Revisiting the war
After a brief absence, the Diary returns for a new year.
And what worse way to start the year than with Iraq, news item #1 of 2003?
The continuing investigation into the level of duping by the hawkish United States and United Kingdom governments has taken further twists and turns these last few days.
First up, US secretary of state Colin Powell (scourge, it would seem, of the neo-cons) admitted last week that, despite his claims at the UN last year, the US had no proof of an Iraqi / al-Qaida link.
Now you tell us.
I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, Powell said, sheepishly. But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time we did.
Make of that what you will. The important factor is that much, if not most, of America still believes there was a connection between the government of Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
Rejecting his earlier claims of a sinister nexus between Iraq and al-Qaida, Powell shifted the tone. The President decided he had to act because he believed that whatever the size of the stockpile, whatever one might think about it, he believed that the region was in danger, America was in danger and he would act. And he did act.
Oh yes, so he did.
Meanwhile, a document found in Saddams possession when he was captured suggests that the Iraqi despot urged members of the Iraqi resistance to avoid getting too close to Islamic jihadis and other foreign Arabs. It seems Saddam was concerned a holy war against the West would do nothing to bring his Baathist regime back to power.
US officials are split on just how many foreign fighters make up the insurgency, but some believe that figure to be less than 10%.
It was the Pentagon who made the strongest case for the Iraqi / al-Qaida connection. The CIA was always sceptical.
Which leads us, of course, to the embarrassing absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
A report by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post last week suggested that Iraqs WMD programme amounted to little more than wishful thinking. Gellman pored through Iraqi documents, interviewed key Iraqi officials and spoken to the US team sent to search for the elusive weapons, and concludes that there simply was no WMD programme. (See also an openDemocracy interview with Ron Manley, the man responsible for destroying chemical weapons in Iraq between 1991-94).
In 1995, Houssam Amin, Iraqs top unconventional-weapons official wrote an internal letter to Qusay Hussein, one of Saddams sons. The entire Iraqi inventory of biological agents, he said, had been destroyed.
Intelligence failure or politicised exaggeration? As Kenneth Pollack, a national security official in the Clinton administration and author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq and now Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong, laments in the Atlantic Monthly: Ive lived in Washington long enough to know that its rare that national security actually does end up transcending politics but that does not make it right.
In the twenty-three months I was there [in the Bush administration], I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq], says former treasury secretary Paul O Neill, who was fired by Bush. From the very beginning [of Bushs presidency], there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.
At the Summit of the Americans, Bush went to some length to reject ONeills assertion. In the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines, he stuttered. And then all of a sudden September the 11th hit.
A report by academic Jeffrey Record was published by the US Army War College this week. It called the war in Iraq a strategic error, an unnecessary war of choice and a detour.
Read Paul Rogerss latest column assessing the implications of Jeffrey Records report Bounding the Global War on Terrorism
The Bush administration announced on Monday that it would revise the process for handing over power to an interim Iraqi government by 30 June, promising to open the regional caucuses to more people and make the whole process more transparent and democratic following a rejection of the existing plans by Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. There have also been US moves to persuade Kofi Annan to send UN staff back to Baghdad as soon as possible. Annan wants clarity over what role the UN will play, the US says clarity can wait.
Plus, Bush reversed US policy this week, allowing Canadians to bid on some of the Iraqi reconstruction projects. The president had previously banned companies from nations that opposed to the war from bidding on the lucrative contracts.
What next, the Diary wonders, Jacques Chirac a guest in the White House?
(See Liberal Hawks Reconsider the War on Slate.com)
How to be happy
Are you a happy person?
If not, there may be an explanation. You may be poor, or middle-aged, or unmarried.
The end of 2003 saw a spate of media interest in happiness. The Financial Times developed a simple equation: people get happier as they get richer, up to a certain point, and then they stop.
Money can buy happiness, says the FT, which, the Diary believes, hardly counts as news. People in developing countries are not as happy as those in the richest countries. But no one, not even Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch, is ever that happy. Money might buy you happiness, but not contentment.
Everything is relative. It is not your wealth in absolute terms that counts, but your wealth relative to others in your society (i.e. if Rupert Murdoch were to move to the slums of Dhaka he would be a lot happier).
