History Forum / General / British History / January 2004

U.K. And U.S.
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"Winning the War, Then the Debate"

"Today's lull in the presidential campaign affords us an opportunity to
look at the latest developments in the weird postwar debate over Iraq,
in which certain American and British politicians and journalists, for
reasons of partisanship, ideology or self-aggrandizement, have for
months been trying to transform victory over Saddam Hussein into defeat
for America and its allies.  ******

For one, the kerfuffle over the BBC's "report" last summer that the
British government had "sexed up" a report on Saddam Hussein's arsenal
has been resolved.  Tony Blair's government stands vindicated, while
heads are rolling at the Beeb.

Yesterday, after the Hutton Inquiry found the BBC's claims "unfounded,"
BBC chairman Gavin Davies tendered his resignation, the BBC itself
reports.  Today director general Greg Dyke followed suit, the Daily
Telegraph reports.  Dyke had apologized yesterday on the Beeb's behalf.

On this side of the Atlantic, Democrats earlier this week jumped on
departing weapons inspector David Kay's assertion that he believes it
unlikely Iraq still had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction by the
time the coalition liberated the country from Saddam Hussein's
dictatorship.  But Kay repudiated the Dems' charges that inaccurate
intelligence estimates were the product of political manipulation by the
White House.  From his testimony yesterday to the Senate Armed Services
Committee:

"In the course of doing that, I had innumerable [intelligence] analysts
who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not
the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated.
Reality on the ground differed in advance."

"And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was
pressured to do this."  The explanation was very often, "The limited
data we had led one to reasonably conclude this.  I now see that there's
another explanation for it.""

Earlier in the week a New York Times editor "sexed up" the paper's
coverage of Kay, leading the paper to publish this embarrassing
correction Tuesday: ******

"Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about David
A. Kay, the C.I.A.'s former weapons inspector, misstated his view of
whether the agency's analysts had been pressured by the Bush
administration to tailor their prewar intelligence reports about Iraq's
weapons programs to conform to a White House political agenda. Mr.. Kay
said he believed that there was no such pressure, not that there was.
(His view was correctly reflected in a quotation that followed the
error.)" ******

At the same time, it turns out that the war may have been all about
oil -- for those who took Saddam's side, that is.  ******

The Daily Telegraph picks up a report from an independent Iraqi
newspaper, which says it has documents showing that Saddam "bribed his
way around the world, buying the support of presidents, ministers,
legislators, political parties and even Christian churches":

"According to the newspaper al-Mada, one of the new publications that
have emerged since the removal of the dictator, Saddam offered each of
his friends lucrative contracts to trade in millions of barrels of Iraqi
crude under the United Nations oil-for-food programme."

"The 270 individuals and organisations alleged to be in his pay included
the sons of a serving Arab president, Arab ministers, a prominent
Indonesian leader, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the party
led by the Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and even the Russian
Orthodox Church."

The Middle East Media Research Institute reprints al-Mada's list with
the disclaimer that "MEMRI is not responsible for the accuracy of the
details with regard to the names listed or the amount of oil granted.""

James Taranto
The Wall Street Journal
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D. Spencer Hines

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Vires et Honor