THE GLOBAL PICTURE
A MESS OF POTAGE, OR A POT OF MESSAGE?
November, 2004

Establishing Parameters And A Sense Of Direction

As we approach Christmas we examine some of the forces shaping our society, the consequences for one of those who buck the Ruling Elite, the Middle East and machinations in the corridors of power. In our second October, 2004, edition we dealt with certain aspects of Immigration, Asylum and Multiculturalism and the role of International Fabian Socialism conterminously with the objectives for Power of the Global Power Brokers.(2) In this context the opposite polarity is that of the Nation State, and the threat to its traditions, culture and its very identity. We used the analogy of a systematically anaesthetised public, which preferred to look the other way with its back to the oncoming train. Down the "tunnel" created by oppressive and legislative change - the revolutionary destruction of the Existing Social Order which was postulated by Karl Marx - approaches the express train of Globalisation as it gathers speed. But let us be quite clear about our position and those questions implied in "Food For Thought". This is explained in the following extract from a standard letter sent out by the Deputy Editor of On Target to potential subscribers:

We constitute a wide circle of like-minded individuals who care deeply for the common good, and are very much concerned with, and by, both national and global trends. We are strictly non-party-political, and stand for traditional, Christian, moral, education and social values. We believe in a free communications media outside the control of a National and International Elite. We are opposed to the present usurious system of banking and finance as is vested in the power of International Finance-Capitalism, and organisations like the Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission through which this power is exercised over individual nations, governments and peoples of the world. We fervently believe that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is basically and predominantly an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic, Christian Nation, and should remain so outside the domination of an European bureaucracy. On the other hand, we are opposed to bigotry, and the oppression of, or discrimination against, minorities, and would respect and treat others as we would wish to be treated in their own countries of origin.

On 13th October, 2004, it was announced that a 116-year-old tradition for an Anglican chaplain to offer a prayer at the start of meetings of the Worcestershire County Council "is under threat because it might just offend non-Christians" (Daily Express, 13th October, 2004). On 10th November, 2004, an Internet transmission recorded that Father Christmas is to be excluded from the Bull Ring, in Birmingham and from shopping centres and other locations in parts of London, Bradford, Dudley in the West Midlands, Croydon, Glasgow, Liverpool, Reading and Wellingborough. According to a survey carried out by The Guardian, revealed on 30th November, 2004, a majority of the Moslem community want Islamic law for their own civil cases, and time off from work for worship. Now the latest issue of the Oswestry & Border Counties Advertiser reports, under the heading "Christmas Political Correctness", the Festive Season in the small Shropshire town of Ellesmere, far from any major population centre, is to be marked by a "Winter", rather than a "Christmas" festival. In its report the newspaper made a clear allusion to the Bull Ring, in Birmingham.

These issues raise a number of very serious questions. The first is what are the causes that force, or induce, largely innocent people to wish for a better life and settle in the United Kingdom and Europe? We have offered the examples of economic exploitation, and wars precipitated in such places as the Balkans, Afghanistan and the Middle East by the Western Powers in pursuit of their own interests, such as the projected Unocal pipeline across Afghanistan, seizure of the Trepca Mines in Kosovo or control of oil reserves in the Middle East. Or, equally euphemistically behind the name of the United Nations, those regions such as the Sudan, largely ignored because they hold no particular or immediate value for the West. Secondly, we would ask what Islamic or other country would contemplate the same Multicultural Liberalism on their own territory? Then we have the singular example of Israel, pivotal to the Global Power play, protected by the United States, whose borders remain tightly sealed to alien faiths. What we do face is the reality that, as indigenous people settle, we have the Trojan Horse effect when levels reach the point at which they begin to change the fundamental character of their host nation from inside. This is not cultural enrichment, and can only sooner or later lead to abrasive confrontation; as often as not under an extreme "Right Wing", "Fascist" or similarly spurious association, just as opponents of Globalisation tend to be dismissed equally speciously as of the political "Left". There is little doubt that Fabian International Socialists are gradually tightening the noose under the collective "banner" of perceived "hatred". Even Christian freedom of expression or opinion is vulnerable as has already been the case on both sides of the Atlantic; even though The Monarch remains Head of the Church in the United Kingdom. Yet, under the noses of British politicians the Christian Church has long been fair game in the blasphemy stakes; "Jesus Christ" or even Jesus f-ck-ng Christ" have long been common currency in the Hollywood film industry and in the entertainment industry generally. Yet what is the record of police investigations, arrests and detentions; where is the censorship; an utter farce at the best of times? Imagine the howl from the resident Moslem community and the Race Relations Commission if one heard the same expletives applied to Allah, or the Jewish faith; the Board of Deputies of British Jews would go beserk. This letter to The Daily Telegraph from Barrister Andrea Minichiello, of the Lawyers' Christian Association, shows how religious freedom of Christians in their own country is being threatened by the forces - the "virus" or "spore" - of Marxism embedded in the "New" Labour Party:

The Government's proposal to introduce a new crime of incitement to religious hatred seriously risks undermining freedom of speech and belief. The proposed offence has been included as a clause in the unrelated Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. Most people will agree that the whipping up of hatred against any particular religious group is wrong and something that society should shun. However, there is already enough legislation in place to deal with the problem of inciting racial hatred in the form of the Public Order Act 1986. "Religion" has not been defined in the offence, so cults and Satanist groups could be afforded the same protection as mainstream Christianity. In the proposed clause, it is sufficient that "comments" are likely to incite religious hatred. Such a test is arbitrary and subjective, and could result in orthodox Christian sermons being targeted, despite there being no intention to cause hatred. Criminalising incitement to religious hatred could increase intolerance and hatred if used by different groups as a weapon against each other, cause the deterioration of good relations between different groups and hinder the enforcement of law and order. If the Government is truly concerned about strength in diversity, community cohesion and race equality, it will allow people to express their religious beliefs freely and without fear.

