Weapons of mass deception: that Bush-Blair transcript

A transcript of a crucial conversation between Tony Blair and George Bush just before the invasion of Iraq seems certain to be suppressed by the Coalition government, despite a ruling that it should be published.

But a leaked copy has made its way to our virtual office. Here’s is a transcript of the telephone conversation between the White House and Downing Street that took place on March 12, 2003, just a week before the invasion began:

GB: Hiya Tony. How’s it going with that pesky Parliament of yours? I thought you were a kinda president like me and didn’t have to do with all that democracy stuff. I hear some guys in your cabinet are even talking about something called international law when it comes to invading some other country like Iran, err Iraq.

TB: George, we’re nearly good to go. You know, we made our decision last year that Saddam had to go, come what may, no matter what the weapons inspectors reported, and I’m going to stand shoulder to shoulder with you on this one. Don’t worry about Parliament. The Tories love a good war and they’ll be voting with me. As for my cabinet, I’ve got it sorted.

GB: That French guy, what’s his name, Durac, BigMac, Chirac? I can’t remember.

TB: Jacques Chirac, Mr President.

GB: He’s sort of saying we need another resolution at the UN before we can go in and find them nukes and chemical weapons our boys say are out there somewhere in Iran. Then he says he’ll block it. So what the shit is he on about?

TB: George, don’t worry! We’ve had all the UN offices bugged for some time and he’s talking bullshit, err no offence George. Anyway, my legal team says we can do more or less what we want, you know, given the breaches of UN resolution Saddam is already guilty of. One guy was a bit iffy on the legality issue, but he’s since come round to my way of thinking and his advice is just what we wanted. Some in the cabinet questioned whether the weapons of mass destruction actually existed. So I got this guy in from intelligence to put the frighteners on them. So it’s sorted.

GB: That’s great Tone, Y’know, Don [Rumsfeld, defence secretary] was saying we didn’t need the Brits if push came to shove because all the firepower was ours. But I told him: “Don, I know that you think there are known knowns and there are known unknowns and that we don’t know what we don’t know. But these guys are our only allies. Let’s invite them to the show.”

TB: Great! Just one more thing, George.

GB: What’s that Tone?

TB: Can we leave Al Qaeda out of this one. I know you guys think that Saddam had a hand in 9.11 but not everyone is convinced. Why don’t we keep it to just WMDs?

GB: I can’t do that Tone. My people want justice for those who planned the attack on 9.11. They gotta be out there somewhere. We didn’t find them in Afghanistan so it seems like Iraq is the next place to look. W’dya think?

TB: If you say so, George.

GB: I gotta a great name for it: Operation Iraqi Freedom. Great, isn’t it?

TB: Wonderful, George.

GB: So when y’all ready?

TB: In a week, once I get it through Parliament we should just get on with it.

GB: What about a week today, March 19?

TB: That’s fine. History will show that when it mattered, we did the right thing.

GB: Too right, Tone. Too right. That’s it for now. Love to Cherie.

TB: Speak soon. Tell your boys I’m with them all the way.

In memory of Brian Haw

A World to Win salutes the uncompromising determination of Brian Haw, who became a symbol, not only for the anti-war movement, but for the basic democratic right to demonstrate and protest. His death from cancer at only 62 robs us of an unbending voice and symbol of resistance to the state.

Haw began his vigil directly outside the House of Commons on June 2, 2001 to protest against the UN-NATO sponsored sanctions on Iraq on June. He said he would stay there “as long as it took”. The carpenter from Essex, also a father of seven, used a megaphone to denounce war-mongering politicians. He survived on donations from supporters.

His campaign against what he termed the genocide of Iraq’s children took on a new meaning after the September 11 twin tower attacks in New York. New Labour joined the United States to invade Afghanistan not long after. In March 2003, Britain and the United States attacked Iraq, a war which ultimately led to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, with many more fleeing into exile to avoid the ensuing violence.

Over the years, Haw was joined by supporters and campaigners including the Global Peace Strike, Democracy Village and fellow camper and hunger striker Maria Gallastegui, who was arrested for reading out the names of dead British soldiers outside the Cenotaph. Embarrassed by the vocal protests, Blair’s government sought to change the law to end Haw’s protest.

In 2003, House of Commons procedure committee recommended the law be changed to prohibit “unlicensed” protests in the square. The committee’s proposals were incorporated in the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) which, despite its name, gave the police vastly increased powers to remove protesters.

On one occasion Haw was injured by a police officer who shoved Haw’s camera into his face and then forced him to the ground. In 2006, 54% of Channel Four television viewers voted Haw the most politically inspiring figure of the year. Haw used the prize-giving ceremony to demand support for his campaign to put an end to the genocide and the looting. “It’s about oil, it’s about the arms industry,” he said.

