Underblog.co.uk

The tories have been using the “UK ricin plot” and the murder of DC Stephen Oake by Kamel Bourgass, a bogus asylum seeker, to justify their immigration policy. Charles Clarke and Labour have responded with talk about terrorism and ID cards.

The amount of misinformation about this case from US and UK politicians and from press hysteria in the run-up to the Iraq war is shocking. Colin Powell used the murder to paint a picture of al-Qaida sleeper cells spread throughout Europe, with links to Iraq and Afghanistan, secretly plotting deadly poison attacks. Even reading coverage today, you could be forgiven for having some serious misconceptions about the actual severity and nature of the threat, so allow me to dispel a few myths.

1. Ricin and other poisons were discovered in the Wood Green flat raid. As scientific expert witness Duncan Campbell explains in today’s Guardian:

It is true that when the team from Porton Down entered the Wood Green flat in January 2003, their field equipment registered the presence of ricin. But these were high sensitivity field detectors, for use where a false negative result could be fatal. A few days later in the lab, Dr Martin Pearce, head of the Biological Weapons Identification Group, found that there was no ricin.

Nor were any other poisons found. According to Dr. Pearce, “All tests were negative”.

2. Recipes to “purify” deadly poisons were discovered. Recipes were discovered for ricin, nicotine, cyanide, solanine and botulinum poisons. Most of these recipes were neither sophisticated nor particularly deadly, according to globalsecurity.org. Ricin, for example, is found in castor beans. The ricin recipe effectively just involved mushing up beans, and does not purify the ricin in any way. When scientists followed the recipe they found that the activity of the resulting paste was 10 times less than the poison in the beans originally, ie 90% of the ricin was inactivated by the procedure.
Other reports in the press mention apple pips and cyanide. 30,000 pips would be required to produce one lethal dose.

3. The plot was an al-Qaida conspiracy. Firstly, only one man, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted —hardly evidence of an al-Qaida cell. No credible evidence exists to suggest that Bourgass was linked to al-Qaida. Mohamed Meguerba, under “interrogation” in Algeria, confessed that he and Bourgass had recieved special poisons training in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. He later retracted the statement. Due to the reputation of Algerian “interrogation” techniques, this evidence would never have stood in court, so it was not used by the prosecution. The prosecution then planned to link the poison recipes to al-Qaida sources, before it was discovered that they were actually derived from american websites, as explained in detail by this globalsecurity.org article. Despite this, a leader in the Times yesterday claimed:

What is clear, however, is that the plot … was real, was linked to al-Qaeda’s assault on Western society and came dangerously close to success

4. That there was a threat of a poison attack on the London Underground. None of the poison recipes discovered could have been used to produce a poison anywhere near potent enough for a widespread poison attack on the underground. Kamel Bourgass was only convicted of conspiracy to cause a “public nuisance by using poisons or explosives to cause disruption, injury or fear”, not conspiracy to commit murder.

Anyone who saw the BBC’s excellent The Power of Nightmares will recognise what’s going on here. There is a self-delusional tendancy in parts of the intelligence community (encouraged by certain politicians for political ends) to see vast terrorist networks hiding amongst us, secret and sophisticated conspiracies to attack us, and bond villains directing operations from underground lairs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The true nature of the terrorist threat is often quite different. Kamel Bourgass is a murderer, having stabbed several police officers, resulting in one death. But he was not a highly trained superterrorist and neither was he acting as part of a shadowy underground terror cell taking orders from bin Laden. He was a dangerous individual, no doubt inspired by other Islamic terrorist acts, who was probably acting alone like the shoe bomber Richard Reid. The threat from him was nowhere near as great as implied by many parts of the press.

BBC refers to the Wood Green flat here as a “suspected chemical weapons laboratory”, and I switched over to newsnight this evening to catch Paxman mentioning biological weapons. I guess one could theoretically describe ricin as a chemical weapon and botulinum as a biological weapon, but the word “poison” would be far more suitable. By no stretches of the imagination are the described preparations weapons of mass destruction, as talk of “chemical and biological weapons” might suggest. Ricin has only ever been used for single poisonings. The recipes found in the flat could only be used to make relatively small quantities of poison (and Bourgass did not even manage that), and even then a fairly significant quantity would have to be ingested by the victim to result in death. That is why Bourgass was not convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.

