By combining my story with the recent evidence from the Chilcot Inquiry, people may fully appreciate what an unprincipled and internationally violent Government we have. Once we understand that, we can look to mend it.
If I can sneak that hard political point into the Showbiz pages of the Mail on Sunday, I must be doing something right.
My congratulations and best wishes to Brian Cox, who has been elected to succeed me as Rector of the University of Dundee. Apologies it will take a little time to get the banner above changed (I am still not up to much of the technical stuff).
All is fine: I haven’t been bloging much recently because I have been snowed under due to the radio dramatisation of Murder in Samarkand, to be broadcast a week today.
Having been roundly defeated in the Court of Appeal, and with it now established beyond doubt that the UK knew that Binyam Mohammed was being tortured by the USA, Miliband has the massive effrontery to welcome the decision.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/feb/10/david-miliband-binyam-mohamed-statement
The truth about the government’s complicity in torture is becoming established beyond doubt. I am still shocked about the virtual media blackout on my own evidence to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI
But am comforted that the forthcoming dramatisation of Murder in Samarkand with David Tennant will do more for popular understanding than dry evidence ever could.
We will never see justice, but I would strongly support the calls for a public inquiry into UK complicity with torture. Preferably of an inquisitorial kind; but even the cosy conversations of the Chilcot committee have thrown up some truth.
I suppose I agree, rather weakly, with the proposition that it is better to elect someone with the acceptance of the majority in the constituency rather than the enthusiastic support of a minority.
But Bliar won the last general election with only 35% of the votes cast – a fact he conveniently forgets as he continually reminds us he won three elections. The AV system would probably have actually increased New Labour’s majority in parliament in 2005.
The logical contradiction of a system which at constituency level ensures majority acceptance, but at the national level would give an even bigger majority to a party supported by only 35% of those voting, is a fatal flaw in the argument.
Plainly the system needs to be changed so a dangerous fanatic like Blair cannot reach power when his party has only 35% voter support. The way to do that is by single transferable vote in multi member constituencies.
Any referendum which does not include the option for real change is pointless.
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT ARE THE BIGGEST HYPOCRITES
British High Commissioner Nick Westcott is not afraid to step in to controversy. Having boldly told us that Vodafone did nothing wrong in their acquisition of Ghana Telecom, he now lectures Ghana that incoming governments must respect contracts entered into by the outgoing government.
Of course, that is true. As a general point, it is a simple statement of the legal position.
But we all know that Dr Westcott did not mean it as a general point. He meant that investigations into contracts including Kosmos and Vodafone must be stopped. Otherwise, he warned, investor confidence would be damaged ?” a warning that foreigners would take their dollars elsewhere.
But what is the logic of this position? No government may question any contract entered into by a predecessor, no matter how corruptly? That if you are a dreadfully corrupt foreign businessman, who has bribed a minister, you only have to hang on until the government changes, and then you cannot be investigated? Plainly this is a nonsense.
The fact is that, as detailed in a series of articles in the Financial Times of London, there are a whole number of questions about the Kosmos deal which give experienced observers great cause for concern.
One which particularly worries me is how, on the best oilfield in Ghana, Kosmos were able to get a royalty rate of only 5%, when the average on other fields is over 11%. There are suggestions that partners from EO were active on the Ghanaian government side of the negotiation.
There are also credible stories of Kosmos handing EO millions of dollars in cash notes for “marketing and publicity”.
Is Ghana forbidden from investigation because the government has changed? No, and they must not be bullied out of it by the British, Americans, IMF or World Bank. Those will always back wealthy Western companies against a developing African nation.
The Vodafone deal suffered ?” at the very least ?” from a lack of transparency and a lack of a level playing field for others ?” including France Telecom ?” who wished to compete. The final sales price was definitely too cheap.
I would like to know how Ghana Airways’ invaluable routes were awarded to GIA – a bunch of obscure and inexperienced investors who came only fourth in the official assessment of bids. The result has been the almost total disappearance of Ghana’s whole aviation industry.
I would like to know how industrial development funds were given to a network of companies the ultimate ownership of which traced back to the Minister of
Industry.
