Thoughts from London

And now a Hoon done it
Okay here is the question. No prizes are offered for the correct answer. Why? Because it does not take an Abdul Qadir Khan with a handful of centrifuges to get it right first time.

So anybody who expects to be doled out a few 100 dollar notes from a briefcase conveniently left behind by a prospective foreign investor or some other poor sap who has been asked to cough up 10 per cent, must apply elsewhere.

Personally I won't offer a wager, not unless the IMF assures me a loan and comes up quickly with what economic pundits call a first tranche. Now that we have got this little conundrum sorted out, here is the question.

Which do you think is more slippery- eels or politicians?
If that makes vegetarians and others queasy, what about a substitute for eels such as bandakka.

Some of those accustomed to the Anglo-Saxon might call it ladies' fingers. Why on earth such an innocent looking vegetable should be compared to those weapons of murderous deployment (WMD) is beyond the scope of this discussion.

And those wonderful gentlemen here, from Lord Hutton to Lord Butler, who have been burdened with the onerous task of giving the Blair government a fresh coat of paint, would naturally consider such a issue clearly outside their remit.

But in the good old days when politicians were more inclined to fill their minds than their pockets or produce progeny who became professionals and not professional thugs, my colleagues referred to some as "going bandakka-style."

For those uninitiated in the argot of that day it meant slipping away like a bandakka on a fork. If in those days-and I mean in the late 1960s and 70s- this meant passing the buck or slithering out of some issue to escape personal blame, today it has been turned into a fine art.

This is not to say it is being done better now but that almost everybody is trying to cover himself and save his skin and doing it so brazenly that it is scandalous.

We used to be told of course that such things happened only in the newly independent nations and the developing world. Those who preached to us about the evils of our leaders naturally came from our former colonial masters who had to relinquish their hold for one reason or another, and from the western world whose perceived superiority in everything was proclaimed with great vigour and relish.

In times gone by the media was essentially in western hands. So little was told about all the dirty doings in the western political and corporate world. Any dirty linen to be washed had to come from "Third World" which was gradually organising itself politically to confront the rich west.

But things have changed. The media has grown. Technological advances have made it possible for more diverse media to enter the field. Sections of the media have set themselves up as watchdogs that not only bark but also bite now and then.

So almost daily the twists and turns of politics and tactics of politicians as they try to evade their responsibilities, if not the truth, are being served to a public increasingly disillusioned with their leaders.

As Britain prepared to join the US in attacking Iraq, popular opinion turned against Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government. They had a temporary respite as British troops engaged in a battle they should never have fought.

The legal grounds for war were always terribly dubious. The only argument for war that had some support was the claim that Saddam Hussain posed a clear and imminent threat to the region and Britain. The US, being even farther away geographically, said he was a threat to the world.

It was also claimed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed within 45-minutes of the order being given. That is what posed the "clear and current threat."

Now all this appeared to be accepted by the British public because it did not know any better. It was not privy to the intelligence material on which Blair based his case for war in two dossiers presented to parliament. So it believed what the prime minister said, though Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary and the leader of the house, did question the accuracy of all this in his resignation speech just before the war.

When Lord Hutton, who inquired into the death of a British weapons expert, in his report following the now notorious BBC report about Downing Street sexing up the Iraqi dossier, totally cleared Blair, the government and officials of any wrong-doing, they felt completely safe and untainted.

But, as that old saying goes, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip, something that both politicians and journalists should be mindful of. Hardly had Lord Hutton completed his whitewashing, when across the Atlantic, Blair's friend President Bush was running into unexpected trouble. His chief weapon's inspector of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, was publicly expressing serious doubts not only about WMD ever being found but also whether Saddam had long range weapons that could be deployed in 45-minutes.

Blair who thought he was sitting pretty, suddenly found Bush doing an U-turn, appointing a committee to inquire into this mess. Blair had to follow suit but, as politicians do, narrowed the terms of the investigation to cover his own exposed posterior and tried and stop the buck at the intelligence officials level.

Though Blair and his henchman in the defence ministry Geoff Hoon have tried to do what the squid does in the face of trouble, darken the waters and escape, the excreta has already hit the fan, if a change of metaphorical gear might be permitted.

Whether it was a slip of the tongue or a devious move to shift the blame on to the defence establishment, Blair told parliament the other day that he did not know the 45-minute claim referred only to battlefield and not strategic weapons until after the March 18 vote to go to war.

That is a damning admission from a Prime Minister who committed the country to war for the very reason that Saddam was an imminent threat to Britain.

Even more curious is the explanation offered by Geoff Hoon. He claimed that when newspapers splashed headlines that read "45 MINUTES FROM ATTACK" and "45 MINUTES FROM DOOM", he was in Poland and didn't see the headlines.

That surely is casuistry. He might not have seen them. But was he also unaware of them. It is the practise in British government circles, like among important states, for press cuttings or information summaries to be sent to travelling ministers. Let's assume he did not see them then. Did he or his ministry try later to correct these erroneous reports if that is what they were? No he did not bother because in Hoon's experience newspapers are loath to correct mistakes.

That might well be. But if such serious mistakes have been made leading the public to believe they were in imminent danger of attack and war is predicated on such claims, a responsible minister would at least try to rectify the error because it was serious enough to do so.A major political cover up is on the cards. Officials might get trampled but the politicians, like the ink-squirting squid, will slip away. But for how long?

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