Political spin and lies: Melanie Phillips' view
June 12, 2003 ~ 1:36 p.m.
I don�t really like to reprint published columns on my page, but, again much like her, sometimes the things I read are just too good not to share.
The following is part of a June 9 essay entitled �Mistrust: The price of spin and lies,� by Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips. She deftly separates the spin behind the war from the spin to throw Britain into the euro zone. Savvy writer that she is, she is able to differentiate between Blair�s actions with regard to both. She really nails down my own feelings too, so I�ll let her speak for me:
Mistrust: The price of Spin and Lies by MELANIE PHILLIPS, June 9, 2003�[The second] factor that has wrong-footed him (Blair) is the Iraq war. For the controversy over Saddam�s invisible weapons of mass destruction has destroyed his credibility. The claim that he lied to the country has stuck, and will do further damage to his case for the euro.
�This is a striking irony for those euroskeptics who believe the case for war was sound and that the current furore is evidence of a collective lobotomy.
�The reason for the Government�s debacle over WMDs is that it was guilty of a spin too far. Its second �intelligence� dossier on Iraq was a sloppy document which included information that was plagiarized or downloaded from the internet �
�Nevertheless, both the dossier and Mr. (Alastair) Campbell�s acknowledgment that the dossier was a rogue piece of political spin are now being used to make the false and demonstrably ridiculous claim that the Government�s whole case for war was based on lies.
�The reason the Government hyped up the argument in this way was because it had a big problem. The public simply wouldn�t accept that the legal case for war was the absence of evidence that Saddam had abandoned his WMD program. The British also didn�t see Iraq in the same way as did the U.S. after 9/11.
�The Americans realized then that unless the West urgently de-fanged the Arab and Islamist nexus of terror�in which Saddam was a key and cunning player�it would be a sitting duck for more such outrages.
�No doubt concerned by Arab and Muslim reaction to such an argument, Mr. Blair never made this case to the British people. As a result, the public remained unconvinced of the justification for war.
�This � created widespread mistrust�fertile ground for the incendiary charge that Mr Blair sent soldiers to war on the basis of a systematic deceit.
�Thus, the Prime Minister fatally undermined a case that was perfectly sound.
�The result of that�along with the lies spun about the EU constitution and a host of other matters�is that people won�t believe him over the euro.
�Nor should they. For to say the euro is not a constitutional issue and that opposition to it is based on xenophobic prejudice is indeed a lie.
�The irony is that by falsely accusing Mr. Blair of waging war on the basis of a massive deception, the pro-European Union, anti-war lobby has made it much more likely that the public will conclude he is lying to them over the euro, to which they will remain staunchly opposed.�
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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