Peter Hitchens's Blog, page 75
November 30, 2019
PETER HITCHENS: My secret meeting with mole at the heart of The Great Poison Gas Scandal
This is Peter Hitchens Mail on Sunday column
I stood outside the safe house, in a road I cannot name, in a major European city I cannot identify, not sure what I might find inside. I had no way of being sure.
I had travelled a long distance by train to an address I had been given over an encrypted email.
I was nervous that the meeting might be some sort of trap. Leaks from inside arms verification organisations are very sensitive matters. Powerful people mind about them.
I...
November 28, 2019
Bellingcat or Guard Dog for the Establishment?
***My response to the Bellingcat attempt to spin away the devastating implications of the OPCW Douma Leak.***
I have interleaved my comments (in black or red) with the Bellingcat arguments (in green)
Emails And Reading Comprehension: OPCW Douma Coverage Misses Crucial Facts
PH: Is this about comprehension? Or is it about self-serving prejudice? What crucial facts does the leaked e-mail miss? Let us see.
We begin with
November 25, 2019
By ...
November 25, 2019
Sexed Up to Make War - an astonishing leak from the Poison Gas Watchdog the OPCW
By PETER HITCHENS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 23:15, 23 November 2019 | UPDATED: 01:06, 24 November 2019
A leaked email last night dramatically indicated that the UN���s poison gas watchdog had butchered and censored a critical report on an alleged chemical attack in Syria. If substantiated, the revelations will be severely embarrassing for Britain, France and America, which launched a massive military strike in retaliation without waiting for proof that chemical weapons had actually been used.
Unconfirmed reports and videos, showing the corpses of adults and children foaming at the mouth in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, shocked the world in April 2018 and led to a joint Western attack on the supposed culprit, Syria, in which more than 100 missiles, including nearly 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles, were fired.
Although the reports and films could not be independently verified, as the alleged events took place in a war zone then under the control of brutal Islamist militants, Western governments, and many Western media, took them at face value.
President Donald Trump tweeted at the time: ���Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!���
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A leaked email last night dramatically indicated that the UN���s poison gas watchdog had butchered and censored a critical report on an alleged chemical attack in Syria. If substantiated, the revelations will be severely embarrassing for Britain, France and America, which launched a massive military strike in retaliation without waiting for proof that chemical weapons had actually been used. (Above, an RAF Tornado over Damascus during the coalition attack)
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President Donald Trump tweeted at the time: ���Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria.' Britain���s then Premier, Theresa May, was equally confident of her facts, saying after the missile launch: ���Last Saturday up to 75 people, including young children, were killed in a despicable and barbaric attack in Douma, with as many as 500 further casualties'
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This image released early on April 8, 2018 by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets shows a child receiving oxygen through respirators following the alleged poison gas attack. However, a dissenting scientist, employed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) says in a leaked email that investigations on the ground at Douma have produced no hard evidence that the alleged gas attack took place
Britain���s then Premier, Theresa May, was equally confident of her facts, saying after the missile launch: ���Last Saturday up to 75 people, including young children, were killed in a despicable and barbaric attack in Douma, with as many as 500 further casualties. We have worked with our allies to establish what happened.
'And all the indications are that this was a chemical weapons attack ��� We are also clear about who was responsible for this atrocity. A significant body of information including intelligence indicates the Syrian regime is responsible for this latest attack.���
But a dissenting scientist, employed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) says in a leaked email that investigations on the ground at Douma have produced no hard evidence that the alleged gas attack took place.
It appears that these facts were deliberately suppressed in published OPCW reports.
The email makes no attempt to suggest what did happen in Douma. It simply points out that hard evidence, gathered and examined by non-political scientists, does not support the officially endorsed version. And it claims that this resulted in the OPCW redacting the report to the extent that its conclusions were misrepresented.
The revelation appears to be the worst instance of ���sexing-up��� in support of war since the invasion of Iraq and Tony Blair���s doctored dossiers. A whistleblower has made public the astonishing email of protest which was sent to senior officials at the OPCW. It says that the independent scientists��� official report on the Douma incident had been slashed and censored so severely that it:
Misrepresented the facts ��� by leaving out key information;
Hid the fact that the traces of chlorine found on the site were merely tiny trace elements, in parts per billion, and in forms that could have been found in any household bleach;
Contained major deviations from the original report submitted by impartial experts, so that it had ���morphed into something quite different���;
Suppressed a total mismatch between the symptoms allegedly displayed by victims at the scene, and the effects of the chemicals which were actually found. The symptoms seen on harrowing videos shown at the time of the incident simply did not match the symptoms which would have been caused by any material found at the site.
