Day 3299: The Not-at-all-sexed-up Dossier Did NOT Mislead, claims Mr Alistair Henchman… so THAT'S all right then(!)

Tuesday:


Lord Blairimort's enforcer, Mr Alistair Henchman, is at the Chilcot Enquiry defending the Iraq Dossier.

That dossier: "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction – The Assessment of the British Government" (pdf), aka the SEPTEMBER Dossier (NOT the subsequent FEBRUARY Dossier "Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", aka the "Dodgy Dossier", which was a complete fabrication*) is the one that said Mr Saddam still had Weapons of Mass Destruction and could launch them within forty-five minutes.

"I don't believe the dossier in any sense misrepresented the position," said Mr Henchman.

Apart, obviously, from being COMPLETELY WRONG.

Asked about weapons of mass destruction, he said their alleged existence became such a "central issue" because of the sense of the "serious and credible threat" they posed to stability in the region.

But to the best of my fluffy knowledge, Great Britain is not IN the "region".

And the ONLY possible justification for Great Britain going to war under INTERNATIONAL LAW is an attack on GREAT BRITAIN.

According to Mr Henchman, Lord Blairimort had "a fundamental view about this."

Aren't we supposed to be AGAINST fundamentalists?

On the 45-minute claim, which was retracted after the war, he said the dossier "obviously" could have been clearer about it referring to battlefield munitions. But he insisted that Mr Blair had put forward a balanced argument in the House of Commons on the issue and the 45-minute claim was only given "iconic" status by the press.

But this claim doesn't JUST appear in the Prime Monster's foreword; it appears FOUR times in total – it's in the Executive Summary, and gets its own (black humour) bullet point; it's in Chapter 3 "The Current Position", listed as one of the "main conclusions" and repeated in section 5 of the same chapter under "recent intelligence".

In none of these cases is it qualified as referring only to "some battlefield munitions"; none of these cases clarifies that this is from ONE uncorroborated source of information; not once is the word "maybe" deployed.

We know NOW that Mr Saddam didn't HAVE any Weapons of Mass Destruction. There was nothing capable of being launched within forty-five DAYS let alone minutes.

Oh, you may claim that it's EASY to say that with HINDSIGHT.

Well the UN inspector, Mr Hans Blix and Bumpsidaisy, was saying it AT THE TIME – saying there was no evidence of WMDs and asking for more time to conduct more inspections.

And the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS were saying it AT THE TIME – saying that in the absence of ANY evidence this was an ILLEGAL WAR.

And this is why this sort of war IS illegal.

If you are FRIGHTENED of the FOREIGN GENTLEMAN living… well not even next door, but in different town altogether… you can't just go round to his house, beat him up and throw him out and then say: "oh, I really, really BELIEVED at the time that he had a GUN and he could have threatened his neighbours in that town, some of whom used to know me a long time ago."

And yet that is EXACTLY what Lord Blairimort DID do, and what he is now – it would seem – claiming as justification.


Doing his best to cover Lord Blairimort's fluffy bottom, Mr Henchman insisted that Lord B had wanted a DIPLOMATIC solution.

Lord Blairimort was clear that military action against Iraq should be regarded as a last resort if the diplomatic process failed and war only became inevitable when efforts to get a second UN resolution collapsed."

Sorry, let me just get that right – the war became inevitable because the UN wouldn't agree to a resolution that would allow the US and UK to go to war?

Isn't it time we just stopped PRETENDING and admitted that the invasion of Iraq was an ILLEGAL and COSTLY mistake, a hideous, ghastly mistake that cost the lives of thousands and thousands of people.

Dwelling on whether the dossier represents what people BELIEVED was the position is neither here nor there. IT WAS WRONG.

If you broke into someone's house because you "really, really believed" they were a threat you would be arrested and sent to prison.

What Lord Blairimort did was tens of thousands of times worse.



*Remember: it would be VERY WRONG to assume that the British Government might in any way have made up any of the intelligence in the September Dossier just because they completely made up the contents of the February Dossier.


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