Quote:'Sycophant' Tony Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war, says former DPP
Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008, says Blair misled and cajoled the British people into a war they didn't want
Tony Blair used "deceit" to persuade parliament and the British people to support war in Iraq, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said today.
In an article in the Times, Macdonald attacked Blair for engaging in "alarming subterfuge", for displaying "sycophancy" towards George Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong.
Macdonald's comments about Blair's decision to go to war are more critical than anything that has been said so far by any of the senior civil servants who worked in Whitehall when Blair was prime minister.
Macdonald was DPP from 2003 until 2008 and he now practises law from Matrix Chambers, where Blair's barrister wife, Cherie, is also based.
In his article Macdonald highlighted a remark Blair made in an interview broadcast yesterday about supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein regardless of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to explain why he thought the former prime minister was guilty of deceit.
But Macdonald also expressed concerns about the Iraq inquiry, suggesting that some of its questioning so far had been "unchallenging" and that Sir John Chilcot and his team would be held in "contempt" if they failed to uncover the truth about the war.
Macdonald wrote: "The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.
"It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible."
Macdonald said that Blair's fundamental flaw was his "sycophancy towards power" and that he could not resist the "glamour" he attracted in Washington.
"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so," Macdonald went on.
"Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death."
Macdonald said that, with the exceptions of some of the interventions from Sir Roderic Lyne, the questions asked when the Chilcot inquiry has been taking evidence from witnesses have been tame.
"If this is born of a belief that it creates an atmosphere more conducive to truth, it seems naive. The truth doesn't always glide out so compliantly; sometimes it struggles to be heard," Macdonald said.
Many commentators have criticised the fact that all members of the Chilcot team are establishment figures – Chilcot himself is a former permanent secretary – and Macdonald said the inquiry needed to prove its independence.
"In British public life, loyalty and service to power can sometimes count for more to insiders than any tricky questions of wider reputation. It's the regard you are held in by your peers that really counts, so that steadfastness in the face of attack and threatened exposure brings its own rich hierarchy of honour and reward.
"Disloyalty, on the other hand, means a terrible casting out, a rocky and barren Roman exile that few have the courage to endure."
Macdonald said Chilcot and his team needed to tell the truth without fear of offending the Whitehall establishment.
"If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt," Macdonald said.
Yesterday, in an interview with Fern Britton broadcast on BBC1, Blair said he would have backed an attack on Iraq even if he had known that Saddam had no WMD.
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked.
He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".
Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Quote:Blair sold Iraq on WMD, but only regime change adds up
The PM seems to have deployed arguments as they suited him. Our weapons inspections were telling another story
By Hans Blix
Before the Iraq war was launched in March 2003 the world was given the impression by the US and Britain that the goal was to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. Recent comments by Tony Blair suggest, however, that regime change was the essential aim. He would have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein even if he had known that there were no WMD, he said, but he would obviously have had to "deploy" different arguments. Must we not conclude that the WMD arguments were "deployed" mainly as the best way of selling the war? Blair's comments do not exclude a strong – but mistaken – belief in the existence of WMD even when the invasion was launched. However, given that hundreds of inspections had found no WMD and important evidence had fallen apart, such a belief would have been based on a lack of critical thinking.
How could the issue of – non-existent – WMD mislead the world for more than 10 years? At the end of the Gulf war in 1991 the UN security council ordered Iraq to declare all WMD and destroy them under international supervision. However, Iraq chose to destroy much material without any inspection, giving rise to suspicions that weapons had been squirrelled away. These were nurtured by the frequent Iraqi refusals throughout the 90s to let UN inspectors enter sites and by evasive and erroneous responses to inspectors' inquiries.
What other reason could there have been than to prevent inspectors getting evidence of existing weapons? It is possible that Saddam wanted to create the – false – impression that he still had WMD. What seems more likely to me, however, was a sense of hurt pride, a wish to defy and the knowledge that some of the inspectors worked directly for western intelligence – perhaps even passed information about suitable military targets.
