Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Something to hide?

I have to admit that I was a bit surprised when a freedom of information request to see the 2003 Iraqi war cabinet papers was approved. I guess I should have known better, after all, there are a lot of suspicions about what just went on, who said what and just who was misleading who. So, it being par for the course, the Attorney General has stepped in to block the request at the last minute...
Mail.
Secret Cabinet papers on the decision to invade Iraq could be kept from the public for three decades.
The crucial minutes of ministerial meetings in 2003 were approved for release under Freedom of Information laws but blocked at the last minute by the Attorney General.
Dominic Grieve’s ruling yesterday is a repeat of the decision made by Jack Straw in 2009 over the same papers.
Sir Menzies Campbell said he was disappointed by the outcome.
‘The original decision to go to war against Iraq is still shrouded in controversy with many people arguing that it was the single most significant foreign policy decision since Suez in 1956,’ said the former Liberal Democrat leader.
‘In the interests of transparency I believe that these minutes should be revealed to the public, not least because there are very substantial questions about the extent to which the Cabinet was informed about the proposal to go to war with the US against Saddam Hussein or even had the opportunity to debate them.’ 
I doubt this will stop the speculation, most people are convinced the government was/is hiding something, possibly it's the speculation that there were no weapons of mass destruction, though the likelihood is they ended up in Syria, to the simple fact we were ordered too by the USA, though again it's probably more prosaic than that in that the decisions involved probably make the government look bad, or that certain politicians are still covering each others backs. Why this would affect the current government, God alone knows, you'd think that an opportunity to stab Labour in the back would have been an open goal, given how currently unpopular they are. Still we are talking Cameron here, the man who threw away an election, perhaps he doesn't want to be judged later in the court of public opinion.
I've no doubt that there will be specific leaks of the papers over the next 30 or so years, governments are like that, perhaps there will be the odd exclusive, no doubt served up by the BBC to present things in the best possible light. Whatever happens though, all this decision will do is confirm the suspicion in many peoples eyes that the government (or more specifically the political classes) have something really bad to hide.
 

1 annotations:

Dr Evil said...

It might be because it alludes to the dirt, or rather filth, that the US CIA has on a number of ex government and government ministers. Operation ORE isn't in the news at all these days.