The Mail on Sunday has seen the email of protest which one scientist at the OPCW submitted to his superiors. It refers to the original expert report from Douma which the email says was savagely censored.
This original report, if it had been published as written, would not have supported widespread claims that poison gas was used at Douma on April 7, 2018. If any such gas was used, it was not a gas known to, or detected by the scientists who visited the scene, examined the buildings and soil and carefully checked the samples.
A source has told me that the OPCW report, which was eventually published on July 7, 2018, was stripped of a vital fact at the last minute: the traces of chlorinated material which were found at the site were so small, and so easily available, that they could simply not be said to show that chlorine gas was employed.
The Mail on Sunday has also been told that, in the days before the original document was due to be published, a second report shorn of many of its most important findings was prepared behind the backs of most of the OPCW scientists.
A source inside the OPCW says that this move was discovered at the last minute. It was then met with protests from scientists, including the email sent to two senior OPCW officials, which The Mail on Sunday has seen. The source says a compromise was offered in which the truth about the tiny traces of chlorine would be told, though the report would still be heavily redacted.
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This original report, if it had been published as written, would not have supported widespread claims that poison gas was used at Douma on April 7, 2018. If any such gas was used, it was not a gas known to, or detected by the scientists who visited the scene, examined the buildings and soil and carefully checked the samples. (Above, a baby has its face wiped following the alleged chemical attack in Douma)
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Western support for the Syrian rebels against the Assad regime in Damascus has been politically awkward, as many of these rebels are Islamist extremists, in some cases linked to Al Qaeda. Claims that Assad has used poison gas against his own people have been important in persuading the Western public to back the policy. (Above, President Assad last week)
The scientists accepted this. But even this promise was then broken, and a third version of the document was issued which left out the vital fact. The wording of this report was so vague that news organisations around the world concluded ��� incorrectly ��� that it said that chlorine gas had been used or might have been used. If the key material had been left in, they could not have done this.
Since then, dissenting scientists have sought for months to find a way of setting the record straight, inside the OPCW. But all their efforts have failed, leading to the leak of the email.
It has been a long struggle. The original email of protest was sent to senior executives at the OPCW (whose names we know but have been asked not to publish) on June 22, 2018. The third (interim) report was published on July 6, 2018. A fourth report, even more mealy-mouthed, but still heavily censored, emerged in March this year.
The leak follows other alarming developments concerning the OPCW���s report on Douma, which suggest an organisation in severe crisis. Last May, another leak from the OPCW���s HQ in the Hague cast grave doubt on claims that gas cylinders found at the Douma site had been dropped from the air, a vital part of the Western case against Syria.
An OPCW engineering and ballistics expert called Ian Henderson (who was not the leaker) had strongly suggested that two gas cylinders found in Douma and examined by the OPCW���s Fact-Finding Mission had been ���manually placed���.
This vital detail too was left out of the OPCW���s own published report, which implied strongly that they had been dropped from the air. This was crucial as Syrian government helicopters were the only aircraft in the area. On this occasion the OPCW revealed that the Henderson document was genuine, probably unintentionally, by announcing a leak inquiry on May 16.
Shock: How we reported the blitz launched by Western allies
The OPCW ��� whose member nations meet in The Hague for a major conference tomorrow ��� is also in severe turmoil after reports of further whistleblowing on the radical US website Counterpunch. Its account was written by the veteran journalist Jonathan Steele (formerly a senior foreign correspondent at The Guardian, twice named International Reporter of the Year), based on the account of a whistleblower who he codenamed ���Alex���.
���Alex��� said that dissenting experts, protesting against the doctoring of their work, were invited to a meeting with three American officials who were ���cursorily introduced without making clear which US agencies they represented���. He recounted that the three ���told them emphatically that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack.���
The Mail on Sunday approached the OPCW for comment on the protest email on Wednesday, November 13, more than ten days ago. We supplied them with a complete text. Despite several further requests by phone and email, the OPCW had not responded by last night.
The OPCW has been in severe disarray before, precisely because its rulings are so sensitive.
In 2002, in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the OPCW���s then director, the Brazilian diplomat Jose Bustani, was forced from office by intense US pressure. The US���s then ambassador to the UN was the ferocious pro-war hawk John Bolton, famed for his brusque and bullying manner to subordinates.
He is thought to have objected to Bustani���s plans to get Iraq to agree to OPCW inspectors going there to search for WMD. These inspections might have got in the way of US plans to go to war against Iraq at all costs, a decision which had already been made by the White House.
The same John Bolton was Donald Trump���s National Security Adviser at the time of the alleged outrage in Douma and the missile attacks on Syria, which took place a week later. He left the post in September after falling out with President Trump.
The OPCW is nominally independent, but its annual budget of roughly ��75 million is supplied by member states, with much of the money coming from the USA and EU and NATO members, many of them heavily committed to supporting the rebels in Syria.
Western support for the Syrian rebels against the Assad regime in Damascus has been politically awkward, as many of these rebels are Islamist extremists, in some cases linked to Al Qaeda. Claims that Assad has used poison gas against his own people have been important in persuading the Western public to back the policy.
Counterpunch asked the OPCW���s media office to explain why the chlorine levels were excluded from the interim and final reports but they did not respond.
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The OPCW is nominally independent, but its annual budget of roughly ��75 million is supplied by member states, with much of the money coming from the USA and EU and NATO members, many of them heavily committed to supporting the rebels in Syria. (Above, Douma on April 6, 2018)
The leaked email in full
From: ********
Sent: 22nd June 2018 08:27
To: *********
Subject: Grave concern about the 'redacted' Douma report
Dear ******,
I wish to express, as a member of the FFM (Fact Finding Mission) team that conducted the investigation into the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, my gravest concern at the redacted version of the FFM report, which I understand was at the behest of the ODG. (Office of the Director General). After reading this modified report, which incidentally no other team member who deployed into Douma has had the opportunity to do, I was struck by how much it misrepresents the facts. Many of the facts and observations outlined in the full version are inextricably interconnected and, by selectively omitting certain ones, an unintended bias has been introduced into the report, undermining its credibility. In other cases, some crucial facts that have remained in the redacted version have morphed into something quite different to what was initially drafted. If I may, I will outline some specific aspects to the redacted report that are particularly worrisome.
The statement in paragraph 8.3 of the final conclusions 'The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders', is highly misleading and not supported by the facts. The only evidence available at this moment is that some samples collected at Locations 2 and 4 were in contact with one or more chemicals that contain a reactive chlorine atom. Such chemicals could include molecular chlorine, phosgene, cyanogen chloride, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen chloride or sodium hypochlorite (the major ingredient of household chlorine-based bleach). Purposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous. It is also worth noting that the term 'reactive chlorine-containing chemical' used in the redacted report is, in fact, inaccurate. It actually describes a reactive chemical that contains chlorine which itself (the chlorine) is not necessarily reactive e.g. chlorophenol. The original report uses the more accurate term 'a chemical containing reactive chlorine'.
The redacted report states that the gas was likely released from the cylinders (in Locations 2 and 4). The original report purposely emphasised the fact that, although the cylinders might have been the source of the suspected chemical release, there was insufficient evidence to affirm this. It is possible the error was simply a typo. This is a major deviation from the original report.
Paragraph 8.2 states that 'based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives, [...] detected in environmental samples'. Describing the levels as 'high' likely overstates the extent of levels of chlorinated organic derivatives detected. They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.
The original report discusses in detail the inconsistency between the victims' symptoms, as reported by witnesses and seen in video recordings. Omitting this section of the report (including the Epidemiology which has been removed in its entirety) has a serious negative impact on the report as this section is inextricably linked to the chemical agent identified. It either supports or detracts from the confidence in the identity of any possible chemical. In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms. The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW (Chemical Weapons) agents.
The original report has extensive sections regarding the placement of the cylinders at both locations as well as the relative damage caused to the impact points, compared to that caused to the cylinders suspected of being the sources of the toxic chemical. These sections are essentially absent from the redacted report. This information was important in assessing the likelihood of the 'presence' of toxic chemicals versus the 'use' of toxic chemicals.
A feature of this investigation and report was the robust and extensive scientific basis for sampling plans and analysing the data collected. A comprehensive bibliography of peer-reviewed scientific literature was attached to support and enhance the credibility of the work of the mission. This has unfortunately been omitted from the redacted report.
By singling out chlorine above other equally plausible substances containing reactive chlorine and presenting it as a fact in isolation creates, I believe, a level of partiality that would negatively impact on the perceived credibility of the report, and by extension that of the Organisation. I am requesting that the fact-finding report be released in its entirety as I fear that this redacted version no longer reflects the work of the team. The original report contains facts and observations that are all equally valid. The fact that inconsistencies are highlighted or observations not fully understood does not justify their omission. The inconsistencies and observations are based on the evidence and data collected. Further information in the future may help resolve them but the facts as they stand at present will not alter and need to be reported.
If the redacted version is to be released, I respectfully request to attach my differing observations, in accordance with the spirit of paragraph 62 of part II of the Verification Annex of the CWC.
Yours sincerely
(Key passages emphasised by Mail on Sunday)
My Response to Allegations that I am an Apologist for Syria and the Assad State - updated and reinforced
Following the publication of my story on the leak from the OPCW, suggesting that evidence against Syria was sexed up to justify war, I expect the ad hominem fallacy to be operating at full blast. I will be excused of being a shill, patsy, dupe or apologist for or of the Assad state in Syria. This is demonstrably untrue.
My record on this matter - of consistent severe criticism of the Syrian state and its actions, from repression, torture and Anti-Semitism, to sponsoring terror, to sheltering Nazi war criminals and mass-murdering civilians - actually goes back nearly two decades, as the extracts below show. I've never been restrained in these criticisms. The character of the Syrian state is not at issue in the controversy about the British, US and French governments to overthrow Assad, using Islamist fanatics to do so - fanatics in some cases formally identified with Al Qaeda and in all cases the sort of people we would arrest if we found them in Birmingham, England or Birmingham Alabama.
My critics, who are more or less Blairites or apologists for US and British foreign policy, arfe by contrst compromised badly by - for example - the fact that the British government (Under A.Blair) compelled the Queen to entertain Bashar al Assad at Buckingham Palace just before Christmas 2002, see https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1416391/Syrian-president-meets-the-Queen.html and Mr Blair himself went to Damascus to pay court to Assad ( seeing him as a possible ally or at least sympathiser in their planned war on Iraq).
Even worse was the action of the US government which actually rendered an innocent Canadian (whom it wrongly suspected of Al Qaeda sympathies) to Syria's torture cellars, after wrongfully arresting him at a US airport . This appalling story is told here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maher_Arar
I have gone into the archives to look up what I have written about Syria in the past dozen years or so. I suspect that few journalists in popular newspapers have written as often about that country. Here is a selection. I think it rather undermines this claim. Readers might also notice a fairly consistent scepticism about liberal intervention.
4th November 2001:
Look at the Prime Minister's strange whirl round the Middle East, rebuffed at every turn by alleged allies.
Perhaps the key to understanding the strange state of the world may be found in Syria, that favoured refuge of retired Nazis and wasps' nest of terror. A few smart bombs in the suburbs of Damascus would do more to eliminate terror from the world than anything that has so far been done in Afghanistan. Instead, we go there seeking allies.
Someone ought to have told Mr Blair why relations between Britain and Syria have been strained in the past.
Back in 1986, the Syrian Embassy in London was the headquarters of a terrorist operation which - had it succeeded - would have been as bad as the Manhattan massacre.
A miserable specimen called Nezar Hindawi, aided by Syrian diplomats, tricked his pregnant girlfriend into smuggling 10lb of explosive on to an El Al flight from Heathrow.
Israeli guards foiled the plan at the last minute. Had the bomb gone off, a fully fuelled and loaded 747 would have exploded over London.
Syria never admitted its part in the outrage or said sorry yet it is now being courted by the West as an ally against 'terrorism'.
11th August 2002
As for Saddam being an especially wicked dictator, the whole Middle East is packed with unpleasant, repressive regimes.
Syria, where Mr Blair was recently humiliated by the dynastic despot Bashar Assad, is a nasty anti-Semitic secret police state which massacres its own citizens.
20th October 2002
The Foreign Offices of Europe are constantly seeking new lucrative friendships with Colonel Gadaffi, the Iranian Ayatollahs and with Syria, every one of them an unrepentant supporter of terror.
8th December 2002
(as part of a ���dossier��� on countries with repressive governments)
How about this? A country with arbitrary arrest and indefinite incommunicado detention, where torture is commonplace - including hanging victims from the ceiling and beating them with sticks and cables.
A country at the centre of the Middle East drug trade which massacred its own citizens in Hama in 1982. It is called Syria. Its leader, Bashar Assad, will be in London on December 16 to meet Mr Blair and the poor Queen. No chance of an invasion there, either, I suppose?
22nd December 2002
THE arguments for the Iraq war are such an insult to the intelligence that the Prime Minister must be signalling to us that he thinks the whole thing is mad. Isn't he?
These scare stories about gas attacks and soft targets are so blatant and pointless that we must be meant to think they are crude attempts to manipulate and panic us. Mustn't we?
And surely the visit to London by Syria's Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein's closest rival in the evil tyrant stakes, was an elaborate joke designed to draw attention to the ludicrousness of the 'bomb Baghdad' project. Wasn't it?
29th December 2002
If Saddam has dangerous weapons, he can be deterred from using them, as he has been for the past decade. His regime is repulsive, but no more so than that of our new friend Bashar Assad in Syria, sponsor and shelterer of some of the world's worst terrorists.
7th December 2003
(in an article on rendition)
One former prisoner, Shah Mohammed, tells of his arrest and treatment in Guantanamo. The other, Maher Arar, describes his arrest and the way in which he was cynically exported to Syria to be beaten with professional skill by the Middle East's most expert torturers and kept in conditions that would drive many of us insane in a matter of days.
Those who think this is just liberal bleeding-heart stuff should bear in mind that the entire might of America's intelligence services could find no reason to detain either man. Plainly, whatever confessions Mr Arar put his thumbprint on are worthless, as such confessions usually are. But in this case they are so worthless that those who authorised the torture cannot even bring themselves to believe them.
Those who think that difficult times justify desperate measures must ask themselves how useful information will be when it is obtained by a Syrian security man in a cellar, beating a suspect black and blue with electric cable. And who knows how many have been subjected to this treatment, or worse? Who knows if they have survived, or remained sane?
20th February 2005
BECAUSE of last week's bomb in Beirut, you may have learned from the BBC that Syria is illegally occupying the Lebanon. If it had not been for the blast, you'd never have heard about this. The same BBC tells you every week, and twice if possible, that Israel illegally occupies the West Bank of the Jordan. Why is the BBC only interested in the woes of Arabs when they come at the hands of the Israelis?
11th January 2009
FROM what I've seen of him (a friendly chat in a TV green room) I rather like Brian Eno, a pleasant man capable of thought. So it's all the sadder to see him falling for the filthiest propaganda trick of the anti-Israel lobby. This is the comparison of what Israel does in Gaza with what the German National Socialists did to the Jews of Europe.
Reading Mr Eno say 'By creating a Middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've forgotten it', was a bit like seeing an old friend suddenly vomit yellow slime in public.
I'm against what Israel is doing in Gaza. But the annihilation of the Warsaw ghetto was utterly different, a conscious, deliberate racial extermination, still unique in human history. Just as soon as the State of Israel starts trying to exterminate Arabs, I'll be the first to attack it for this with all the fury I can summon.
But while it's not doing this, it's a particularly revolting piece of dishonesty (or ignorance) to claim it is so.
Why? As Mr Eno must know, the State of Israel exists because the 'civilised' world (including some influential Arabs) refused to rescue Europe's Jews from Hitler when they could. The great powers were rightly guilty when they found out afterwards what they had allowed. In future, persecuted Jews would always have somewhere to take them in.
The false claim that Israel is like Nazi Germany is a smear designed to rob Israel of its moral right to exist.
If Mr Eno wants a (slightly) closer parallel with what's going on in Gaza, he should look up what happened in the Syrian city of Hama in February 1982. The Muslim Brotherhood, in many ways similar to Hamas, had violently challenged the rule of Syrian President Hafez Assad. Hama, with 350,000 inhabitants, was identified by Assad as the HQ of the Brotherhood.
After warning that anyone who remained in Hama would be considered a rebel, the Syrian Army bombed and shelled the city for three weeks. Death and torture squads were then unleashed.
Estimates of the numbers killed range from 7,000 to 40,000. By comparison with this, Israel's attack on Gaza looks positively effeminate.
But fashionable showbiz folk have never heard of Hama. Is it all right for Arabs to kill Arabs - and only bad when Israel does it?
27th March 2011
DAVID CAMERON'S war of personal vanity still rages on, its aim and its end unknown. Our ludicrous Libyan allies - who may in fact be our enemies - fight each other as we protect their so-called army from Colonel Gaddafi. If we don't send weapons and troops to help them, they have no hope of winning. Will we? Or will we, in desperation, wink at an assassination of the Colonel, an action that will take us close to his moral level? Or will we, by then, be too busy bombing our way to the Big Society in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, China and anywhere else where government doesn't reach our leader's alleged high ethical standards? Nobody knows. Ministers, apparently with no idea of the forces they have unleashed, drawl that it's as long as a piece of string.
Ho ho. Or maybe it's as long as the rope needed to hang themselves. Yet the House of Commons endorses this leap in the dark with a vote so overwhelming that you wonder if they put something in the water, or whatever it is they drink. What are all these costly people for? Last year we worried about their expenses. This year we should be worried about their salaries. We hired them to question and watch the Government, not to do what the Prime Minister tells them. Aren't we still recovering from the gullibility of MPs (and the media) over Saddam Hussein? Do we learn nothing from experience? Are too many of us, and them, just too thick to be in charge of a small nuclear power? It seems so.
MPs should be reminded they are not the employees of Downing Street, but of us. I am quite sure that a huge number of British people do not want this war, and for good reasons. It is not in our national interests. We can't even protect old ladies from rapists in our own country, and perhaps we should sort that out before reforming Africa.
They correctly think it is not our affair. After being told that we can't even afford public libraries, they have to watch Liam Fox burning great mounds of banknotes (provided by us) as he rains costly munitions on Tripoli.
THEY are baffled to see the remains of our naval power towed surreptitiously to a Turkish scrapyard, because we allegedly cannot afford it. And meanwhile, an obscure public relations man who has never fought in a war poses as the saviour of Benghazi.
Where was the British people's voice in the Commons on Monday? I don't care much what the UN, that rabble of torturers and tyrants, thinks. I would cheerfully see it abolished.
I have no idea why we still need Nato 20 years after the threat it was formed to face vanished for ever. The fact that it has endorsed Mr Cameron's adventure doesn't comfort me.
What really troubles me is that Parliament wasn't asked its opinion until after the missiles were launched. It was treated, contemptuously, like a neutered chihuahua, a pitiful yapping thing to be pushed about by the Premier's polished toecap, and patted as long as it fawned. And if it doesn't now revolt against this treatment, then that is what it will have proved itself to be.
I believe that the Government knew by Friday, March 18 that it was more or less certain it would begin military action on the evening of Saturday, March 19. There was time to call a special session of the Commons.
And there was a precedent - the Falklands. The first motion before the House on Monday should have been a censure of the Government for launching a war of choice without seeking Parliamentary approval.
Yet, while the whole engine of British diplomacy was devoted to getting Mr Cameron's war past the UN, Nato and (of course) our ultimate rulers in the EU, Westminster was forgotten.
And so were we.
This is wrong. Those involved should not get away with it. Later on, I shall say I told you so. Just now, I'm telling you so.
17th April 2011
WHY do dictators refuse to quit? Simple. They see what happens to those who give up. Nicolae Ceausescu was killed after a kangaroo trial. Erich Honecker was hounded from country to country until he died of cancer. Slobodan Milosevic was locked up until he died. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is now under arrest and his sons in jail. Are they wishing that - like the rulers of Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria - they had killed more of their own people and stuck it out? I wouldn't be surprised. If the 'West' really wants Colonel Gaddafi to go, it would be wise to give him an easy exit.
7th August 2011
ACCOUNTS of the trial of Egypt's ex-President Mubarak in Cairo generally seem to assume that this is a good thing.
The same news organisations then report the massacres in Syria as if these are a bad thing.
Can't these dimwits see that their incessant encouragement for the futile and over-rated 'Arab spring' is one of the reasons for the murders in Syria? Syria's President Assad sees Mr Mubarak in prison garb, displayed in a cage, and decides with utter determination that this will not happen to him.
Instead, he kills and kills and kills to stay in power and out of the dock.
The Leaked e-mail from the OPCW in full
The e-mail from inside the OPCW, with key passages emphasised
From: ********
Sent: 22nd June 2018 08:27
To: *********
**
Subject: Grave concern about the 'redacted' Douma report
Dear ******,
I wish to express, as a member of the FFM (Fact Finding Mission) team that conducted the investigation into the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, my gravest concern at the redacted version of the FFM report, which I understand was at the behest of the ODG. [Office of the Director General]. After reading this modified report, which incidentally no other team member who deployed into Douma has had the opportunity to do, I was struck by how much it misrepresents the facts. Many of the facts and observations outlined in the full version are inextricably interconnected and, by selectively omitting certain ones, an unintended bias has been introduced into the report, undermining its credibility. In other cases, some crucial facts that have remained in the redacted version have morphed into something quite different to what was initially drafted. If I may, I will outline some specific aspects to the redacted report that are particularly worrisome.
The statement in paragraph 8.3 of the final conclusions "The team has sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders", is highly misleading and not supported by the facts. The only evidence available at this moment is that some samples collected at Locations 2 and 4 were in contact with one or more chemicals that contain a reactive chlorine atom. Such chemicals could include molecular chlorine, phosgene, cyanogen chloride, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen chloride or sodium hypochlorite (the major ingredient of household chlorine-based bleach). Purposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous. It is also worth noting that the term "reactive chlorine-containing chemical" used in the redacted report is, in fact, inaccurate. It actually describes a reactive chemical that contains chlorine which itself (the chlorine) is not necessarily reactive e.g. chlorophenol. The original report uses the more accurate term "a chemical containing reactive chlorine".
. The redacted report states that the gas was likely released from the cylinders (in Locations 2 and 4). The original report purposely emphasised the fact that, although the cylinders might have been the source of the suspected chemical release, there was insufficient evidence to affirm this. It is possible the error was simply a typo. This is a major deviation from the original report.
. Paragraph 8.2 states that "based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives, [...] detected in environmental samples". Describing the levels as "high" likely overstates the extent of levels of chlorinated organic derivatives detected. They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.
. The original report discusses in detail the inconsistency between the victims' symptoms, as reported by witnesses and seen in video recordings. Omitting this section of the report (including the Epidemiology which has been removed in its entirety) has a serious negative impact on the report as this section is inextricably linked to the chemical agent identified. It either supports or detracts from the confidence in the identity of any possible chemical. In this case the confidence in the identity of chlorine or any choking agent is drawn into question precisely because of the inconsistency with the reported and observed symptoms. The inconsistency was not only noted by the FFM team but strongly noted by three toxicologists with expertise in exposure to CW (Chemical Weapons) agents.
. The original report has extensive sections regarding the placement of the cylinders at both locations as well as the relative damage caused to the impact points, compared to that caused to the cylinders suspected of being the sources of the toxic chemical. These sections are essentially absent from the redacted report. This information was important in assessing the likelihood of the 'presence' of toxic chemicals versus the 'use' of toxic chemicals.
. A feature of this investigation and report was the robust and extensive scientific basis for sampling plans and analysing the data collected. A comprehensive bibliography of peer-reviewed scientific literature was attached to support and enhance the credibility of the work of the mission. This has unfortunately been omitted from the redacted report.
By singling out chlorine above other equally plausible substances containing reactive chlorine and presenting it as a fact in isolation creates, I believe, a level of partiality that would negatively impact on the perceived credibility of the report, and by extension that of the Organisation. I am requesting that the fact-finding report be released in its entirety as I fear that this redacted version no longer reflects the work of the team. The original report contains facts and observations that are all equally valid. The fact that inconsistencies are highlighted or observations not fully understood does not justify their omission. The inconsistencies and observations are based on the evidence and data collected. Further information in the future may help resolve them but the facts as they stand at present will not alter and need to be reported.
If the redacted version is to be released, I respectfully request to attach my differing observations, in accordance with the spirit of paragraph 62 of part II of the Verification Annex of the CWC.
Yours sincerely
November 24, 2019
PETER HITCHENS: Let's save the monarchy... by getting rid of the Royals
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
What if we carried on having a monarchy, but just got rid of the monarch, and the Royal Family, too? The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.