In 2007 police removed all of Haw’s placards but one and arrested him under SOCPA. He was acquitted under a technicality a year later, but continued to be harassed by not only the police, but by the Greater London Authority under Mayor Boris Johnson. At the time of his death, Haw was still battling the authorities for the right to stay in Parliament Square.

Haw inspired artist Mark Wallinger who recreated his array of banners and placards and installed them in the Tate Gallery. Wallinger went on to receive the Turner Prize for his “State Britain”, which pointed to the severe restrictions imposed on the right to demonstrate in Westminster.

Haw sought to name and shame the successive Parliaments which approved the decisions made without reference to any democratic procedures to go to war. He hoped that his moral stand would inspire others to put an end to wars for profit, oil and political careers

The truth is that attacks on sovereign states by major capitalist powers are endemic to the economic and political system we live under and are used by desperate leaders of all parties. Yesterday’s admission by NATO that they bombed a residential area in Tripoli killing nine civilians provides more evidence if any is needed.

Haw’s marathon protest and sacrifice should be not only make us to mourn his passing and celebrate his achievement. It must be an incentive to unmask the sham façade that is misnamed democracy and create in its place a real alternative based on the needs of ordinary people.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Iraq war prepared behind a cloak of lies

On the eve of former senior civil servant Secretary Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into Britain’s role in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, documents are surfacing which reveal New Labour’s astounding duplicity.

Secret government reports have been leaked which show unequivocally that former PM Tony Blair was fully aware of plans for an invasion and regime change a year before the events. So too, of course, must Gordon Brown have been.

The papers disclose that throughout 2002 Blair and a small number of officials were actually planning for military action even whilst the prime minister was claiming that the objective was “disarmament, not regime change” as late as November 2002.

On 16 July 2002, when Donald Anderson, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee asked: “Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq.” Blair replied: “No, there are no decisions which have been taken about military action.”

But as the Daily Telegraph reports: “Britain had, in fact, been preparing for possible military action for five months”. According to the leaked documents: “From March 2002, or May at the latest, there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation.”

By June 2002, a special Iraq planning conference for Britain and Australia was being held and in August, US Central Command (Centcom) commander General Tommy Franks discussed bringing together a “massive contingent of British troops as a northern invasion force through Turkey”, writes Andrew Gilligan.

It was Gilligan who filed the May 2003 BBC Radio 4 Today programme report that government claims of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could be unleashed in 45 minutes were “sexed up” and “dubious” based on inside information from Dr David Kelly. The scandal that erupted led to Kelly’s suicide and a government clampdown on the BBC.

Undoubtedly the latest leaks are connected with the deep-seated hostility within the military establishment to the way New Labour conducted the war in Iraq as well as the on-going debacle in Afghanistan. They reveal huge tensions over lack of planning and strategy as well as poor equipment.

Not only was the planning bungled, but logistics and supplies were mismanaged on a laughable scale. Ludicrously, a container-full of skis ended up in the desert. Troops were sent to war in civilian airlines and had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Despite Blair’s close relationship with the Bush White House, the leaked documents also reveal that British commanders were treated with contempt by their American opposite numbers. British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J K Tanner describes his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” who could not be communicated with!

The leaks up the ante before the inquiry opens tomorrow. Unlike previous investigations, it will be held in public, contrary to the wishes of both Blair and Brown. It will be worth following the inquiry closely. Oliver Miles, former British ambassador to Libya is asking a question on behalf of many others: “Was the invasion legal and is Blair a war criminal?” But Chilcot’s inquiry has already ruled out any investigation of this issue, declaring that “the inquiry is not a court of law and nobody is on trial”.

We don’t need an inquiry to answer the question, however. Not just Blair but all those in the New Labour cabinet who endorsed the secret plans for war and voted for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, which devastated that country, stand indicted. Putting together a court to try them will have to wait until we have established a real democracy in Britain in place of the sham political system that is shot through with lies and deceit.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

New Labour vultures gather

As senior New Labour politicians form a queue to deny they are seeking to replace Gordon Brown as leader of the party and take over as prime minister, they are bringing the curtain down on an era that began exactly 30 years ago today.

On May 4, 1979, Margaret Thatcher led the Tory Party to victory at the general election and Britain was never the same again. She ruthlessly set about the task of modernising an ailing British capitalism at the expense of working people and the trade unions.

The Thatcherite period of rule was marked by one conflict after another – war with Argentina, the miners’ strike, poll tax and a string of privatisations to name but a few – as the economy was subjected to a new period of intense, corporate-driven globalisation. Unemployment soared and the scars of this economic blitzkrieg are still felt in hundreds of communities up and down the country, where unemployment has been passed down through successive generations.

The mantra that the market provided all the solutions and could regulate itself, drawn from the dogmas of American monetarist Milton Friedman, took over in every field, private and public. Financial markets were set free – and where there were no markets – in the NHS for example – one was created.

