Wednesday, August 20, 2003

State-sponsored lies: "To justify a preventive war that the United Nations and global public opinion did not want, a machine for propaganda and mystification (organised by the doctrinaire sect around George Bush) produced state-sponsored lies ... with a determination characteristic of the worst regimes of the 20th century... Bush and his entourage have deceived Americans and world public opinion. As Professor Paul Krugman says, their lies are "the worst scandal in American political history, worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra.""

The WMD fiasco was a catastrophic lie which has destroyed the credibility of the Anglo-saxon governments (US/UK/Aus) and of their intelligence agencies, which will take years to overcome and which will probably require a thoroughgoing public inquiry and the removal from office of the responsible political and intelligence leaders from all three countries. It is no light matter either, as the threat of both international terrorism and of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is real, while at the same time the war on Iraq has increased, not decreased, the risk to us all from these two problems and their possible coming together.

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