Ann Clwyd testifies before Chilcot
Labour MP Ann Clwyd’s testimony before the Chilcot Inquiry won’t get a fraction of the attention paid to Tony Blair’s or Clare Short’s appearances– but it deserves every bit as much.
You can watch it here (second video) or read the transcript here (pdf).
Last year I singled out her and former Labour MP Harry Barnes for caring about what happens in Iraq even when it doesn’t give them a chance to blame the US or the UK for something.
Clwyd has taken a passionate interest in the human rights of Iraqis since the 1970s, and that interest continues to this day. She first met Iraqi students who had been imprisoned and tortured through the National Union of Mineworkers. After the ouster of the Ba’ath regime in 2003, Tony Blair appointed her as the UK’s human rights envoy to Iraq. She has visited the country numerous times, before and after the 2003 invasion.
Clwyd was deeply concerned with the situation of the Kurds in northern Iraq, especially after Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja in 1988. Before the war she was active in INDICT, a campaign to hold Iraqi leaders accountable for their crimes.
She testified:
In February 2003, before war was declared, I was on a visit with INDICT people to Kurdistan. Again, we were collecting evidence, and I was taken by the wife of the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. I was taken by his wife, who was in Kurdistan at the time, to the border with Iraq and Kurdistan, which is an area called Sham Shamal, and she pointed towards the hillside where there were rocket positions and she said, “That’s where they are going to fire the chemical weapons at us”, and we didn’t stay there very long. She said, “Let’s get away from here. It is dangerous to be here”, and it was then, at that time, when I saw the Kurds were fleeing from the towns, the Kurds actually were, you know, going on cars, buses, all sorts of things out of the towns into the country because they so believed that chemical weapons were going to be used against them again, and I can remember, in fact, Jalal Talabani, who was also in Kurdistan at that time, asking me to ask Tony Blair, when I returned to the UK, for chemical weapons protection suits.
Now, the Kurds had their own intelligence and, you know, when you saw women going into the market and buying piles of nappies because they thought they could put the nappies over their faces to protect them from chemical weapons, you realise that people there took the very threat seriously indeed, the threat of Saddam attacking them again.
The Kurds had never told me before that they wanted to war. I mean they had their uprisings, you know, against the regime, the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south, but I had never ever heard them say, “We want a war”. They had tried to overthrow him — Saddam’s regime themselves, but never had anybody said, “We want a war”. But this time they said to me, “There is no other way”, and that’s the first time I ever heard the Kurds — and I have a very long association with them — say that. “There is no other way”. So when I came back and we had this debate at the beginning of February — the beginning of March — middle of February in the House of Commons, and I spoke then explaining what I had just heard and seen in Kurdistan, and I said for the first time that, you know, with INDICT over the years we had tried every way, with sanctions we had tried, but actually even that twin-track approach had not managed to move the regime. So I felt myself there was no other option. I didn’t feel that I could go back and face the Kurds and say that I had argued any other way because I couldn’t on the basis of what I had heard.
Like many others, Clwyd expressed her frustration in dealing with the seemingly clueless Americans in charge of the occupation, especially when it came to the treatment of Iraqi army officers.
Mr Bremer was in charge of the operation there and the British were there and so we talked about some of these issues. One of the first things that struck me was — because, again, because of my friendships with Iraqis, one of my Iraqi friends had [a brother who was] a General in Saddam’s army. He was now in a staff college, but he was a General, and immediately after 2003, my friend rang me up and he said, “Do you know what is happening with the military? Because there are lots of the military that my brother knows who would help the British. There are 50 to 100 senior Iraqi officers who are ready to help the coalition”.
Well, obviously, I passed that information on. But, you know, the army wasn’t there anymore, but they were queuing up in very hot weather for their pensions, for their stipends, and I discovered that the man — the brother of my friend had been queuing up every day for two weeks, and he was a senior, you know, army officer, and yet had never got to the front of the queue. He said — I spoke to him eventually, and he said to me, you know, “If they want to humiliate us, this is the way of doing it”.
…Well, I think many people slipped through the net actually, senior people, who could have been used in those early stages to help the coalition and wanted to help the coalition.
She told about visiting one of Saddam’s mass graves.
[I]n 2003 they started excavating the Al-Hillah sites near Babylon, and I went there to look at what was going on because there was a UK forensics team also working there and giving assistance to the Iraqis about how to handle evidence, because — I mean, it looked like a moonscape, it was so huge, the site. They estimated — I don’t know if they’ve revised the estimates since, but there were 15,000 bodies actually buried at that site in Al-Hillah, which is near Babylon, and I thought it was a very sad way that the Iraqis had to go to those sites, because you saw elderly women — when they excavated bodies, I think they excavated several thousand in that first round — if there was no identification with the body, they would then put — or rather, if they found identification, but couldn’t identify the name of the person or persons, they would then put their possessions in a plastic bag on the top of the grave and rebury the body, and, you know, old, old women were going round these sites, looking inside these plastic bags and pulling out a watch or a ring or a piece of cloth or a lighter just to see if they could identify them, and I thought, you know, that was really a very great concern to see people having to try and identify their lost relatives in that way.
Clwyd continues to visit Iraq regularly and sees steady improvement.
I see progress in all areas. I have always been optimistic about the future for Iraq and one of the reasons for that is I monitored the elections in Basra, the first elections, in 2005, which was, you know, a particularly joyful occasion, because people were voting for the first time, and you know, it reminded me of being in South Africa when I monitored the first elections there. People came out with their black fingers and they were waving them in the air at us saying, “There, we have voted”. There was an attack on one polling station in Basra in 2005, but apparently the women — women had turned out in great numbers, you know, about 80 per cent turned out to vote in those first elections in 2005 and there was a rocketed attack on one of those polling stations which was mainly filled with women at the time, and, apparently, they all stood there and sang and defied those people that were attacking them, and the same now for the election — for the provincial elections.
