(no subject)
Jul. 22nd, 2003 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liadnanDecidedly more cheerful today. I worked at home on a case all morning: I must do this more often, working at home is not only quite a lot more pleasant than doing so here, I actually manage to do quite a lot.
I won this afternoon, which is a lot better than losing. I'm also feeling slightly less shattered than I was when I got back to London last night. I was having a blast of wondering whether I'm physically cut out for this job, equally whether I'm really any good at it, but I think it's passed. That of course doesn't mean I am, but confidence is everything. Isn't it?
I didn't have enough energy last night to do more than watch TV and look at old photos. I have one of my dog (and he was mine), a beautiful Irish Setter, taken in the days when I used to wake up very early in the morning, and take him for an hour long walk over the fields. I remember so vividly, walking on the downs, in the early sumer mornings, no one but me around, walking a track that was there before the Romans and pretending that I was too. I miss those days, sometimes.
Watched the last episode of the West Wing series, Bartlett ordering an assasination... a fairly interesting step for them to take I thought, particularly since they left the whole justification question so open.
Meanwhile, back in what we innocently call the real world.. the Campbell row and Dr Kelly.
I don't know what to think. I was rather surprised that Kelly did indeed turn out to be the main source. I was sure the BBC had someone more significant up their sleeve.
I've been following the story quite carefully, ever since being frankly shocked when I heard the original Gilligan report on Today. I should note that I supported the war, purely on the basis of the "humanitarian argument". I said, in various places, that my gut feeling was, to borrow my friend and fellow Culturnik Martin's terminology, that Iraq probably didn't have Very Nasty Weapons (nukes) (but wanted them), probably did have Fairly Nasty Weapons (assorted gases and the like), and didn't seem to have delivery mechanisms that were a threat to anyone but Israel.
But I did believe that the government believed differently. Gilligan actually made a distinction in his original report between them believing they were in the right and "sexing up" the dossier in over-confidence they were right; and simply doing it because they wanted to win the vote. Which is a real difference. The point is, it's important to know whether or not Parliament was lied to, equally it's important to know if our intelligence services are, frankly, any good. That is, to my mind, a distinct argument from whether or not going to war against Iraq was in fact, on the knowledge at the time, either moral or sensible.
It seems Gilligan is actually not too highly regarded in some quarters. There are some negative stories about him, for which see the current edition of Private Eye. But frankly, I am always going to need some convincing not to be on the other side to that scumbag Campbell.
It's also more than a little irritating that the questions that matter, to my mind, have been lost somewhere: a) were there weapons? and b) did the governments involved believe there were weapons? Instead we're now lost in this horrible mess of a story, which somehow or other has led to another death.
I won this afternoon, which is a lot better than losing. I'm also feeling slightly less shattered than I was when I got back to London last night. I was having a blast of wondering whether I'm physically cut out for this job, equally whether I'm really any good at it, but I think it's passed. That of course doesn't mean I am, but confidence is everything. Isn't it?
I didn't have enough energy last night to do more than watch TV and look at old photos. I have one of my dog (and he was mine), a beautiful Irish Setter, taken in the days when I used to wake up very early in the morning, and take him for an hour long walk over the fields. I remember so vividly, walking on the downs, in the early sumer mornings, no one but me around, walking a track that was there before the Romans and pretending that I was too. I miss those days, sometimes.
Watched the last episode of the West Wing series, Bartlett ordering an assasination... a fairly interesting step for them to take I thought, particularly since they left the whole justification question so open.
Meanwhile, back in what we innocently call the real world.. the Campbell row and Dr Kelly.
I don't know what to think. I was rather surprised that Kelly did indeed turn out to be the main source. I was sure the BBC had someone more significant up their sleeve.
I've been following the story quite carefully, ever since being frankly shocked when I heard the original Gilligan report on Today. I should note that I supported the war, purely on the basis of the "humanitarian argument". I said, in various places, that my gut feeling was, to borrow my friend and fellow Culturnik Martin's terminology, that Iraq probably didn't have Very Nasty Weapons (nukes) (but wanted them), probably did have Fairly Nasty Weapons (assorted gases and the like), and didn't seem to have delivery mechanisms that were a threat to anyone but Israel.
But I did believe that the government believed differently. Gilligan actually made a distinction in his original report between them believing they were in the right and "sexing up" the dossier in over-confidence they were right; and simply doing it because they wanted to win the vote. Which is a real difference. The point is, it's important to know whether or not Parliament was lied to, equally it's important to know if our intelligence services are, frankly, any good. That is, to my mind, a distinct argument from whether or not going to war against Iraq was in fact, on the knowledge at the time, either moral or sensible.
It seems Gilligan is actually not too highly regarded in some quarters. There are some negative stories about him, for which see the current edition of Private Eye. But frankly, I am always going to need some convincing not to be on the other side to that scumbag Campbell.
It's also more than a little irritating that the questions that matter, to my mind, have been lost somewhere: a) were there weapons? and b) did the governments involved believe there were weapons? Instead we're now lost in this horrible mess of a story, which somehow or other has led to another death.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-22 01:56 pm (UTC)This war was neither moral nor just. If the people of Iraq see improvement in their lives, I will rejoice. I am pleased that Mr. Bush did not see fit to spread his "humanitarian" inclinations throughout the rest of the world.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 02:23 am (UTC)As for the war itself.. I felt at the time that this was an appalling country, largely because of previous western interest going back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, that we have a responsibility to try and clear up after ourselves, and that the prospects were good that in a relatively short period of time (by which I mean about five years) Iraq would be in a much better position and a lot less people would have died than had we continued to do nothing save impose ridiculous sanctions. And I don't in any event believe that national sovereignty is an argument of any great weight in these matters, nor do I have much respect for the UN.
Obviously, all of that is open to argument and challenge, but it was (and remains) the conclusion I eventually came to, after a long perod of procrastination.
the questions that matter
Date: 2003-07-23 03:56 am (UTC)As far as the second question is concerned, I think the correct answer would be both yes and no. When it all started, I doubt either of the governments believed that the weapons existed. But over the course of next many months, I think they ended up believing that the weapons existed. I think they did too good a job of convincing themselves.
Another thing, I fail to see the distinction Gilligan draws between sexing up the dossier to win votes or sexing it up because they were over-confident. Either way, the government misrepresented the facts and then used the same facts to argue their case. They could easily have chosen to represent the facts faithfully and then to argue a case stressing the facts they considered pertinent.
I am confident that the US Government knew there were no weapons prior to the war
Date: 2003-07-23 04:22 am (UTC)Re: the questions that matter
Date: 2003-07-23 04:37 am (UTC)I think it was something along the lines of "it's one thing if the dossier said what the government honestly believed to be true at the time, quite another if it deliberately made a stronger case than they actually thought they had."
no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-23 07:23 am (UTC)Re: the questions that matter
Date: 2003-07-23 08:35 pm (UTC)Isn't it obviously a case of the latter, even if the motive might have been the former? Someone, somewhere, decided to include reports of doubtful veracity and to stress the reports more than the doubts about their accuracy.
They could have done so because they wanted the votes in the Parliament or they could have done so because they had already convinced themselves that the threat was real.
I wonder which is more dangerous - the govt. misrepresenting facts because it seeks to control the Parliament or the govt. misrepresenting facts because it already *knows* the answer, thereby rendering the facts irrelevant.
The end result, however, is the same: a misrepresentation of facts, a 'sexing-up' of a dossier so that a Parliament votes a certain way.