Matt Sellwood, National Campaigns Co-ordinator of the Young Greens, responds to the new government enquiry into the intelligence basis behind the Iraq war
The Hutton Report was a whitewash. Amazement has reigned across the political spectrum at the sheer gall of a Government that simply refuses to accept the scale and enormity of its own errors. As if Hutton was not insult enough to the collective intelligence of the country, the new inquiry into the "intelligence failures" before the war, led by Lord Butler, will not explore the only question with real importance: What were the real reasons for us entering a war that has so far cost over 10,000 innocent lives?
A simple examination of what is going on in Iraq today reveals one of the main reasons. The occupation of Iraq is not leading to political independence, but it is destroying the economic sovereignty of the Iraqi people. The economy of Iraq has been taken over by multinational corporations; trade tariffs have virtually been abolished, US companies are being given billion-dollar contracts at the expense of Iraqi people, and over 200 state-owned enterprises have been privatised. Many of us in the anti-war movement openly predicted that this would happen before the war; the neo-conservatives in Washington are conducting economic experiments on Iraq that no Western country would ever countenance. It is nothing less than economic imperialism.
Even a cursory examination of the facts show that Tony Blair and his cronies were not "misled" by faulty intelligence. Millions of people, including vastly qualified intelligence experts, told them that Iraq did not have WMDs and that, even if it did, there was no basis on which to wage an illegal war. With two million people marching on February 15th, Tony Blair cannot possibly claim that he had no access to an alternative point of view. Even more damning is the resignation of Robin Cook. If he could see that Blair was waging war on a faulty premise, the Prime Minister cannot claim that nobody could have foreseen the outcome of the war. The fact is that either Tony Blair is lying about why he went to war, or he is criminally incompetent. Either way, he must now resign and face trial in front of a court of international law.
12th Feb 2004