My other commitments have prevented much blogging of late. My most culpable failure has been over the execution of Saddam. Luckily, Perry de Haviland sums up my thoughts almost exactly:

Why is a bloody tyrant getting his just deserts generating so many official grimaces and shocked swooning amongst the professional political classes? That Saddam Hussain's executioners visited upon him a tiny measure of the degradation and horror Saddam's own busy hangmen inflicted on so many others when he was in power is a trivial matter. Tyrants should have neither consideration nor dignity, deserving only to reap the harvest of hatred from the fields of skulls they have themselves planted, ideally at the hands of their victims or suitable representatives.

Tyrants are killed as punishment for unspeakable evil acts and as a warning to other would-be tyrants. Puncturing their vanity and disrespecting them is not 'inappropriate', it is justice and a small measure of revenge for against a person towards whom the most appropriated emotion is hatred. That such a person controlled a state makes their debasement all the more important, though quite possibly that very fact lies at the heart of why so object to what happened to him.

Sic semper tyrannis.

I find the whole upset over Saddam being taunted utterly perplexing. What does it matter if some people said a few nasty words to a murderous butcher as he prepared to meet his maker?

As for those ministers who have condemned the manner of his execution, whilst failing to condemn his execution: eh? If they condemned his execution, that would be one thing. But their stance is this: feel free to kill him, and say what you like about him behind his back, but don't say anything nasty to his face.

Bizarre.

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A virtuoso piece by Daniel Finkelstein on why the decision to remove Saddam was right:

The outcome of any political decision is uncertain. You use your best estimate of the probabilities of different results and make a choice. Even if you have calculated the probabilities correctly and made a sensible choice, the outcome might still be a poor one. Only an analysis of the results of repeated decisions can provide a proper insight into whether your choice was a good one.

...What if, instead of viewing the Vietnam War as a single episode, you view the decision as one of a long series? America decided to confront Soviet influence aggressively wherever it reared its head. Mostly this strategy was successful but, naturally, sometimes individual decisions produced a calamitous outcome. Luck plays a role as well as error. The Cuban missile crisis is viewed as a great triumph. It is separated by the thinnest margin from being the worst event in the history of mankind.

Apply this to the Iraq war. The critics believe that Mr Blair should have defied the request from our closest ally and chosen to stand aside and do nothing about Saddam.

They reach this point with two sleights of hand that make the decision to go to war seem impossibly stupid. The first is to criticise the known outcome of the course taken without reference to the unknown outcome of the course not taken. Not prosecuting the war would have meant leaving Saddam in power, followed in due course by his mad, murderous sons. If you ignore the possible result of allowing this then, of course, the war becomes difficult to explain.

The second thing the critics do is to consider the Iraq war as an isolated decision, rather than one in a long series. It can’t be looked at like that.

Even if you consider the history of policy towards Saddam alone, the decision to remove him is simply one among many. But the Iraq invasion also has to be seen as one decision among many in the War on Terror, in the recent history of liberal interventionism and in the long course of the special relationship.

On the whole, I believe that robust partnership with the United States, and a strong military approach to dangerous, aggressive dictators with nuclear ambitions is a better foreign policy than the alternatives. And on the whole, I think that believing intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction is a more sensible thing to do than ignoring them.

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For the life of me I can't understand why those of who supported the Iraq war - and who continue to argue it was and remains the right thing to do - should oppose an inquiry.

What is there to hide? Opposition to it can only come across as defensive and shifty and add (surely spurious) credence to the idea that there was something amiss with the basis of the decision.

Iraq should not be unique in this respect. It’s important that there is a full inquiry after most armed conflicts which cost British soldiers' lives, just as there was after the Falklands.

I don't often think the Prime Minister is wrong in regards to the war, and I'm ready to label David Cameron an opportunist when it's appropriate, but in this instance Mr Blair is wrong to veto the very idea - the only dispute should be over the timing of an inquiry - and Mr Cameron is quite right to press for one.

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My friend Peter Oborne, whose book The Rise of Political Lying is a must-read, and who is one of the most eloquent and principled opponents of the war, has sent me this email about my post below. He has given me permission to quote him, and I think it only proper that I do:

I have the answer to your demand for evidence that we were lied to before the Iraq War. The case is set out on pp190-195 of my book The Rise of Political Lying.

The government dossier of September 2002 was a fraudulent prospectus for war. It is not simply that its claims subsequently turned out to be untrue. Tony Blair misrepresented speculative information from intelligence sources as hard fact.

Had a company prospectus been as cavalier with its statements of profits and assets as the British government was in claims about Iraq’s so-called WMD the fraud squad would have been brought in and the board of directors would have been arrested. I make this case on pages 263 and 264 of the book, (and did so only after discussing the issue in detail with corporate lawyers and investment bankers). It should be borne in mind that city fraud cases normally relate only to stolen money. Blair’s fraud on the British public has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

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Oliver Kamm has a typically rigorous and honest account of the justification for the Iraq war, three years on.

I have received a series of emails from opponents of the war in recent days. Not one has made a case (which can, of course, be made) that the war was wrong in conception as well as execution. They have simply asserted that it is now self-evident that it was wrong, and that we were lied to.