How Canadian Tolerance Became Intolerance
By Michael Radu 13th August, 2004

Our observations confirm that Canada is much further down the road to the imposition of a multicultural society that the United Kingdom. Literature deemed offensive in this context, likely to cause "race hate" can even be confiscated at the point of entry to the country. On 17th November, 2004, it was reported that Moslem parents were being urged not to withdraw their children from education classes on same-sex marriages. This followed an earlier ruling that refused them permission to withdraw their children from classes on homophobia. We would certainly go along with the Moslem view; the moral decadence in which children are brought face-to-face with such questions is abhorrent. We have also had the banning of headscarves for female Moslem students in France. Michael Radu is a Senior Fellow and co-Chairman (referred to in his formal title as "Chair"!), at the Centre on Terrorism and Counterterrorism at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, in the United States. What Michael Radu does raise in the following paragraphs of his article under the heading "How Canadian Tolerance Became Intolerance" are some of the differences and difficulties brought about by Multiculturalism in a once-stable society:

* Sooner or later, the de facto mutual support society of progressives and Islamists had to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. The progressives who have supported the claims of Islamists in the West have long chosen to disregard the saying that one cannot be so open minded as to let your brains fall out. Now reality forces them to wake up and, increasingly in Europe and now in Canada, realize that the Islamists' goals are incompatible with their own, and that excessive "tolerance" inevitably leads to intolerance. The days of the joint anti-American demonstrations of the Left and Islamists, of the Communists, Socialists and Moslem radicals in the streets of Paris or in Trafalgar Square may indeed be coming to an end. The first and most spectacular sign that the progressives and the Islamists seek different, contradictory goals came from the Netherlands - that most progressive of all countries, the land of legal drugs, medical assisted suicide and euthanasia, gay marriages and unionised military. It had a face - Pym Fortuyn, a gay environmentalist who famously declared that Islam is a reactionary and "stupid" religion, and that his country is "full". Blasphemy - Not really. Shortly after Fortuyn's 2002 assassination by a radical environmentalist, his Party came from nowhere to second place in the general elections that year. While the Party soon collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence, its radical (by European standards) anti- immigration (read anti-Moslem immigration) programme was largely adopted by the present government in The Hague. Meanwhile, the same year, the gay Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, was almost killed by a Moslem who did not like gays. No matter how multiculturalists may tie themselves in knots over the issue, Islam and homosexuality are irrevocably incompatible. This is demonstrated by the attitudes of Muslims everywhere. Moslems condemn homosexuality as much if not more than fundamentalist Christians. And unlike fundamentalist Christians, they are willing and ready to kill over it. Then there is Islam's problem with feminism, and women in general. Polygamy, which is illegal everywhere in the West, is quite commonly tolerated, practised, subsidised in a number of countries, especially France. Then there is the practice of genital mutilation of girls - not an Orthodox Moslem practice, but it happens nonetheless - in many Moslem countries. Finally there is the general - and theologically correct - Islamic denial of the most basic rights to women. Put polygamy, genital mutilation, anti-abortion attitudes and the bura together and one is likely to drive feminists wild indeed. It is also a combination that makes all Western women - and most decent men for that matter - question the realism of accepting Islam as just another religion to be respected and tolerated in their midst.

* Now, Canada is becoming the Netherlands of North America. Its official ideology is "multiculturalism". Canadians may not like the term, but that is the ruling Liberal Party's entrenched policy since the premiership of the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1970s. However, multi-culturalism is now facing the limits of "tolerance". Canadian-style multiculturalism, the dream of American academics and the enemy of serious Canadians who care about politics and their own culture, is simple to define: immigrant ethnic minority groups, virtually all from the Third World, are not only not required to assimilate, but the taxpayers, in the name of "diversity" and "tolerance", are required to pay for maintaining their culture. Hence the plethora of ethnic - Chinese, East and South East Asian, Indian sub-continent, etc. associations, schools, cultural organisations paid by the taxpayers of Alberta or British Columbia - via Ottawa, of course, since the Canadian West is quite hostile to this. One may ask the key, common sense question to all pro-immigrant, anti-assimilation groups everywhere: why would anyone choose to emigrate from the balmy climates of the Third World to chilly Canada if their culture - political or otherwise - is so worthy as to be maintained in the new country? Indeed, if Pakistani, Romanian, Bangladeshi or Jamaican culture are so great, why leave? Or is there no link - logical and practical - between that culture and the push factors for emigration? In the name of tolerance and multiculturalism, in 1991 the Ontario Provincial Government passed something called the Arbitration Act, allowing religious (at the time Christian and Jewish) authorities to perform certain legal functions, in family and civil law, rather than having regular courts do it. Of course, as Ontario goes, so goes Canada. Ontario Moslems demanded that Shariah (Islamic law) "courts" be allowed to solve family and other civil matters (divorce, child custody and inheritance, etc.) among Canadian Moslems. And why not? After all, it would be hypocritical to allow a rabbi to deal with kosher matters while denying an imam the right to deal with divorce or child custody, wouldn't it? It is a valid legal point within the moral, cultural and legal universe of Canadian multiculturalism. As one may expect, supporters of the Shariah as de facto Canadian law for Moslems promise - perhaps sincerely - that no obligatory Shariah punishments such as cutting off the hands of the thieves, stoning adulterers, etc., associated with strict application of Shariah in Saudi Arabia, would happen in the snowy towns of Ontario. However Shariah is divinely ordained, in its totality, in Moslem eyes.