Only in September 2002, when the US had already moved troops to Kuwait, did Iraq say it was to accept the inspection that the UN demanded. By that time a new US national security strategy declared that it could take armed (pre-emptive or preventive) action without UN authorisation; many in the Bush administration saw UN involvement as a potential impediment.
Many are convinced that the American and UK military plans moved on autopilot, and the inspections were a charade. I am sure that many in the Bush team felt that way. It seems likely that British and American leaders expected that UN inspections would again be obstructed or that Iraqi violation of the draconian new resolution 1441 would persuade the security council to authorise military action to remove the regime. For my part, I tended to think of the war preparations rather as a train moving slowly to the front and helping to make Iraq co-operative. If something removed or reduced the weapons issue, the train, I thought, might stop.
For the UK to join the US on an unpredictable UN line was a gamble – and in the end it failed. Inspections did not turn up any "smoking guns" and gradually undermined some of the evidence that had been invoked. Iraq became more co-operative and showed no defiance that could prompt the authorising of armed force. Thus, while the train of war moved on, the UN path pointed less and less to an authorisation of war.
What could the UK have done to avoid this development? It could have made a condition of its participation in the enterprise that the movement of the military train be synchronised with the movement on the UN path. With inspections just starting in the autumn of 2002 the military train should have moved very slowly. We have heard that Karl Rove had said that the autumn of 2003 was the latest time for invasion. Why so fast then in 2002? As the then German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said: what was the sense of demanding UN inspections for two and a half years and then let them work only for a few months? Of course, if regime change – and not WMD – was the main aim, the steady speed becomes logical.
The responsibility for launching the war must be judged against the knowledge that the allies had when they actually started it. The UK should have recognised that no smoking gun had been found at any time, and that in the months before the invasion evidence of WMD was beginning to unravel. As we have heard recently: out of 19 Iraqi sites suspected by the UK – and suggested to the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission for inspection (Unmovic) – 10 were actually inspected, and while "interesting", none turned up any WMD. This warning that sources were not reliable seems to have been ignored. Intelligence organisations seem to have been 100% convinced of the existence of WMD but to have had 0% knowledge where they were. Worse still: the uranium contract between Iraq and Niger that George Bush had given prominence in his 2002 state of the union message was found by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be a forgery.
The absence of convincing evidence of WMD did not stop the train to war. It arrived at the front before the weather got too hot and the soldiers got impatient waiting for action. The factual reports of the IAEA and Unmovic did, however, have the result that a majority on the security council wanted more inspections and were unconvinced about the existence of WMD.
At the end the UK tried desperately to get some kind of authorisation from the security council as a legal basis for armed action – but failed. Confirming the fears of Dick Cheney, President Bush's vice-president, the UN and inspections became an impediment – not to armed action, but to legitimacy.
Unlike the US, the UK and perhaps other members of the alliance were not ready to claim a right to preventive war against Iraq regardless of security council authorisation. In these circumstances they developed and advanced the argument that the war was authorised by the council under a series of earlier resolutions. As Condoleezza Rice put it, the alliance action "upheld the authority of the council". It was irrelevant to this argument that China, France, Germany and Russia explicitly opposed the action and that a majority on the council declined to give the requested green light for the armed action. If hypocrisy is the compliment that virtue pays to vice then strained legal arguments are the compliments that violators of UN rules pay to the UN charter.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Sir Jeremy Greenstock's evidence on political mistakes after invasion is interrupted
Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the Iraq inquiry, cut the live video of today's hearings, raising fears that he is suppressing evidence on grounds of embarrassment rather that any damage to national security.
"I interrupted the broadcast because of a mention of sensitive information," he said after hearing evidence from Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's UN ambassador before the invasion and special envoy in Baghdad afterwards.
(snip)......
People aware of the piece of intelligence now deleted from the record dismissed it as insignificant. They made it clear that in their view the information was not at all sensitive from the point of view of national security.
Greenstock earlier himself said that relations between the US and UK, including what the US told British officials about conditions in Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison where US soldiers abused Iraqi detainees, was "a matter for private discussion". The incidents suggest evidence is being suppressed to avoid political or diplomatic embarrassment rather than genuine issues affecting national security.