Oliver's post puts with far greater clarity than I have managed why that premise is mistaken. As for the latter accusation, I repeat here what I have said in reply to my correspondents. If anyone has evidence that Tony Blair lied in putting the case for war, they should make it public. Despite a series of inquiries, no such evidence has yet emerged.

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Democratiya now has available to watch on its site a DVD of testimonies from Saddam's victims made by the Iraq Memory Foundation - the only one with English subtitles. I've just watched it and it is powerful stuff.

I wonder how those who marched in favour of keeping Saddam in power will feel when they see it.

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Very good posting by Pooter Geek on John Simpson's column about Saddam's trial:

The chief judge has been remarkably lenient to Saddam and his half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and they have taken advantage of this.

But does this mean, as some people in the Western media are starting to say, that the trial is descending into farce?

Simply because Saddam Hussein's trial is different from the court practices of, say, Britain or France, that does not make it farcical.

It is true that many Iraqis, including senior ministers in the government, believe that Saddam has been given too much latitude.

It is also true that Saddam often manages to distract everyone's attention, at a time when the evidence is particularly graphic and terrible.

Yet none of this means that the senior judge has lost control of his court.

...If the judge treated Saddam more roughly, he would seem like a martyr. The fact that he does not is a sign of success, not of failure.

To the opponents of the liberation of Iraq:

Do you really prefer this:

to this?

Blimey. A sensible comment about Iraq in the Guardian:

Am I the only one who screams at broadcasts of the Saddam Hussein trial, "Why can't you get him to SHUT UP?" I am sick to death of deposed pond scum being allowed to mouth off in the dock to their hearts' content. So far Saddam's trial is repeating the travesty of Slobodan Milosevic's in The Hague. In bog-standard criminal trials, the defendant is never allowed to pipe up with whatever pompous tirade he cares to air. So why has the judge in Baghdad sat still while Saddam foments about the indignity of walking a flight of stairs because the lift is broken? Why let him declaim - with no basis in theology - that his being forced to carry a Koran in manacled hands is a sacrilege? Why is he allowed to go on about the evil American occupiers, to constantly issue orders to the judge himself, or to boom at a state witness, "Don't interrupt me, boy!" To chant "Long live Iraq!" and "Long live the Arab nation!" as if still leading one of his own self- aggrandising rallies?

As Iraq's vice-president Ghazi al-Yawer has despaired, "I don't know who is the genius who is producing this farce. It's a comedy show." Well, I'm not laughing.

David T reprints Nick Cohen's aposite question in today's Evening Standard:

I want to ask a question of my own: would you think worse of Mr Galloway if the Americans were right and he was corrupt? I wouldn't. Corruption is deplorable, but it is a common human vice. Is it better to grovel before fascists because you've been paid to grovel before them? Or because you sincerely believe in their courage, strength and indefatigability?

The questions aren't only for Mr Galloway. With a few honourable exceptions, the anti-war movement has accepted the leadership of an apologist for totalitarianism. Most of the newspapers have praised him or left him alose. The fearsome interviewers of the BBC have never given him a proper grilling.

People look back at the 20th century and marvel at the Tories who sucked up to Hitler and the socialists who sucked up to Stalin. We think we've learned the lessons of the past and are better than them.

Quite. As Christopher Hitchens puts it:

I wonder if any of those who furnished him a platform will now have the grace to admit that they were hosting a man who is not just a pimp for fascism but one of its prostitutes as well.

I'd also recommend reading David Blair's piece. It was Blair who unearthed the original Galloway documents in Baghdad - the veracity of which were not questioned by the High Court judgement, whatever Galloway might wish:

Following publication of the documents in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Galloway successfully sued and won damages of £150,000. Yet anyone who listened to the MP's public statements would never have guessed two crucial facts. First, Mr Galloway's lawyers did not challenge the authenticity of the documents. Second, they did not question my account of how I found them.

Turning to the authenticity issue: shortly after I brought the documents to London, the Telegraph commissioned a forensic examination that helped show they were genuine. But, as the documents' authenticity was not disputed by Mr Galloway's lawyers - they argued that it was "irrelevant" - this evidence was never introduced in the libel trial.

I think this is what's known as being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Does one believe the word of a tyrant loving piece of scum, or that of a tyrant loving piece of scum? Or maybe they can both be lying.

Gerard Baker is on a roll. His pieces are always worth reading, and today's is as important as ever:

I will acknowledge that, yes, our engagement in Iraq has increased the risk that we will be attacked but that fact in no way instructs us to get out of Iraq or the Middle East. On the contrary it makes it more urgent than ever that we win there.

It is true in an obvious sense that Iraq has increased our vulnerability; al-Qaeda and its allies play the game of international politics quite well. Their aim is to divide countries between and within themselves, to prise the timorous away from the struggle. Of course that makes London a target; they know full well that many in Britain’s elites are only too willing — wittingly or otherwise — to respond positively to their demands But Iraq has, I concede, made us more vulnerable in another sense. Invading Iraq has undoubtedly created in the minds of many millions of Muslims the idea that their people, their faith is under attack.

The right way to tackle that view is not to indulge it, sympathise with it or nurse it, but to correct it. The right way to deal with anti-American and anti-British sentiment in the Muslim world is not to pull out our troops from Iraq and beg forgiveness, but to continue to fight there on behalf of the majority of good Muslims for the kind of country they need and deserve.