You can see that the secular is winning over the religious, because more secular parties, more secular candidates got elected in those provincial elections. Again, there is a 25 per cent quota for women, which is much better than ours in the UK, and you know, the 25 per cent quota I think is extremely important because it is also so for the next elections in March, 25 per cent quota.
Clwyd said the Iraqis still want help from the British.
They have always said, I have to say, right from the beginning, you know, “The British understand us. We would like more of the British to come here, and, you know, we don’t want you to go away. We would like more help from you”.
That’s why they can’t understand Inquiries like this. The Iraqis always say to me, you know — because weapons of mass destruction was Saddam — “Why are you still operating in this area? What we need is your help and your attention”, and obviously the Iraqis can pay for a lot of things themselves now, but nevertheless they appreciate the guidance that we can give them…
Speaking to the British and American families who have lost loved ones in Iraq, Clwyd said:
You know, we sat in the House of Commons as Members of Parliament feeling particularly responsible when the Prime Minister read out the names of those who had died, and you know, we all feel great sympathy for those people, but I do hope that Iraq eventually will turn out to be the kind of country that everybody can be proud of, and, of course, not just British troops, but, you know, American troops, coalition troops, civilians who have died, many, many Iraqi civilians have died. Then I can only say how sorry I am and — but I hope that, at the end of it, Iraq will be a much better country. I know Iraqis — I say this because Iraqis tell me so often. You know, they feel great sadness about people from this country who have given their lives to achieve their freedom and they certainly appreciate it.
This is just a small part of what she had to say. Watch or read it all.
(Hat tip: Andrew Murphy)
Comments
| 6 February 2010, 10:30 pm |
Does anyone know why this articulate woman’s (well, more than Clares Short, though that’s probably damning with faint praise) testimony has received so little coverage.
Unfortunately she isn’t particularly “articulate” (in the silver-tongued, ultra-polished sense), but she makes up for it in passion and commitment and, well, decency.
| 6 February 2010, 10:45 pm |
Why is nobody interested in what the silly cow has to say? Well, she was the one who tried to spread the line about the shredder, so basically nobody believes a word that she says.
The nice thing about being back home is just sitting around nattering to people and one theme come up time and time again: nobody believes in Blair’s wars nor wants anything more to do with them or his American masters.
| 6 February 2010, 10:45 pm |
She cares about Iraqis and knows about them, so she’s the enemy of the anti-war movement and the inquiry.
The politics is all about not giving a shit. Reality is the last thing anyone wants exposure to.
| 7 February 2010, 12:07 am |
Josh you nailed Exiled and his ilk’s politics: it is the politics of not giving a shit and it’s an absolutist politics that is common to both the the BNP, Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan paleocon right and to broad swaths of the stopper left.
I’m relieved to see Exiled so outraged by Clwyd’s testimony at Chilcot, by Gene’s approving posting of it and by the fact that people aren’t willing to join him in the prison of ressentiment in which he and his ilk freely choose to putrefy.
Btw, can someone provide a phonetic spelling for Clwyd, I have no idea how it is pronounced. Thanks.
| 7 February 2010, 12:17 am |
Btw, can someone provide a phonetic spelling for Clwyd, I have no idea how it is pronounced.
I believe it is “Clue-id.”
But I’m from Manchester, so I’ll happily stand aside for correction from someone who knows for sure.
| 7 February 2010, 12:42 am |
It is when you hear a testimony like this (and I had known of Indict since before the war) that the academic arguments about legality, the “non-existent” WMDs (according to just about every BBC pundit), and the Stoppers and their march, seem so irrelevant. Faced with human stories such as Ann has witnessed, it just becomes the decent thing to do, indeed it becomes a moral imperative. I really believe that the Stoppers would blanch if they heard what Ann Clwyd knew of the horrors of Saddam and his ghastly sons.
On Any Questions, all the panellists were against the war, describing it variously as “illegal”, a “disaster”, and such like. One point made was that “Blix said he needed more time for inspection” – as a criticism, oblivious to the fact that keeping 200000 men sat in the desert while the weather worsened was not a viable option, and that Saddam would not have let the inspectors back in if the army had not been there. And then we get “there were no WMDs”. So how come Blix needed more time if he “knew” there weren’t any? Yet Humphrys, Naughtie and Dimbleby “know”. Perhaps we should have sent them to comb through the Iraqi desert, then they could have found the absence first hand.
| 7 February 2010, 12:43 am |
Thanks Evert.
| 7 February 2010, 1:22 am |
That testimony alone made the Chilcot inquiry worthwhile. Utterly compelling. I feel so utterly ashamed of the Stoppers and anti war mob in general. Frankly of the whole witch hunt of Blair too.
| 7 February 2010, 2:42 am |
This is Ann “Shredding machines that I horrified the public with but can’t possibly prove the existence of” Clwyd, is it? No doubt Chilcot’s hilarious farce will find her testimony endlessly useful in getting to the truth of the matter.
| 7 February 2010, 3:00 am |
FlyingRodent, endless atrocities have been corroborated, ones every bit as extreme and atrocious as the plastic shredders, but you’d rather avoid the perspective that honesty brings.
We know who you care about: no one at all. Shut the fuck up.
| 7 February 2010, 3:34 am |
Yeah. It’s got to be said, when you see this deeply caring, deeply earnest woman give her testimony, and you see low-life filth like rodent laugh at her, you’ve got to say, really, what a cunt. And not just a cunt, but a smarmy one at that.
| 7 February 2010, 3:55 am |
A genuine, decent, and exceptionally good person and an honest and committed politician.