The British High Commissioner has the problem entirely backwards. It is not that the government is not honouring existing contracts. I am Chairman of several companies, including Atholl Energy. Atholl had a contract with the NPP government which has been honoured by the NDC government, because we carry our our work diligently and honestly.
The problem is that where contracts are not honest, action has not been fast enough or decisive enough to root out corruption.
Two of the worst examples are in the energy sector. Let us look at the case of another British company, Zakhem International Ltd. They are building the Kpone Power Project for VRA.
VRA bought the turbines from the manufacturer, Alsthom for US $70 million. They then paid Zakhem US $80 million upfront to install them and provide the ancillary equipment.
After three years, what do Ghanaian taxpayers have to show for their US $150 million? Absolutely nothing. An empty field at Kpone, surrounded by Ghana’s longest concrete wall so the Ghanaian public cannot see that their money has been stolen.
What is happening about it? Nothing, because Zakhem and their Ghanaian partners have stolen enough money to bribe all the officials involved. They are now claiming around town that the new government is also “In their pocket”.
Most of the $80 million has vanished forever, while the $70 million turbines are now badly damaged by disuse.
Or look at Balkan Energy. They claimed to have spent US $100 million on refurbishing the Osagyefo barge, at a time when they had really spent less than US10 million.
Under an astonishingly corrupt contract, Balkan are to lease the barge for $10 million per year, from the government of Ghana, but then charge Ghana over $40 million per year for its use as a “Capacity charge”. They will in addition charge the government of Ghana for the fuel, and make a profit on that too.
It is as if I rented your car from you for 100 Ghana cedis a month, then rented it back to you for 500 Ghana cedis a month plus charging you a premium on all the petrol you use.
Balkan stand to make a total of about $1.5 billion dollars in profit from the people of Ghana from this terrible deal. It is the most corrupt contract I have ever seen. It is astonishing that a country like Ghana would enter into a contract with Balkan, whose owner, Gene E Phillips, has stood trial as a gangster in the United States.
These are not crimes without a victim. Everyone who pays any VAT or other tax in Ghana is putting money into the pockets of these disgraceful conmen. Most of the taxpayers of Ghana are very poor, and the money is being taken by people who are very rich.
That is why I am speaking out. I am not supporting any political party. I am supporting the ordinary people of Ghana.
I first spoke out about corruption in Ghana back in 1999, when I was Deputy High Commissioner there. It caused a sensation in the Ghanaian media at the time. But people do not know that I was nearly sacked by the British government as a result.
The British government did not object at all to my attacking corruption in Ghana. The reason I was nearly sacked was because I said “Sadly some British companies have been involved in this corruption”. I was carpeted by the British government and told I must never mention British companies’ corruption.
At the time I was thinking of the British company International Generics Ltd and their involvement in scams over the La Palm and Coco Palm hotels.
The hypocrisy of the British government in defending corrupt British companies was most famously seen when Tony Blair ordered an end to a prosecution of the arms company BAE over massive bribes they had paid in Saudi Arabia. Blair declared that prosecuting BAE was not “In the national interest”.
Last week BAE again escaped criminal prosecution and were allowed to pay a fine instead, for corruption in Africa including Tanzania.
So Nick Westcott is only continuing a British hypocritical tradition of condemning corruption, unless it is British corruption.
The truth is that sadly there was a major increase in corruption in Ghana especially in 2007 and 2008. That was a major reason why the Ghanaian people voted to change their government. But so far there is little indication that the new government has done much to root out the corruption.
The danger in this is that ordinary people will become disillusioned with the political process.
Ghanaians are not stupid. People know who stole money, and they see them swanning around town in their fancy cars, unashamedly living the highlife. This can corrupt society. Young people can easily draw the conclusion that the way to make money is to be a corrupt politician or a drugs dealer.
The further danger is that, just like in Nigeria, they conclude that all the politicians of all the parties are into the corruption, and that is why everyone gets away with it.
I did not used to think that was true in Ghana, but I really am beginning to wonder, unless we see some effective action soon.
So rather than protecting the corrupt, the British High Commissioner should be offering help and assistance actively to attack corruption. That includes corruption by British companies.
He should also remember that, with oil revenues within touching distance, Ghana will soon have her own investment funds and no longer be so dependent on foreign investors. It is not for the colonial master to kick Ghana. The boot will soon be on the other foot.
