Congress would not have supported it, nor would the British Parliament.Rockefeller, normally the most balanced of politicians, summarised the results of that war thus: “Our credibility is diminished Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before.”On ever single count, the same could be said of Britain. So what do Blair and Bush say to the people persuaded to vote for it?a.hamilton independent.co.uk
More from Adrian Hamilton. It was the right thing to do and done with the best of intentions.”Of course, investigations like the US Senate Committee and the Butler inquiry are useful in finding out how the intelligence mistakes were made and how they were used. But that was not how it was presented to the British or American public. Not the least worrying parts of this whole grisly story is the way in which the US President, the Prime Minister and their supporters nonchalantly move the justifications for war as the debate goes on.

One moment it was because Saddam was arming himself with nuclear weapons, and in league with al-Qa’ida, then, when that proved false, it was because he was brutalising his own people and his overthrow would set of a chain reaction of democratic change in the Middle East.But in democracies, words matter. And they matter more than anything when they are used to justify the most serious of all decisions: that of going to war. You can’t say, as the Prime Minister appears to at the moment, “It doesn’t look as if we will find weapons of mass destruction, but it doesn’t matter. I remember a highly sophisticated judge collaring me at a dinner at the time and asking almost desperately, “Tony Blair must know something we don’t, mustn’t he?”We now know, of course, that he didn’t really know much that we didn’t and, in so far as he did have access to special information, it was false. What he had was a general presumption that Saddam Hussein was a menace to his own people and to the region, that you couldn’t go on forever with a sanctions regime that was leading to the death of thousands of innocent civilians, and that it would be better if the man was removed.Fair enough. There is an assessment of Lord Butler’s report into WMD being touted by ministers and supporters of the Prime Minister that is at once subtle and morally shameless

There is an assessment of Lord Butler’s report into WMD being touted by ministers and supporters of the Prime Minister that is at once subtle and morally shameless. In the end, it goes, all these reports don’t matter much so long as they don’t point the gun at individuals and force a resignation.

Short of fingering an actual lie, the reports will change nothing. The views on Iraq are so fixed by now that the two sides will simply pick out any conclusions that back their case.
To which one can only point to the comments of Senator Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the US Senate Intelligence Committee, which reported last Friday. “The Administration, at all levels,” he declared, “and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war, and we in Congress would not have authorised that war if we knew what we know now.” And if Rockefeller is regarded as too partisan, remember that most Democrats voted for war, including himself, and that the chairman of the Committee, the Republican Pat Roberts, came out at the weekend and agreed that he, too, would “probably have voted against”.The question of the use and misuse of intelligence about Iraq’s possession of WMD wasn’t just some intellectual assertion in an argument about policy. But these people are part of the university.”In the southern city of Nasiriyah, many departmental heads have received threatening letters, ordering them to leave Iraq At least one professor in the university has been murdered. The dean of the college of law in Mosul, murdered last month, was the most gruesome killing. “She was in bed with her husband when they came for her,” a Baghdad colleague told me yesterday “They coolly shot both of them in their bed.

Then they cut off both their heads with knives.”Both arts and science faculty members have been victims. Dr Abdul-Latif al-Maya was working in urban planning in the Baghdad University geography department when he was killed at his home. Professor Wajih Mahjoub was murdered in the College of Physical Education in April last year as US troops were entering Baghdad.”Dr Arawi told me only two days before he was murdered that he had nothing to fear,” a friend of his recalled yesterday “He said, ‘I never hurt anyone. Everyone respects me.’ On the day of his death, the killers came claiming to be patients. They shot him in his surgery.”In the early weeks of his occupation proconsulship, Paul Bremer fired all senior academics who were members of the Baath party. “They went home and tried to leave the country,” another Baghdad arts professor complained.