Have the two governments got their stories confused as they now seemingly contradict each other on a daily basis. The article says:
Debate:
Is this even possible anymore (trust)?
Should it be the way of government - selectively offering sifted information for public consumption, or should all information be available for scrutiny and debate?
Should the citizens of a country accept everything they are told be their respective governments without question?
Is it better for governments to mislead their citizens, even without consent, IF they find it to be in the countries national interest to do so?
No citizen of a democracy should accept a government’s word on anything without thought and without comparing it to alternative views. This is one reason why the BBC is such a respected institution - it scrutunises politicians and parties actions and words and subjects them to vigourous testing.
That’s not to say cynicism is the order of the day either. It’s just as wrong to assume politicians are always fibbing but on serious matters I believe a democratic government has to lay out the facts to the people to facilitate an informed public debate.
It seems pretty clear to me the Blair Govt has not done this over Iraq, instead it has attempted to manipulate a hostile pre-war public opinion and Labour Party with selective and misleading “information” for want of a better word and is now busily trying to spin it away.
And any government that misleads it’s citizens over something as serious as an attack on another country better not be counting on my vote again.
The older you get the harder it is not to become cynical.
The Blair government came into power proclaiming a new “ethical foreign policy”.
Real politik soon watered this down, and Iraq seems to have not just washed it away but taken us back 100 years to the point where we feel we have the right to dictate to other nations based on military strength.
every time I feel politicians couldn’t possibly sink any lower they prove me wrong
listening to the weasel words about “… WMD Programmes” now instead of “WMD” just makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
With you all the way on that. Robin Cook went way up in my estimation by resigning when he did and he predicted that there would be no WMD’s just bits of programs. But it wasn’t programs they were selling us or Parliament, it was imminent threats and trying to weasel out of it now is gutless. Blair should resign as he’s lost the trust significant portions of the electorate.
At this rate within a couple of months Blair will be standing up in Parliament declaring that they have absolute proof that Saddam was thinking in his head about maybe starting another WMD programme, which is what they really meant before the war, sorry if anyone misunderstood.
As for that 45 min threat, well you wouldn’t believe how quickly those Iraqis can get moving once Saddam makes his mind up on something!
Either Blair has lied through his teeth or his intelligence agencies are useless jokes. Same goes for Bush.
Absolutely - for both Bush and Blair it seems they were either incompetent in going to war on intelligence they didn’t bother to understand was dodgy, despite all the warnings, or they were lying. Even if the latter was for, in their own eyes, good reason, it isn’t acceptable to this former Labour voter.