* It is a matter of faith, and choosing and picking among its rules is not for Canadian (or any other) imams to decide. But that essential issue is not what has provoked a strong feminist reaction in Ontario and among those Canadians not in Barbados or Florida at this time; it is the relationship between Shariah and women rights - and feminism. "It's shocking to see the seeds of an Islamic republic being sown here in Canada," one young woman shouted to vociferous applause at a recent Toronto rally, organized to denounce the practice of Shariah in Ontario. "Shariah doesn't work anywhere else in the world. Why does the government believe it will work here?"(1) This is a clear case of "tolerance" gone wild and becoming intolerance - and it is a double one. On the one hand, Moslems in Canada (at least some of them) claim that, in the name of Canadian "tolerance" and "multiculturalism", they have a right to live by their own legal rules (Shariah), which is by definition intolerant (to non-Moslems), "morally conservative" and gives Moslems a legal domination over all others. On the other hand, the Left - of which feminism, here, in Europe and in Canada is one of the strongest contingents - believes in erasing religious moral standards, indiscriminate "equality" between sexes and to gays, bisexuals, etc. The problem for Western leftist politicians and their media sidekicks is that, sooner or later, their gay, feminist and "tolerant" constituencies would rebel and prove that they are still more numerous at the ballot box than those immigrant Moslems who cannot adapt.

(1) Susan Bourette , "Can tolerant Canada tolerate Shariah?", The Christian Science Monitor, 10th August, 2004.

MORE THREADS AND PATTERNS OF POWER

We offer items, each of which throws some light on the machinations behind the scenes, about which very little is allowed to come to the notice of the public at large except, occasionally, in a late-night television or radio programme. Indeed, it is curious how many news items covered in B.B.C. radio transmissions in the middle of the night never see light of day a few hours later. In the case of Iran and the quest for nuclear power, when one follows the pattern of media reporting the talk-up to military action by the United States is very clear. This has every sign of a deliberately orchestrated campaign, in which every politician, "talking head", journalist and other commentator appears to be playing a part according to a predetermined script. Steve Weissman was, of course, writing before the re-election of president George W. Bush for a second term, but the article loses none of its impact. Secondly, in the case of the invasion of Iraq, we read of events surrounding senior Ministry of Defence analyst, Brian Jones, who challenged the "dodgy" dossier used by Prime Minister Blair to justify the invasion. Third, we have the words of Felicity Arbuthnot, the campaigning freelance journalist. A long-time friend of the ill-fated hostage, Margaret Hassan, Felicity Arbuthnot is an expert on Iraq and somebody who really does know the background to the manipulation of the work of the Weapons Inspectors in Iraq. One might say that, to Felicity Arbuthnot, "dodgy" dossiers are meat and drink! In the last item, we quote from an article by Simon Jenkins published in The Times of 17th July, 2004. In this we read in chilling terms how the mandarins of Whitehall regarded the "dodgy" Prime Minister of "dodgy" dossier repute.

How Soon Will the United States or Israel Bomb Iran?
Americans: The Missionary Position
By Steve Weissman, Perspective, 2nd September, 2004

I can just hear the Presidential conversation. "Did I say Iraq backed al-Qa'eda?" he asks with a boyish grin. "Oh, heck, I meant Iran. I always get those two mixed up".

What should Iran do? What would you do if you were an Iranian Ayatollah? The President of the United States has branded Iran part of the "Axis of Evil". He has demanded that Iran "abandon her nuclear ambitions". He has claimed the right to wage pre-emptive war against any enemy he chooses. To add weight to these threats, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution on 6th May, 2004, calling on the President "to use all appropriate means to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." The vote was overwhelming: 376 for, three against. On 22nd July, the Senate passed a similar resolution with wording only slight less inflammatory. The Americans now have nearly 150,000 troops just across the border in Iraq. They also have aircraft and missiles in easy striking distance, as do the Israelis, who - as the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported - are currently working with the Kurds to make raids into Iran. Put yourself in Israel's shoes. The Iranians are building a major nuclear industry, with the ability to enrich bomb-grade Uranium and reprocess plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods. Iran has facilities in Tehran, Bushehr, Natanz, and Arak, and could soon produce 15-20 nuclear weapons a year, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The International Atomic Energy Agency [I.A.E.A.] has already found traces of the bomb-grade Uranium in Natanz and Tehran. The Iranians say this is only contamination from used centrifuges they bought from other countries. An Iranian bomb would challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, creating a short-range, hair-trigger stand-off that would continually encourage each side to strike first before the other could. Now think like an American neo-conservative. You and your fellow policy wonks have struggled for years to persuade both Democrats and Republicans in Washington and successive Likud governments in Tel Aviv to play hardball throughout the Middle East. You urged them to expand control over the world's diminishing supply of oil and to overthrow nasty regimes, especially in Iraq and Iran. Your neo-conservative colleagues currently hold key posts in the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington, but your policies and performance have made a hash of Iraq, causing President Bush to turn increasingly to other advisors. Worse, Mr. Bush could lose the November election amidst a burgeoning spy scandal that widely paints neo-conservatives, whether Christian or Jewish, as not-to-be-trusted Israeli agents. As in the perfect storm, the activities of the three groups - Iranian Ayatollahs, Israeli Likkudniks, and American neo-conservatives - are now creating just the right conditions for a ghastly outcome - an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear installations.

While no one can predict with certainty where the madness might lead, it would clearly isolate Israel and the United States even more from most of the world, unify rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims, and encourage the Iranians to intervene massively in Iraq. On the other hand, an October surprise to make America safe from an Islamic bomb might help Mr. Bush win a close election. Can anything stop an attack on Iran, whether before the elections or - as I think more likely - after? At this juncture, even a cockeyed optimist has difficulty seeing much hope. From where they stand, the Iranian leaders have little choice but to press ahead with their quest for nuclear weapons. They may say - as did the Pakistanis, Indians, and Israelis before them - that they want only peaceful uses of atomic energy. They may see nuclear power as the best way to meet a growing population's demand for electricity. In fact, much of the programme began under the Shah, and with American blessings. But the Bush Administration has given Iran the strongest argument yet for wanting atomic bombs - and the missiles to drop them on Tel Aviv. Nothing less seems as likely to hold the pre-emptive Bushies at bay. Given the way atomic energy works, the Iranians could move ahead with an entirely peaceful programme to produce electricity, as they say they are doing. They could allow full inspections and monitoring from the International Atomic Energy Agency. But once they reprocess plutonium or enrich bomb-grade Uranium in sufficient quantities, they are only weeks away from having an atomic bomb. Senators Kerry and Edwards, the Democratic contenders, have suggested offering Iran "a great bargain". If the Iranians give up their capacity to produce bomb-grade materials and accept full supervision to ensure that they have, other countries - including the United States - will provide whatever nuclear fuel Iran needs. It's a great start. But a Kerry Administration would also have to offer security guarantees far beyond any yet mentioned - or any they could easily mention. Too many Americans still remember with bitterness the pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini's young supporters holding fifty-two of our fellow citizens as blindfolded hostages. The Great Satan, as the Iranians called us, does not forgive and forget without an enormous effort. Nor would the Iranians find it easy to overcome their rational fears. As Shia Muslims, with historic and religious interests in the Shia areas of Iraq, they would increasingly bump up against the Americans, who show no sign of leaving no matter who wins the November election.

