The strategy for dealing with questions about Iraq if you're uncomfortable

So, you're on Question Time on BBC 1, or Newsnight on BBC 3, or the Channel 4 News on Channel 4, or HardTalk on BBC News 24, or even on BBC Parliament and the big ugly monster rears it's head.



Iraq..... GARRGH!



You don't have the luxury of being a Liberal Democrat, and therefore popular in your initial opposition for the war or a member of the public who has nothing on record. You are. in fact, a Labour Minister or perhaps a Conservative front bencher. Oh dear. In Parliament you voted to allow this war and spoke supporting it all the way back in the heady days of 2003 and three before the Joint Intelligence Committee's prediction that Iraq would encourage terrorism proved to be tragically accurate.



So what do you do? Well from analysing the arguments of those who are charged with this heavy burden I have concluded that they typically use the following arguments:



a. The "If I'd have known she was under 16 gov I never would have stuck it in her" line of argument.

Or the...

b. "Let's not argue about who killed who..." argument.



Argument "a" is referred to in terms of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. In Britain this was the big cheese argument - if we didn't take Saddam out then we were apparently 45 minutes away from him launching all sorts of problems of biblical proportions on to us. These weapons apparently are also very tiny, because after having the run of the country for over 4 years now we seem to have lost them.



"Well where did you leave them?" asks one searcher to another.

"With Saddam in the nineteen eighties!" the other one answers making reference to the fact that the West is largely responsible for arming this former dictator in the first place.



Politicians argue that had they known that he didn't have Weapons of Mass Destruction then they wouldn't have supported an invasion; all the intelligence they say pointed to Saddam having those weapons and we were just unable to take that risk! Those poor politicians, the girl said she was 17 and old enough to legally consent. They're awfully embarrassed now that the police have informed them that she was short of that rather critical age. They have been forthright in demanding the sackings of those who provided them with that intelligence... Well OK not at all. Does this, in any case, redeem them?



No.



In 2003 not everyone believed everything they were told. Some dug deeper; the least radical merely pointed to the weapons inspectors in Iraq under Hans Blix. They wanted him to be given more time, utterly rightly. I quote now from Robin Cook's resignation speech from before the war:


"On Iraq, I believe that the prevailing mood of the British people is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator, but they are not persuaded that he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want inspections to be given a chance, and they suspect that they are being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own. "


Robin Cook was against this war, was in the cabinet and he resigned. Liberal Democrat MPs voted against it in Parliament. One million people marched in London against the war. They might merely have disagreed with a unilateral approach or they might have been full blown America haters but the point is very simple:

They are the proof that you could have made another decision to the one you did, so you can not hide behind good faith and people "generally believing" something was the case.

As for the "let's not argue about who killed who" argument well it's all very simple: Yes, we ought to think about Iraq's future but should we not consider the past when we ask ourselves who we trust on the future?

Do we not also deserve the chance to have our doubts confirmed and for somebody to own up and take responsibility. The British have a sense of justice and fair play and that is why the argument will keep arising until the government changes hands.