And we must continue to explain what we are doing — to take on directly the outrageous falsehood that this is a fight between Islam and its enemy, and to point out to Muslims in London, Leeds, Karachi and Kandahar just how false this is.

It would help, for instance, to point out that in 1991 we liberated Kuwait, a Muslim country, from Saddam Hussein and that, in the process, saved the holiest sites in Islam — in Saudi Arabia — from falling under his heel too. That in Bosnia we intervened (belatedly) to save Muslims from being massacred by Christians; that we did the same again in Kosovo a few years later. And also that we are striving to create a state for Palestinians.

Above all we should point out that what we are fighting in Iraq is not some brave, popular “insurgency” struggling to free the Arab people from Western and Zionist oppression, but a coalition of some of the most vile individuals who have ever crawled the earth and who happily slaughter Muslim, Christian and Jew alike for their own ends.

That is what we are fighting against in Iraq. If doing that has really increased our vulnerability to attack, it should make us even more determined to prevail.

Splashed on the front page of The Independent yesterday, was the figure 24,865. “Revealed: Iraq’s Civilian Death Toll”, read the headline.

It was not alone. The BBC’s bulletins ran with the same figure, as did the Daily Mirror and The Guardian — derived, said the latter, from “a detailed study of the human cost of the conflict”.

There is only one problem with the figure — not that you would know it from the credulous reporting. It is an entirely arbitrary figure published by political agitators.

The figure was released yesterday by two organisations, Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group. According to the BBC, the former “is one of the most widely-quoted sources of information on the civilian death toll in Iraq”. Indeed it is — because the BBC itself reports its propaganda as fact.

One of the leading lights of the IBC is Marc Herold, a professor of economics and women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire. Professor Herold has attempted this trick before, when he “revealed” in December 2001 that there were then 3,800 civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The now-accepted figure at the time was two thirds less — about 1,200.

The reason his figures were so wrong then, and are almost certainly wrong now, is that the IBC’s methodology is designed to come to as large a total as possible. The organisation simply adds up all reports of casualties, no matter what the source or how scant the evidence. Hardly surprising, since the IBC’s associates are a veritable who’s who of anti-war activism.

The co-founder of IBC, John Sloboda, is also the director of the Oxford Research Group, an organisation “which seeks to develop effective methods whereby people can bring about positive change on issues of national and international security by non-violent means”. Translated, ORG is a lobbying group with a political agenda.

Professor Sloboda describes himself as having “worked with the Committee for Peace in the Balkans”. What that admirable title obscures is that the committee was, as he himself has put it, “essentially a lobbying and campaigning group against the Kosovo war”. Having opposed the liberation of Kosovo, he turned to Iraq.

The civilian costs of the war have been greater than its advocates expected. It does not help in getting to the truth, however, when parts of the media report partisan lobbying as fact.

Hmmm. It seems that Israel Shamir's friend, Lord Ahmed, has another even less salubrious friend: Tariq Aziz.

Lord Ahmed has signed George Galloway's petition for Aziz's release.

What a bunch his co-signatories are. They used to joke in the 1930s that you could wipe out British fascism in one fell swoop by bombing Twickenham. You could certainly make the world a better place by ignoring any utterance from any one of the 182 signatories.

The poor dear:

Saddam Hussein watched the televised election of Iraq's new president from his jail cell yesterday and was "clearly upset", a senior official said.

Clive Davis (whose blog is one of my first ports of call every day) points to the glorious use of the word 'probably' in today's Indie editorial.

There's an excellent demolition in today's Observer by David Aaronovitch of Phillipe Sands' new book about Iraq.

I won't summarise it: read the whole thing.

Norm has a cogent dissection of Phillipe Sands' pieces on the Iraq liberation in the Guardian this week.

The unmissable Norm is the subject of a piece in the Sunday Times.

As Harry points out:

The tone of the article is not unfamilar - it is that there is something extraordinary about a man of the left being supportive of the removal of Saddam's dictatorship.

Quite.

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It's something of a relief that Sir Simon is back to his usual self: plain wrong.

His piece today is simply breathtaking in its arrogant, patronising, defeatist nonsense. Amidst a sea of misstatements, half truths and wilful misinterpretations, one statement stands out as typical of the bizarre world view from Jenkins Towers:

America refused to acknowledge Yassir Arafat as a democrat...

Hello? In what world do the words 'Arafat' and 'democrat' hang together? Praise the recent Palestinian elections, yes. But Arafat? The man who went beyond even the Sinn Fein slogan "with an Armalite in one hand and a ballot box in the other". For Arafat it was an Armalite in one hand and a suicide murderer on the other.

How this man is taken seriously is quite beyond me.

(The sentence

There were active, contested elections in Palestine in 1996, Egypt in 2000, Iran in 2001 and Pakistan in 2002.

runs the above a pretty close second. Sir Simon clearly has a different idea of what a contested election involves than the traditional definition of free speech and a free contest.)

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Gorbachev calls Iraq elections fake.

That's as opposed to the USSR's ballots, eh, Mikhail?

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Superb piece by Michael Ignatieff in the Observer:

Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.

Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?

Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.

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I have long dismissed the Lancet's claims to being a sensible and independent policy journal. In my professional field - health policy - the Lancet is little more than a hard left political propaganda sheet. (I am working a longish article on the deeply political agendas of the Lancet and, to a lesser but nonetheless significant extent, the BMJ.)

