Greater and lesser crimes

Russell Razzaque, a psychiatrist and author of Human Being to Human Bomb: The Conveyor Belt of Terror, disagreed with the British military action in Iraq.

So, now, does the Daily Mail, although its editorial position at the time was carefully hedged.  In a leading article today the Mail is so taken by the testimony of Baroness Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, to the Chilcot inquiry, that it declares: “MI5 refused to have anything to do with that work of fiction” – referring to the September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Lady Manningham-Buller took over the top job at MI5 only the following month, but she was deputy head of the domestic secret service at the time of the dossier and MI5 was of course represented on the Joint Intelligence Committee, in whose name the dossier was published.

Razzaque at least recognises that Lady Manningham-Buller’s evidence to the Iraq Inquiry contained nothing that was not already well known. He takes one view of the evidence. I take another. We are unlikely ever to agree.

But I am surprised, given that the subject of our debate is, indirectly, Saddam Hussein, at his lack of imagination:

If the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens then I cannot imagine a greater crime a government could perpetrate on its own people.

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