Thoughts from London

Blair-faced lies cause Labour pains
The events leading up to the war on Iraq and its aftermath contain many lessons for the public. The first is not to believe or believe in politicians. Not that the long-suffering people of Sri Lanka need to be reminded on this score.

After all they have enjoyed the right to vote for 70 years and doubtless have long memories about the mafia-style politics that has emerged. The great democratic experiment, among the very first in Asia and nurtured with loving care, has produced its fair crop of thugs in lily-white vertis and shirts with Nehru collars. Perhaps today they parade in luxury vehicles, the .45 magnums tucked into their Calvin Klein shirts or Armani jackets.

Fortunately politicians in Britain do not behave like Clint Eastwood, though I wouldn't like to vouch for some of those across the Atlantic. Yet like most politicians they have cultivated the art of spinning and doctoring that turns lies and untruths into the great verities of our day. But such lies, distortions and false promises cannot remain undiscovered like the weapons of mass destruction(WMD) with which Saddam Hussain threatened the security of the United Kingdom-or so we are told in the gospel according to St Blair.

Some day, and sometimes far sooner than politicians expect, the cover may begin to fall away. Then comes the day when the multitude, like the little boy in the fable, will shout that their leaders have no clothes on.

If the unfortunate and illegitimate Iraq war taught the public, especially in Britain and America, a lesson, it carried equally important messages to politicians and their hoodlum friends who are parasites fattening themselves on the body of the politician and the body politic.

The lesson for the politicians is this. However powerful the leader and however powerful the country, such power is not permanent. Those who throw their miserable weight around in one's own country or in the world outside, do not last forever.

Today George W Bush, the leader of the world's sole superpower and Tony Blair, prime minister of a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, both of whom preside over their own weapons of mass destruction, stand indicted for leading their respective countries into war with false and misleading information.

They are not legally charged of such a serious offence and greater the pity for that. But they stand morally accused not only of pursuing an illegal and unnecessary war but also of justifying the war to their publics on false and cooked up information with the sole intention of winning the confidence of their peoples.

In the United States two senate committees have called for joint hearings on whether Bush and his neo-conservative administration misused and doctored intelligence information to concoct a case for attacking Iraq.

In Australia, where another hard-right prime minister, John Howard took his country into the same war, the Labour opposition is seriously considering whether to call for a public inquiry on the very same issue.

Anyway, Australia's defence minister believes that a public inquiry might be the best way to allay public doubts. Last week an Australian intelligence officer who resigned recently said on BBC television that he thought the intelligence on which the leaders claim they decided to act, was pretty flimsy.

But here in Britain, Tony Blair at the epicentre of the controversy since he threw his weight completely on the side of the war-mongers in the Bush administration without really weighing the political and diplomatic consequences, is refusing to grant a public inquiry.

He is afraid that a public inquiry will remove the fig leaf under which he has been hiding his moral nudity. So what is the British public, growing increasingly sceptical about the evidence with which Blair justified the war, being given- a hearing by the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee whose inquiry will be behind closed doors and is anyway packed with Blair appointees. It is not even sure whether whatever report it comes up with will be published in full or edited- in the name of security, of course.

But such a highly restrictive inquiry is hardly going to satisfy the millions of British citizens who opposed the war for several reasons. The Labour Party leadership seems to blame everybody but itself for the current contretemps that has greatly embarrassed the party facing a general election in two years time.

That is another reason why Tony Blair does not want a public inquiry. It could become very dangerous for Labour if ever it emerged that Britain was dragged into a war without justification at the time and even less legitimacy in restrospect.

Nobody will trust the joint intelligence and security committee to come up with anything substantial that will blow Blair's credibility to bits. If Blair tries to hide behind this committee he is leaving himself wide open to continued attacks, particularly since no weapons of mass destruction or signs they existed, have been discovered more than two months after the war began and thousands of American troops and experts were deployed to find the proof that will get Bush and Blair off the hook.

When Blair proclaimed to the British people that Saddam had WMD, that he had the capacity to deploy them in 45 minutes, that his weapons were a threat to the region and Britain, that British soldiers in Cyprus were in danger and produced an intelligence dossier to prove all this, he asked them to believe him.

I am the man who knows this. I am the man who has seen the intelligence reports. I am the man who was privy to intelligence from Washington. So trust me. Have confidence in me when I say Saddam has all this.

That was his message to the British people as he dragged them into a war in which there were British casualties. But to date not one illegal warhead has been found. Not one drum of chemicals for weapons. Not a single incriminating document that provides any evidence of a vast arsenal of illegal weapons. And like Osama bin Laden, not even Saddam.

Before the war Blair asked us to have confidence in him. During the war he said the weapons would soon be found. After the war he said he was certain WMD did exist.
All the searching has not found a thimbleful of chemical or biological toxins that could be used in building a weapon of mass destruction.

Remember WMD was the principle on which the argument for the war rested. It is because Saddam had ignored so many UN resolutions and had purportedly not destroyed all his WMD and had defied the UN, that Bush, Blair and a few other coalition partners went to war.

The fact that Saddam was a tyrant and had killed thousands of his own people was not the reason canvassed before the UN, for launching the war but one added on later to show they were on a crusading mission to civilise the Middle East.

In fact the coalition partners were not ready to give the UN arms inspection team a couple of more months when its chief Hans Blix asked for time. Still the coalition pleaded urgency and wanted to destroy the weapons immediately. If they found the inspection teams wanting, the coalition experts have proved a greater failure in locating the weapons that the Colin Powell and Blair proved with bell, book and candle, existed.
Hans Blix later said that the evidence for war was "very, very shaky".

It seems that the leaders of the US and Britain detest independent inquiries or independent inspection teams fearing public exposure. When US Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld said recently that it does not matter if weapons of mass destruction are not found, it proved the importance of WMD- Words of Mass Deception- to hoodwink not only the American and British people but also the United Nations that represents the world's nations.

Many Labour Party backbenchers who were convinced by Blair of the Iraqi threat now fear that the Blair's diminishing credibility will rub off on the party. That is why the Blair-faced lies are causing Labour pains. But Blair's messianic complex and his undying belief in himself will not cause him worry. Even if a catapult with a range of 100 yards is not found in the whole of Iraq, Blair will probably say with Sherlock Holmes: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

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