Straw has just been questioned on precisely the point I made about the huge gap between his evidence and what was said in the contemporary Foreign Office telegrams.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/jack_straws_big.html#comments
This relates to Security Council Resolution 1441 and what it means. Straw is holding the line that if the Security Council were to meet again “to consider” rather than “to decide”, that meant it was OK to ignore them and invade anyway.
Apart from the logical strangeness of the argument, the committee are suffering from an anglophone blindness that those of us who have negotiated at the UN know to avoid. “To consider” is indeed weaker than “to decide”. But the French language text is equally valid, and the verb there is se prononcer. As in prononcer un jugement – or, in English, to pronounce judgement. The committee should not ignore the other language texts.
I once, incidentally, spent four weeks of my life at a UN Commission arguing on whether to use should, ought to, has to, is to, or must to, in order to convey a duty to register a deep seabed mining concession with the appropriate international authority. That it would be “devoir” in French was agreed on day 1. As it was February in Jamaica it wasn’t a horrible four weeks.
I was watching the Andrew Marr show when Alistair Campbell broke down, apparently overcome that anybody could doubt the integrity of Tony Blair.
A minute later Andrew Marr asked him if he were not troubled by the 800.000 deaths following the invasion of Iraq, and Campbell snapped back:
“You can’t prove that”.
It was a very revealing riposte. Not only did it contradict the tearful innocent demeanour, it revealed the mindset of the guilty. Innocent people in the throes of deep emotion shout out “That’s not true”. They don’t shout out “You can’t prove that”.
“You can’t prove that” is the riposte of the criminal who thinks he is too clever to be caught. It actually answered the question perfectly – no, Campbell never thinks about the Iraqis whose deaths he helped to cause.
Marr’s estimate was pretty conservative, but that’s not the point. The point is that Campbell was intimately involved in the policy decision not to estimate or comment upon any estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq, precisely to give the “You can’t prove that” defence.
Marr’s question was exactly the one the Chilcot committee failed to ask Blair. They allowed him to witter on about how much better Iraq is now than it was under Saddam. Nobody asked if it was better for the million dead, the four million maimed, the four million refugees, the tens of thousands of new babies with birth defects.
Blair was allowed to get away with a whole stream of top end estimates of Saddam’s atrocities using the phrade “On some accounts”. “On some accounts” 50,000 were gassed, “on some accounts” 1 million Iraqis died in the Iran Iraq war.
Nobody put it to Blair that “On some accounts” 1.4 million died as a result of the invasion he launched on a basis of lies.
One day, perhaps Alistair Campbell can try the waterworks technique on the judges in the Hague.
The Daily Telegraph let slip a most revealing fact:
“the BBC insisted that the play not be uncritical”,
The BBC was not insisting that the play be not uncriticial of a New Labour government which agreed to use intelligence from terrible torture in Uzbekistan, and cooperated with torture worldwide in the extraordinary rendition programme.
The BBC was in fact concerned that those facts were not given too much prominence compared to diversionary criticism of me for not being a teetotal monogamist, which is of course much worse than being a warmongering torturing murderous bastard.
Nadira was wondering when the media would stop calling her a lap dancer, when they would start using her married name, or mentioning her acting achievements (including the fact that she plays multiple characters in David Hare’s adaptation of Murder in Samarkand for Radio 4, in four different languages).
The answer I fear is never, not even in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/02/david-tennant-samarkand-radio-4
nor in the EDP
I will say however that I think David Hare had done a tremendous job and produced an excellent play which is both entertaining and profound. As I gather is usual for David, he did a tremendous amount of research, even travelling to Tashkent to interview eye witnesses as well as holding a meeting with the FCO to get their side of the story. I am actually quite relieved that the production does not simply rely on my word for the key events.
Please do publicise the broadcast by whatever means are at your disposal.
A national newspaper has put in a Freedom of Information request to the University of Dundee for the expenses claims of Court members over the last three years – precisely the period I have been Rector. Now why might they want to do that?
Personally, I only submitted any calims in the first six months when I was on my uppers and needed to claim travel and accommodation costs. Since I could afford it, for the last 30 months I have borne all expenses from my own pocket. So if anyone’s hoping for a scandal from me, they will be deisappointed.