The relief when 18 years of Tory rule ended in 1997 was palpable, until the voters quickly discovered that New Labour’s leaders were actually Thatcher’s heirs. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had modelled themselves on the Tory leader’s outlook and gave it their own spin. As the penny dropped, disillusioned voters stopped casting their ballots to the point where New Labour won the 2002 election with the backing of just one in four of registered electors.

The consequences of New Labour rule have been just as squalid as those that resulted from the Thatcher period. Gross inequality in society, market-driven policies imposed on every sector, from schools to the London Underground, an illegal Iraq war launched on lies and pretexts as a former head of MI6 makes clear today, and a political degeneration that knows no bounds.

The crisis now engulfing the Brown government is not just of its own making. It has everything to do with the global economic crisis that is signalling the definite end of period of capitalism marked by an unparalleled expansion into every corner of the globe.

Today’s collapse of production and trade alongside the disintegration of the financial system, has been coming for some time. Early warning signals could be seen in the Asia-Russia financial crisis in the late 1990s and the dot com meltdown of Internet-based companies in 2000. Soaring house prices and an explosion in credit in the 21st century only served to disguise the storm that has now broken with a vengeance.

Now members of the New Labour cabinet are hovering over a political corpse like vultures, ready to pick the bones of the party clean as they jostle for Brown’s job. A fat lot of good it will do them because they clearly have no chance of success in the coming general election and the Tories will return to inflict savage spending cuts on those who can least bear them.

The moral of this 30-year story is not only that the corporate-driven globalisation period has self-terminated but that the politics that helped to drive the free-market train also belong on the refuse tip of history. If there was ever a time to create a new politics that aims to put an end to class-based divisions in society, it surely is now.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Terror from the air

In case you thought that British withdrawal from Basra means that the suffering of Iraq and Afghanistan is coming to an end, think again. A report issued yesterday by U.S. Central Air Forces Combined Air Operations Center shows that last year the US military carried out five times more air strikes than in 2006.

Last year, the United States-Britain-led coalition dropped nearly four bombs a day on Iraq – a total of 1,447. This compared with 229, or four a week, in 2006. The figures do not include US Marine Corps air strikes, or US and NATO bombings in Afghanistan which doubled from 2006 to 2007.

Only last week, Operation Phantom Phoenix carried out air strikes across Iraq. On Thursday morning alone, Arab Jabour, 38 bombs with 40,000 pounds of explosives hit an area southeast of Baghdad in just 10 minutes. North of the city, 16,500 pounds of bombs were dropped in a few days last week.

Military commanders like US Army Col Terry Ferrell claim that better intelligence gathering allows precision strikes which “shape the battle field and take out known threats before our ground troops move in”.

But the United Nations and human rights groups say that the latest strategy carries an even higher risk of civilian casualties than before. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) says that more than 200 people have died since last April. “The Iraqi population remains at risk of harm during these operations,” spokeswoman Eliane Nabaa says. “The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.” Human rights groups estimate that more than 300 civilians died as a result of bombing in Afghanistan last year. The Afghan Independent Human Rights commission says that “in previous casualty tallies by the UN, the number of civilians killed by NATO forces has exceeded the numbers killed by the Taliban. What is striking though is the rise in the recorded number of deaths. In July, the UN reported a total of 600 civilian deaths for 2007 to that date, making a monthly average of about 100. Based on that estimate, the total for September has increased by over 50% from the average.”

The US-UK military hope to wipe out insurgents from the air in order to minimise troop casualties as US military deaths have risen to 3,926 since the occupation began in 2003. UK military deaths reached 260 in December and look set to rise in Afghanistan.

And while commanders grotesquely boast about “using air power more creatively” and deploy concrete-filled bombs and 250 and 500 pounders “to make blasts safer for civilians”, no date has been set for a withdrawal of US troops. On the contrary, the plan is for a long-term troop presence.

Both leading US Democratic presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have actively opposed setting a date for leaving Iraq or Afghanistan. Both of them approved a no-strings-attached $300 billion war funding. They voted to confirm key players in the pro-war arena: Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, among others. The only wafer-thin difference that separates them is an anti-war speech made by Obama back in 2002. But it’s a different story now.

Meanwhile, back at the International Monetary Fund ranch, it’s business as usual. While Iraqi citizens pay the price of the occupation and civil strife, the IMF expects Iraq's economy to become stabile this year despite political and security problems “as oil production recovers and the government moves ahead with reforms”. Oil production, which accounts for 70% of Iraq’s domestic productivity, is expected to increase 'at least' by 200,000 barrels per day in 2008, according to Mohsin Khan, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department.

As one US blogger wrote to the Washington Post: “Who cares if a few more shoemakers and their children are slaughtered. It's all about the economy, stupid!”

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary