This is a fairly trivial post but I just had to make some mention of John Bolton being interviewed on The Daily Politics by Andrew Marr. It's literally just finished airing as I type this.
Bolton is absolutely unbelievable. He was still talking about the existence of WMD and how great he thinks Bush is.
He defended against Marr's point that opinion polls across Europe show that Bush has made the USA the most unpopular it's ever been by pointing out that there was actually a poll in France in the late 1940s that was even less favourable. Oh, so that's alright then! Jeeeez.
He told Marr with a straight face that the invasion of Iraq was necessary because Iraq posed a direct threat "even to Europe". As though he doesn't realise that Iraq is closer to Europe than America.
And right at the end of the interview - this is the best bit! - he actually said... wait for it... "Since when have terrorists ever given a warning about their intended actions?!"
As the GG man might say, I'll just leave that one hanging in the air for a while...
John Bolton and Andrew Marr
i thought i'd post this in here, as its from marrs book, about the build up to the war and the media;
"He [Blair] was asked about the nuclear threat, yet again. And again he was general about it. Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and would get them some time. But as he'd said before, for four long years there had been no inspections. Here was the root of world scepticism: why now? Was Britain really threatened by him? Blair answered that we were: if Saddam began a new war in the Middle East, we'd be drawn in as we were in the Gulf War. 'British interests' would be threatened. So much, so obvious. He wouldn't talk about timetables. There was nothing really newsy. It was frankly disappointing. As the journalists milled around afterwards, the Sunday reporters were under immediate pressure to deliver. Several thought 'Saddam's Nuclear Threat to Britain' was the headline...
By the time some of the Sunday's had done their work , you would have thought a nuclear strike on Birmingham was only weeks away. This distortion did not annoy Blair's team. Far from it. It helped them in their task of trying to move public opinion towards war; yet it did so in a way that could not be blamed on Blair. He had chosen his words carefully. Journalists had hyped them up in a way that was hugely helpful. Number Ten benefited. The reporters benefited: they had justified their expensive airline tickets and salaries for another week. The newspapers benefited; they had strong-looking, dramatic front page stories that might help win sales in shops and petrol stations. Only the public had been short-changed. They had been given a story which happened to be a scare story. Some of them would remember and mistrust the news a little more next time. A handful might even stop buying the paper. But most would forget the distortion. Nuance doesn't make for good headlines...
Soon, photocopies of the Sunday front pages were faxed to the Downing Street staffers with us, who passed them around. There were hoots of laughter and wry grins at the spine-chilling headlines and shameless overwriting."