors, the personal tragedies and the general chaos in Iraq to explain away.  We now know from leaked Foreign Office documents what must always have had good reason to suspect.

 

During the succession of lies and half – truths which led up to the Iraq War, the Foreign Office’s small army of Middle East experts was saying of Blair’s plan the equivalent of:  ‘You cannot be serious’

 

 

 

The officials in question must have felt the desperate gloom of Cassandra, daughter of Troy’s King Priam, endowed with the gift of prophecy and the fate of never being believed.

 

Yet Foreign Secretary Jack Straw did apparently believe them, at any rate to the point of a trenchant warning to Blair. Middle East hands, old and new who had served in the area, spoke the language, understood the religious divides, and knew the dreary course of the region’ revolutions, utter a chorus of warnings about the likely outcome of invading Iraq.

 

They envisioned chaos, terrorists flocking to the country and the cause, to say nothing of a post-war Iraq needing coalition troops ‘for years’

 

As for the excuse of the Twin Towers, Foreign Office policy director Peter Rickets warned that the planned invasion looked more like a George Bush ‘grudge’ war.  Like the Weapon Inspectors, the FO did not expect weapons of mass destruction to be found.

 

Straw’s letter to Blair contained the prescient passage: No one has satisfactory answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better.  Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience.’

 

 

 

 

 

And so the warnings went on. At the time of the invasion, of course, various military figures also voiced misgivings and lawyers were sure the war was illegal.

 

These must be the most damaging documents ever to have emerged from Whitehall about an existing administration.

 

What they said, in effect, to Blair was:

 

 

 

You are sending our young men out to die in Iraq to make the world a more dangerous place, with little prospect of bettering the people of Iraq, the likelihood of making things worse and all with, to say the least questionable legality.

 

Straw will have some explaining to do. Why did he so publicly back a policy about which he had so many qualms?

 

The Prime Minister is trying to brazen things out by announcing that the war is not over after all –surprise !surprise! – And that we are now involved in a second war in Iraq, which will decide the future of ‘Terrorism’

 

 

 

It won’t, it can’t. It is a silly claim behind which lies the hope that, somehow, the public will stop thinking about the recent past and rally behind the flag. [The flag, which Mr Blair has recently signed away]

 

Can he really get away with it any longer?  He has survived so far because the Tories supported the war, with Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram drivelling on about the threat from Saddam being just like Hitler’s.  A combined Opposition plus Labour dissidents would have held Blair in check.

 

The Tories now have the perfect chance to bring him to book.

 

So the Prime Minister went to war despite Foreign Office warnings that have turned out to be remarkably accurate.

 

 

 

 

How does he explain that?  Why were the FO’s trenchant warnings so carefully concealed?  For Heaven’s sake, Howard and Co, do your job.

 

The initiative now rests in the hands of next week’s Labour Party conference.  For Blair to make a simultaneous mockery of Labour backbenchers, the party rank and file and the Foreign Office is an achievement with few parallels.  He must pay for it.

 

The publishing of those FO documents by the Daily Telegraph was undoubtedly a journalistic coup.  But read on to the paper’s leader and what do we find?  After reviewing the horrendous outcome which the Foreign Office so presciently described, the paper concludes that in making his decisions as he did:  ‘Mr Blair proved himself a statesman.’

 

 

 

 

I can understand why the Prime Minister is anxious not to admit he was wrong.  It would be fatal. But newspapers have the luxury that they can change their minds, and often do.

 

It adds to, rather than detracts from, their authority, the more unrepentant the telegraph becomes.  The [Daily] Telegraph and Blair deserve each other.

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[Fonts altered-bolding used-comments in brackets]

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www.eutruth.org.uk

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www.thewestminsternews.co.uk

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www.speakout.co.uk

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Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU

www.telegraph.co.uk.blogs

 

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VOTE

MAY -2007

 

TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE

TO SET YOU

 FREE

 

THE

UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY

www.ukip.org

 

TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER

BUT

SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES.

*

 

ONLY

PRO-PORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

*

Home Rule for Scotland

WHY NOT

HOME RULE for ENGLAND

[EACH WORD HAS A DIFFERENT BULLETIN]

 

*

MAY/07

 

[All underlined words have a separate bulletin

THE QUESTION THAT THE VOTER MUST ANSWER

 

‘DO YOU WISH TO BE GOVERNED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE, LAW AND CUSTOM OR BY THE CORRUPT ,EXPENSIVE UNACCOUNTABLE AND ALIEN BUSYBODY BRUSSELS’

 

-SIMPLE IS IT NOT?