And heres another thing: marriage makes both men and women happier. So does being old or young. People in their 30s and 40s are not so happy. And lets face it, it shows.
Happy people exhibit more activity on the left side of their brain than the right although how that explains why George Bush is always smiling, while the peace protestors always look so angry, the Diary is not so sure.
What is clear is that American women are less happy than they were thirty years ago (so much for liberation). Smoking makes you unhappy. Being eastern European is no bundle of laughs. Though, to the surprise of some political analysts, being Nigerian is apparently a cause for celebration.
The FT offers a prescription: eat vegetables and brown bread; go to church, or the synagogue, or mosque; get married, not divorced; win the lottery; increase your social capital, though mix with those less fortunate and financially endowed than yourself; stay away from the Ukraine and, if possible, move to Iceland or Ghana.
[NB: The World Health Organisation says that 100 million of us are depressed almost exclusively members of the richest nations.]
Action and inaction
Last December, the Diary wrote about how the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) suppressed a report on anti-semitism when the findings proved controversial.
Well, the row continued. Early last week, European Commission President Romano Prodi decided to suspend a conference on anti-semitism hed organised for February after Israel was deemed the biggest threat to world peace in a poll of EU citizens.
Edgar Bronfman and Cobi Benatoff of the World and European Jewish Congresses published a letter in the Financial Times that accused the EU of intellectual dishonesty and moral treachery in its handling of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism can be expressed in two ways: by action and inaction, they said. Remarkably, the European Union is guilty of both.
Prodi said he was surprised and shocked by the accusations, and that in such a bad atmosphere progress at the conference was unlikely. Anti-semitism is one of the European dangers, so weve taken it very seriously, he said. We give the biggest priority to this terribly important, political, moral, and ethical issue.
After reassurances from several Jewish groups that they trusted his commitment and judgement, and did not believe the EU Commission to be an anti-semitic body, Prodi decided to revive the talks. We are closing an episode and opening a deeply felt cooperation that is of utmost importance for European society, he said.
No way Norway!
Finally, in one of those bizarre twists of fate so familiar to the Diary, the European Union is set to be nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.
Thorbjõrn Jagland, former prime minister of Norway and new member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, believes 2004 is the right year to give the peace prize to the EU.
Why? As I see it, explains Jagland, the EU has made former warring powers and troublemakers into peacemakers.
Fair point, perhaps. But the Diary cant help noticing that, last year especially, peacemakers can also be troublemakers depending, of course, on which side youre coming from.
But, as The Economist recently noticed, The notion that unity and peace in Europe are two sides of the same coin is an article of faith for modern pro-Europeans.
Norway, by the way, is not a member of the EU.
Figure of the week
600+% Inflation in Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe
(Source ZWNEWS)
Quotes of the week
Like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people.
Former treasury secretary Paul ONeill on how President George W. Bush led cabinet meetings.
This money is not coming from backyard bake sales and barbecues. Its coming from powerful special interests who want something.
Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, on President Bushs campaign funds. A new study this week showed that 6 out of 10 of Bushs top contributors were brokerages, banks or credit companies.
Moustaches are improving the personalities of our constables. They are acquiring an aura of their own. They are creating a positive impression on the local people and getting a lot of respect.
Mayank Jain, police chief of Jhabua district in Indias Madhya Pradesh district, on why local policemen are being paid to grow moustaches.
The Guardian Council will act based on law, and the record of its past performance proves it will not yield to any pressure and commotion.
Mohammad Jahromi, spokesman for Irans Guardian Council, which has barred about half of the 8,200 candidates for the 20 February parliamentary election, all of them liberals and reformers. Resignations and boycotts are threatened, and the Guardian Council has been widely condemned across the democratic world.
It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists.
Reem al-Reyashi, the 22-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber who blew herself up killing four Israelis in Erez, Gaza. She was a mother of two young children and the first woman to be recruited by Hamas for a suicide mission. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, said This was a distinguished operation. God gave me the ability to be a mother of two children who I love so, Reem al-Reyashi said in a video. But my wish to meet God in paradise is greater, so I decided to be a martyr for the sake of my people. I am convinced God will help and take care of my children.
Contact the Diary: Dominic.Hilton@openDemocracy.net
