Re: General Sir Michael Rose calls for Tony Blair's Impeachment
Epsilon Minus
It seems that I may not be quite so cynical as you suggest; nor am I alone in holding the vapourings of retired Generals in something less than awe. It also appears that the recent demand by Sir Michael Rose for Blair’s impeachment has not shaken the Establishment sufficiently to excite a D Notice. I quote verbatim yesterday’s (Thursday’s) “Thunderer” column in The Times.
0 ROSE, THOU ART SICK
“General Sir Michael Rose, former commander of the UN protection force in Bosnia, is an angry man. In The Guardian, and a Channel 4 documentary made by the former war correspondent Martin Bell, he calls for Tony Blair's impeachment over the Iraq war. Sir Michael believes this "would prevent politicians treating quite so carelessly the subject of taking a country into war". Had he still been a serving officer, he would "certainly'* have resigned his commission, to try to persuade MPs to "think twice about what they were doing".
Perhaps Mr Bell recalls his 1996 judgment of Sir Michael's service in Bosnia: "By the time he left, there was little muscular or robust about the force he led, or his leadership of it”. Sir Michael's performance caused the greatest rift in transatlantic relations since Suez. That record does not invalidate his criticisms now. But Sir Michael's judgment of the impact of his hypothetical resignation indicates a rare confidence in the way others see him.
Sir Michael argues, conventionally, that the Government misled the Commons over Iraq's WMD. He also practises a conventional omission. Nowhere does he refer to 9/11. Those attacks inevitably changed policymakers' perception of strategic risk. The foundations of postwar security policy — deterrence and containment — had been undermined in a morning.
Sir Michael holds Mr Blair responsible for not testing flawed intelligence. He gives no advice on how to do that beyond waiting till the intelligence is confirmed or refuted. That was the route Sir Michael chose in 1994 when he disastrously played down reports that Gorazde was about to fall. No prime minister can afford to be so mistaken.
Saddam welcomed 9/11 and sought a WMD capability in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Intelligence about current capabilities was wrong, but Iraq did possess dual-use facilities that, according to Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group, could quickly have produced chemical and biological weapons. Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism, and remained the most likely route by which Islamist groups could obtain WMD. How to weigh those factors was a political judgment, not a perfidious wangle.
The military mind in politics, from Cromwell to Douglas MacArthur and beyond, is notoriously insensitive to uncertainty. His advice should be treated with the respect due to him.”
Oliver Kamm, “Thunderer”, The Times 12 January 2006.
I do not go all the way with Mr Kamm in the exculpation of Blair. I believe that the Butler Report, in the parts I read either in the press or online (and making allowance for Lord Butler’s “Mandarinese”), whilst clearing the PM of outright lying, showed that the “Dodgy Dossier” was deliberately intended to deceive Parliament and the public. The report included damning comparisons between the original intelligence assessments by WMD experts and the wording of the final published “dossier”. The latter certainly deceived me into supporting the war initially, but I doubt whether the evidence would be sufficiently compelling to support impeachment proceedings (were these legally available).