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?

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”

Al-Qaqa’a: ‘Benign’ Neglect by a Malign Power By William Bowles

28 October 2004

The latest ‘revelations’ to emerge from the annals of the US occupation of Iraq concerns the ‘loss’ of over 350 tons of high explosives that the US was meant to be guarding at the military base of al-Qaqa’a. According to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the stockpile went ‘missing’ some time after January 2004. So either, the US didn’t bother to check that it was still there over the past nine months (complete with its IAEA seals that had been intact since being installed in 2002) or, they knew it was missing and didn’t tell anybody. It was left for the IAEA to discover that dozens of truckloads of highly explosive matériel had gone missing.

Remnants of Empire By William Bowles

18 July 2004

The media’s response to the Butler ‘report’ has been tediously predictable, with most of the press pundits seeming to emit a collective sigh of relief as if, more even than the government, they can’t wait to see the back of Iraq and get on with what they know best – hobnobbing with their pals in Parliament and propping up our ‘failed state’.

Separate but Synonymous: The Media and the State By William Bowles

13 July 2004

“Lord Butler is to head off any attempt by Tony Blair to “spin” the conclusions of his report…by speaking live before the Prime Minister makes his statement to the House of Commons… In an attempt to stop Downing Street quoting selectively from the document, Lord Butler of Brockwell plans to seize the initiative by publishing his conclusions before Mr Blair has a chance to comment on the report publicly.”
Independent 12/7/04 P.5

There could be no clearer admission of the incestuous relationship between the media and the state than the subtext within this apparently ‘objective’ reportage on the impending release of the Butler report on the government‘s justification for the invasion of Iraq.

A Failure of Policy Not of Intelligence By William Bowles

10 July 2004

LANGLEY, Va. (AP) – Former President Bush, helping the CIA celebrate its 50th birthday Wednesday, called agency critics “nuts,” derided the CIA’s “universally negative press” and labeled congressional staffers who investigate agency misdeeds “crusading young zealots.”

The podium-thumping speech brought repeated ovations from a crowd of about 4,000 CIA retirees – including all the living former directors of central intelligence. Bush focused on his time as the CIA chief in 1976 and 1977, in the wake of highly critical examinations of U.S. intelligence by the press and congressional investigating committees.

Blair: Out-Gunned and then brought up Short By William Bowles

27 February 2004

Is the British state in disarray or what? It’s one disaster after the next for Blair’s ‘mini-imperium’ and in spite of all the calls to ‘move on and put Iraq behind us’, like a bad meal the issue of why the war and invasion and all the lies used to justify it, the issues just won’t go away.

The dirty tricks campaign mounted against members of the UN Security Council that included bullying, bribery and blackmail by the US to get the half dozen recalcitrant members to endorse its invasion of Iraq (a campaign that amazingly failed), has yet again exposed the bumbling English political class as an inept and divided servant of US capital.

WHY? By William Bowles

13 February 2004 — InvestigatingImperialism

In reading the endless media reports on the lack of WMD in Iraq, there’s not a single report in the corporate press that raises the issue of why except of course for the state’s mantra of ‘faulty intelligence’ followed by the endless litany of accusation and counter-accusation between governments and their various ‘intelligence’ agencies.

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).

Mea (Ex)culpa By William Bowles

3 February 2004

Aish! Well I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised but in an op-ed piece in today’s Independent (03/02/04) by Mary Dejevsky headed “Let’s be honest: journalists failed as well”, we are told that:

“We journalists failed to ask pertinent questions that could have at least cast doubt on the information the government supplied…. How could so congenitally sceptical a breed allow this to happen?”

Good question Ms Dejevsky, it’s a pity that instead of exploring the real reasons you firstly, fall back on a failing memory:

“It is hard now to think back to September 2002 and January 2003 when the Government issued its two dossiers on Iraq’s Weapons.”