Even if President Kerry could contain the inevitable conflicts, some future president could easily return to the evil-hunting crusades of the current incumbent. Better a "nuke" in the hand, which some analysts believe the Iranians could have as early as 2006. For the Israeli Likkudniks, and for me personally, the situation looks like déjà vu all over again. We all saw the same thing back in 1981, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin took on the French Government of then-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, which was helping Saddam Hussein build his Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. Israel's Mossad led the charge. In April 1979, secret saboteurs entered a small French engineering firm on the French Riviera in Toulon, where they dynamited the reactor core only hours before the Iraqis could take delivery. In June 1980, in a hotel room in Paris, an unknown intruder bludgeoned to death an Egyptian nuclear engineer who played a leading role on the Osirak project. In August, a series of bombings and telephone threats terrorized French and Italian engineering firms supplying equipment to Osirak. During that time, Mossad was also secretly leaking information to journalists about Pakistan's effort to build what Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto called his "Islamic Bomb". Among the journalists was a team from B.B.C.'s Panorama, for whom I worked. The Israelis, who would never meet me face-to- face, could never understand why a nice Jewish Boy insisted on checking out first-hand every bit of information they proffered. In fact, our team discovered several parts of the Pakistani story Mossad had apparently missed. We also found an Israeli-American defence analyst who boldly predicted on camera that the Israelis would bomb the Iraqi reactor, which they did on Sunday, 7th June, 1981. What a scoop! Breathlessly recounted in several books and articles, the daring Israeli attack still stands as a model of pre-emptive warfare, which the Israelis now threaten to repeat on Iran.

According to one recent news story, they have already rehearsed the bombing run, much as they did before sending their American-supplied F15s and F16s to wipe out Osirak. But, before jumping on the bandwagon, please remember some oft-forgotten facts. Prime Minister Begin rushed the attack in part because he feared his party would lose a close election. Seeing military action as the only remedy, he also feared that his opponent Shimon Peres would try working diplomatically with the newly elected French President Francois Mitterand, who had already ordered significant steps to safeguard the Iraqi reactor. On the other side, one of Begin's staunchest supporters for the attack was his Minister of Agriculture, Ariel Sharon. For the American neo-conservatives, recent events could push them to become even more extreme. The Israeli spy flap involving retired Air Force Colonel Larry Franklin focuses heavily on Iran, and the cooperation between leading neo-conservatives, the Israelis, and Iranian exiles to overthrow the Ayatollahs. There are also suggestions of improper Pentagon arms transfers to Israel, unauthorized back-channel dealings with foreign governments and private groups, and the question of how closely the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (A.I.P.A.C.), the chief pro-Israeli lobby group, works with the Sharon government. All of this will terribly embarrass the neo-conservatives, who will grasp at any straw to divert attention from both their failures in Iraq and their efforts behind the scenes. Enlarging the Iraq war to Iran offers the perfect solution. In the advice often attributed to their Pentagon protector, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "If you're having difficulty dealing with small problems, make them bigger."

From Inside Sceptic To Public Dissident
Analyst Exposed by Defense Ministry Assesses Damage of Blair W.M.D. Claims
By Glenn Frankel, Washington Post Foreign Service, 27th August, 2004

London - For 15 years, Brian Jones headed the unit that analysed nuclear, biological and chemical weapons intelligence data for Britain's Defence Ministry, a job so secret that even his mother did not know what he did. Then one day last August he and his wife, Linda, turned on the 6 o'clock news and saw that the lead item was about a confidential letter he had written to his supervisor. "As it appeared, our chins fell closer to the floor," he recalled with rueful smile. "We had visions of a scrum of journalists gathered around the house. We really didn't want to be in the public arena in this way." The letter appeared to contradict claims by Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that there was no significant dissent within the intelligence community over a controversial dossier that the Government published in September, 2002, to detail its charge that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction. Without telling Jones, the Ministry had turned over the letter to a Public Inquiry, placing him at the heart of a highly charged dispute over intelligence, politics and the invasion of Iraq. Since then, the formerly anonymous insider has become a public dissident in Britain, arguing that government officials exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq, overstated the evidence and backed up their conclusions with last-minute raw intelligence that they concealed from Jones and his analysts. The debate has echoed a similar one that broke out in the United States after occupation troops failed to find Weapons of Mass Destruction, whose purported existence was the war's prime justification. In Britain, two public inquiries have rejected the claim that the government deliberately distorted the spy agencies' reports. Still, Jones's views were exonerated last month when one of the inquiries, the Butler Commission, concluded he had been right to raise concerns about the dossier and that he and his analysts should have been shown the last-minute intelligence, which was later withdrawn as unreliable. He contends that the governments mistaken claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction has done serious harm to the credibility of the intelligence community and to international efforts against such weapons. "The damage has been considerable, and I think it will continue until exactly what went wrong is clarified," said Jones, sitting in his living room in South West England, with Linda at his side, in his first interview with a non-British news organization.