I came back from Africa and have been in Dundee for some University meetings and goodbyes. To get a feel for this look at Andrew Smith’s posting on my Facebook newsfeed at 12.57 yesterday and the subsequent comments!
Then last night we had a dinner for Scottish University Rectors at Edinburgh University before a meeting today with the Scottish Parliament’s All Party Group on Higher Education. Then 6.30pm tonight still at Holyrood I am addressing the Scottish Independence Convention. Back to London tomorrow.
Blair just said “You would be hard pressed to find anyone who in September 2002 doubted that Saddam had WMD”.
It wouldn’t have been that hard. If he had asked members of the Near East and North Africa Department of the FCO, the Middle East experts in the FCO’s Research Analysts, or in the Defence Intelligence Service, he would have found absolutely no shortage of people who doubted it, whatever position No 10 was forcing on their institutions.
One of the many failures of this Inquiry has been a failure to ask individual witnesses before it whether they personally had believed in the existence of any significant Iraqi WMD programme. I know for certain that would have drawn some extremely enlightening answers from among the FCO and probably MOD participants.
Sir Martin Gilbert allowed Blair to conflate Iran, Iraq, Al-Qaida, WMD and terrorism in a completely unjustified way. When Straw tried exactly the same trick, Rod Lyne did not allow him to get away with it.
A further stark contrast with Straw is that both Blair and Straw were asked about the failure of the UK to secure movement in the Middle East peace process by using our role in Iraq to influence the USA. A major, detailed and fascinating part of Straw’s answer was that Israel’s – and specifically Netanyahu’s – political influence in the USA had prevented progress.
By contrast, Blair did not even mention Israel in response to the questions on the failure to achieve progress in the Middle East. He solely blamed the Palestinian Intafada. He has been anxious to widen the discussion beyond Iraq at every opportunity, and frequently referred to destabilising factors in the Middle East, and again and again pointed to a growing threat from Iran and Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, and to Palestinian terrorism (including Saddam Hussein’s past sponsorship of it).
He has made not one single comment about Israel’s behaviour as a contributing factor in Middle East instability. Given Blair’s official position as Middle East envoy, this lack of any bare pretence at impartiality is most revealing.
I am astonished that Blair had not prepared a convincing answer to the question of why he told Fern Britton that, if he had known there were no WMD, he would have found another argument “to temove” Saddam. Blair blustered, failed to finish several sentences and then concluded that he had not used the words “regime change”. So “to remove” Saddam from the local knitting circle, then.
I have no hopes rhe ultimate report will be anything but a whitewash. However the body language is fascinating. Baroness Ushar is not a good forensic questioner but is looking at him with great disataste. Blair has lost his smoothness in lying. When pushed on the details of Crawford Blair varies between stumbling and gabbling too quickly for the stenographer. When he manages to get off subject, for example on to Clinton and Kosovo, his whole demeanour changes and he is his old fluent self – but only when he wriggles off subject.
“I would not have done Iraq if I had not thought it was right” he just said. Nobody doubts that. I think Hitler could have honestly said the same too. There is nothing more dangerous than a sociopath who thinks he is right.
My three year term as Rector if the University of Dundee comes to an end shortly. I have decided not to seek re-election. I was touched by the very kind observations on Subrosa’s blog including the comments.
http://subrosa-blonde.blogspot.com/2010/01/craig-murray-to-stand-down.html
I am not standing for re-election becuase I have come to the conclusion that it is essential that the Rector lives in Scotland to do the job properly.
When I was elected I did hope to move to Scotland. However Nadira has made it very clear she does not want to live in Scotland – or indeed anywhere but London. Personally, if I had the chance to live in any town in the entire world, plus the seventh circle of Hell and an oxygenless planet off Alpha Centauri, London still might be bottom of my list. But that’s family life for you.
I missed the December university court meeting because weather related London Transport problems meant I missed my flight from London City airport. I am flying back from Africa to make it to a university nominations committee on Tuesday (I’ll come to why shortly). Despite being non-resident, I have had a much better attendance record than any recent Rector. I attended over 70% of Court meetings to argue for the students – and that’s 70% more than Lorraine Kelly, my immediate predecessor.