After cutting off the live feed, Chilcot referred to "sensitive information as defined in our published protocols". Under protocols agreed by the inquiry, information in official documents can be referred to only after consulting the Whitehall department or government agency concerned.
Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, has written to Chilcot asking him to explain how he is interpreting the protocols. "Chilcot needs to confirm that he pulled the plug on grounds of national security, not political embarrassment," he said. "Any suggestion that the inquiry would be party to suppressing political mistakes – whether by Americans or Brits – would be highly damaging to its credibility."
Inquiry panel members have sometimes referred to documents but not their content even though they are already in the public domain.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
15-12-2009, 08:22 PM (This post was last modified: 15-12-2009, 08:41 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
Few know that the first British invasion of Iraq was in 1914. I guess they hoped by tagging along with the Americans they could try once again...having failed the first time. Now it is two out of two...or is that three out of three or four out of four or more?!.....:captain:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
15-12-2009, 08:50 PM (This post was last modified: 15-12-2009, 08:55 PM by Helen Reyes.)
My reading came up with a meeting between Bush Sr and Thatcher in 1989 or 1990 (forget) to agree to how to attack Iraq. Before Kuwait was invaded. Before Saddam Hussein went on to TV to tell the British, na-na-na-na, I got the krytons anyway. Bush, Reagan, Thatcher and I think Queen Elizabeth were all party to the pre-planning for 1991.
btw Peter, there's some marginal talk of British rule in Iraq in Lady Ethel Stefania Drower's The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: their cults, customs, magic, legends, and folklore (1937): http://www.archive.org/details/MN41560ucmf_1
The former foreign secretary Jack Straw is to face potentially explosive questioning at the Iraq inquiry next month over a private letter he sent to Tony Blair on the eve of the invasion, urging the prime minister to look at options apart from pressing ahead with British military involvement in the attack.
It is understood that the inquiry is to receive a copy of the personal letter sent by Straw, written after discussions with Sir Michael (now Lord) Jay, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, on 16 March 2003, two days before the Commons voted to back the war.
Straw was yesterday named by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war as one of its star witnesses next month. Ten serving or former cabinet ministers have been called, including Tony Blair, the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and the former defence secretary Geoff Hoon.
But the inquiry has controversially decided not to cross-examine Gordon Brown before the general election, on the basis that it would be wrong to interrogate any serving minister still holding ministerial responsibility for Iraq. Straw is not exempted on this basis because he is now lord chancellor, with responsibility for the justice system.
It has been claimed that in the letter Straw suggested the UK should offer the Americans "political and moral support" in their campaign against Saddam Hussein, but not military backing.
He reportedly urged Blair to tell George Bush that British troops would help clear up the mess and keep the peace once the war was over, but could play no part in Saddam's overthrow.
The US president had offered Blair the chance to pull out, and the then chief of the defence staff, Lord Boyce, has told the Chilcot inquiry that the US invasion would not have been delayed by more than a week if British military forces had been held back at the last minute.
Downing Street has never denied the existence of Straw's letter, but claims he did not oppose British involvement in the war, and instead merely set out the options for how the UK could remain involved in Iraq's reconstruction in the event of MPs voting to oppose British military involvement.
The dispute over the letter's precise contents and motives is one of the great mysteries of the high politics of the British invasion. If Straw did urge restraint at the last minute, it will place an extra onus of responsibility on Blair himself for the decision to go to war. It will also raise questions as to why Straw decided to defend the war so strongly subsequently.
In public Straw has always argued that the invasion was lawful and that Iraq is a better place for the downfall of Saddam. He has also maintained that the whole of the western intelligence community genuinely believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
But it is known that in common with the then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, he challenged the way in which the neo-con Bush administration viewed regime change in Iraq and its optimism that the fall of Saddam would not lead to a civil war between Sunnis and Shias.