Rare qualities indeed in the sewer of amoral personal power play that typifies the contemporary British politician’s world.
A politician who knew the gravity of the situation and the height of the stakes involved in the decision to go to war.
She fully accepted, the dreadful cost of her decision and bears its moral burden soberly and with a heavy but beating fully human heart that reaches out to the victims of the conflict.
She also accepts that her decision to support a war of invasion to achieve liberation for those oppressed by Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship, was taken because in her honest and fully informed view of the dire plight of Iraqis, she did not believe a non military solution was possible.
Compare her testimony to the deceitful and self deceiving manipulation of Clare Short’s hysterically accusatory attempt at exculpation.
Clare Short would have us believe that she was bullied and manipulated into taking a political decision to support the war initially because of the deceitful presentation of the Attorney General’s opinion of the legality of the war.
The snivelling, guilt ridden, coward, Short, desperate to mask her own gross hypocrisy to try and remain a cabinet minister, over and above all other concerns, would have us believe that such a decision by cabinet and parliament is taken as a rubber stamping of a legal opinion over which they had no control.
Pitiful as an explanation, and even more pitiful as, like so many other politicians, who wish to expiate their own guilt, they would try to mislead the public to attempt to persuade them that such a decision can ever be anything but political, a decision for which each member of parliament is politically and morally fully responsible.
Following 9/11 Clare Short was as able as any other person to form an informed opinion as to the (mixed) motivations of the US administration in prosecuting this war.
As a start she could have simply read any US newspaper for the previous year to learn that regime change was an unapologetically declared objective of the Whitehouse.
To pretend that this was some secret and private knowledge that only Tony Blair had and refused to divulge is pathetic.
She could never expect to share all the knowledge of any serving prime minister, but that does not prevent any astute and honest politician from forming a coherent and reasonably accurate view of the events leading up to a probable war.
This is called politics and is an art we might have expected Short to have mastered.
If we are to believe her personal apologia at the expense of an ‘indictment’ of Tony Blair as being the one solely responsible for parliaments combined political decision to wage war, while shirking any of the responsibility for making her own decisions, then we can only do so if we believe also that she is a weak and incompetent politician devoid of any political competence and lacking any real concern for the plight of the Iraqis, and that she shares this political and moral blackhole with the majority of her fellow MP’s.
No wonder there is little interest in publicisng Ann Clwyds thoughtful honest and forthright evidence of the facts of the situation in Iraq and the imperative to take a political stand for military action.
I was opposed to the Iraq war at the time for many of the reasons that she dwells upon in terms of the conduct of the war but especially the failures of political and social reconstruction immediately after initial military victory.
She genuinely makes me question whether despite all these compelling reservations they were sufficient to deny a course of action that arguably was the only means by which to achieve the liberation of Iraq from murderous tyranny.
It is not so much that Ann Clwyd ‘exonerates’ Tony Blair, rather she forces or should force those of us who opposed the war to confront the human cost for Iraqis of the failed and failing alternatives.
In her quiet insistence on the objective reality that led her to her political decision she pulls the inquiry away from the puerile and fantastic story of ‘it was the nasty man what made us do it’ and back to where it should be as a decision made by, ostensibly, intelligent informed parliamentarians exercising their sovereign power.
She does not pretend for one minute that she was made to take the decision, without a sufficient knowledge of the issues, through deception or fraud.
The indictment she prefigures is one of those lazy, duplicitous lightweights, like Clare Short, (she was head of the Department for International Development no less) who pretend that they really took no decision at all for which they should be held to account, politically and morally.
Ann Clwyd is the real speaker of truth to power and so many of the rest of the ‘don’t blame me blame him, we all hate him now anyway’ excuses for Politicians, are selfish, self centred, careerist charlatans, with a penchant for moral superiority not born of any strength of character or genuine moral conviction.
I am saddened that today we see so few politicians of Ann Clwyd’s calibre left in politics, instead we are patronised by the group think clichés and pseudo confessions in this cabaret, this circuit party of parliamentarians, politicians and pundits, whose poorly spun stories are little more than the skimmed and repackaged bullet points of ‘vox populi’ views taken directly from focus group reports.
The ‘Public attitudes to the Iraq war: Great Big Focus Group Dot to Dot and Colouring Book’ is the manual which droopy, dreary and plain dreadful politicians are cravenly copying in a forlorn hope of re-election.
Haven’t they done enough? Have they no shame? At last, have they no shame?
| 7 February 2010, 9:17 am |
Anne has always been consistent. Even when it was unfashionable to despise Saddam in the eighties, in those days we he was our “friend”.
Although it does make me chuckle, reading the many defences from right wing posters and writyers of HP who would have called her nuisance and supporter of communist Kurd terrorism in the Eighties when she criticized the Thatcher government.
How the wheel turns.
| 7 February 2010, 10:04 am |
Huh? Which “writyers of HP” are you referring to? Certainly none of the Bloggers. Or are you?
Anyway, Ann Clwyd is the anti-FlyingRodent. A person of integrity, prinviple and courage. A proper leftist.
| 7 February 2010, 11:33 am |
“Why is nobody interested in what the silly cow has to say? Well, she was the one who tried to spread the line about the shredder, so basically nobody believes a word that she says.
The nice thing about being back home is just sitting around nattering to people and one theme come up time and time again: nobody believes in Blair’s wars nor wants anything more to do with them or his American masters.” – Exiled to another computer 6 February 2010, 10:45 pm
Straight from the Pimple Belt.