We also have established the Rectors’ Group. All five Scottish University Rectors meet on a regular basis to agree joint positions – for example against student tuition fees – and to lobby for those postitions. We are meeting again on Wednesday, and then as a group meeting the Scottish Parliament Education Committee and the Scottish Education Minister Fiona Hislop on Thursday. A major theme will be that the public spending deficit should not be used to heap the costs of education further upon students.
The Scottish Rectors’ Group has been possible because we have achieved a situation where all five universities have Rectors who are really committed to doing the job. It is perhaps not a coincidence that, for the first time in history, all five were R|ectros of their own Alma Mater.
What I was not able to do was to spend as much time as I would like at the University, meeting individual students and dealing with their problems. I would not recommend anyone to become Rector unless they are able to devote twenty working days a year to the job.
Subrosa is quite right that the University authorities will be delighted to be rid of me. Lorraine Kelly was their ideal Rector. She never went to committee meetings, and allowed the University authorities to nominate her Assessor, who can represent the Rector. I nominated my old student friend Mike Arnott, described to me by a shocked University official as “A communist from the trades unions”. Pretty accurate, exactly. And just what they need.
Universities to New Labour were in one sense just another quango into which they could place supporters. The Chairman of Dundee University Court is John Milligan, close to Gordon Brown and biggest single donor to Scottish New Labour and its tax dodge, the “Charitable” Smith Institute. The Court is packed with businessmen, whose idea of the value of education is measured in pounds and pence. Teaching is viewed as vastly less important than income-bringing research.
What the University does not feel like at all is a self-governing University community exisitng primarily for the benefit of its students. I did my best to apply that view to all issues, and to remind others at least that this view still exists. Looking back, I remain proud of my Rectorial Address. The University refused to follow tradition and print it and put it in the University library, let alone give it to the media.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/10/freedom_of_spee.html
The University administration had put their press and public affairs office fully behind their candidate, former British Lions captain Andy Nicol, whom I beat in the election. Andy is a nice man, but he was precisely what the University would want – a local celebrity they could use for PR, but with no particular views on higher education and most unlikely to turn up to a string of committees.
On the day of the election itself, the Dundee edition of the New Labour touting Daily Record was being given out free around the University and extraordinarily the full front page was devoted to the Dundee Rectorial election, with a huge photo of Andy Nicol and a banner headline “I was born to lead Dundee students”. (Wrong!!)
It had been organised by the University press office, as had the front page endorsement of Andy Nicol by my two immediate predecessors – Lorraine Kelly and Fred Macaulay. The involvement of the University Press Office was completely out of order. I also believe that it was very bad form indeed, and against all tradition in all the Rectorial universities, for past Rectors to endorse a candidate and thus oppose others.
The University were plainly stunned and very unhappy when I won. They couldn’t understand how I had defeated their much more famous candidate. It is also worth noting that my immediate predecessor Lorraine Kelly made no attempt to contact me or offer advice – perhaps unsurprising as she knew fuck all anyway. The predecessors who did give me some advice were Stephen Fry and Gordon Wilson.
Which brings me back to why I am making a point of attending Nominations Committee on Tuesday. The committe is deciding on the appointment of two more members of University Court, and that learned body has already opined that “Finance and Pensions Experience” should be key qualifications, as a preliminary attempt to exclude from University governance anyone interesting.
My last act as Rector will be to attend the Scottish parliament to argue for continued investment in higher education and against tutition fees. But my penultimate action will be to create as big an unpleasant row as I can about the packing of Court with yet more balance sheet dullards. All entirely appropriate.
The election for my successor is now on. I am going to return to what I consider proper behaviour and not tell students for whom to vote. But I do recommend criteria to them.
Judge the candidates’ on their views on the funding of higher education and on tuition fees in particular. But also judge candidates on their views on the position of students within the university, how the university should be governed, and further on the purpose and value of higher education in society.
Then – and without this the rest is pretty worthless – judge whether they are both willing and able to actually turn up on a regular basis to argue for these views and values.
To my successor, please continue to fight cuts in the University and especially the pruning of arts and environmental subjects in order to concentrate on “Core” (ie money-making) activity. Be sceptical of all governments, and conscious that the value of education is much more than merely economic. Remember that the University has become essential to the remaining economy of a fine but shrinking old city, and that brings its responsibilities too.