Finally, one more thought from Duncan Campbell in his piece in the Guardian:

The experience of being an expert witness on these issues has made me feel a great deal safer on the streets of London.

—Update: It seems The Register and Chicken Yoghurt got there 12 hours before I did with this. Both excellent reads.

Sorry, did I say opinion? Did I make it explicitly clear that I meant opinion, and not advice? Do forgive me, I meant advice.

OK, so what in shitting crikey is going on?

Well, remember that MPs, the press and several cabinet ministers initially assumed that a 2-page answer given by Lord Goldsmith to the House of Lords and circulated to MPs on the 17th of March 2003, which laid out a case for war under existing UN resolutions, was a summary of the Attorney General’s legal advice. This was not corrected at the time, because this is what Blair needed parliament to believe to get approval for the war in Iraq.

We were recently told that this 2-page document was in fact a summary of Goldsmith’s “opinion”, and not a summary of the advice given to Blair. This line was necessary because information was beginning to surface, from Philippe Sands and others, that the Goldsmith’s 13-page advice given to the Prime Minister on the 7th of March 2003 was far less certain about the legality of the war than the supposed summary of that advice. Because MPs weren’t told about the doubts, it was no longer possible to say that the 2-page answer was a summary of the 13 page advice. That would imply that the document was designed to mislead parliament about the Goldsmith’s advice to Blair.

But that left another problem: Tony Blair did not let cabinet see the original 13 page document. This was a contravention of the ministerial code, which states that legal advice received by any minister should be circulated to the whole cabinet. If the PM were to admit he had broken the code, he would have to resign.

So now they say that the 13 page document was not “the” legal advice at all (although it is known that it contained legal advice)! They are making the absurd claim that the 2-page answer given to parliament was the full legal advice.

Three questions:
1. What was the 13 page document given to the prime minister on the 7th of March 2003?
2. If it wasn’t legal advice, the argument against releasing it (that governments should be able to receive advice in confidence) doesn’t apply. So can we see it please?
3. Why the hell has the government been insisting for months that it would not release the full legal advice about the war, even though it supposedly released that advice to parliament two years ago?

Do not try and spin the advice. That’s impossible. Only try to change the truth.
What truth?
There was no advice.

Keep tugging at the thread, people. With a little luck the whole thing could unravel.

Tony Blair used to say that he would resign if he became an electoral liability. Today the Observer reports that Blair admits that he has become “an issue”, but now he is saying that he will only resign when he feels he is no longer able to make “a contribution”. Which could mean anything.

Blair also claims that although he is an issue, that no other leader would fare better: “I am an issue, I always will be. Whoever is the Prime Minister will be.” OK, Let’s get this straight: although he is an issue, he’s actually not an issue at all, because anyone else would be just as much of an issue, presumably because it’s the labour party that is the real issue? That’s pretty rich, considering his presidential style of leadership, and the way in which he has ignored the concerns of his party.

So Blair suggests that replacing him would not help the party’s fortunes in the general election. A poll published last week by the Independent on Sunday suggests otherwise. Blair or the general public, I just don’t know who to believe.

OK, so here’s the dealio. It seems that Goldsmith’s opinion, at least by March 2003, was that attacking Iraq would be legal. However, his legal advice was that it might not be. Got that?

MPs made the decision to go to war on the basis of Goldsmith’s personal opinion, not on the legal advice he gave in his professional capacity. Tony Blair was advised that the war could be illegal, MPs were not.

So that’s alright then.

—Update: Of course, the distinction between advice and opinion was not explained at the time. The shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, certainly seemed unaware of the situation. He said the following during the parliamentary debate which ended with a vote for war:

“The next question is: is military action legal? I accept the Attorney-General’s advice. It is not the advice of an individual lawyer or legal expert but the considered legal advice of the person who is charged with the constitutional duty of advising the Government and the House on the legality or otherwise of actions. The House should give exceptional weight to that advice.”

He clearly believed the advice given by Lord Goldsmith to the government, in his professional capacity as Attorney General, to state unequivocally that war would be legal. Of course, nobody from the government corrected this misapprehension, because it was precisely what they wanted us all to think. Blair didn’t have to actually tell a direct lie, but the intention was obviously to mislead.