“Compare [Clwyds*] testimony to the deceitful and self deceiving manipulation of Clare Short’s hysterically accusatory attempt at exculpation.” – mettaculture 3:55 am
The B.B.C. website (at 11.a.m. 07.02.10) are highlighting Short’s Chilcot evidence under the heading “Short strikes: Ex-cabinet minister blasts Blair in week nine of inquiry”. Meanwhile Alistair Campbell was not allowed to answer a single question put to him by Andrew Marr this morning (clip on B.B.C. website) without being repeatedly interrupted, sometimes before the second interruption had been addressed – like watching tag wrestling. Who is supposed to be enlightened by this is anyone’s guess. Do people remember John Freeman or B.B.C. radio’s Bill Hardcastle? But they were interested in the answers not their own ratings. Marr has also repeated the “600,000 deaths” in Iraq (since the Liberation) line without saying who is chiefly responsible for those deaths.
“It is not so much that Ann Clwyd ‘exonerates’ Tony Blair, rather she forces or should force those of us who opposed the war to confront the human cost for Iraqis of the failed and failing alternatives.” mettaculture ibid.
Precisely.
“Anyway, Ann Clwyd is the anti-FlyingRodent. A person of integrity, prinviple and courage. A proper leftist. Phomesy 10:04 am
Bang on.
“That’s why they can’t understand Inquiries like this. The Iraqis always say to me, you know — because weapons of mass destruction was Saddam — “Why are you still operating in this area? ” Clwyd.
Many of us have been wondering about that for sometime. It seems to have become for the B.B.C. in particular an obsession to nail Blair in revenge for Greg Dyke’s fall over the Gilligan allegations. It begins to resemble the Dreyfus Affair more and more.
*I would pronounce Clwyd as “Kloo-id”. Are there any Welsh speakers who can advise?
| 7 February 2010, 12:37 pm |
It would be “Kloo-id” with the “y” in this case forming a schwaa like vowel sound
| 7 February 2010, 12:39 pm |
Phomesy is spot on. How reductive and revealing it is for the most cringingly desperate sort of stopper to be reduced to trying to completely descredit Clwyd on the basis of one story which itself may or may not be true.
As if all Saddam’s thousands of other victims would not matter if it was not true.
I bet there were people like that around in the forties arguing that as there was some doubt about the stories of soap factories those who warned of death camps should be laughed at.
Wankers – several thousand times worse than Lee John Barnes.
| 7 February 2010, 12:53 pm |
Ann Clwyd was usually very careful to get her evidence corroborated, and that which appears in the Indict site is only a fraction of the testimonies that her organisation received. The shredder story is one failure of judgement in a sea of genuine concern and compassion, and which I am sure she regrets.
It is an unfair ad hominem judgement to dismiss Indict’s testimonies on the grounds of the mistake of believing a story that was fully in character of the Saddam family, but probably turned out to be the product of a dark and fertile imagination. The overall picture from all the stories is one of the vilest cruelty and sadism. And if Uday had thought of it, it is very possible that he may have done exactly what was described.
It is, unfortunately, necessary to quote such stories received from witnesses, because they are so much worse than the average spotty student has ever experienced or is likely to be able to imagine. Ideological positions melt on contact with such reality, and it is important that they do.
| 7 February 2010, 1:01 pm |
Mettaculture, an excellent comment.
Sadly people of integrity like Clywd – who are geniunely in politics to serve other people – and not just for an ego trip – don’t get the publicity they deserve (partly because they don’t seek it out, whereas Galloway….well…we all know about that)….And I fear that the increasing “cult of celebrity” that has washed over the UK over the last 10 years, particularly, is going to make the public life of the principled even more hidden and rare, at any rate until that tide is turned.
| 7 February 2010, 1:43 pm |
I must confess I never thought we would find the WMDs, but at the same time regime change there seemed like an entirely legitimate aim. Maybe one we should have been up front about? Its certainly possible to recognize that the war in Iraq had plenty of human benefits, as well as costs. Kurds are not getting gassed for a start! Before the whole shooting match kicked off various commentators wondered if it was possible to assasinate Saddam and his sons and followers, in a less “massive” intervention. But I suppose there were sound reasons aginst this.
| 7 February 2010, 2:06 pm |
I understand why the stoppers would wish to ignore or denigrate Ann Clywd, but it is worthy of contempt that mainstream news organisations have overlooked her testimony. Ann Clwyd’s long-record on human rights and Iraq merits her being given at least equal prominence to Clare Short or any other rent-a-’illegal!-blood!-oil!-a-million-dead!’ types.
The likes of Andrew Marr and others are clearly using the BBC as a platform for their own shared opinion on the war and other topics. There appears to be little or no interest in providing balance and breadth of information and views. There is evidently no one at the BBC with sufficient integrity to say, ‘Look, I know Clwyd’s views don’t gel with many here at the BBC, but we really should give her’s proper and respectful treatment.’
I know, even the idea sounds fanciful nowadays, doesn’t it? The BBC is highly ideologically biased and one-eyed, and it will be the death of that and other formerly neutral organisations like Amnesty.
| 7 February 2010, 2:35 pm |
‘I would pronounce Clwyd as “Kloo-id”. Are there any Welsh speakers who can advise?’
That’s about right.
As for the wankers who are banging on about the shredding machines, I wish I had a time machine so I could send them to Abu Ghraib pre-2003. It’s no more than the fuckers deserve.
| 7 February 2010, 4:06 pm |
Focussing on the shredder stuff seems akin to the whole “No holes? No Holocaust!” thing — or perhaps “No soap? No Holocaust”, would fit a little better.
| 7 February 2010, 4:25 pm |
Great to see so many highly cogent comments in support of Ann Clwyd’s stance on the war. What a contrast to those from the other side.