I wish all the best to all the candidates.
I am addressing the plenary of the Scottish Independence Convention at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood on Thursday 4 February at 6.30pm. The subject of my address is
Might is Right: Torture and the Moral Void of UK Foreign Policy Since Robin Cook.
As ever, I won’t have a text, but I expect to cover extraordinary rendition, Iraq and Afghanistan – and why an independent Scotland ought not to maintain a common defence policy and armed forces with the rump United Kingdom.
The meeting is open (and free, I think) but you have to book in with the Scottish Independence Convention. Contact details are here:
…in Scotland.
One of the things that makes Scotland a nation is that it has its own legal system. This is not only quite separate from the English legal system but has a distinctly different origin, in Roman as opposed to Anglo-Saxon Law.
Lord Goldsmith was never Attorney General in Scotland. His legal writ carried not a milligram of weight in Scotland.
Scotland has a Lord Advocate.
It speaks volumes about the reality of the so-called Union, that the English Attorney General advises the Cabinet on whether to go to war, and in so doing he travels to Washington to consult the opinion of US legal authorities, but he does not travel to Edinburgh to consult the opinion of Scottish legal authorities.
As a matter of urgency, the Scottish parliament should now request the Lord Advocate to produce a review of Lord Goldsmith’s opinion on the Iraq War in the light of the Scottish understanding of international law. He should also produce views on the constitutional questions which may arise when the Scottish Lord Advocate takes a different view on the legality of war to the English Attorney General.
The Parliament should make plain that the notion that Scotland does not have a view on the legality of a war in which Scottish troops will be involved, but is bound to follow the English Attorney General, is not an acceptable position.
AMENDMENT
(I initially proposed that the Advocate General undertake this, as he is the officer who normally advises the UK government on Scots law. It has been suggested that the Lord Advocate would be more appropriate, and after consideration I agree, despite sharing the concerns about the wide range of the Lord Advocate’s powers. The key point stands that Goldsmith’s writ did not run in Scotland).
One of these two was an honest man. The other one caused his death.
Lord Goldsmith is partial to war. He likes to sit his well-padded bottom on comfortable leather chairs in expensive offices, and be flattered into agreeing that a bit of war would not be a bad idea.
Baha Mosua was a very quiet man, not partial to war at all. Unfortunately he is the one who got killed.
I have a policy of not using atrocity photos, not even on the issue of torture and extraordinary rendition. But the contrast between the easy glibness of Goldsmith and the consequences of his actions needs to be rammed home. The media seems imprssed by his 248 pages of well rehearsed verbiage. I am not.
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/43803/100127-goldsmith.pdf
To call Lord Goldsmith’s evidence yesterday “Partial” would be ludicrously polite. It turned on the crucial period in March, when he changed his advice to the view that UNSCR 1441 did indeed give, in itself, sufficient grounds to invade. With no personal experience of ever having negotiated a Security Council Resolution, Goldsmith did this in the teeth of fierce opposition from the FCO Legal Adviser Sir Michael Wood, a world renowned eminence in the subject of use of force and the security council, who had also served for four years in our mission to the United Nations.
Goldsmith’s change of mind was based on the notion that the negotiating history of UNSCR 1441 revealed intentions which were not plain from the text – a text which Goldsmith was at pains to characterise as extremely unclear, when actually it isn’t. He also took the view that the negotiating history should have more weight than the formal explanations of vote given in public.
That might be because the UK explanation of vote said this:
We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about “automaticity” and “hidden triggers” — the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response… There is no “automaticity” in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in paragraph 12. We would expect the Security Council then to meet its responsibilities.
As I have posted before, as a British Ambassador I saw at the time the telegrams of instruction go out from the FCO. The matter was so grave that not only was 1441 being negotiated for in New York, we were lobbying for it in capitals as well, and the instructions were clearly to stress that 1441 contained “No automatic triggers.”
Indeed, our original draft did authorise “all necessary means” – the accepted formula for force – but we dropped it in negotiation. That part of the negotiating history was something that Goldsmith did not volunteer at all. He repeated the Jack Straw line that UNSCR 1441 must authorise force because France and Germany had dropped wording making specific that it did not do so. But we dropped our wording too. That didn’t count in his Lordship’s mind.