So I was deeeply suspicious of its claims that 100,000 Iraqis died during the war, a figure which has now attained the status of fact.

This piece, however, rips the analytical foundations of the figure apart, and shows that it is, indeed, baseless.

(via Melanie Phillips.)

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At last, some balanced commentary on Iraq! Thomas Friedman's New York Times column this week , written just after his return from Baghdad, is well worth reading:

General Sattler was explaining how well the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy Seabees had worked together in Falluja as a combined task force. As General Sattler was speaking, I looked around at the assembled soldiers in the room. It was a Noah's Ark of Americans: African-Americans and whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians, and men and women I am sure of every faith. The fact that we can take for granted the trust among so many different ethnic groups, united by the idea of America - and that the biggest rivalry between our Army and Navy is a football game - is the miracle of America. That miracle, and its importance, hits you in the face in Iraq when someone tells you that the "new" Iraqi police unit in a village near Falluja is staffed by one Iraqi tribe and the "new" National Guard unit is staffed by another tribe and they are constantly clashing.

...[W]e are trying to plant the seeds of decent, consensual government in some very harsh soil. We are not doing nation building in Iraq. That presumes that there was already a coherent nation there and all that is needed is a little time and security for it to be rebuilt. We are actually doing nation creating. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another. Despite all the mistakes made, that is an incredibly noble thing. But for Iraqis to produce such a social contract, such a constitution, requires a minimum of tolerance and respect for majority rights and minority rights - and neither of those is the cultural norm here. They are not in the drinking water.

...Cultures can change, though. But it takes time. And, be advised, it is going to take years to produce a decent outcome in Iraq. But every time I think this can't work, I come across something that suggests, who knows, maybe this time the play will end differently. The headlines last week were all about Falluja. But maybe the most important story in Iraq was the fact that while Falluja was exploding, 106 Iraqi parties and individuals registered to run in the January election. And maybe the second most important story is the relatively quiet way in which Iraqis, and the Arab world, accepted the U.S. invasion of Falluja. The insurgents there had murdered hundreds of Iraqi Muslims in recent months, and, I think, they lost a lot of sympathy from the Arab street. (But if we don't get the economy going on the Iraqi street, what the rest of the Arab world thinks will be of no help.)

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This could just be the single most important story to emerge since the fall of Saddam:

Syria Storing Iraq's WMDs
By Bill Gertz
Washington Times | October 29, 2003

Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.

Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists.

UPDATE: A correspondent appears either lazy or unable to read words begining with W and ending in N and those beginning with T and ending in S. He dismisses the story because it is linked to via FrontPage.com. If he bothered to look at it, he would see that it is taken from the Washington Times and is written by the respected reporter, Bill Gertz.

FURTHER UPDATE:
The biter bit. Having castigated a commenter, I must now plead guilty to stupidity and incompetence myself. I meant to link to this and another post by the same writer about the Russians moving explosives out of Iraq and destroying papers revealing their contracts, but have put up the wrong link and cited only one of the passages I meant to cite, from a piece a year old. I now can't access the link I wanted to post. In mitigation, I am on the move and posted this from an internet cafe. When I get back to my own pc, I will get back to square one. Apologies all round.

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An excellent post by Oliver Kamm is distinguished still more by this extract from a column by Christopher Hitchens:

One of the editors of this magazine asked me if I would also say something about my personal evolution. I took him to mean: How do you like your new right-wing friends? In the space I have, I can only return the question. I prefer them to Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin and the cretinized British Conservative Party, or to the degraded, mendacious populism of Michael Moore, who compares the psychopathic murderers of Iraqis to the Minutemen. I am glad to have seen the day when a British Tory leader is repudiated by the White House. An irony of history, in the positive sense, is when Republicans are willing to risk a dangerous confrontation with an untenable and indefensible status quo. I am proud of what little I have done to forward this revolutionary cause.

(3)

Congratulations are in order for Charles Kennedy and his wife, Sarah. They are expecting a baby in April. Could I make a suggestion? If the baby is a boy, Mr Kennedy might care to name him after the man whose cause he champions, Saddam Hussein.

Throughout the run-up to the war, and in its aftermath, I have taken some small pleasure in referring to the opponents of the war as ‘friends of Saddam’. I have found few methods more guaranteed to reduce them to spluttering anger. To be honest, I have always known that the insult was rather below the belt. There were few opponents of the war who actively sought to defend Saddam. The direct consequence of their view prevailing would, indeed, have been that he remained in place as President of Iraq, but this was not their avowed intention; rather, it was a guaranteed by-product.

I did not really think that, since the war and Saddam’s subsequent arrest, the opponents of the war intended to be seen as explicitly, proudly and determinedly championing Saddam’s right to govern Iraq.

I was wrong.

Charles Kennedy and his ilk seek as a matter of policy Saddam’s re-instatement as President of Iraq. The leader of the Liberal Democrats was quite clear in this respect when, at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, he told Mr Blair that, “Now that we know that the 45-minute claim was unfounded and has been withdrawn, and now that we know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, regime change becomes the only remaining argument, but the Prime Minister knows that regime change is contrary to international law.” According to Mr Kennedy, Mr Blair “led us into an illegal war”.