Oh, and here’s something Jack Straw said the day before the debate:

“Of course it would have been better if it had been possible to achieve a consensus in the United Nations for a second resolution, but there is no question about the legality of the action that we propose to take.” (My emphasis)

Remember that foreign office lawyers had been united in the view that a second UN security council resolution was necessary (according to John Kampfner), and that the second most senior lawyer in Jack Straw’s department resigned, saying that the invasion was a “crime of agression“. Jack Straw also saw Attorney General’s actual advice, which, according to Philippe Sands,

“recognised that if [the Attorney General's] argument were to come before a court of law it might well be unsuccessful, so that the use of force against Iraq could be found to be illegal.”

How then could Jack Straw tell the house that there was “no question” over the legality of the proposed war? Clearly, if the government were to release the Attorney General’s advice, it would show that Jack Straw lied to parliament.

There’s been several stories recently about the dubious nature of the legal advice produced by the UK’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, in the run-up to war. Much of this has been sparked by Philippe Sands QC’s recent book, Lawless World. I’ve tried to put together a timeline to summarise what’s emerged so far. It’s by no means comprehensive, but shows how Goldsmith was leaned on, and how his advice changed as a result of that pressure. (more…)

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about my disbelief at Tim Ireland’s plans for bloggerheads to back blair. It later became apparent that this was a wind-up, and a few days ago we found out what it was really all about with the launch of Backing Blair. This is a campaign aiming to inflict upon Blair the comeuppance that he has hitherto avoided for his deceptions over Iraq and his right-wing leanings, in the form of a large anti-labour protest vote at the general election. And it seems to have the labour campaign worried.

But it’s not as simple as all that. In order to really make all those Blair appeasing Labour MPs quake in their boots, they want people to vote for whichever candidate is most likely to beat the Labour candidate, regardless of petty considerations such as, well, anything else. This might mean voting for a bigoted, pro-war tory, rather than an anti-war, anti-Blair labour MP. Here’s the justification:

Labour candidates need to know what Blair’s ongoing leadership has/will/may cost them. We want survivors of the protest vote to come away determined to unseat Blair.

And we couldn’t give a toss about the performance of an MP regarding their service to the local community. The invasion of a country that presents no threat to us on the basis of thin and politically-influenced intelligence sets a dangerous precedent that threatens us all. The same goes for detaining people without trial. Domestic issues pale into insignificance next to such things, I’m afraid.

So, “do I agree?”, I ask myself (because nobody else knows or cares what I think). Well, here’s the way I see it:

1. The prime minister has lied to the electorate in order to go to war against a country that wasn’t a threat, without UN approval, leading to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Legally speaking, Tony Blair has commited the war-crime of aggression. Morally speaking, he is a dangerous, delusional, self-righteous, manipulative git. (When I look at that old New Labour, New Danger ad now it seems eerily prescient). I cannot vote for a Labour party headed by Blair under any circumstances.
2. The possibility of the Tories winning this election is negligible
3. The first past the post electoral system is undemocratic. A vote for a left-wing anti-war party in my constituency will increase the chance of a party even more pro-war and even more right-wing than labour (the conservatives) representing me in the commons.
4. Rather than trying to change it, Labour are actually exploiting the undemocratic nature of the system to their advantage, with their “vote Lib Dem, wake up with a Tory” message. If Labour are going to encourage tactical voting, I should vote tactically in order to combat them.
5. A reduced Labour majority, even at the expense of more tory MPs, will make any politician think twice about abusing the trust of the british people in the future. It will also actually hand more power to the liberal democrats, and in the best case scenario could result in a hung parliament with the liberals (the largest anti-war party) holding the balance of power.

So it seems that I think people should be prepared to vote lib dem, green, respect, or whatever in labour/conservative marginals, and accept the possibility of a tories winning some of those seats in exchange for a more powerful Liberal Democrat party (who, incidentally, are also committed to democratic reforms that will make this sort of decision unnecessary in the future) and the chance to give the labour party a good kicking for its support/appeasement of Blair.

But then why not take that argument to its logical conclusion? The simple mathematics of the system means that voting conservative in these constituencies has double the effect of voting for an anti-war party, if the aim is to punish labour and reward the lib dems.

I’ll have to think a bit more about anti-war, anti-blair labour MPs, and tory constituencies in which the lib dems or other non-labour parties are challenging, but I think I might just have talked myself into backing Backing Blair.

Sheesh, this democracy lark isn’t easy.