Chilcot's treatment of the Straw letter will also be a major test for the legitimacy of the inquiry itself, which has been criticised for repeatedly failing during examination of witnesses to refer to written documentation made available by Whitehall. Since July, the inquiry team has received more than 40,000 government documents, including 12,000 from 10 Downing Street.
In his closing remarks before the end of the pre-Christmas hearings, Chilcot said: "The inquiry will increasingly wish to draw on government records which are currently classified – in some cases highly classified – in its questioning. Where we do, we will seek the necessary declassification of records in advance of the relevant public hearings, with a view to making the written records publicly available."
As well as the prime minister, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Douglas Alexander, the development secretary, have all been excused for the moment and will not give evidence until after the general election, because the inquiry wants to remain "firmly outside party politics".
When Brown is questioned, he will have to answer claims that British confusion over whether to take responsibility for southern Iraq stemmed from Treasury resistance to funding the reconstruction.
The inquiry has broken new ground by revealing the lack of serious postwar planning in the UK, Whitehall's late awareness of the implications of the US defence department taking responsibility for reconstruction, and the collective failure of Whitehall in the days before the war to consider whether delay was necessary. Civil servants under cross-examination have repeatedly admitted that they struggled to influence US thinking, and sometimes revealed deep disdain for American methods.
Others to appear in January or February include the former defence secretaries John Reid and Des Browne, and a former legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Elizabeth Wilmshurst – who resigned after Goldsmith's final advice to the government reversed her legal opinion. Lord Jay, the former Cabinet secretary Lord Turnbull, Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, have also been summoned to appear. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/23...aq-inquiry
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Quote:Matthew Norman: It will take more than Chilcot to nail Campbell
As the warm-up man for Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell was perfect
"He did not impress me as a witness in whom I could feel 100 per cent confidence, he was not wholly convincing or satisfactory, and he was less than completely open and frank."
These are not my words about Alastair Campbell's appearance before Sir John Chilcot's inquiry yesterday, but those of judge Sir Maurice Drake in the 1996 malicious falsehood case brought against him by Tory MP Rupert Allason. They seem doubly apt today. For one thing Mr Allason's lively joint career as both politician and spy writer offered, with the hindsight to which Mr Campbell yearningly referred yesterday, a tantalising hint of the dangers in store when politics and spookery go to bed together. And for another, Mr Campbell remains anything but a wholly convinc... well, whatever the above judicialese for downright bloody liar was.
Nothing original in that analysis, you may think, and you would of course be right. Pontificating ponces like me have been calling Mr Campbell a liar for even longer than he has been blaming us – as he often did yesterday: it was the media wot screwed it all up; us and the French – for poisoning the well of purist political debate he strove mightily to protect.
Then again there was nothing thrillingly original in anything he had to say as by and large he trotted out his lines with the practised ease of one who has done so before, and boned up hard for this latest viva. On the surface he did it pretty well, holding his temper, smiling when possible, and treating his interrogators to the contemptuous patience of the prissy boarding school headmistress whom a pair of sporadically donned and curiously effete spectacles made him resemble.
As warm-up man for Mr Tony Blair, in fact, he was perfect. Admittedly he was fairly dull for the first segment of the cross-examination (a guy in the front row of the audience snoozed), but so was the subject matter (regime change vs WMD). Both sprung to life in the second half, however, when he provided enough entertainment to keep the crowd amused, but not so much as to risk the headline act disappointing us later this month. For all that, the poor soul was rattled once or twice. And he is a pitiable creature, this gaunt and haunted dry drunk, this self-destructed alpha timebomb.
Sympathy for the psychotic propagandist who did such incalculable damage to national life – denuding the Civil Service of its independence, making outright falsehoods the currency of Downing Street where half-truths and omissions had been the coinage before, and unwittingly taking the Samson Option to bring the temple roof down on himself as well as the BBC – doesn't come easy. It's unforgivably petty, but I exult in every Burnley defeat knowing it will ruin his weekend. He's a right little monster, and no mistake. But he's a sad and vulnerable little monster, and, however nerveless he appeared, he was suffering yesterday. A couple of times he even gave himself away.
