A sexed-up, over-egged cup of Horlicks

Details are emerging, as the newsmen might put it, of the Iraq Survey Group's upcoming report on the hunt for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".

While this is indeed the case, the thrust of the report is unlikely to succumb to any last-minute revisions; they don't seem to be waffling much.

Mr Neil said, according to the source, the report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material".

They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.

Or, in short, the report will, as it were, report that Iraq did not, in point of fact, actually have weapons of mass destruction after all. Not even a little.

Fancy that.

It's only an interim report, it's true, but if any, and I do mean any, slightest trace of NBC (a far more informative acronym: nuclear, biological, and chemical) material had been found, the Powers That Be would be arsetrumpeting it from the rooftops. Especially poor Tony Blair, who genuinely seemed to think they'd turn up. Boy, is his face red.

Cor.

So all the intelligence was wrong, and all the dossiers were bollocks, and Britain and the US were led into the invasion of Iraq with a string of fabrications and fuckups.

Who knew?

Oh, and while I'm at it...

Guess what?

Andrew Gilligan's original story on the Today programme was, as it was planned, factually accurate after all. Gilligan just flubbed his lines. Hence referring to his source as the 'intelligence services' rather than 'experts'.

Critically, Mr Dingmans said the new evidence showed the BBC story "would have been absolutely correct as we now know from Bryan Jones and others".

Mr Jones is an intelligence officer who gave evidence during phase one of the inquiry, claiming parts of the dossier had been "overegged".

Well, bugger me.

Also, see the incomparable Calpundit and behold Colin Powell announcing in 2001 that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

Well, piss my soul!

So I guess pretty much all the prominent Bushistas are lying, lying liars, lying lying liar-pantsed lying liarriffic liars. And they lied. It's hard to spin this into anything but a blanket condemnation of the entire run-up to war and everyone involved. The Bush administration systematically deceived the general public into supporting an untimely, poorly-thought-out war on fabricated grounds.

Well, twist my titties and call me Susan!

It all seems pretty conclusive to me. Does this make you angry? It should. It really and truly should. Phrases about 'new brooms' and 'sweeping all clean' float through my head. Also little catch-phrases like 'The Doctor is in' and 'Prescription for change', in reference, in case you hadn't heard, to that delightful Mister Governor Howard Dean, MD. I'm positive the time is ripe for a quip involving Bush and a rectal thermometer.

Posted by aloysius at September 24, 2003 11:52 AM | TrackBack |