Harald Stanghelle is (well, deserves to be) known for his carefully neutral style. He follows the two first commandments of meaningless punditry: 1. Thou shalt offend no reader, and 2. Thou shalt cloak thy conventional wisdom in pretty words, so as to flatter thy reader's intelligence. The strong language in this Bush lied-piece either means that conventional wisdom has gone crazy or that Stanghelle is unusually brave. I think it's the first.

Never before have the US and Great Britain gone to war "only" because of intelligence reports. Now the reports are revealed as lacking, misinterpreted, exaggerated, untruthful - and abused by the politicians. That which was meant to legitimate the Iraq war turns out to have been a gigantic scam.

And a gigantic one too! How gigantic is it? As gigantic as the Reichstag fire? The Moscow trials? At the very least we're talking pretty gigantic, right?

Most of us are aware by now that the intelligence data used by the US and UK were lacking, misinterpreted, exaggerated, untruthful and/or abused by the politicians - we just don't know how much each was a factor. Stanghelle throws them all in. Taken literally this means that US intelligence overlooked vital data, that much of the data they had they didn't understand, that the parts they understood they exaggerated, and everything else they invented. And then they had to watch as Washington twisted their carefully assembled fraudulent reports for their own political purposes. That's a gigantic scam allright, involving every single link in the intelligence chain, from the lowliest signal intelligence officer to the commander in chief himself. I wonder where the proof is.

Perhaps David Kay provided it:

The difficult truth was finally confirmed when the leader of the United States' own weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, withdrew after ten months intense, but unsuccessful hunt for the supposed weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein. They're simply not there, and Kay concluded that "everyone" was wrong in the buildup to the Iraq war. This has made the war supporters tone down their formerly so certain claims.

David Kay did say that everyone was wrong. He also said that:

One of the explanations most commonly given - that analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration - I deeply think that is a wrong explanation. In [Iraq] I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world we were finding was not the world they had thought existed. Reality on the ground differed. [..]

Never - not in a single case - was the explanation 'I was pressured to do this'. The explanation was very often: 'The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it'. [..]

[Iraq was] in the early stages of renovating [its nuclear] programme, building new buildings. It was not a reconstituted full-blown nuclear programme. [..]

In my judgment ... Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [UN] Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities [..] We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis ... that should have been reported under 1441. [..]

The world is far safer with the disappearance and the removal of Saddam Hussein. This may be one of those cases where [Iraq] was even more dangerous than we thought. [..] After 1998 it became a regime that was totally corrupt. Individuals were out for their own protection. And in a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood at some point ... of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country. [..]

Iraq was in clear and material violation of 1441. They maintained programmes and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their programme.

Of course, David Kay could be wrong. But the selective quoting is deceptive. Either David Kay is an authority on Saddam's wmd programmes or he isn't. I doubt this is deliberate on Stanghelle's part, though. The information that David Kay actually supports the war in Iraq and does not believe that Bush consciously lied is simply not available inside the Norwegian media bubble, and Stanghelle is clearly under little pressure to seek information outside it.

Most serious are the many indications that American and British leaders were aware of what they did. The investigations will perhaps uncover who knew what, and when they knew it. But hardly any observer is in doubt that both Bush and Blair did not want to lend an ear to those who warned against the war. Therefore all information which did not legitimate the decision to go to war was put aside.

Hardly any observer is in doubt? That's one of those phrases that, when someone finds themselves writing it, should set all alarm bells ringing. If hardly any observer you know of disagrees with you, then you have a problem. But let us accept the claim for now. Attempting to prove it without actual inside information of how Bush evaluated this issue will be difficult, because there's no way to know whether Bush ignored opponents because he disagreed with them or disagreed because he ignored them. But let's assume he disagreed because he ignored them. Who, precisely, among those who warned against going to war does Stanghelle believe Bush should have listened to? The ones who predicted houndreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees and bitter street fighting in Baghdad? The ones who thought Bush Sr was right to betray the Shiah's in 1991, who believe that "the problems of others are not our concern"? The ones who believe that Bush is a second Hitler out to steal Saddam's oil? The ones - quite popular here in Norway - who claimed that war never accomplishes anything, so it's wrong to even consider it? ("Tell that to the city fathers of Carthage.") There were of course sensible people who opposed war. But Stanghelle owes us to specify which alternative, more reliable sources of information he's thinking of. Can't be difficult. After all, hardly any observer is in doubt about this.

Or perhaps it is Stanghelle who lacks vital information, and misinterprets and exaggerates the information he does haves, thus falsifying a case against Bush and Blair that has little basis in reality. Hardly any observer is in doubt that he does, (depending on the meaning of hardly any, of course.)

I used to have respect for Aftenposten and Stanghelle. That was back in the days when the paper was a voice of reason in the otherwise leftist Norwegian media picture.

These days, however, they seem to be more in sync with the Communist Daily "Klassekampen" when it comes to Iraq and the war on terror.

Needless to say, my respect for this paper is long gone. Good Riddance.

"But hardly any observer is in doubt that both Bush and Blair did not want to lend an ear to those who warned against the war."
Nonetheless, want to or not, they did "lend an ear" to a lot of people: they just did not agree that Saddam need not live up to his agreements.

"Therefore all information which did not legitimate the decision to go to war was put aside."
Oh? I thought it was taken into account, e.g. the warnings about massive casualties in the five to six figure range, huge numbers of refugees, street fighting...
Come to that, what "information" was against the war? Some people did not want to, some thought it wrong - but the only "information" I recall was that it would disrupt trade.

And to those who claim it was "against international law" -
First, there is no such thing. There are agreements with multiple signatories, as with "maritime law", but they are not actually law except for the countries which have signed on.
Second, international practice (your"law") has always been that the breaker of a truce can expect resumption of hostilities. Saddam did not have a treaty, he had a truce or cease-fire and broke it repeatedly for over a decade.

Oops, previous post mentioning "international law" was mine.

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