Now I don't know if any of Sir John, the admirably dogged Sir Lawrence Freedman, the not so dogged Sir Martin Gilbert, the reticent Sir Roderick Lyne or the sensationally useless Baroness Ushar Prashar moonlights as a professional poker player. On balance, I'd guess not.
But if so, they'd be aware that the most obvious tell of all is someone touching their nose for no apparent reason. If there's no scratching, wiping or other practical purpose to the nostril-work, invariably it's a bluff.
Mr Campbell needlessly touched that aquiline hooter a couple of times, most notably when Sir Lawrence moved to those legendary 45 Minutes. He'd been spouting a fair amount of gibberish from the start, to be frank. He had, for example, made the false claim that the policy of containing Saddam was failing by the time of the pivotal Camp David meeting between Messrs Bush and Blair in 2002, and told the whopp... excuse me, been less than wholly convincing in denying that this was when Mr Blair promised the President his undying martial fealty. But he'd said it all with the effortless assurance that leads people to trust in, or at least give the benefit of the doubt to, spoken words that would strike them as preposterous on the page.
Once Sir Lawrence started with the dodgy dossier, however, and particularly the "overtly political" foreword – shorn of caveats and signed by the PM himself – of which Mr Campbell's BF Sir John Scarlett wisely washed his hands until they bled, he started to struggle. The declarations of his own rectitude became more strident, the attacks on a venal media more deranged. If only hacks had been timelocked in the deferential age when questioning a PM's vague but forceful assertions about intelligence material was unimaginable, ran what passed for his argument, none of this mess would have happened.
The non-existence of the WMDs and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the phoney war that ensued seemed irrelevant. Such banalities have no place in the mind of this perverted Marshall McLuhan. To him the media is always the message, and the real war the one still rumbling between his own monstrous ego and those, led by the Andrew Gilligan, who dared to doubt him and his master in the first place.
And yet, and yet ... where we graciously extend to Mr Blair the catch-all sociopath defence that for him the act of intoning a thought transforms that thought into the truth, Mr Campbell knows a lie when he speaks it. And we know he knows, and he knows we know he knows. Put another way, to adapt the late Hylda Baker, it's nose you know.
The publishing of the dossier (and this you have to love) was an exercise in "openness". If the cretins of the press chose to fixate on its juiciest claims, and write "Saddam can attack British nationals in 45 minutes" and "He could nuke us all in a year" headlines, well, headlines were never of the faintest concern to this important strategic thinker. The fact that Scarlett emailed him to ask what headlines he wanted the dossier to generate was so irrelevant that he couldn't even recall what, if anything, he replied.
It was at this stage that I succumbed to the obvious fantasy, in which a team of SAS stormtroopers burst through a hole in the wall, Iranian Embassy style, and pumped him full of a truth serum, or waterboarded him, or put him on a Gulfstream to Syria in pursuit of a confession.
"I don't know what more I can say?" he said, insisting that the insertion of the phrase "beyond doubt" regarding Saddam's fearsome weapons capability was "a perfectly fair philosophical point" because – and you'd need to be quite the scholar of logic to spot the flaw here – no one ever said for sure that Saddam didn't have WMD.
What more Mr Campbell could say, you felt, was "it's a fair cop, guv'nor, you've got me bang to rights". But that isn't how this weird and unending danse macabre is danced. So all he could say, as if no more need ever be said, is that when Mr Blair told the Commons and the country that beyond doubt Saddam was a serious, credible and current threat, the PM believed it with all his heart. And then he touched his nose.
Alastair Campbell had the grand title of Director of Communications and Strategy under Blair. In reality, he was a spinmeister, a propagandist, and a more accurate job title would have been Director of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda - Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.
In his early years, Joseph Goebbels penned "romantic" fiction. Campbell wrote pornography. Fundamentally though, both men were driven by the desire to control, to influence, to bend others to their will, and their evolution into state propagandists had a definite inevitability.
The Daily Mail's front page headline today was "Shameless, swaggering and STILL lying". Whilst I loathe the Daily Mail as much as anyone, the broader point is that newspapers are highly reluctant to call a person a liar in print.
