[lbo-talk] The lies that led us into war ...

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Sun Jun 1 10:28:12 PDT 2003



>Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 00:19:29 -0500
>From: steve philion <philion at hawaii.edu>
>To: lbo <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] The lies that led us into war ...
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>
>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=411300
>
>The lies that led us into war ...
>Glen Rangwala shows how the UK and the US manipulated UN reports - and
>conjured an anthrax dump from thin air
>01 June 2003
>
>
>One key tactic of the British and United States governments in their
>campaign on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was to talk up
>suspicions and to portray possibility as fact.

Why couldn't we pick up on this before I wonder?

There was a lot of informed critical comment in the UK media.

Were we caught out with the momentum that the US was going to war anyway so serious examination of the case against the Saddam Hussein regime did not matter outside the Security Council.

Was it that we did not understand the coded politics of Hans Blix reports enough?

Is that why it has waited for a lecturer in politics to do the detailed textual analyses? Yes it needs concentrated attention over a period of time but there was enough collective networking to have been able to synthesise this earlier.

Couldn't the Stop the war movements have commissioned someone to go through this?

Is it because as left-wingers we think our role is just to criticise and we are cynical about what happens anyway?

Or did it require the security services on both sides of the Atlantic to start breaking ranks and to start complaining about how their reports were spun?

Chris Burford London



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