Where he was really partial was the “Mr Goldsmith goes to Washington episode”, He met the Americans, listened to their legal interpretation, and crucially listened to their version of the negotiations with the French. But as Michael Wood had pointed out, these negotiations were private meetings, some literally in corridors, of which no records were taken and which are disputed.
Goldsmith absolutely gave himself away in the contempt with which he greeted Rod Lyne’s suggestion that he might have asked the French for their version of events – what happened in the negotiating history and what they believed the resolution meant. There is an important point here, United Nations documents are produced in five languages, all equally valid.
Personally, I believe with Sir Michael Wood that for Goldsmith to put so much weight on the negotiating history, in order to give 1441 a meaning which is not apparent in the text or in the public explanations of vote on the text, is very dubious. But if you are going to rely on the negotiating history, it is ludicrously partial to rely only on the assertions of one party – the Americans – and they being the party known to have the most extreme position on the issue.
Goldsmith accepted the US account that in negotiations, though not in their explanation of vote, the French had accepted 1441 provided a basis for the use of force. This exchange is highly revealing:
SIR RODERIC LYNE: What evidence did they give you that the French had acknowledged this?
RT HON LORD GOLDSMITH QC: I wish that they had presented me with more. That was one of the difficulties.
That Goldsmith point blank refused in these circumstances to ask the French, is evidence that he was partial. he was firmly committed to the US, and to the invasion. He had chosen sides. His legal advice was going to back his mate Tony. All this pretence of his careful legal consideration is a transparent sham.
Having complained of people posting off topic, it seems a reasonable solution to give an opportunity for people to discuss the topics I am banning from other threads – of which 9/11 seems the most popular.
I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected. There are some strange and dangerous people in America, but not in sufficient concentration for this one. They couldn’t even keep Watergate quiet, and that was a small group. Any group I can think of – even Blackwater – would contain operatives with scruples about blowing up New York. They may be sadly ready to kill people in poor countries, but Americans en masse? Somebody would say it wasn’t a good idea.
I asked a friend in the construction industry what it would take to demolish the twin towers. He replied nine months, 80 men, and 12 miles of cabling. The notion that a small team at night could plant sufficient explosives embedded at key points, is laughable.
The forces of the aircraft impacts must have been amazingly high. I have no difficulty imagining they would bring down the building. As for WTC 7, again the kinetic energy of the collapse of the twin towers must be immense.
I admit to a private speculation about WTC7. Unfortunately in construction it is extremely common for contractors not to fix or install properly all the expensive girders, ties and rebar that are supposed to be enclosed in the concrete. Supervising contractors and municipal inspectors can be corrupt. I recall vividly that in London some years ago a tragedy occurred when a simple gas oven explosion brought down the whole side of a tower block.
The inquiry found that the building contractor had simply omitted the ties that bound the girders at the corners, all encased in concrete. If a gas oven had not blown up, nobody would have found out. Buildings I strongly suspect are very often not as strong as they are supposed to be, with contractors skimping on apparently redundant protection. The sort of sordid thing you might not want too deeply investigated in the event of a national tragedy.
Precisely what happened at the Pentagon I am less sure. There is not the conclusive film and photographic evidence that there is for New York. I am particularly puzzled by the much more skilled feat of flying that would be required to hit a building virtually at ground level, in an urban area, after a lamppost clipping route – very hard to see how a non-professional pilot did that. But I can think of a number of possible scenarios where the official explanation is not quite the whole truth on the Pentagon, but which do not necessitate a belief that the US government or Dick Cheney was behind the attack.
In my view the real scandal of 9/11 was that it was blowback – the product of a malignant terrorist agency whose origins lay in CIA funding and provision. Also blowback in a more general sense that it was spawned in the nasty theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which is so close to the US and to the Bush dynasty in particular. As with almost all terrorist activity, I do not rule out any point on the whole spectrum of surveillance, penetration and agent provocateur activity by any number of possible actors.
But was 9/11 false flag and controlled demolition? No, I think not.
(Now I have given full opportunity to discuss 9/11 here, any further references on other threads will be instantly deleted).