Britain has the most onerous libel laws in the world, and newspapers lawyers would not have allowed such a charge to be printed if they had no evidence.
My own judgement is that the Mail decided to call Campbell a liar on their front page because they are daring him to sue. If Campbell sued, the case would go to a court of law where the Mail would have rights of discovery and so get to see many of the documents that the Chilcott Inquiry has now stated will remain classified (after earlier spinning that they would be declassified). In addition, cross-examination of Campbell would be far more rigorous, robust and relentless. He would not be allowed to get away with his spinmeister tricks and empty banalities.
I hope Campbell does sue. Because a court of law would do a far better job of interrogating him and getting to the truth of this matter than Chilcott's circus is doing.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Quote:Now Campbell quotes scripture at us: Blair's spin-doctor blogs on Psalm about 'people who try to twist your words'
By Niall Firth
Last updated at 3:45 PM on 13th January 2010
He once famously said that 'we don't do God'.
But Alastair Campbell today admitted that he had found comfort in a Psalm that had been emailed to him ahead of yesterday's appearance at the Iraq inquiry.
Writing on his own blog today, the former No 10 communications chief claimed that he had been inundated by emails and messages by well-wishers.
And the former spin doctor said that one email in particular had given him comfort as he listened to what he described as 'overblown and agenda-driven commentary'.
Alastair Campbell speaking at the Iraq Inquiry yesterday. He said he had been given some comfort by a Psalm sent to him yesterday before he appeared
He wrote: 'I am amazed too how many people, though they know I don't do God, sent me passages from the Bible.
'As I walked through the media scrum on the way in, and on the way out, and listened to some of the overblown and agenda driven commentary, I was glad to have read in the morning an email with Psalm 56 attached ...
'"'What can mortal man do to me?" it asks "All day long they twist my words, they are always plotting to harm me. They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, eager to take my life..."
'I never detected a death plot among the British media, but the rest of it sums up the Westminster lobby to a tee.'
More...Shameless, swaggering and STILL lying: Alastair Campbell 'stands by every word' of 45-minute dodgy dossier that took us to war with Iraq
Gordon Brown: I have nothing to hide from Iraq inquiry
Mr Campbell wrote that he while he was 'still not doing God' he agreed with Neil Kinnock who he quoted as saying that 'it's a shame we're atheists, because some of the best lines are in the good book.'
And he added: 'I will give the papers a miss today, knowing that most will follow their own agenda pretty much regardless of anything said yesterday'.
Mr Campbell also revealed that he would like Keira Knightley to play the lead role in any film version of his new novel.
He said he had 'loved' her performance in the new film The Misanthrope where she stars alongside Damian Lewis.
And he wrote: 'I could not help thinking that she would be good as Maya, the heroine of my novel out in a few weeks.
'A couple of film-makers have already expressed an interest and I would ask them to note this match made in heaven. Kate W would be good too, mind.'
Mr Campbell famously said 'We don’t do God' when he stopped Mr Blair from talking about his faith in an interview with Vanity Fair to mark his 50th birthday.
No 10’s anxiety to avoid religious rhetoric during the Iraq war was underlined when Mr Blair prepared a TV address on the invasion’s eve.
He told staff: “I want to end with ‘God bless you.’” But this sparked a revolt by advisers and he dropped the line.
Mr Campbell also once told Mr Blair not to mention God in a TV broadcast because it would sound too American.
During yesterday's appearance at the inquiry, Mr Campbell denied doing anything to 'beef up' the case for going to war.
And he dismissed the overwhelming evidence of government papers and his own diaries that he pressured spy chiefs to harden Tony Blair's 'dodgy' dossier on Iraqi weapons.
During six hours of questioning he insisted that 'not a single one' of his team 'sought to question, override, rewrite, let alone the ghastly "sex up" phrase, intelligence assessments in any way, at any time, on any level.'
The former No 10 communications chief then defied critics of the war by insisting he was 'very, very proud' of his role - and made clear that Tony Blair will do the same when he testifies later this month.
