Afternoon all – welcome to week seven of the Iraq Inquiry. A mixed bag of witnesses this week; a scattering of permanent secretary civil servants but also some political big guns like Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw, tomorrow and Thursday respectively.
Five words I never quite thought I’d hear, let alone use myself, but Geoff Hoon could be interesting following his and Pat Hewitt’s recent toys/pram hoo-hah.
It rather depends on which paper you read or leaks you believe (often amounts to the same thing) but reports suggest that Hoon is either “poised to wreak further revenge on the prime minister over his funding of the armed forces” or face allegations that he himself “denied Iraq soldiers equipment that could have saved lives”. Glad that’s clear then.
This afternoon’s witness doesn’t quite fall into either camp. The title “chief of staff” feels, dare I say it, a little American, not quite the way we “do” things over here: I can’t help but think of Leo McGarry to President Bartlet or even Silvio Dante to Tony Soprano.
Which is neither to say that Jonathan Powell is or at any time has been a recovering alcoholic Democrat or a New Jersey consigliere. He worked at the heart of Downing Street from 1997 to 2007 – staying on longer than Alastair Campbell or almost any of the other New Labour luminaries.
Powell’s role in the tectonic plate shifts that ended in war was revealed by the Hutton Inquiry – in particular an email he sent Campbell on 19 September 2002 in which he suggests that JIC boss John Scarlett remove part of that month’s dossier which made it sound as though Saddam would only use WMD if threatened – calling it “a bit of a problem”.
He also famously asked Campbell “What will be the headline in the Standard on day of publication. What do we want it to be?” I suspect he won’t be terribly disappointed if he doesn’t feature in this evening’s headlines at all. Let’s see.
Author: |Posted: January 18, 2010
Tags: Iraq/ Iraq inquiry/ Iraq war
3 Responses to “Week seven: Blair's chief of staff and the 'problem' email”
well it was yet another day of evidence of self denial. it is a pity the evidence is not given under oath so the parties can be charged with perjury.
thats campbell and powell so far that live in the land of the fairies
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Dichotomies are go for Mr Powell, it seems, too:
I thought two members of the Chilcot panel were more searching today, which is my naive mininum expectation for any genuine inquiry, in their questioning of J. Powell; yet another exponent of the classic Blair art of brazen self-contradiction.
(Incidentally, the two questioners I refer to who may yet redeem themselves, unlike those guilty subjects of the inquiry, does not include the eternally bewildered Baroness Prashar ).
On the one hand Powell maintained that September the eleventh changed the TB camp’s perspective towards Iraq prior to the invasion, while claiming that the invasion was purely about Saddam and his (non-existent) wmd’s; as they knew there were never any links between Saddam and the Taliban.
The usual contradictions also arose in his response to the questions about the impossibility of providing evidence to prove one had destroyed wmd’s if one hadn’t had them to begin with.
Another of the many little dichotomies was the one about what he called TB’s ‘eargerness to avoid going to war’. Ah; so that’s what that ‘incontrovertable’, ‘tied to a lamp post etc.’ speech was about: cautiousness.
Now, will Powell also have to be recalled to ‘resolve some problematic answers’ in addition to Campbell? If so, might this be the beginning of some kind of an endless ‘loop of the damned’ forming in the corridor outside the hearing room?The chief cronies, being forever unable to tell the truth about something that would ultimately incriminate themselves, would be constantly recalled, each shuffling behind the other for the rest of eternity, trapped in an endless cycle of self-contradictions.
That’s the flaw with the great TB technique of ‘contradict yourself very quickly all the time, then they can’t argue with you’ , one tends to get found out.
Almost forgot another little dichotomy; his proclamation that the people of Iraq were grateful for their ‘liberation’. (Here, I assume he means the living) But I thought it was about wmd’s?
Here we go again. It’s like the Flying Dutchman..
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