Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In one of those interesting columns that make you snort with contempt, not at the author but at our rulers, Richard Norton-Taylor in today’s Guardian documents what he says were the attempts by British intelligence to advise Washington against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He adds that General Tony Zinni the former head of US central command called it “the wrong war, fought in the wrong place, at the wrong time”.
Well, you could have blown me down with a feather. And the blogosphere is still full of polemic about how the only the pro-war left are right. So let me put on the record David Held’s article which we published in openDemocracy as the war began. Its opening words: “Wrong war. Wrong reasoning. Wrong priorities. Wrong timing”.
He correctly predicts that it will prove to be "The wrong war, even if it is a success in military terms”. And again, just for the record, so everyone does no go overboard about the originality and wisdom of Gordon Brown, David along with Mary Kaldor, his fellow director of LSE's Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the LSE, wrote two weeks after 9/11 that the attacks on the World Trade Centre and on the Pentagon should be treated as a: “global crime against humanity”.
And just in case you are worried that Gordon Brown might have been wrong to exclude Blair’s public opinion guru “Lord” Philip Gould from his inner circle, David once told an interesting story about his article. I was editing openDemocracy and had decided to publish it when war was formally declared, given it could no longer influence the inevitable; so he was carrying it around for a few days. He happened to bump into Gould who asked him what he was doing. David replied with all the enthusiasm of an author, and told him what he was about to publish. It was in his briefcase and he offered Gould the chance to read it in advance. Oh don’t publish that, Gould said, and he predicted that David would be making a big mistake because a war will be over in weeks! This is doubly revealing. It shows how those who wanted to stay as Blair’s men also refused to listen to British and American military judgement and intelligence, let alone anyone else. It also shows that Blair and his clique had no fear of Saddam Hussein being any kind of immediate threat, let alone having “weapons of mass destruction”...