I am also encouraged that so many are now picking up on the heavily biased media coverage of the inquiry, which prompted me to place a four screen moving version of that Ban Blair-baiting ad at the Press Gazette’s site, the heart of the Fourth Estate. It’s up for the coming month and can be accessed here http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ if it’s clickable. If not, google it and click on to our petition to register your disdain for the media’s coverage of the inquiry (not to mention Marr’s treatment of Campbell today).
| 7 February 2010, 4:46 pm |
Gentlemen, I think we can all agree that both Ann Clwyd and yourselves are moral titans in a fallen era. Watching you all leap onto your chairs, clutching at your dresses and shrieking like the woman in Tom & Jerry is endlessly useful and entertaining. No doubt some day, a commenter will post who thinks Saddam was lovely and his well-documented crimes fictional, at which point you’ll be able to give us a non-disingenous repetition of this pearl-clutching silliness.
That said, I am of course reiterating what I’ve said on this before, at my own blog and on others’ – that Chilcot is a bullshit enterprise, since it’s premised on the idea that a castrated nation with a shit army and no airforce presented some kind of vague threat to a superpower with an annual defence budget of five hundred bajillion dollars.
I’m not particularly familiar with Ann Clwyd, and make no judgement on her opinions or her campaigning. I do think that it’s entertaining that Chilcot felt it necessary to invite her in to tell people that Saddam was a murderous bastard, as if there was some kind of controversy about the matter. This is much like inviting Stephen Hawking in to affirm that yes, the sky is indeed blue.
Further, I think it’s entirely apt that a woman responsible for chucking one of the wackier of the countless pieces of bullshit propaganda that constituted the case for war should be invited to appear. It’s a shame they can’t invite Americans, because I would love to hear a defence of the hysterically overblown pre-war claims that Saddam was planning to genocide Dogdick, Alabama with anthrax.
Shorter version – bullshit inquiry into bullshit war is interested in bullshit. OMG!
| 7 February 2010, 5:00 pm |
FlyingRodent
That said, I am of course reiterating what I’ve said on this before, at my own blog and on others’ – that Chilcot is a bullshit enterprise, since it’s premised on the idea that a castrated nation with a shit army and no airforce presented some kind of vague threat to a superpower with an annual defence budget of five hundred bajillion dollars.
I suppose that I can assume from that rant that you were not anywhere near to the twin towers when they ‘collapsed’ or near the London Underground train that was attacked by freedom fighters looking for their 72 virgins.
| 7 February 2010, 5:33 pm |
…Saddam was a murderous bastard, as if there was some kind of controversy about the matter.
So, we have our first premise!
| 7 February 2010, 6:07 pm |
Gentlemen, I think we can all agree that both Ann Clwyd and yourselves are moral titans in a fallen era.
I think what we CAN all agree upon is that you would be an immoral tosser in any era.
| 7 February 2010, 6:13 pm |
Further, I think it’s entirely apt that a woman responsible for chucking one of the wackier of the countless pieces of bullshit propaganda that constituted the case for war should be invited to appear.
Although I don’t think anyone has actually disproved Clwyd’s allegations I’m sure that the leader of the STWC would have been much more objective in his summing up of the accusations against Uday.
http://www.theodoresworld.net/pcfreezone/gallowayandsaddamson.jpg
| 7 February 2010, 6:17 pm |
I’m not particularly familiar with Ann Clwyd, and make no judgement on her opinions or her campaigning.
Further, I think it’s entirely apt that a woman responsible for chucking one of the wackier of the countless pieces of bullshit propaganda that constituted the case for war should be invited to appear.
Run that totally transparent attempt to look reasonable while eagerly shitting all over Clwyd’s name by me again?
| 7 February 2010, 6:26 pm |
Rodent, given the fact that Ann Clwyd has done more genuine work for human rights and common decency than you will ever contemplate, the real question is simple:
How the fuck do you live with yourself?
| 7 February 2010, 6:35 pm |
So in short, that’s a) Iraq (cough, cough, mumble) 9/11, b) You are horrible, c) Here’s a link to a picture of George Galloway acting like a prick, for some unknown reason, d) Referring to the bullshit shredder story is not allowed and e) You are horrible. Devastating stuff, guys.
| 7 February 2010, 6:41 pm |
“I must confess I never thought we would find the WMDs, but at the same time regime change there seemed like an entirely legitimate aim.” Scotty 1:43 pm
W.M.D.’s were found after 1991-2 and Ralf Ekeus and his U.N. team (including at that time Dr David Kelly) discovered a completely unsuspected embryonic nuclear programme.
To take but one well known agent Sarin, enough to kill many thousands could be contained in a small bottle.
No one who has studied the historic evidence available doubts the Saddam regimes determination to possess such weapons, it’s history of manufacturing such weapons and Saddam’s willingness to use them against civilians and military targets.
In the First Gulf War in 1991 British troops were compelled to wear full Nuclear Biological and Chemical protection despite the known deterioration in military performance wearing such ‘kit’ has in high temperatures. They were not doing it for show. Schwatzkopf warned the Iraqis of the consequences for them if they attempted to use such weapons which was widely interpreted as a retaliatory tactical nuclear strike threat.
Many international intelligence agencies believed Saddam had such a continuing W.M.D. programme. The only sure way with him was to remove him. I thought this should have been done in 1991 but the politics were complicated.
“Gentlemen, I think we can all agree that both Ann Clwyd and yourselves are moral titans in a fallen era. Watching you all leap onto your chairs, clutching at your dresses and shrieking like the woman in Tom & Jerry is endlessly useful and entertaining. No doubt some day, a commenter [sic] will post who thinks Saddam was lovely and his well-documented crimes fictional, at which point you’ll be able to give us a non-disingenous [sic] repetition of this pearl-clutching silliness.” Flying Rodent 4.46 p.m.
