Freesteel Blog » The Department of Official Lies

The Department of Official Lies

Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 5:52 pm Written by:

And so we come to a day three years after Mr Christopher Ames wrote a letter to the Foreign Office which said:

“I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act to see a draft of the September Dossier on ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction’ which according to John Scarlett, was produced by John Williams. It was referred to in an e-mail from Daniel Pruce as ‘John’s draft of [9 September 2002]'”.[1]

After much legal wrangling and fighting, the Foreign Secretary complied with the law concerning the public’s right to know the full details by which the Government lied this country into war with Iraq, and released the document,[2] stating:

The document produced by John Williams, then head of the FCO’s press office, was not commissioned as part of the formal drafting process and was not used as the basis for the dossier the Government subsequently published, which was produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee.[3]

The Information Tribunal prints part of Daniel Pruce’s 10 September email:

“I promised some quick thoughts on John’s draft of 9 September… we also need to think, once we have John’s further draft tomorrow, how we prepare the ground for the launch of the text to get expectations in the right place”

I can’t account for the fact we’ve got a 22 July draft rather than a 9 September draft, although the Information Commissioner provides a detailed chronology of the events leading up to his possession of this document in December 2005 after overcoming the arguments that it was too embarrassing sensitive to release it to him, even though he had all the necessary security clearance.[4]

Regardless of its version, it is a shockingly bad piece of work in every way. It’s clearly an attempt to produce a sales-pitch for a military invasion, rather than an early collection of notes that will later be assembled into something coherent and complete. Here’s its first paragraph:

“Iraq presents a uniquely dangerous threat to the world. No other country has twice launched wars of aggression against neighbours. In the 77 years since the Geneva Convention against chemical weapons was signed, Iraq is the only country to have broken it. Saddam Hussein is not the world’s only dictator, but no other has used poison gas against civilians. No other country has flouted the United nations’ authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”

This was too much for the next person who scrawled some notes on the page. They pointed the words “Germany?” and “US – Cuba, Grenada” at the second sentence, and suggested inserting “since WWII” at the end of that line.

Also, realizing that 77 years before 2003 sets the date back to 1926, they added the question “Japan in China?” A lot of bad things happened since 1926, such as the Changde chemical weapon attack, not to mention the massive use of Agent Orange and Napalm during the Vietnam War, which one has to be pathologically narrow-minded not to classify as Chemical Weapons, seeing as they are both extremely reactive Chemicals that are used as Weapons.

But that’s not all. The person writing the notes also added one word, “Israel”, beside the sentence alleging that: “no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations’ authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.”

As any fool knows, Israel has flouted every authority in its pursuit and possession of nuclear weapons. However, this one word had to be wiped out from the margin, because the Government official argued that the note indicated that the person who wrote it believed that Israel has flouted the United Nations’ authority in a manner similar to that of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, and that this would seriously damage the UK’s relations with Israel, because the comparison with Saddam and the implied accusation of a breach of the UN’s authority by Israel are potentially very serious.[5]

Now, what I don’t get with all of this — and I think this goes very deep into the psychological mechanics of an official state lie — is: Why does it make any difference that that note got erased? We know it was there. We know it is true. Yet somehow not actually seeing that pencil mark as hard evidence contradicting the idea that not one single person in the entire Government is aware of the truth makes a difference to their ability to sustain the fantasy that they actually give a damn about international law. The fact is, the Government clearly demonstrates that it doesn’t care about international law by its covering up of the Israeli nuclear weapons program, and even though this is done in broad daylight out in the open, the cover-up for some unknown reason succeeds. If it didn’t, then whenever the UK Government censured another country for it’s non-compliance with international law regarding nuclear weapons, everyone would fall over laughing. It is not competent to make a case.

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