The Chilcot ‘Inquiry’: A Theatre of the Absurd By William Bowles

16 December 2009 — Strategic Culture Foundation

Why does the extermination of an entire culturecause not a ripple in our public discourse? The answer is obvious: we don’t have any kind of discourse with those who wield power. The Chilcott ‘Inquiry’ demonstrates this down to a tee. It’s brazen in its disregard for the reality of the crimes the British state has committed in Iraqand continues to commit in Afghanistan. And brazen in the way it scoots a lot of very guilty-looking ‘witnesses’ through the process as painlessly as possible. How has this come to pass?

Downing Street Memos – the silence is deafening by William Bowles

13 June 2005

“The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’’ – Downing Street Memo, 23 July 2002

The Washington Post this morning is still at it. They quote that sentence, and they say, “Well, this is vague, but intriguing.” Well, there’s nothing vague about that at all, and it’s not at all intriguing. It’s highly depressing. Now, we veteran professionals, we professionals that toil long and hard in the intelligence arena are outraged at the corruption of our profession, but we are even more outraged by the constitutional implications here because as Congressman Conyers has just pointed out, we have here a very clear case that the Executive usurped the prerogatives of Congress of the American people and deceived it into permitting, authorizing an unauthorizeable war. – Ray McGovern, 27-year career analyst with the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

As the memos pour forth from who knows where (somebody on the inside is obviously very pissed off with the actions of the Blair government), aside from the two articles in the Sunday Times, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain not a single mainstream media outlet in the UK has picked up on what is now known as DSM or the Downing Street Memos.

War preparations or how the media ‘disappeared’ the secret memo by William Bowles

10 June 2005

Some time in mid-2002 (most likely June), George Bush and Tony Blair met to discuss their war plans, or as they would prefer to call it, ‘regime change’.

On May 1, 2005, the Sunday Times published the secret memo that detailed the results of the meeting. The memo, dated 23 July 2002 and marked:

“SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY” with the added proviso “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents”

Wriggling, Squirming and Sliding into Sleaze By William Bowles

6 February 2004

What a way to run capitalism! But then the entire enterprise has been somewhat problematic since day (91)1 so-to-speak. But this past week has I think been quite an eye-opener for a lot of people (aside from the millions who had their eyes open from the beginning).

As predicted, Blair has done his best to reset the agenda re the ‘dictionary’ definition of WMD but then what other choice does he have? Blair’s capos Reid, Straw, Hain, Hoon et al have been working overtime trying to do damage control but it’s the performance of Margaret Beckett’s that took the cake this week, as she has revealed herself as shrill bordering on the hysterical when she rounded on anyone who dared question what a WMD is let alone where (‘the 45-minutes are not important’) and then capped it by trying to compare Blair to Churchill (‘We’ll deceive them on the beaches, we’ll deceive them in the air’ etc).

Damn! What a Week (and it’s only Wednesday) By William Bowles

4 February 2004

Hard to know where to begin what with Blair desperately seeking solutions. Kay, Jones, Powell and co, all spilling the beans (not, I add of the ricin kind) and jumping ship in what now looks remarkably like a total rout for the imperium. Blair protests in Parliament that Saddam’s ‘plans’ are pretty much the same thing as actually having the weapons (gasps of disbelief) and then not content with this, he goes on to say that ‘battlefield weapons’ are actually WMDs but by another name (more gasps of disbelief).

It’s the spies wot gets the blame By William Bowles

2 February 2004

“I saw evidence that was categoric on Saddam possessing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Now I saw the evidence, so did the Prime Minister, so did other cabinet ministers. That informed our decision to go topple him. I think we were right in doing so, but let’s wait and see what the jury finds out in the end.”

So says Peter Hain, Leader of the Commons and former anti-apartheid activist and if you believe this statement, you’ll believe anything.

But what is this statement based upon? The September 2002 dossier? The ‘dodgy’ February 2003 dossier or the stuff that nobody else has ever seen? Perhaps it’s Hans Blix’s final report to the UN? Perhaps it was the fairies at the bottom of the garden?

Coitus Interruptus By William Bowles

1 February 2004

“US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD”.

So goes the headline in the Observer (01/02/04) but the reality is that the US government knew in 1991 that Iraq possessed no WMD as did the UK government. So what’s the argument all about? Why is it so important that a ‘battle royale’ is being conducted around the existence or otherwise of WMD? For what the headline reveals is the ‘wheels within wheels’ approach to selling a war nobody but the warmongers wanted.

Franchising the news or how to whitewash a whitewash By William Bowles

30 January 2004

In 2002 when I first returned to the UK after many years abroad and started my long period of readjustment to this malignant society, a major part of the process was getting a handle on the media here. I read many of the leading ‘papers, listened to the news and of course watched it on tv. I tried to immerse myself in the gallons of turgid prose that gurgled out of ‘news central’, for that’s what it is, a factory for the manufacturing of ‘news’ for passive consumption, designed it would appear for an audience with the attention span of a gnat.

Some Old White Guy Does The Whitewash By William Bowles

29 January 2004

Do politicians lie? Do fish swim and birds fly? It’s difficult to know where to start with this ‘inquiry’ except to say that Hutton has transformed what was meant to be an investigation into the events surrounding the alleged suicide of Dr David Kelly and his being ‘outed’ by the government into a total whitewash of Blair’s rationale for going to war. Everybody involved in the entire disgusting and illegal invasion has been absolved of any wrongdoing, except the BBC, but more on this later.

The war on everything By William Bowles

29 December 2003

There is a direct correlation between imperialism’s increasingly desperate economic state and its urge to go to war, only now it’s declared war on the entire planet, a sure indication of capitalism’s inability to deal with its inbuilt and rapidly escalating contradictions. Consider the wars it has declared over the past 100 years: the ‘war on communism’, ‘war on drugs’, the ‘war on crime’ and of course the latest war only now it’s called ‘terror’, a meaningless catch-all phrase that’s ideal for a propaganda campaign but useless as an explanation.