There it is, spelt out in cold logic. If his words mean anything at all – and one must do him the courtesy of assuming that he only uses words and concepts which he understands – then, according to Mr Kennedy, Saddam must immediately be reinstated as President of Iraq.

If Mr Kennedy believes that the war was illegal and thus brought about an illegal regime change, then he also believes – it is not logically possible to believe anything else - that Saddam remains the rightful ruler of Iraq. He was, after all, deposed only by an illegal force. And if he believes, as he claims, in the primacy of international law, then he and those who espouse the same argument have no alternative but to campaign for Saddam’s immediate re-instatement as the internationally recognised head of state of Iraq. To allow him to remain detained by the Americans, couped up in a cell, is not merely illegal; it is an outrage which besmirches the honour of all those who are complicit in it.

Further, if Mr Kennedy’s view of international law is to have any meaning, then those who were guilty of prosecuting the illegal war must be arraigned before the International War Crimes Tribunal: Bush, Blair, Howard and the military commanders who ordered the ‘shock and awe’ attack. Assuming Mr Kennedy means what he says, then his words can lead to no other conclusion.

There are other explanations, but they are so unlikely as to be barely worth recording. One is that – perish the thought – Mr Kennedy is so devoid of intellect that he does not understand the basic logic of his position. The other is that he is so deeply cynical that he understands it full well, but is prepared nonetheless to make political capital from an incoherent, morally indefensible and shameful stance of appeasement to a dictator.

As if!

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For some inexplicable reason, it has taken me until now to record that I had the best possible fun at this year's Labour Party conference by telling people that I only remained a Blairite because of the war.

The looks of total incomprehension were a treat.

(1)

Posting will be even more sporadic over the next few weeks than of late - a combination of the party conferences and a lot of foreign travel. So please forgive me if I take a while to react to some things...

To wit, on Monday Ashling O'Connor concluded a brief item on football in Iraq with a remarkable sentence in The Times:

Whether Iraqi football would have been better off had Britain not joined the US in invading the country in the first place is another debate.

It depends, I suppose, on what one means by 'better off'. In April, the Guardian carried a report of the motivational tactics employed by the chairman of the Iraqi football federation under Saddam - his son Uday, so tragically departed from this world last July. If Ms O'Connor considers it debatable whether Iraqi footballers were better off under Uday, then she either needs her head examining or has a unique appreciation of the joys of leg amputation.

The sporting life, as described to the Guardian by four past and present players, was one where motivational lectures from Uday...included threats to cut off players' legs and throw them to ravenous dogs. Missing practice sessions, even to attend a sick child or funeral, meant prison. A loss or a draw brought flogging with electric cable, or a bath in raw sewage. And always at the back of the players' minds was the knowledge that Uday was watching.

A red card was particularly dangerous. Three years ago, Yasser Abdul Latif, a former captain, was accused of hitting the referee in a club match in Baghdad. He was taken to the Radwaniya prison camp, on the edges of the capital, and confined to a cell two metres square, with a tiny window high in the wall.

His head and eyebrows were shaved, and he was stripped to the waist. He was then ordered to perform press-ups for two hours. Three guards flogged him with lengths of electric cable, spelling off when their arms grew tired.

The torture continued, in two-hour sets with an hour's break in between, and the beatings grew more savage as Latif tired. The only relief, if it can be called that, came when he was led outdoors into the winter cold, and doused in freezing water.

I don't think it really is 'another debate', Ms O'Connor. Stick to the sports reporting.

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I want to start a campaign to impeach this lot. (Let's forget about the fact that - thank God - none of the rabble have ever been remotely near to holding office.)

Since they think it so important for Saddam to have been left in power, free to buctcher as many of his citizens as he wished, that they hold one of the men responsible for his removal to be a criminal, the very least form of impeachment they deserve is to be extradited into the hands of the Kurds, with a label attached with words to the effect of 'these people wanted Saddam to have control opf you'.

What an odious bunch of tyrant-friendly hypocrites. And how surprising to see the suicide bomber empathising Dr Tongue amongst them. I suppose she is at least consistent. Explaining away suicide bombing and campaigning to keep Saddam in power is much of a muchness.

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For American readers:

If you'd like to express your appreciation of Tony Blair's support for the war in Iraq, here's a site which will let you.

For UK readers:
We have a more direct option. Come the next election, we can either vote for Michael Howard, whose behaviour in recent months over Iraq has been damn-near contemptible; we can vote for the preposterous Charles Kennedy, who favoured keeping Saddam in power; or we can vote for a leader who is prepared to stand up to terror, to defend the West, and to remove tyrants.

Hmmm. Difficult choice.

UPDATE: One of my commenters makes a very good point. In labelling Howard as 'damn-near contemptible' and Kennedy as only 'preposterous' I imply that Howard is worse than Kennedy, and surely it should be the other way round. Howard did, after all, support the war, whereas Kennedy campaigned for a genocidal maniac to remain in power.

Quite right. My labels were misjudged in their application. I stand corrected.

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Let me offer a brief summary of the left-liberal approach to foreign policy: we should stop Africans dying but Iraqis can go to hell. How else can one explain the hypocrisy that surrounds the now overwhelming calls for intervention in Sudan emanating from the same mouths which so opposed intervention in Iraq?

