George Galloway has "hinted":http://politics.guardian.co.uk/otherparties/story/0,,2107298,00.html that he might stand against Jack Straw in Straw's Blackburn constituency at the next election. I'm not overly fond of Galloway or his Respect party, but I can see his logic. Straw, we are told, is certain to be in Gordon Brown's cabinet and, having been foreign secretary and a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, will represent the strongest remaining link with that catastrophic decision. He was described in (this week's) New Statesman as "that old survivor", but then he has the advantage of knowing where the bodies are buried on Iraq. In fact, he buried many of them. In fact, he fashioned the shovel with which they were buried.
Although Straw has used spin and briefings to compliant journalists to distance himself from the war, he was in on the plan from the beginning. What evidence there is of his scepticism merely shows his complicity. He understood the lie that was being perpetrated, but went along with it anyway. For example, Straw was present at the July 2002 Downing Street meeting whose famous "leaked minutes":http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1 show that it was always Tony Blair's plan to start a war on a cooked-up pretext. Having heard Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett set out the latest intelligence, Straw said:
*"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."*
The sham of "going down the UN route" to justify a war that had already been decided on was as much Straw's plan as anyone else's. That Straw and Blair promoted this as an attempt to avoid war proves the hypocrisy of their foreign policy. This duplicity shows exactly what Straw had in mind when he "asked":http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0033.pdf for the September 2002 Iraq dossier to contain "a killer para on Saddam's defiance of the UN". The government wanted to make the case that the UN weapons inspectors would not achieve anything, even as it set out the case for their return.
As I have written before, it was Straw who cleared his personal spin doctor John Williams to write the first draft of the dossier, Straw who made statements to the foreign affairs committee hearing that have turned out to be untrue and Straw who personally - and "wrongly":http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2007/fs50072316.pdf - blocked my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Williams draft.
I have also learnt this week that it was Straw, when foreign secretary, who blocked two more of my FOIA requests, even though the Cabinet Office was the public authority that was responsible for handling them. The first request was for some more "missing" documents. The second request was to know the authors of those documents, or at least whether they were spin doctors or intelligence officials, or failing that, the departments for which they worked. But according to the Cabinet Office:
*"disclosure of department names, individuals' names and designations is as inhibiting for government business as disclosing details of the responses."*
The exemption Straw deployed here was once again Section 36, "prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs", "described recently":http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2007/2/britain-public-nuisance.shtml by the Guardian's "David Leigh":http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_leigh/ as a "noxious ministerial veto". It was Straw himself who, when home secretary, watered down the FOIA with this and numerous other get-outs. Now he was using it in the most cynical - and, frankly, laughable - way imaginable. If the disclosure of information as vague as this would bring Whitehall to a standstill, could anything ever be disclosed? Everyone who argued that ministers could not be trusted with such a broadly-based exemption has been proved right.
Many people feel, with some justification, that Gordon Brown could, and should, have made a stand over Iraq and that he will always be tarnished by his failure to do so. I continue to think that it is his insistence on sticking with Straw, without whose complicity Blair could not have taken Britain to war, that says most about Brown's willingness to tell the truth about how and why it happened.
George Galloway has "hinted":http://politics.guardian.co.uk/otherparties/story/0,,2107298,00.html that he might stand against Jack Straw in Straw's Blackburn constituency at the next election. I'm not overly fond of Galloway or his Respect party, but I can see his logic. Straw, we are told, is certain to be in Gordon Brown's cabinet and, having been foreign secretary and a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, will represent the strongest remaining link with that catastrophic decision. He was described in (this week's) New Statesman as "that old survivor", but then he has the advantage of knowing where the bodies are buried on Iraq. In fact, he buried many of them. In fact, he fashioned the shovel with which they were buried.
Although Straw has used spin and briefings to compliant journalists to distance himself from the war, he was in on the plan from the beginning. What evidence there is of his scepticism merely shows his complicity. He understood the lie that was being perpetrated, but went along with it anyway. For example, Straw was present at the July 2002 Downing Street meeting whose famous "leaked minutes":http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1 show that it was always Tony Blair's plan to start a war on a cooked-up pretext. Having heard Joint Intelligence Committee chairman John Scarlett set out the latest intelligence, Straw said:
*"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."*
The sham of "going down the UN route" to justify a war that had already been decided on was as much Straw's plan as anyone else's. That Straw and Blair promoted this as an attempt to avoid war proves the hypocrisy of their foreign policy. This duplicity shows exactly what Straw had in mind when he "asked":http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0033.pdf for the September 2002 Iraq dossier to contain "a killer para on Saddam's defiance of the UN". The government wanted to make the case that the UN weapons inspectors would not achieve anything, even as it set out the case for their return.
As I have written before, it was Straw who cleared his personal spin doctor John Williams to write the first draft of the dossier, Straw who made statements to the foreign affairs committee hearing that have turned out to be untrue and Straw who personally - and "wrongly":http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2007/fs50072316.pdf - blocked my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Williams draft.
I have also learnt this week that it was Straw, when foreign secretary, who blocked two more of my FOIA requests, even though the Cabinet Office was the public authority that was responsible for handling them. The first request was for some more "missing" documents. The second request was to know the authors of those documents, or at least whether they were spin doctors or intelligence officials, or failing that, the departments for which they worked. But according to the Cabinet Office:
*"disclosure of department names, individuals' names and designations is as inhibiting for government business as disclosing details of the responses."*
The exemption Straw deployed here was once again Section 36, "prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs", "described recently":http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2007/2/britain-public-nuisance.shtml by the Guardian's "David Leigh":http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_leigh/ as a "noxious ministerial veto". It was Straw himself who, when home secretary, watered down the FOIA with this and numerous other get-outs. Now he was using it in the most cynical - and, frankly, laughable - way imaginable. If the disclosure of information as vague as this would bring Whitehall to a standstill, could anything ever be disclosed? Everyone who argued that ministers could not be trusted with such a broadly-based exemption has been proved right.
Many people feel, with some justification, that Gordon Brown could, and should, have made a stand over Iraq and that he will always be tarnished by his failure to do so. I continue to think that it is his insistence on sticking with Straw, without whose complicity Blair could not have taken Britain to war, that says most about Brown's willingness to tell the truth about how and why it happened.