Bill's Comment Page

Does the evidence about the threat Iraq is said to pose, which is referred to regularly by George W Bush and Tony Blair, really exist?

The quick answer is that I have no idea. All I am aware of, recently, is that Tony Blair announced in a speech earlier this week that a dossier would be published in the next week or so which would satisfy all the doubters.

It seems to me that there are several possible explanations:
- Bush and Blair are simply lying, or at the very least exaggerating dramatically, when they claim that evidence exists showing that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons ‘of mass destruction’ and that he has the means and the definite intention to use them; there could be many motives for this dissimulation, if it exists, but I don’t plan to discuss these in this article;
- Circumstantial evidence for the above exists, but because they know it would not convince those not pre-disposed to accept what they say without question they have chosen not to reveal the paltry evidence they do have;
- Real evidence does exist, but for various reasons they have chosen to retain the confidentiality of the information they do have.

They may be other possible explanations, but I think the three above cover the most likely. I tend to discount the first – I find it difficult to believe that the alleged evidence is a bare-faced lie; I have no particular views about Bush as my understanding of the intricacies of US politics and its electoral system is not perfect, although I think I have a fair understanding of both. On the other hand, I am not a natural supporter of Tony Blair at all – I like the present New Labour no more than I liked traditional Labour policies, but I have no reason to suppose that Blair would indulge in bare-faced deception; manipulation yes, media-spin certainly, but outright falsity – no, I don’t think so. At the very least, both Bush and Blair must surely know that the truth will eventually be revealed.

At the very least I suspect that strong circumstantial evidence exists to justify their forthright views. We are told often that no intelligence is available from within Iraq because it would be very difficult for those gathering it to survive given the level of state surveillance Saddam’s regime is notorious for and it is implied, but never explicitly stated, that the intelligence-gathering is all remotely-based (whether by satellite surveillance, evidence provided by Iraqi defectors or other eaves-dropping techniques).

A number of sceptical politicians here in the United Kingdom, and in the United States, have demanded that firm ‘evidence’ be provided to justify pre-emptive action against Iraq; they state that as democracies we must be seen to act legitimately at all times and that “the people have a right to know”. Nothing wrong with this, in principle, I would be the first to agree. On the other hand, though, I think that sometimes in the West we have a tendency to think that the rest of the world thinks as we do, in democracy and the rule of law; we live in comfortable societies where the bulk of the populations are reasonably healthy, well-educated and prosperous and where safety-nets exist to help those who for one reason or another need help. The rest of the world is not necessarily like this, though.

I make one final set of comments. What if the evidence against Iraq is real and credible, just as Tony Blair has stated it to be, but that it has been obtained by operatives from within Iraq who would be in grave danger if its existence and the detail behind it were to be revealed, because the Iraqi authorities would know that only one or a very few individuals could have known about it? If this is the case, perhaps the remarks by Blair and Bush that evidence would be revealed when they feel it is prudent to do so is because they need to give those who provided the intelligence the time and the opportunity to protect themselves from the retaliation of Saddam Hussein and those among his administration who remain loyal to him not just through fear, but real conviction.