It is now — rightly — taken as read that, with a humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes in Sudan, we in the West have a moral obligation to do our best to stop it. That means more than just sending food aid. It means military intervention, either to force the Sudanese Government to take action itself or, if need be, to do it ourselves. And if that involves armed conflict, so be it.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who describes himself as being even broadly liberal in outlook who opposes the idea of military action in Sudan. Certainly not Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesman. Last month Sir Menzies wrote to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, demanding that he instigate an EU-led military intervention in Darfur. As he put it: “It is becoming increasingly clear that food aid and pressure on the Sudanese Government alone will not be sufficient to stem the impending disaster in Darfur. An EU military force operating under a UN mandate looks like the only answer if we are to prevent a disaster on the scale of Rwanda a decade ago . . . Britain too must also contribute to any such force so far as it can. This has now become a matter of critical urgency.”

Sir Menzies has, for reasons which can be explained only by his articulacy and confident bearing, developed a quite undeserved reputation for wisdom. The fact that on almost every issue, from the euro and the development of the EU to the threat of militant Islam, he is dangerously wrong, seems to have been masked by his impressive countenance. And when, by the law of averages, he is eventually right — Sudan, for instance — he is right only as a result of breathtaking inconsistency.

When criticising the UN Security Council resolution on Sudan last month, he argued that “it seems to me to fall a long way short of what is necessary, . . The timetable involved seems unnecessarily prolonged and one can only imagine the hunger and suffering which will take place in the next 30 days. The truth is there has been too much dithering over Darfur.”

Quite. But if 30 days is too long in Sudan, 12 years (the period during which Saddam ignored UN resolution 687) was not long enough in Sir Menzies’ mind for the Iraqis to suffer. This is the man who, in his determination to oppose intervention in Iraq and thus to ensure that Saddam remained in power, free to butcher his countrymen, argued that no military action should be taken against Saddam. “Let the weapons inspectors take as long as they need,” he wrote before the war. And when we did finally take action, Sir Menzies was at the forefront of the opposition.

Sir Menzies is far from alone in adhering to the warped moral calculus which dictates that action against a vile Sudanese Government is fine but action against a vile Iraqi Government not. The unspoken reason is clear. As ever, it comes down to antipathy towards the US. Action against Iraq was led by the US; that against Sudan will not be. And action is only justified if it is not led by the US.

The revolting truth is that such sentiments are shared by most of the liberal Left, who rank their belief in humanitarian action below their antipathy towards President Bush and, more generally, the United States.

So much for the fabled internationalism of the Left. So much for the idea that human beings are what count. To the anti-war liberal mindset, human misery is less important than hatred of America.

(24)

Norman Geras points to a glaring contradiction in David Clark's piece in today's Grauniad, in which he argues for intervention in Sudan, having opposed intervention in Iraq.

I am at a loss to understand the mindset of those who take such directly contradictory positions. It is at least consistent to take the High Tory line that it's all none of our business, much as I disagree with such a view. But there is simply no convincing, let alone consistent, argument in favour of action in Sudan but not in Iraq. Either we hve a duty to intervene or we don't (and that, of course, leaves out the cassus belli in Iraq - Saddam's failure to observe the UN resolutions).

And please, let's hear no more of the 'but Iraq was hypocritical - what about Zimbabwe' argument. It is indeed a moral outrage that we of all countries are standing by whilst Mugabe starves and butchers many of his people to death and destroys a wonderful civilised country. But it is the most glaring non sequitur to conclude that our failure to act properly against Mugabe somehow destroys the case for intervening in Iraq.

(4)

Nick Cohen makes a desperately sad point in his typically honest laceration of the left's foul alliance with Islamic fundamentalists and fascists:

[T]here no longer is a left with a coherent message of hope for the human race.

(6)

Norman Geras has a typically eloquent dissection of a sloppy, misleading piece of Grauniad journalism over Iraq.

(2)

Did you hear the astonishing interview on the Today programme this morning in which John Humphrys (the even more unacceptable voice of the BBC than usual) assailed Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, over the government's paltry response to the crisis in the Sudan?

Humphrys had that tone which he reserves for subjects he seems personally to be aggrieved by. How can you possibly justify such a tiny force - just 300 soldiers? There is butchery going on. People are dying because of the vile regime in power.

Why, in other words, aren't you going in all guns blazing?

All good points.

Except for one rather glaring inconsistency: this is from the mouth of the man who - still - seems bent on painting every supporter of the Iraq War as a crazed liar.

Butchery. Vile Regime.

The response: a large force.

Ring any bells, John?

(You can hear the interview here. Press Friday and then 7.30.)

It;s not just Humphrs, of course. On Wednesday there was a scarcely believable display by James Naughtie. Intervewing George Foulkes about Blair's 10 years as leader, Naughtie brought up Iraq again. Foulkes pointed out that this has become a Today programme obsession, and they were ignoring issues such as the Sudan. Naughtie then had a verbal explosion - really, listen to it, you'll not believe the evidence of your ears - and screamed at Foulkes that he was speaking 'rubbish'.

If the Today programme wasn't already beyond the pale, we'd be shocked by such a display. But it's simply typical.

(You can hear Naughtie go berserk here at 08.55.)

(9)

Excellent piece by David Aaronovitch on the likes of Robin Cook and Douglas Hurd. Key quotes:

Cook's other retrospective problem is the probability that, by the time he as Foreign Secretary signed up to Desert Fox, Saddam's WMD were as disappeared as they were in 2003. What intelligence, one might ask, was he acting upon?