Jones, who just turned 60, took early retirement a few months after the dossier was published. He depicts himself as a reluctant whistle-blower whose original motivation was to protect himself and his colleagues bureaucratically rather than to make a stand on principle. Jones expressed his objections in writing, he says, so that no investigator could come along later and accuse him and his staff of signing off on a flawed dossier. His tale also sheds light on Britain's ultra-secret intelligence establishments methods, calculations and vulnerabilities. "In some ways, the whole controversy has done more damage here than in the United States," said Gary Samore, a weapons expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "There have been so many intelligence failures in the United States that the reputation of C.I.A. (Central Intelligence Agency), was already dented, whereas here there is still a lot of mystique about M.I.6,"" Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. "It will be a long time before the intelligence community produces this kind of dossier again," Samore added. When Jones, who has a Doctorate in Metallurgy, first took over as head of the technical intelligence branch of the agency in 1987, he recalled, his unit largely consisted of experts in weapons materials and chemistry - with just two men whose specially was chemical and biological warfare sitting in a corner. That all started to change in the late 1980s, after the Soviet Union disclosed that it had produced chemical and biological weapons and Iraq began using chemical weapons against Iran. Over the next few years, Jones's unit began to concentrate on such weapons, and in the mid-1990s, it added nuclear components as well. It became known as the primary shop within the British intelligence establishment where data on weapons of potential mass destruction were analysed and assessed. M.I.6 "are the collectors," not the analysts, Jones said. "One of the great sins in intelligence is to allow the people who collect the intelligence to assess its quality, because the very fact they collected it means they are biassed. That's why you have analysts who are independent."

During the summer of 2002, Blair had spoken about producing an Iraqi weapons dossier, but when Jones went off to Greece for vacation in late August, the project seemed to be on hold. He returned to the office on 18th September to find it in full swing, with publication less than a week away - and parts of his staff in dismay. Jones's most senior chemical weapons specialist was particularly concerned that the dossier's drafters, who worked for the cabinet-level Joint Intelligence Committee (J.I.C.), had ignored his concerns about the documents claims concerning chemical weapons. "He felt the language was much too strong," Jones recalled. "He was saying he could find no conclusive evidence that Iraq had produced [a] chemical warfare agent or weapons." The dossier was being crafted by the J.I.C. with help from Blair's political and press advisers. In its foreword Blair stated: "I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. . . . I am in no doubt the threat is current and serious." The specialists were also sceptical about a claim, based upon a single source reporting information that he said he had heard from an Iraqi military officer, that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order. Jones talked to his experts individually on the day he returned, then held a 30-minute session with all of them the following day, 19th September. Among those who sat in was [Doctor] David Kelly, a government weapons expert who was not a member of Jones's staff but was a frequent visitor. After the session, Jones took the unusual step of writing a note to his immediate superior, Tony Cragg, registering his group's objections. Filing a written dissent was a highly unusual step. "The whole culture of the J.I.C. is that it produces consensus," Jones said. "At the end of the day, we want something that we're all agreed with. So if you are actually putting down a dissent you're saying all this effort has failed. I maybe did it once, maybe twice before in 15 years. You don't do it lightly." Cragg later told the Hutton Inquiry, the other public investigation touching on Iraq-related intelligence, that he was surprised to read Jones's memo. He took up the matter with his superior, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, and the two men decided the matter had already been resolved satisfactorily. The dossier went forward as written. "I was content for it to go to print" Cragg testified.

Word was passed to Jones that the reason his concerns were being ignored was that a new piece of intelligence had arrived a few days earlier that backed up the 45-minute claim. The source was said to be so sensitive that Jones and his analysts were not allowed to see the material. "I was very wary," Jones recalled. "My job was all about being suspicious - suspicious of other people, suspicious of the information you receive. What sort of information could this be that pops up all of a sudden that answers the dozen questions you've got? I thought our dissent was being finessed away." In late May, 2003, with the invasion completed and no Weapons of Mass Destruction found, B.B.C. Defence Correspondent Andrew Gilligan reported that an unnamed source had told him of great unrest within the intelligence community about the dossier, especially its 45-minute claim. Gilligan mistakenly reported that Blair's aides probably knew the claim was wrong, but otherwise his report accurately captured the feelings of Jones and his staff. The broadcast set off a bitter controversy between the B.B.C. and the Government which denied the story, as well as a hunt for Gilligan's source that led eventually to Kelly. Kelly was forced to testify before Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and subsequently committed suicide, in July, 2003. Jones says it was only then that he realized that Kelly must have been Gilligan's informant and that his longtime colleague had been talking about the discontent he had heard expressed by Jones's staff the previous September. Jones soon found himself under the same spotlight that had burned Kelly. In early July, after Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the Foreign Affairs Committee that he was unaware of any significant discontent within the intelligence community, Jones wrote a letter to Cragg's successor, reminding him of the previous note of dissent and asking whether he should inform the Committee of the error. Less than two months later, the Hutton Inquiry into Kelly's death made the note public, although with Jones's name expunged.


The Joneses expected Brian's name to leak - and reporters to descend on their home. "We made arrangements to move out quickly if we had to - to stay with one of Brian's sisters," Linda Jones recalled. "The bed there has been made up ever since." But when the time came to testify, the Joneses decided that Brian would be better off coming forward publicly to pre-empt the kind of media frenzy that had engulfed Kelly. "We came to the conclusion that if Brian appeared as himself, the press would have his name and his photograph and that would remove the need for a scoop," she said. Appearing before the House of Commons last month, a chastened Blair conceded that there should have been clear procedures for senior intelligence officers such as Jones to take their objections directly to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Blair also conceded that he and his Government had made mistakes in the period preceding the war. "What I do not accept" he quickly added, "is that it was a mistake to go to war." Two public inquiries and two parliamentary reports have dismissed claims that the Government deliberately exaggerated the threat and opinion polls indicate that the Prime Minister is on track to win a third term. John Scarlett, the senior official responsible for the dossier, recently became head of M.I.6. Kelly is dead, the two B.B.C. senior executives who initially stood by Gilligan's report were forced from their posts, and John Morrison - a former deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence who publicly criticized the Government recently lost his job with the Committee that has oversight of British Intelligence. Jones said Scarlett's promotion might make it harder for the intelligence services to regain their public standing. "I can't comment on his competence, but his association with a major intelligence failure is unavoidable," said Jones. "Intelligence is about credibility, and we're in a situation with al Qa'eda and the terrorist threat where credibility is absolutely vital. It makes things that much more difficult for credibility to be reestablished, with John Scarlett in that position." What really troubles him, Jones said, is that British Intelligence and its sister agencies in other countries failed to assess accurately Iraq's weapons programmes despite a clear mandate to do so. This suggests to him the limitations of intelligence and compliance monitoring, including inspections. "After Iraq lost the first Gulf War, we had greater access through inspectors than any of the existing arms control treaties would give us, and still we failed collectively through intelligence and through compliance monitoring to get the right answer," he said. "The truth is, we need to do a whole lot better than we did in Iraq," Jones said, "but I am not confident that what is required can actually be achieved."