Puerile.
| 7 February 2010, 6:52 pm |
You’ve really jumped the shark on tis one, Rodent. You clearly have no idea who Ann Clwyd is or what she has done.
You’re pissing all over her because that’s what you do. That’s all you do.
Well she’s no random blog addict. She’s a committed humanitarian and activist with decades of public service behind her.
You are a piece of shit.
You getting the picture here?
| 7 February 2010, 7:14 pm |
She’s a committed humanitarian and activist with decades of public service behind her.
So does this mean she didn’t write an article called “See men shredded, then say you don’t back war” then? Not that it really matters, since I notice that Chilcot couldn’t be arsed to ask her about it. I’m surprised, since they took the ludicrous WMD claims seriously enough.
| 7 February 2010, 7:51 pm |
Mate, you just keep on digging don’t you? Just walk away. You couldn’t look more like a prick if you tried.
Don’t you get it? She’s not a “Decent”. She’s not someone you can piuss all over just because she made a decision about the war that you didn’t like. She’s not one us on this blog who have engaged in years of tit-for-tat insults, she’s not Tony Blair who made the ultimate decision, she’s not Jack Straw or Geoff Hoon who you could accuse of making the decision for political reasons.
Ann Clyws stands outside all of this shit. She’s a committed leftist, humanitarian and activist who has dedicated decades of her life to helping the Iraqi people because that’s what she believes in. Her decision to vote for war was the hardest decision of her life precisely because it was not a political decision at all – it was a moral, ethical and intellectual judgement and deeply personal.
And she doesn’t regret it. Why? Because she, unlike any of us, talks to Iraqis today just like she did 20 fucking years ago and despite everything that has happened they and she continue to believe it was the only option available. Is she and are they wrong? Possibly. But maybe, just maybe it’s YOU who is wrong.
I hope some of this is getting through to you because this is the whole fucking thing in a nutshell. You want to piss on her – you need to piss on her – because she represents a threat to your ordered state of wellbeing. That’s why the media didn’t talk about what she had to say – because they know, better than you, just what moral authority she speaks with on this subject and that doesn’t play with the narrative. A narrative you share. So stop bleating like you’re on the outside looking in. You are part of the fucking establishment on this subject. But at least the media just denies Ann Clywd a voice – they don’t actively piss on her like you are.
Ann Clwyd, Jose Ramos Horta, Vaclav Havel – these are the types who have the history and moral authority to give anyone pause for thought before thinking that anything about the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power was easy. But these are the people you either ignore or piss upon.
My goodness it says a lot about you. And nothing about Ann Clwyd.
| 7 February 2010, 7:52 pm |
Rodent, the WMD was not ludicrous. It just turned out they did not have any although Saddam was stupid enough to say he did. Saddam did have WMD in the first gulf war. SCUDS, do you recall! The desert is a large place you can hide anything. In any case Saddam should have been taken out during 1991. He was given a few extra years to carry out more of his atrocities. No more claptrap speeches about his indefatigability now.
| 7 February 2010, 7:57 pm |
Phomesy, post: 7 February 2010, 7:51 pm
Eloquently put.
Flying Rodent doesn’t appear to grasp what an utter wanker he has shown himself up as, and how each feeble new post compounds that.
| 7 February 2010, 8:24 pm |
Mr. Rodent, you have a right to disagree with Ann Clwyd on the invasion of Iraq. You have a right to believe the Iraqi people would be better off if the invasion had never happened. What you don’t have is a right to be smug in those beliefs.
| 7 February 2010, 8:37 pm |
So in short, that’s a) Iraq (cough, cough, mumble) 9/11, b) You are horrible, c) Here’s a link to a picture of George Galloway acting like a prick, for some unknown reason, d) Referring to the bullshit shredder story is not allowed and e) You are horrible. Devastating stuff, guys.
So in short that’s ‘I write the “decentpedia” and when cornered, when everyone can see what a wanker I am, all I can do is pretend everything is is a joke in my own smug way’.
Thank God your side lost.
| 7 February 2010, 8:48 pm |
Dear God, this isn’t hard. It’s a question of hard fact – did Ann Clwyd publish an article making incorrect claims about a people-shredder? Note that the only relevant answers here are “Yes”, “No” or possibly “Yes, but in her defence”. God only knows what “OMG how dare you impugn this brave woman by mentioning her totally wrong claims, you awful smuggy-smug wanker” is, but it sure ain’t rebuttal.
And as for the idea that I’m pissing over Ann Clwyd, I mean, what? This is an analytical question, not a moral one. Even if it were the latter, my position, which I’ve publicly stated on numerous occasions, is that Blair’s administration and the pro-war MPs honestly believed they were doing the right thing. I think they were horrifyingly naive and brutally wrong with blood-curdling consequences, but I don’t doubt most of them genuinely believed that they were going to make the Iraqis’ lives better. I imagine that Clwyd believed the story about the people-shredder, but sadly it’s yet another example of a political class that cheerfully swallowed pretty much anything if it matched up with its desired goals. Result – disaster. When the entire British state fucks the dog this badly, it’s fairly important to find out why.
The reason I refer to her claims at all is that the entire war was based upon obviously insane propaganda wheezes in the first place, and that Chilcot is treating ludicrous propositions with far more respect than it should. Example – that a globestraddling military colossus was forced to invade a decrepit, tinpot dictatorship in self-defence, a proposition that would be hilarious if it wasn’t the actual justification for the war.
