UK Guardian: This war is not yet over

posted by admin on Wednesday February 11, @02:40AM

It's the Alan Clark manoeuvre. When the old Tory reptile found himself assailed by a tricky argument, he would fire back with his most lethal weapon. "This is boring," he would say airily. "You are being the most frightful bore." Clark used the word often, keenly aware of its peculiarly English power to devastate. Now the government is deploying the Clark manoeuvre. Those who still insist on banging on about Iraq and its missing weapons of mass destruction are anoraks, they say, trainspotters on the fast track to Dullsville. Ministers declare that the rest of the country lost interest in this media fixation long ago. Only journalists, with their stained coats and plastic carrier bags, still care.

It is beginning to work. Plenty of those whose blood was up in the immediate aftermath of the Hutton report - the backlash against the whitewash - suspect they ought to drop it now. Better to change the subject than be a bore.

They should think again. For this is more than another political story de jour, one that looms enormous at the time but is soon forgotten. This is not the fuel protest or the Hinduja affair. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the Iraq war is about as serious a question as you could imagine; its answer could determine the way our world is ordered in the 21st century. And this is not abstract, chin-stroking stuff for the seminar room. It has direct political consequences; it could even break the governments of both Britain and the United States.

The Bush administration makes no secret that it sees the Iraq war as the prototype for future conflicts; indeed, it has enshrined the idea in its official national security strategy document. Pre-emption remains the Bush doctrine. Witness Donald Rumsfeld's revealing remarks in Munich last week. Asked whether America is bound by any international system, legal framework or code of conduct, the US defence secretary replied: "I honestly believe that every country ought to do what it wants to do ... It either is proud of itself afterwards, or it is less proud of itself." Translation: the US can do what it likes - including making war on countries that have made no attack on it.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk

<  9-11 Panel Presses Bush on Briefing Notes | Stewardess ID'd Hijackers Early, Transcripts Show  >