Iraq's WMD The Lies - We Have Been Here Before - Again And Again
By Felicity Arbuthnot, 15th October, 2004

"Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotised by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And when there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over". Arthur Koestler. Bricks to Babel, 1980.

Dodgy dossiers, dodgy intelligence, misleading statements, illegal regime change, a ruined, devastated country and people - and no weapons of mass destruction but the ones the United States and United Kingdom have dropped. Saddam "failed to comply with United Nations Resolutions" - yet the first United Nations Resolution relating to Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war guaranteed: "Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity" and was never rescinded - regime change being anyway illegal. The invaders have massively failed to comply, and Saddam and his scientific community were telling the truth. But in the chaos the turmoil of the thirteen intervening years are forgotten: The illegal, misnamed "safe havens" the north and no fly zones, patrolled by the United States and United Kingdom (the French pulled out early on in disgust), bombing at will: remote farms, flocks of sheep and child shepherds, repaired power stations (desperately and inventively cobbled together under the embargoes crippling restrictions), Basra's one remaining water treatment tower, hit each time it was painstakingly repaired with cannibalized parts. Illegal actions in defiance also of the Geneva Convention. And Britain and America lied - and lied again. Ignoring the illegalities, they were bombing "legitimate targets", "military installations" - which when visited, turned out to be residential streets, schools, playgrounds, hospitals - sheep and shepherds. The killing of renowned artist Laila Al Attar and her family in 1993 when her home in the Al Mansur district of Iraq was written off without an apology: "She was a friend of Saddam Hussein," was the justification. Well no, untrue - but had she been does that justify killing? But in the petty revenge mindset of the Pentagon perhaps what did, was that she created the mosaic of George Bush Senior's face on the steps of the Rashid Hotel, which Iraqi's (and not a few visitors) ground their heels into or stamped on with glee, on entering. For once, perhaps, precision targeting worked; artists clearly "a threat to the coalition".

Between 1993 and the invasion [in 2003] there were numerous massive bombings and numerous lies, but some exceptionally instructive untruths were uttered by the Prime Minister [Tony Blair] in December 1998 after a four day Christmas blitz on Baghdad. Saddam's sister's palace had been bombed, thus "a legitimate target". What actually was bombed was the Abassid Palace, built in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, the architecture of the inspired and a museum to wonder at over generations. The Ministry of Defence had been bombed, certainly a legitimate target, Mr Blair assured. Wrong again, hit was the old Ministry from Ottoman rule, unused for decades as Defence Ministry; an evocative ancient building lay broken and ruined on the Tigris banks - with the group of little homes behind it, their inhabitants too, extinguished. The other side of the bridge, the blast blew out every window of the vast general hospital, patients died of heart attacks and were killed by glass shards turned lethal weapons. The father of a baby just born as the bomb fell told me how the midwife, in her shock, dropped her on her head, leaving her permanently brain damaged.

On February 16th 2001 a massive bombing on the outskirts of Baghdad: "a routine mission of self defence", was to target fibre optic cables (remember them?), which "considerably enhanced Iraq's air defence and radar systems." Iraq, as has been woefully proven had no meaningful air defence system. In September, 2002, there were consistent reports that at least one hundred planes bombed "defence systems" near Rutbah in western Iraq. The United States military said there were twelve planes and twenty five bombs had been dropped. "We've been doing this for ten or eleven years and we'll keep on doing it", said a United States military spokesman. When a group of activists were hurt in a road crash a short time later, they were taken to and treated in Rutbah hospital. They found the hospital damaged, clinics demolished along with homes in this quiet, rural town. That there were military bases nearby and along the western road, was no secret, they could be seen by anyone who drove the seven hundred kilometres of the flat desert terrain, their ancient tanks, anti aircraft guns and vehicles from another era, of no possible danger to United States and United Kingdom military might, flying high beyond the reach of any ordnance fired from the ground.

In November 2002, driving to Baghdad, somewhere near Fallujah, the night sky was lit up with explosion after explosion "What is going on?" I asked the driver. "They are destroying the last of the Scud missiles", he said. Invasion was expected any day and in a desperate attempt to avert war, the regime had ordered that even those were destroyed, so flawed that it was a black joke, that when fired they often did more damage to Iraq than to any enemy, since they so frequently dropped back to earth. In December 2002 Iraq delivered eleven thousand pages of dossier to the United Nations, accounting for their weapons capability. "The United States removed it from the United Nations office of the weapons inspectors and returned just four thousand pages, so heavily blacked out as to be largely 'incomprehensible", said one Ambassador. Driving down from the northern city of Mosul in March 2003, days before the invasion, there was no sign of military mobilisation, army bases along the road had been bombed, ancient tanks damaged beyond repair. An imminent invasion and simply no military movement, it was surreal. About an hour outside Baghdad we finally passed a convoy of eleven army trucks. They were circa 1948, and ten were strung together, being towed by the one in front. Tyres were down to canvas, the vehicles were near irreparable. I thought of the desperation of a government that offered ten thousand dollars - a fortune in embargoed Iraq - to anyone who could shoot down British and American bombers; no one could. I remembered Prime Minister Blair's ceaseless parroting that Iraq could launch a strike on far away cities: "In forty five minutes" and was "a real and present danger". I thought of an interview with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who suddenly broke off and said: "You know, Madam Felicity, we too feel vulnerable, surrounding nations have been sold the most sophisticated weapons on earth. . . "