...Douglas Hurd, it is true, operated in a very different way as Foreign Secretary. Look at what happened on his watch. On 25 April 1994, day 20 of the Rwandan slaughter, with 144,000 dead and 600,000 to die, Hurd was asked: 'When will the government put pressure on the United Nations to bring back its troops to prevent further slaughter?' He replied: 'I am not sure how maintaining a United Nations force on the original scale will help assuage those horrors ... There is no magic in keeping troops there if there is nothing useful that they can do.'

As author Linda Melvern subsequently wrote: 'In both London and Washington, and at the UN in New York, there were politicians and civil servants who took decisions that cost the lives of an incalculable number of people. These officials should bear full responsibility for their decisions, though it is unlikely they ever will.'

And, indeed, they haven't. Then there was Bosnia. Over three years, as one author puts it, 'a European country was destroyed. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants were murdered.' Western inaction, sculpted into a strategy of arms embargoes and humanitarian lorry runs by Hurd in particular, caused fury in the Muslim world. One Arab journalist wrote: 'Diplomats and ambassadors amicably explaining Western actions will be talking to the deaf. Only when blood flows in their own cities and bodies are strewn in their own streets will they really understand.'

One week after Hurd resigned from the Foreign Office, as many as 8,000 Bosnian civilians were massacred by Serbs outside Srebrenica. Within 13 months Lord Hurd, now employed by NatWest, had a 'discreet breakfast' with Slobodan Milosevic (now being tried for war crimes at the Hague) to thank the Serbian despot over some business decisions. 'More than any country,' Hurd had minuted to his Prime Minister during the Bosnian crisis, 'we have been the realists.'

(2)

Amazing - an anti war writer with a sense of humour:

Large areas of the nation's capital were in ruins as violent protests continued for the third day against a bill that would revive the military draft, but only for neoconservatives.

The bill, officially called the Bellicose Resources Deployment Act but informally known as the Roast Chickenhawk Initiative, would supplement the nation's dwindling supplies of mindless belligerence by drawing on inexhaustible deposits found in seething think tanks, frothing newspaper columns, fulminating talk-radio programs, frenzied Sunday morning television and publications owned by Australians. It would then be shipped to the Middle East, where it is urgently needed.

The bill, explicitly requiring people who have never been in combat to serve in the wars they start, would affect thousands of neoconservatives in Washington and New York. It was strongly opposed by the Bush Administration on the grounds that it would leave most of the Administration's upper-level positions vacant, including the presidency and vice-presidency, but it was left unattended on President Bush's desk and he inadvertently signed it after deciding it looked too long and too hard to read first.

(4)

Wonderful post by Norman Geras on the odious Robert Fisk.

(4)

I should stop linking quite so often to Melanie Phillips, but it's very difficult given the quality of her posts. She has been especially good recently on detailing the specifics of the non-existent links between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Here's the latest non-existent person to outline more non-existent details - someone who is under the impression that he is the Iraqi PM:

Allawi: We know that this [the war in Iraq] is an extension to what has happened in New York. And — the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.

Brokaw: Prime Minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not, I can’t — vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

(4)

As always, a balanced, dispassionate view of Saddam's forthcoming trial from Con Coughlin in the Sunday Telegraph.

(Note this paragraph:

Nor will it be easy to persuade those involved in carrying out Saddam's orders to testify before their former commander. Iraq's justice minister says that even the life of the trial judge is now under threat after Robert Fisk of the Independent, together with other anti-war newspapers from the Arab world, blithely published his name, having ignored an explicit request not to do so.

Fisk goes from bad to worse.)

(6)

The good news: Saddam is getting the death penalty.

The bad news: David Beckham is taking it.

(3)

I am Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq

Sorry, no, old chap. Afraid we didn't listen to Charles Kennedy, George Galloway, and the others who marched last March to try to ensure you remained in power.

(3)

You have to hand it to the internet fraudsters. This one manages to combine the usual story with opposition to the Iraq War:

Good day;
I am Hajai Kudirat Khalifa the Wife of the Ex-oil minister Of Iraq, Comrade Hammoud Khalifa I am moved to write this letter to you considering my present circumstances and situations as I escaped out of the country (Iraq) to Libya, along with my children, where my family settled down.

My husband moved to was killed amongst other military men fighting against the coalition forces of United States of America, however there after declaration of War on Iraq the United States of America made arrangements with the Switzerland Government and some other European countries to freeze my husbands accounts abroad considering my husband as looter of public funds.

But God so kind to us, my husband and I deposited the sum of US$22,000,000.0 Twenty Two Million United States Dollars with a reputable Security Company Firm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for Safe Keeping. These funds were security coded to prevent it from failing into the wrong hands.

I humbly want to introduce you to my son Prince Dahiru Musa Khalifa whom is Schooling in London but currently in Dubai in search for admission to complete his education there in Dubai U.A.E where the funds are safely kept, because Schooling in London is very expensive and I could no longer bear the cost.

However, I want to seek for your consent in assisting us to invest this money but I wouldnt want I and my son identity to be revealed due to our position and current situation in Iraq. May I implore you to maintain the high level of confidentiality which this transaction requires and I hope you will not betray the trust and confidence that I have already bestowed in you.

