The Lincoln Plawg

Tuesday, February 18, 2003 10:09 p.m.

Blair press conference today - one or two nuggets amongst the dross

The prose of our beloved prime minister has the qualities of Flanders' mud: too slippery to grasp properly, but solid enough utterly to bog you down - and in quantities sufficient to bury you!

You mind's meant to give up, thus surrendering your senses to the indoctrinating mood music of gesture, cadence and intonation. And that Colgate-Ring-of-Confidence smile, of course, whenever he thinks it not utterly tasteless to give us all a flash.

So, what today?

Needless to say, the dolly-drops (hanging curves) from the journos gave him no difficulties whatsoever [1].

The First Great Elision lives: the fictional Saddam-terrorism nexus is given several outings, on the guilt by association principle:

....So the stance that the world takes now against Saddam is not just vital in its own right, it is a huge test of our seriousness in dealing with the twin threats of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

And

....this issue of weapons of mass destruction and the link with international terrorism is serious and dangerous for our country and for the world;....

The Why single out Saddam? question receives its usual inconsquential mantra:

Saddam is a threat. That is why for 12 years the United Nations has been trying to get him to disarm Iraq peacefully of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. He is not the only dictator in the world, he is not the only tyrant. Iraq is not the only power with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but he is the only leader who has used them, he is the only one with 23 outstanding United Nations resolutions in respect of them, he is the only leader still in power that has twice declared war on his neighbours and fired missiles at no fewer than 5 different countries.

That this analysis is essentially retrospective - whereas the only justification for war is the actual threat he poses now and in the future - well, that went unquestioned.

Blair's insistence that the world has been patient with Saddam

....So there is no rush to war. Indeed we have waited 12 years....

doesn't, of course, compute. (The delay shows containment works - so why not another 12 years? Why war in weeks?) Naturally, no journos ran with the point.

We are now seeing the Second Great Elision brought centre-stage: the floating moral backstop - not, Tony insists, the justification for war, but a security blanket for the weaker brethren to cling to as they see the fuel-air explosives whoosh....

But then he straight away admits that the evil nature of Saddam's makes it easier to decide to attack, and to attack early:

.....I keep saying to people, look if this was a regime that had weapons of mass destruction but was otherwise a benign regime, ruling its country well, you would think a lot harder before taking military action because the nature of the regime would be benign, even though there was a problem say in relation to weapons of mass destruction. But it is the very nature of Saddam, how he operates is history, how he treats his people, that mean that in his hands these weapons of mass destruction are all the more dangerous........

And this, lurking in yet another turgid paragraph on public opinion:

Now I believe it is our job to carry on trying to persuade people of that, and also to persuade people of the moral case for removing Saddam, who is a murderous and brutal dictator who has caused death and destruction to thousands, indeed millions of his fellow citizens.

The journo asking the first question at the presscon asked about shifting rationales. But, though this (arising from the speech on Saturday - I've discussed before here and here) is a fresh issue on which you would have hoped journos would have got together to put pressure on Blair - there was nothing concerted.

On consequential effects of the war he borrows from the John Prescott school of oral dyslexia in order to obfuscate and flummox, and successfully evade the awkward issue:

If I thought we were going to unleash something in which hundreds of thousands of people were going to die, we were going to have more Bin Ladens, the Middle East was going to go up in flames, no of course I don't believe that that is the case because I think people are forgetting one very, very simple thing, and that is that the United Nations has laid down an instruction to Iraq that the whole of the world, including the Arab world incidentally, believes should be implemented.

But, based on what he said on Afghanistan, he may not be as committed to micromanaging the post-war situation as he is the war itself:

In Afghanistan, I know there are bits and pieces about all the problems there are in Afghanistan, when Mr Karzai comes here, as I hope he will in the next few months, I think it is just worth interviewing and talking to him about the situation in Afghanistan.

Bits and pieces....

Further confirmation of Blair's mental state in this interchange:

Q Do you accept that your stance on Iraq has alienated many loyal supporters of the Labour Party and are you concerned about the implications for Labour's prospects at the Scottish elections and the Welsh and local government elections in England?
A In an issue like this, if you take a very strong position, and frankly there is no point in ever taking a weak or muddled position, you have got to make a decision, and you will always find that those people who disagree and disagree very sincerely with that will obviously be angry at the position that I am taking........

Of course, there is not just a decision to be made - and the matter itself is inextricably muddled. For strong, read simplistic.

Finally, on the deliberate morality-security confusion, Blair was asked

The letter you have circulated from Iraqis in exile in the UK condemns the failure of the UN to uphold Resolution 688 which would sanction force if Saddam failed to respect human rights. Why, if you feel so powerfully about the human rights abuses, are you not pushing for that resolution to be upheld?

The reply:

Well I would push for the resolution to be upheld.........There is no point in me trying to kid people that we can't remove Saddam simply on that basis.

One question from left field: a suggestion that Blair's concerns on WMDs should start by

reviewing why we approved the export of say iridium to Iran

Blair momentarily escapes the Bush embrace to side with the mullah-loving Old Europe:

But I don't think that is the threat that we are looking at. The threat that we are looking at are rogue and unstable states that are trading in this stuff, or terrorist groups with access to it.

And don't think Khamenei isn't grateful for the free pass. (Even if there's nothing dramatic on Google to suggest that the UK actually has exported iridium to Iran. Not yet, perhaps....)

Emphases are mine.