Wednesday, July 14, 2004
The Butler Report: No Alarms and No Surprises Please.
There were 'serious flaws' in the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq but that wasn't anybody's fault. I half expected Lord Butler to add "and besides, all those Iraqis probably would have died anyway, so let's hear no more about it, all right?" The debate in the Commons afterwards (although in reality the term 'debate' is something of a misnomer as it was just people making speeches about whether they'd believed in the war with Blair saying "no" to practically everything except Angela Eagle, IIRC, one of those MPs who don't actually contribute anything useful except some piece of blatant crawling and sycophancy towards Blair in the form of a question.) was fun, especially as with the lack of Blair's blood on the floor of the chamber we at least got to see the boot being put into the Tories, with Blair reminding everyone several times that Michael Howard voted in favour the war and got a pre-dossier briefing on the intelligence with regards to Iraq. However, Blair was using this to distract from Howard's legitimate questions over the Prime Minister's credibility as he admitted that he'd been wrong over the issue of WMD in Iraq.
But the Hutton Report insisted that errors were made and three BBC employees resigned or were kicked out. The Butler Report insists that errors were made, yet because the Government acted 'in good faith' and is willing to learn from it's mistakes no-one is going to go. Double standards much?
There were 'serious flaws' in the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq but that wasn't anybody's fault. I half expected Lord Butler to add "and besides, all those Iraqis probably would have died anyway, so let's hear no more about it, all right?" The debate in the Commons afterwards (although in reality the term 'debate' is something of a misnomer as it was just people making speeches about whether they'd believed in the war with Blair saying "no" to practically everything except Angela Eagle, IIRC, one of those MPs who don't actually contribute anything useful except some piece of blatant crawling and sycophancy towards Blair in the form of a question.) was fun, especially as with the lack of Blair's blood on the floor of the chamber we at least got to see the boot being put into the Tories, with Blair reminding everyone several times that Michael Howard voted in favour the war and got a pre-dossier briefing on the intelligence with regards to Iraq. However, Blair was using this to distract from Howard's legitimate questions over the Prime Minister's credibility as he admitted that he'd been wrong over the issue of WMD in Iraq.
But the Hutton Report insisted that errors were made and three BBC employees resigned or were kicked out. The Butler Report insists that errors were made, yet because the Government acted 'in good faith' and is willing to learn from it's mistakes no-one is going to go. Double standards much?