Bluntly – if Chilcot couldn’t even be bothered to WTF Clwyd on her pre-war claim, it’s worse than useless. An inquiry should drill through the mountain of bullshit to get at the seam of the truth – in my opinion, a clan of well-meaning but painfully naive dupes and Panglossian idiots riding their moral high-horses to catastrophe. An Iraq inquiry that interviews Ann Clwyd and doesn’t even raise her main contribution to the pre-war debate is beyond incompetent.
What you don’t have is a right to be smug in those beliefs.
Facepalm.
| 7 February 2010, 8:50 pm |
Oh by the way I’m glad you noticed:
Here’s a link to a picture of George Galloway acting like a prick, for some unknown reason
The reason (of course) is that whilst you could find time to slither over here this afternoon and try to denigrate a woman who was concerned for ordinary Iraqis at the hands of dictators, and whilst you have spent weeks of your ‘life’ constructing the ‘decentpedia’ you never before in all the years that you have graced us with your presence could find time to even criticise Galloway could you?
Arsewipe.
| 7 February 2010, 8:53 pm |
Dear God, this isn’t hard. It’s a question of hard fact – did Ann Clwyd publish an article making incorrect claims about a people-shredder? Note that the only relevant answers here are “Yes”, “No”
Unless of course you have even a single braincell – in which the answer could be ‘who knows’? I don’t think anyone has found the pot in which Craig Murray alleges that people were boiled alive but I for one will not be popping over to his website to gloat about its non-existence.
| 7 February 2010, 9:05 pm |
the entire war was based upon obviously insane propaganda wheezes in the first place
You seem to be including the shredder among these. And yet the tortures and mass murders by Saddam’s regime are well-documented. What susbtantive difference does the shredder make to any of that that? None. Zero.
You are clinging to it as if it shows the larger general case about Saddam’s use of torture and mass murder to be ‘insane propaganda’. It doesn’t. All your posting on this thread indicates is that you would like it to be so.
You are about as respectable and credible as the kind of neo-Nazi who likes to imply – without quite having the guts to say it – that the Holocaust is a lie because this or that camp was ‘merely’ a concentration camp and not an actual made-for-purpose extermination camp.
Do you really think the shredder case fundamentally devalues Clwyd’s overall argument, and that of the Iraqis who are grateful to her, or not? Please clarify. If not, then you can only be flogging this dead horse in order to discredit a fundamentally reputable and honest person and the cause she has espoused for decades.
| 7 February 2010, 9:08 pm |
Dear God, this isn’t hard. It’s a question of hard fact – did Ann Clwyd publish an article making incorrect claims about a people-shredder? Note that the only relevant answers here are “Yes”, “No”
Mr. Rodent, have you stopped beating your wife? Note that the only relevant answers here are “Yes”, “No”
Which is to say (yet again) that the claims about people being placed in industrial shredders have not been incontrovertibly disproved.
| 7 February 2010, 9:33 pm |
Guys, sharp-eyed readers will notice that you have both just quoted me while deliberately failing to include “Yes, but in her defence,” – an entirely legitimate argument – in order to make a fairly feeble Gotcha! point. Pretty weak.
What susbtantive difference does the shredder make to any of that that? None. Zero.
This is 100% true. Nobody is saying “Gee, Saddam was a stand-up guy,” because he was obviously a murderous fuckhead who perpetrated an unbelievable string of atrocities.
The problem is the astounding number of half-truths and outright fictions that wound up being reported as facts, and that they were used to justify a disaster. This is about as serious as fuck-ups get, and those interested in avoiding future fuck-ups should be interested in what went wrong there. For my money, I think Ann Clwyd has bumped into an Iraqi bullshitter of the Ahmad Chalabi “they will welcome us with flowers” genus, someone with a direct political investment in US invasion. Such people were all over the place before the war and their assertions were reported as truth. Predictably, Chilcot is letting this slide, which means it’s harming rather than helping any attempt to achieve clarity.
Which is to say (yet again) that the claims about people being placed in industrial shredders have not been incontrovertibly disproved.
Gene, nobody has incontrovertably disproved the existence of the Tooth Fairy, or of God. You wouldn’t accept this argument in any other context and I’m not buying it here.
| 7 February 2010, 10:14 pm |
Guys, sharp-eyed readers will notice that you have both just quoted me while deliberately failing to include “Yes, but in her defence,”
Even sharper-eyed readers will notice that ‘yes but in her defence’ still admits that she was wrong about the shredder – a claim for which you have no evidence but which you wish us to swallow just because you have stated so and because it allows you to construct a story (again based on no evidence) about Clwyd somehow validating a war which in any other context you would claim was fought for reasons other than humanitarian ones and compound this by another magical-realist narrative (without any evidence) about how Clwyd was taken in by a clever Iraqi conman in the pay of US ‘political investment’.
Basically however many untruths were around at the time of the invasion you have just swamped them with fantasies of your own.
| 7 February 2010, 10:28 pm |
Graham, you are now arguing that it’s other people’s duty to disprove an unsupported contention. This is exactly backwards, and is usually part of the arsenal of Truthers and Loch Ness monster spotters. It’s high-school level basic debate stuff.
Nor am I asserting that Clwyd was conned – I’m saying that makes sense to me, in the context of available information. I don’t expect anyone to take this as truth, because it’s no more than a guess. There is, as you say, no evidence to back this up, and I’ve made no attempt to prove it because, without the source coming forward, it’s unprovable.
| 7 February 2010, 10:39 pm |
Graham, you are now arguing that it’s other people’s duty to disprove an unsupported contention.