He added: 'I defend every single word of the dossier, I defend every single part of the process.
Psalm 56 (New International version)
Be merciful to me, O God, for men hotly pursue me;
all day long they press their attack.
My slanderers pursue me all day long;
many are attacking me in their pride.
When I am afraid, I will trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me?
All day long they twist my words;
they are always plotting to harm me.
They conspire, they lurk,
they watch my steps, eager to take my life.
On no account let them escape;
in your anger, O God, bring down the nations.
Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll—
are they not in your record?
Then my enemies will turn back
when I call for help.
By this I will know that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
in the Lord, whose word I praise—
in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
I am under vows to you, O God;
I will present my thank offerings to you.
for you have delivered me from death
and my feet from stumbling,
that I may walk before God in the light of life
I humbly suggest a more appropriate biblical passage:
Quote:Let us pray.
God, whose nature is ever merciful and forgiving, accept our prayer that this servant of yours, bound by the fetters of sin, may be pardoned by your loving kindness.
Holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who once and for all consigned that fallen and apostate tyrant to the flames of hell, who sent your only-begotten Son into the world to crush that roaring lion; hasten to our call for help and snatch from ruination and from the clutches of the noonday devil this human being made in your image and likeness. Strike terror, Lord, into the beast now laying waste your vineyard. Fill your servants with courage to fight manfully against that reprobate dragon, lest he despise those who put their trust in you, and say with Pharaoh of old: "I know not God, nor will I set Israel free." Let your mighty hand cast him out of your servant, Alastair Campbell, so he may no longer hold captive this person whom it pleased you to make in your image, and to redeem through your Son; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever.
All: Amen.
Then he commands the demon as follows:
I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are, along with all your minions now attacking this servant of God, by the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, by the coming of our Lord for judgment, that you tell me by some sign your name, and the day and hour of your departure. I command you, moreover, to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness; nor shall you be emboldened to harm in any way this creature of God, or the bystanders, or any of their possessions.
The priest lays his hand on the head of the sick person, saying:
They shall lay their hands upon the sick and all will be well with them. May Jesus, Son of Mary, Lord and Savior of the world, through the merits and intercession of His holy apostles Peter and Paul and all His saints, show you favor and mercy.
All: Amen.
Next he reads over the possessed person these selections
from the Gospel, or at least one of them.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: May He also be with you.
Yes, indeed.
The rite of exorcism.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Alastair Campbell had the grand title of Director of Communications and Strategy under Blair. In reality, he was a spinmeister, a propagandist, and a more accurate job title would have been Director of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda - Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.
In his early years, Joseph Goebbels penned "romantic" fiction. Campbell wrote pornography. Fundamentally though, both men were driven by the desire to control, to influence, to bend others to their will, and their evolution into state propagandists had a definite inevitability.
The Daily Mail's front page headline today was "Shameless, swaggering and STILL lying". Whilst I loathe the Daily Mail as much as anyone, the broader point is that newspapers are highly reluctant to call a person a liar in print.
Britain has the most onerous libel laws in the world, and newspapers lawyers would not have allowed such a charge to be printed if they had no evidence.
My own judgement is that the Mail decided to call Campbell a liar on their front page because they are daring him to sue. If Campbell sued, the case would go to a court of law where the Mail would have rights of discovery and so get to see many of the documents that the Chilcott Inquiry has now stated will remain classified (after earlier spinning that they would be declassified). In addition, cross-examination of Campbell would be far more rigorous, robust and relentless. He would not be allowed to get away with his spinmeister tricks and empty banalities.
I hope Campbell does sue. Because a court of law would do a far better job of interrogating him and getting to the truth of this matter than Chilcott's circus is doing.
This is a welcome turn of events. It can only be hoped that the Daily Mail is sued and that this can lead to more documents being freed and the end of this odious man's career. It really does seem that at least one faction has decided to hang Tony Bliar out to dry. I'm surprised it got this far. And he lost the EU presidency.:musicus:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