A number of pro Iraq War bloogers have started commenting more or less full time on this blog for the last few weeks. If you look through a number of comments threads, you will see that angrysoba and Larry from St Louis, for example, have actually spent more time on this blog in the last couple of weeks than I have.
When they first appeared, I made a point of saying that free speech is the basic rule of this blog, and they were welcome.
But increasingly angrysoba, Larry from St Louis, and alan campbell are not putting any rational argument about the whole string of vital, evidential posts on Iraq that prompted their appearance. Instead they seek to provoke commenters into discussing, 9/11, and attempt to provoke anti-semitic commenters to inhabit the blog.
For example, in the post about Lord Goldsmith below, at 11.47am Alan Campbell posted:
“And not only is he not an expert in international law, he’s looking particularly Jewish, ‘eh lads?”
Nothing in my post or in any of the comments had made any inference at all about Goldsmith’s ethnic origin, of which I know nothing and which is in any case completely irrelevant.
Similarly Larry from St Louis at 8.56pm on the thread “Government Ban Protest Outside Blair Iraq Hearing” posted
Still waiting on Craig to delete references to the Protocols …
on a thread where the only nutter wittering on about the Protocols of Zion was Larry.
The object of these interventions is to provoke anti-semites and others to comment on this blogsite. On other sites around the blogosphere, the same individuals then post entries and comments saying
“Ignore Craig Murray’s articles, his site is inhabited by 9/11 truthers, green lizards and anti-semites”, with an inference, or sometimes direct accusation, that I hold those views myself.
The objective of the exercise is to reduce public belief in my evidential postings on extraordinary rendition, Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am not positing that the individuals involved are anything other than individuals with an amazing amount of time on their hands and a fervent attachment to the “War on Terror”.
I remain fundamentally committed to free speech. Contrary comments from all angles remain welcome here. I don’t read all comments – it would be a full time job – but I will knock out racism where I come across it. You can bring it to my attention by email. The only views which are mine are those I post myself.
We have some regular commenters who regularly take an opposite view to me, and who remain welcome – Eddie for one is a good example. Eddie does argue about the posting in question and does not routinely try to provoke strange views. But I will be much more ruthless in deleting off topic comment.
Fascinating to watch Lord Goldsmith this morning. A great contrast in demeanour. Wood and Wilmshurst sounded open, painstakingly careful to be accurate, and honest. Goldsmith, by contrast sounds slick and extremely well rehearsed. The stream of verbiage never halts and he hardly seems to draw breath.
Glib.
UPDATE
Feeling much better now. Many thanks for the many kind – and often very wise – comments. I know why I can’t sleep, why can’t you lot?
I hate being away from Nadira for lengthy periods and am not well equipped to pass the small hours alone. Still feeling an immense frustration that truly evil men like Blair prosper, but that has been part of the human condition forever. Oh well – really must try and get some sleep now, it’s 5am here,.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a manic depressive and sometimes feel almost suicidal, Don’t worry, I have three wonderful children and I am not going to leave them. But I feel so weak this evening. compared to the strength of the forces of evil, if you describe evil as illegal war and the massive profits to be made from waging it, and the sunsequent looting of resources.
I hope that those who saw Sir Michael Wood’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry today, and who have also read Murder in Samarkand, feel that I painted an accurate pen-portrait of my once friend.
I felt that Michael had stabbed me in the back by refusing to back me in saying unequivocally that intelligence from torture was illegal.
I did not know that, exactly at that time, he was engaged in a heroic struggle to try to stop the war in Iraq on legal grounds, and that he had drawn the full fury of Blair and Straw. He could not afford to open a second front on extraordinary rendition.
I have been struggling ever since to come to terms with what I saw as his going along with torture. I misjudged him.
But the way that the evil people like Blair and Straw manage to split decent people like Michael and me, is the lesson to avoid in future. Why is it that people like Michael, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Bill Patey and I never managed to get together? (Bill Patey was the head of the FCO geographical department which included Iraq, and he, like very many others in the system, never believed the “Evidence” on Iraqi WMD.)
I am feeling so sad because different ways of trying to resist took us down different paths, and perhaps I am sad because I was harsher on some than they deserved.
But I am most sad because hundreds of thousands died so Blair and Straw could earn their lucrative standing in the USA. I feel nothing but despair.