Finally, if you are ready to assist us. My son will put you through the picture of the business. I will forward to you the contacts of my son Prince Dahiru Musa Khalifa immediately on the receipt of your response.
He will discuss the modalities and remuneration of your services as soon as you indicate your interest to assist us.

Thanks for your anticipated cooperation.
Yours Sincerely;
Hajia Kudirat Khalifa

(5)

Nice line by David Frum, re the laudatory reception given at Cannes to the odious Mike Moore:

If an American were to make a documentary about the (genuine in this case) links between French President Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein – how do you think he’d do at the Oscars?

(BTW, I cannot believe my own stupidity. How could I post something on Sian Lloyd who is, after all, just a weather girl, and leave unsaid my loathing of Moore? At least all I want to hit when Lloyd comes on is the TV. When I see Moore, I want to go much, much further.)

(21)

Peter Briffa has a corrective to the idea that the only people to have lost their jobs over Iraq are journalists.

(1)

Explain this, please. We were told by the peaceniks before the war that it was quite wrong to include action against Saddam under the aegis of the war on terror because Saddam, whilst being a nasty chap, had nothing to do with terrorism. Iraq and terror were two entirely different issues.

But now, apparently, the publication of the awful pictures showing torture and other general degredations means that we are now more likely to be the victims of terror in the UK.

Which is it?

(8)

Hmmm. I try my best to be supportive of what's happening in Iraq, even though there have been some pretty horrendous mistakes.

Sometimes, however, it enters the realms of the surreal.
This press realease from is not, I assure you, from Onion; it's from the CPA:

TO HONOR THE BIRTHDAY OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD (PBUH), THE COALITION GIVES SOCCER BALLS OUT TO CHILDREN

Hilla, Babil Province, Iraq.

In support of the national holiday honoring the birthday of The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the Coalition Provisional Authority is giving more than 950 soccer balls to Iraqi children, schools, and sports clubs in South Central Iraq. The soccer balls are being distributed through the Democratic Iraqi Gathering, the Polish Coalition Forces, and the Coalition Provisional Authority.

As friends of the Iraqi people, the Coalition wishes Iraqis the very best for this holy occasion and a memorable day for the Iraqi children. We will continue to support the Iraqi people as they move toward a sovereign and democratic Iraq.

Well that's OK, then.

(4)

I was unaware that Norwich is a war zone. There is, however, a body called the Norwich Peace Council. I assume from its name that its purpose is to bring peace to Norwich, in which task all will surely wish it well.

Interestingly, the Green Party's representative on the aforementioned body - again, I can only assume that, since it feels the need to be represented, the Green Party is one of the combatants, which came as a surprise to me given its oft-proclaimed opposition to war - has demanded an inquiry into allegations of a massacre in Fallujah.

Today is full of surprises. Who would have thought that a Green Party representative would be amongst the first to dismiss such allegations? That, clearly, is the intention of Mr Rupert Read, the Green Party's representative:

We are calling for a public inquiry into the events at Fallujah, similar to the inquiry into the Jenin massacre in Israel 2 years ago.

Since the allegations of a massacre at Jenin were found to be baseless, it seems Mr Read is already pressing for similar claims about Fallujah to be dismissed. Good on you, Mr Read! Well done for standing up to your more blinkered Green Party colleagues!

(4)

From Rumsfeld's press briefing today:

There are two ways, I suppose, one could inform readers of the Geneva Convention stipulation against using places of worship to conduct military attacks. One might be to headline saying that "Terrorists Attack Coalition Forces From Mosques." That would be one way to present the information.

Another might be to say: "Mosques Targeted in Fallujah." That was the Los Angeles Times headline this morning.

(via The Corner)

(4)

I no longer bother with the New Statesman, so I missed this bizarre piece by John Pilger (yes, I know, that's something of a tautology):

Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country.

Ah, the smack of firm discipline eh, John! That Saddam knew how to run a tight ship.

I waited for the sentence telling us that he made the trains run on time, too.

(1)

William Shawcross does a marvellous demolition job on Rod Liddle (whose supposed virtues have always been a mystery to me) and Andrew Gilligan, for their respective pieces in last week's Speccie.

Anger and detailed facts - a lethal combination in Shawcross' hands:

Liddle’s most awful claim (which headlined his article) is that Iraqis were ‘better off’ under Saddam Hussein. He asserts that 14,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war began (he does not source this claim) and goes on to say that it is ‘my guess’ that that was more than Saddam would have killed in a year.

Why on earth would Mr Liddle want to make such an odiously casual ‘guess’? Has he read anything at all about Saddam’s rule or does he just not give a damn? Max Van der Stoel, the UN special rapporteur on human rights for Iraq, said that the brutality of the regime was ‘so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have passed since the second world war’. Did Liddle see the thousands of bereaved people scrabbling in Saddam’s mass graves this time a year ago? Did he care about the losses of their husbands, fathers, mothers, sons?

...There is violence and there is progress in Iraq. Most visitors understand that. Pace Gilligan and Liddle, most Iraqis are using their freedom well. From his privileged perch in Doughty Street, Liddle asserts, ‘Right now, there is not the faintest glimmer that the Iraqis are clamouring for more secular democracy.’ The truth, however, is that municipal elections have been held in 17 cities so far; according to Taheri they have all been won by democratic and secularist parties. There are now mo