I thought of the old Monk at the Christian Monastery, where Saint Matthew is believed buried, perched on a mountain, high above the plains of Nineveh, who said of the bombings: "Every day we have new widows, new widowers, new orphans; please, when you go home, tell Mr Tony Blair he is a very, very bad man." I thought of the five Permanent Members of the Security Council who had the invoices for the arms they had sold to Iraq; all the weapons inspectors had to do was subtract what was accounted for and investigate further anything which might remain. I thought of the satellites monitoring Iraq which we were told and has been confirmed by experts including one of the most hawkish Inspectors, Scott Ritter, that they could detect any chemical, biological or nuclear material. I thought of the numerous Pentagon briefings with aerial satellite photographs showing "new weapons facilities", "rebuilt weapons facilities", "mobile laboratories" which all turned out to be either untrue, or the same old sealed facilities wrecked and checked by successive weapons inspectors. I thought of thirteen years of lies in high places and of General Norman Schwartzkopf's boast that the killing fields of the Basra road bombing after the cease-fire in 1991 was "a turkey shoot". This time, the "Coalition" would be bombing a sitting duck. I looked back at the sorry convoy of near sixty year old trucks and I wanted to weep.

Prime Minster Blair - The Day Of Reckoning Draws Nigh

Simon Jenkins is one of the more perceptive, interesting and apparently well-informed political observers. He wrote of the Butler Report in The Times of 15th July, 2004: "At last the mandarins get their revenge in triplicate - savage indictment of Blair's un-minuted 'sofa government' and cronyism". We have repeatedly expressed the opinion in On Target that neither Blair, his Secretary of State for Defence, "Geoff" Hoon nor his other Ministers such as the "up-and-coming" Treasury Minister, Ruth Kelly, have ever run a business in their lives. Indeed we have commented on occasions that none of them have the ability to run as much as a whelk stall. An interesting reflection of our views came towards the end of Jenkin's article in this paragraph:

In a fit of exasperation, the last Cabinet Secretary, Sir Richard Wilson, told Mr Blair: "Your problem is that neither you nor anyone in No 10 has ever run anything." When the Prime Minister replied that he had at least run the Labour Party, Sir Richard's retorted that he had led the Party, "but not run it". Mr Blair's response was to reject the Civil Service as "the forces of conservatism" and demote the Cabinet Secretary from the inner sanctum of his sofa.

But let us go back to the beginning of Simon Jenkins' devastating article, and the gathering of the great and the good to which he refers:

As Tony Blair sat in Downing Street reading the Butler Report on Tuesday night, the enemy was gathering half a mile to the east. Under the mighty vault of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, the most powerful freemasonry in Britain assembled. Limousines brought the permanent heads of the great offices of state. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Tumbull, arrived with his two predecessors. Summoned were the law officers of the Crown, Lords Woolf, Phillips and Goldsmith. They were joined by the private secretary to the Queen, the head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, diplomats, Joint Intelligence Committee chairmen, courtiers and quangocrats. There was nothing so vulgar as an M.P., save for the unobtrusive presence of the Foreign Secretary. When speeches were made in honour of Sir Hayden Phillips, the retiring Permanent Secretary for the Lord Chancellor's Department, the jokes were duly impenetrable. When news was brought by the Lord Chancellor in person of Tony Blair's defeat in the House of Lords, the rejoicing was properly muted. Then the throng parted and there glided into the hall the hero of the hour, the lofty figure of Lord Butler of Brockwell. Here was their champion, their former leader, Lancelot back at the Round Table. These were men and women to whom, once upon a time, every Whitehall heart was open and from whom no secrets were hid. They had risen to power on the yeast of the British constitution and formed its crust. Mr Blair had shut them out, and now revenge was in the air.

Jenkins went on to point out that Lord Butler had produced two reports, one he described as a meticulous study of modern intelligence for which Downing Street might have "hoped". In this, as Jenkins suggests, Butler corrected Lord Hutton in Hutton's own Report earlier in the year, in that he had committed the "unpardonable sin of "implausibility". In other words, given the limitation of his terms of reference, this meant what almost every commentator opined at the time: nothing less than a "white-wash". Jenkins goes on to say that when asked if Prime Minister Blair was a liar or a fool in making his case for the invasion of Iraq, the response was that Blair had been a fool with mitigating circumstances. In other words, it seemed that Downing Street had "cooked the books before the invasion". Intelligence had been distorted and the pudding had been "over-egged. The inference was that the intention had not been deliberately mendacious; rather faults of inexperience and eagerness. We profoundly disagree with Butler's view as relayed by Simon Jenkins, that the Prime Minister had "pulled a fast one with '45 minutes'". When Malcolm Rifkind had been Secretary of State for Defence some years ago, he had only been saved from oblivion on the firing range by the quick reactions of the instructors when he attempted to drop a mortar bomb down the tube the wrong way round. Blair's crime had been infinitely worse than simple ineptitude. Blair had been guilty not only of manipulating evidence; he had displayed culpable recklessness and ignorance of military technical knowledge in hustling the case for an invasion that has since resulted in the death and maiming of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Jenkins then wrote:

Lord Butler clearly took the view that we knew already that this war was declared on a false prospectus and tens of thousands died as a result. We have already choked on Mr Blair's excuse that Saddam Hussein killed lots of people too, and choked on his claim that Iraq is "a safer place" as a result. Like the Franks report on the Falklands, Lord Butler seems happy for the evidence to speak for itself. He lets history pass final judgment. His job was to find out the facts and apply, if not whitewash, at least a light coat of grey. If everyone was to blame, then so was no one.

