Making the case for the Iraq war. Again.

Once more into the breach. Just for the sake of completeness, you understand. No one is going to change their mind. No one has changed their mind on Iraq since Johann Hari in about 2005. But I have started the Iraq Inquiry Coverage Rebuttal Service, so I’ll finish.

A little flurry of excitement among the LBLM&C (London-Based Liberal Media & Culterati) today about new documents released by the Iraq Inquiry. Which, of course, prove What Everybody Knows. My friend Richard Norton-Taylor at The Guardian reports:

A top military intelligence official [Major General Michael Laurie CBE, right] has said the discredited dossier on Iraq’s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”.

This is one of those wonderful sentences that beg its premise. If you think, as I do, that there was a case for military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime, then an intelligence dossier setting out the evidence dispassionately would indeed help to “make the case for war”.

If you do not, as the LBLM&C does not, then “making the case for war” is a propaganda exercise based on exaggeration.

The one thing the dossier is not, however, is discredited. The Hutton report concluded that the central charges against it of “sexing up” were unfounded, and the Butler report found that there were weaknesses in it and errors of judgement in the way it was compiled, but not that the motives of those who produced it could be faulted.

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• http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RWQW5VGWYSRA5K3VBT7ZWOEJLE Stephen

  Let me get this straight.  According to you, a leader known to have ordered men to go to a foreign state to carry out massive destruction of property and causing the deaths of numerous people has broken no laws.  Under this logic (!) Osama Bin Laden could not have been prosecuted for the 9/11 attacks because there are no laws against destroying buildings and killing lots of people.  Are you serious?  Is that why the US murdered him instead of prosecuting him?  Because it’s not actually illegal to do such things?  I suggest you stick to saying you like Tony Blair and think the war against Iraq was wonderful rather than trying to convince people that blowing things up and killing people is somehow legal.  I would love to hear you explain how if Iraq had bombed London and killed thousands of people, and Saddam Hussein had been brought to the Hague for trail, he would have gotten off because, as you claim, no laws have been broken.  Go on, please, explain it to me. 

• JohnJustice

  This is a nonsense analogy. The more accurate one is of Hitler bombing London, killing thousands of people, a cease fire being announced, and Hitler breaking one of the conditions of the cease-fire that there should be unfettered inspections to ensure that Hitler no longer had V weapons to threaten London again. In those circumstances it would have been quite legal under international law for hostilities against Hitler to be resumed and quite absurd to talk about the leader of Britain being brought to the Hague for breaking international law.

  For Hitler read Saddam Hussein. For the attack on London read the attack on Kuwait. For V weapons read Saddam’s WMD. For hostilities being resumed against Hitler read hostilities being resumed against Saddam Hussein.

  Get it?