No. It is your contention that Clwyd lied about the people-shredder. All I am asking you to do is prove this contention. But as you admit, you are just guessing (and on top of this guess building a story about how Clwyd used the story to ‘build support’ for the war and how thousands of crafty Iraqis, in the pay of the CIA were creeping around trying to ‘take in’ British MP’s.)
You act as if you are dealing with people who can only deal with ‘high-school level debate’ but unfortunately for you everyone here can see right through you.
| 7 February 2010, 10:50 pm |
I’ve never said I thought she lied – I personally believe she was taken in, but ultimately I’m merely saying she was just plain wrong. Until a people-shredder or credible witnesses to one shows up, that’s an accurate statement.
| 7 February 2010, 10:51 pm |
And the behaviour of Ahmad Chalabi’s faction in the run-up to the war is very well-documented, while we’re at it.
| 7 February 2010, 11:03 pm |
but ultimately I’m merely saying she was just plain wrong.
Proof?
Until a people-shredder or credible witnesses to one shows up, that’s an accurate statement.
No. It is your contention. There are no witnesses or material evidence of many atrocities during WW2 (for example) but it is not ‘just plain wrong’ to allude to their possibility.
| 7 February 2010, 11:06 pm |
But while we are in the game of unsupported contentions I guess she was neither ‘wrong’ not ‘taken in’ but I can’t be bothered constructing a whole tower of babel on those foundations. I’ll leave it at just a guess.
| 7 February 2010, 11:09 pm |
If that’s the case, then Saddam had nukes, Elvis is alive and Lady Gaga has a cock. Have fun with that one, kid.
| 7 February 2010, 11:23 pm |
If that’s the case, then Saddam had nukes, Elvis is alive and Lady Gaga has a cock. Have fun with that one, kid.
Seems to me quite clear that it is you that is ‘having fun’ with unproven contentions – not anyone else. That Uday tortured people to death in many ‘creative’ ways is a lot more of a solid proven fact than your Iraqi fiction makers in CIA pay, Clwyd’s gullibility, or the use of her human rights campaigns to build support for the war.
| 8 February 2010, 12:52 am |
I just had this unbelievable comment at my blog -
“As for the title of this blog – it is not a trial of Tony Blair.
As I have said in other media, it is a trial of Chilcot.”
This kind of “thinking” is the reason the press and the pre-judging brainwashed anti-war warriors don’t want to read such as Ann Clwyd’s evidence. They do not want to confuse themselves with facts.
I have used this and others’ posts at my site on Clwyd too, btw. Thank you.
This is still some fight for justice, and in my opinion for democracy. The Fourth Estate is not and never should be the pre-determining body responsible for democracy, even when they think they KNOW all about it – better than the elected. They don’t and they won’t.
Please sign the Ban Blair-Baiting petition if you haven’t done so:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/ban-blair-baiting.html
It’s about MORE than defending Tony Blair, if that isn’t reason enough for you.
| 8 February 2010, 1:03 am |
To sackcloth and ashes ,
7 February 2010, 2:35 pm
Pronunciation of Clwyd –
I’m not Welsh speaking but I know this. It’s more or less as you say. Perhaps more like “claw-id”.
In fact a kind of mixture of “Clue-id” as a Mancunian above suggests and “claw-id”. Either of these, and they’ll think you’re a local.
Now try this one for size:
“Ynysybwl”.
| 8 February 2010, 1:03 am |
Metta
As a start she could have simply read any US newspaper for the previous year to learn that regime change was an unapologetically declared objective of the Whitehouse.
It was a joint Dem/ Republican thing – for regime change in the Joint 1998 Iraq Liberation Act passed under the Clinton Administration AND the authroisation for use of force, in Oct 2002 under the GW Bush administration a few months before the coalition invasion.
Otherwise, spot on.
Clwyd is compelling, but as heartfelt true and heartrending as her testimony is, and – her testimony alone makes a complete nonsense of the illegal war trope, every bit as much as that for the earlier Kosovo NATO operation to protect the Muslims being persecuted by the Serbs.
But, it’s a little tangential to the main reason for the US led coalition invasion, which was essentially due to the threat presented by Iraq and the Iraqi continued non-compliance with the terms of the 1991 ceasefire over a period of 12 years. Pretty much what was ‘on the tin’ of the US Iraq Liberation Act, as well as in the substance of the speech delivered by president Clinton soon after the act was passedhere.
Anyway, it’s funny that Clwyd’s speech wasn’t broadcast or highlighted on the telly….NOT!
| 8 February 2010, 1:07 am |
If Benji was ever banned for being annoying…
Just saying.
| 8 February 2010, 12:16 pm |
“Clwyd is compelling, but as heartfelt true and heartrending as her testimony is, and – her testimony alone makes a complete nonsense of the illegal war trope, every bit as much as that for the earlier Kosovo NATO operation to protect the Muslims being persecuted by the Serbs.
But, it’s a little tangential to the main reason for the US led coalition invasion, which was essentially due to the threat presented by Iraq and the Iraqi continued non-compliance with the terms of the 1991 ceasefire over a period of 12 years. Pretty much what was ‘on the tin’ of the US Iraq Liberation Act, as well as in the substance of the speech delivered by president Clinton soon after the act was passedhere.” – Nick (ex South Africa) 1.03 a.m.
It is your point which is tangential. Clwyd is speaking to her experience not U.S. legislation which post-dates her involvement with Iraq by some years. This thread is about Clwyd’s testimony to the U.K.’s Chilcot Inquiry in to the reasons for the U.K.’s decision to go to war. She cannot be faulted (“… but …”) for speaking of her extensive contacts and reflections on her wide experience on the ground in Iraq.
Does anyone know why this articulate woman’s (well, more than Clares Short, though that’s probably damning with faint praise) testimony has received so little coverage.