What Simon Jenkins called the "other" Butler report was, in colloquial terms, not about "cooking the books", but about the "caterers" - a subtle distinction between those in charge - or who should have been in charge of the "kitchen", and the cooks themselves!

Now for the other Butler report. This is not about cooking books. It is about handling the caterers. In his final chapter Lord Butler turns to Mr Blair's style of regime. He is unequivocal. This style, he says, "lessened the support of the mechanism of government for the collective responsibility of the Cabinet". Its "informality and circumscribed character" meant that ministers could make little input to decisions. Mr Blair's use of "frequent but unscripted" meetings and the neglect of official papers beforehand was "of concern". This was the more dangerous where "in the vital matter of war and peace . . . the quality of judgement is all the more important". This criticism is mandarin-speak for savage. It is what those gathered in the Royal Courts of Justice wanted to read. It was payback time for seven years of humiliation, seven years of "what Tony wants", of sofa government, unminuted meetings, initiativitis, cronyism and spin. Mr Blair's aide, Jonathan Powell, had warned the Civil Service on coming to power in 1997 that it would have to change "from a feudal system of barons to a more Napoleonic system". He was as good as his word.

Simon Jenkins wrote that the the final words of the Butler report were "the barons' revenge", in that they were revenge for Prime Minister Blair's insistence that his aides be allowed to boss civil servants. It followed that they were revenge for daily humiliation by Alastair Campbell and by political advisers and dodgy lobbyists. They were revenge for Blair's view that he need only descend into Churchill's bunker for the fuel strike, the Foot-and-Mouth Disease crisis and the so-called War on Terror to evaporate overnight. Jenkins' record, and assessment,of this castigation over the flouting of the fundamental procedures and principles of Government, tried and tested over centuries, goes on:

To Lord Butler, the Iraq intelligence debacle was a case history of what Mr Blair and his cronies had done to his beloved Civil Service. The degeneration of carefully nuanced intelligence as it rose up the assessment hierarchy might be no different from what happened before the Falklands. What was new in the case of Iraq was that Downing Street itself was stripped of normal checks and balances and denuded of independent-minded advice. Even the Cabinet no longer operated. The television series, "Yes, Minister" is globally popular not because it is funny but because it is true, reflecting a vital balance of power between politics and administrative stability. Mr Blair was not the first to upset that balance. Margaret Thatcher began it with "not one of us". But her Civil Service came to understand where she was going and what she wanted. When Mr Blair came to power nobody knew where he was going, except on to the front page of the next day's newspaper. That is until he wanted to go to war. Then his Napoleon instinct came into its own. As all dictators know, leadership shines in time of war. It is no surprise that Mr Blair found his most satisfying moments when acting as statesman and war leader. Only then do the trumpets of glory drown out the dull rhythm of Treasury drums and the whingeing of spending ministers. The irony is that the war Mr Blair chose to fight was one that cut him off from his diplomatic and military advisers. Hardly an ambassador or a general approved of Iraq, a disapproval Mr Blair could handle only by retreating to his bunker. This retreat further corrupted the intelligence that he felt he needed to win public trust and legal support. Lord Butler clearly believes that no government can be run on Napoleonic lines. The North-cote-Trevelyan Civil Service was created 150 years ago to replace a corrupt and incompetent executive based on ministerial patronage, an executive for which Mr Blair seems to yearn. Northcote-Trevelyan led to a cadre, eventually a complete career structure, based on merit and immune to favouritism. Its loyalty was to public service, its ethos non-partisan. It may have been conservative, but in its absence last year no spy dared to tell the emperor his dossier was naked. (Emphasis added)

The reading of this episode, Simon Jenkins observes, is that a ruler cannot operate without courageous advice, and that he - or she - should "crave" advice from those beyond the reach of his patronage. Nor can a ruler "subcontract" the wisdom of experience to parvenus and sycophants. The British Labour Party undoubtedly inherited the legacy of short-term opportunism and self-interested material greed that consumed the Thatcher years; a creed with its own in utero nemesis; a nemesis that embodies the continuum of inescapable, escalating debt under the present global debt-usury system of money creation. This is the fundamental problem in providing public services, including Defence. At the same time, beleaguered by ideologically motivated policies in the case of "New" Labour, and a Conservative Party that seems to have no philosophy at all, except that of opportunism, there appears to have been an almost total absence of the necessary far-seeing strategic vision, or the managerial and administrative genius on the scale required on the politicial benches, in any field, from Immigration and Asylum, to Transport, Health Care, Law and Order, Education, Foreign Affairs or Defence. Like the distortion of Intelligence, as Jenkins writes, someone always talks, and dead bodies cannot be hidden.

REFERENCES

Note: Prices are shown where available from Bloomfield Books, and represent only a selection relevant to the theme of this edition of On Target. A wide range of reading may be found in the Stock Price List (S.P.L.), which may be obtained post free on request from the address below. Books temporarily out of stock are annotated *. Out of print, or older works, may be obtained through the Book Search Service, or the Second-Hand Book Service, both of which are operated by Mr. T.G. Turner, for which details are available as for the S.P.L.

(1) Ellis, Dr Frank. The Macpherson Report: 'Anti-racist' Hysteria and the Sovietisation of the United Kingdom. Right Now Press Ltd., 2001. Porfessor Antony Flew, writing in the Preface.
(2) On Target, Vol. 34, Nos. 8 & 9, 16th & 30th October, 2004. Control And Nature Of The Coming World Order

The following titles do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor of On Target. They are, however, useful general references in the broad field covered in this edition

­ Napoleoni, Loretta. Modern Jihad - Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks. Pluto Press, 2003. H/B; £17.99*.
­ Jones, Nicholas. The Control Freaks - How New Labour Gets Its Own Way. Politico's Publishing, 2001. H/B; £18.99.
­ Galloway, George. I'm Not The Only One. Allen Lane, 2004.
­ Herrnstein, Richard J. & Charles Murray. The Bell Curve - Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The Free Press, 1994.