I strongly support constitutional monarchy. I think it keeps politicians out of a key part of power ��� the bit where they bathe in public adulation, and are treated as living gods, the bit where they ride in coaches and stand, in gorgeous uniforms, taking the salute of the Armed Forces.
Just imagine Margaret Thatcher or Anthony Blair doing that and you know, instantly, that it would be a disaster. Blair in particular came to love posing with soldiers, and it frightened me to see it. His head was quite swollen enough already.
People who mock and despise our rather modest monarchy seem never to spot just how grandiose presidents can be.
The President of the USA has a personal anthem, played when he comes into the room, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and can pardon convicted criminals on a whim.
He flies about in a gigantic, flashy aeroplane which takes off and lands exactly when and where he says it should. No wonder they aren���t allowed to stay in office for more than eight years any more.
The President of France lives in a palace with plumed ceremonial guards standing at its gates, and lives, if he wishes, more or less above the law, with his private life a secret from the people. So we might be grateful for an austere Queen who eats frugal breakfasts and turns out the lights as she roams her crumbling, dowdy palaces.
Except, of course, that not all monarchs are like her. In fact, I think we can be fairly sure that we will not get another Elizabeth II in a century or more. Hence the worry about the other members of the family, which I share. I wondered for a while last week if it was possible for a prince or duke to resign or be sacked from the Royal Family.
Now, thanks to silly, childish Prince Andrew ��� whose Royal status went to his head ��� we all know that he can be fired and has been.
Edward VIII famously abdicated, but that was a gigantic personal and constitutional struggle which ��� if it happened again ��� would probably destroy the monarchy and perhaps the country. The removal of the Duke of York was by comparison a minor scuffle. And it made me think seriously again of an idea I have been pondering for a long time. Why not keep the monarchy, but stop having any actual monarchs or annoying heirs? They are so accident-prone, aren���t they?
In return for some nice houses and a decent pension, the whole lot of them can be persuaded to modestly renounce their claims to the throne when the time comes. My suspicion is that most of them would be glad to be rid of the burden.
And the actual daily tasks of the monarchy can be given to some harmless white-haired senior civil servant towards the end of his or her career, who can sign Acts of Parliament in the King���s name, preside with dignity and good humour at the award of Honours or at Privy Council meetings, and can open Parliament, perhaps arriving by bicycle.
The monarch is a bit like the king on a chessboard, who can hardly move and cannot easily take any other piece, but who prevents others occupying his square and those immediately round it.
As long as that space is adequately filled, prime ministers will not be able to invade it and the main job will be done. The arrangement will be slightly incomprehensible, in a quirky British way, but then so is the current position.
I personally would not miss the lost tourism, which has engulfed London in a mile-deep wave of tat for decades. And if I never had to watch another Royal Broadcast or endure another Commonwealth Conference, I would be a happy man.
What is more, there would not need to be another Coronation, which, when it comes in all its Welbyised modern horror, will just ram home to us all how far we have declined since the last one in 1953.
I note that the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, defending her party���s moronic policy of marijuana legalisation (which has failed to do what its supporters claim, everywhere it has been tried), says she smoked the drug with enthusiasm at university. Yet more evidence, as if it were needed, for the link between marijuana use and reduced intelligence.
Laughing as our democracy dies
Most of the time I forget that there is an Election taking place. I am happier that way. But I managed to watch some of the non-gladiatorial clash between Al ���Boris��� Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn on ITV.
Two things struck me. Mr Johnson really, really does not like to be asked about his long record of dishonesty ��� and the presenter, Julie Etchingham, shockingly failed to compel him to answer a question on that subject, which he clumsily evaded. Instead, she soppily forced the two men to shake hands and promise to be nice. Oh, honestly.
The second thing was that, for the first time I have ever seen, the audience openly laughed at the various evasions of the two men. Applause can be faked and is. But scornful belly-laughter, which this was, cannot be. This is not a good omen for our future. If democracy has become a joke, can dictatorship be far behind?
One of the best stories ever written - then the BBC got to work on it
I think The War Of The Worlds is one of the best books ever written. I first read it 60 years ago and even now, when I pick it up again, I find it hard to stop reading. Was there ever a man with a head so full of ideas and pictures as Herbert George Wells? He fills your mind with vivid images and pulls you into the book with superlative, simple story-telling, so simple most authors cannot manage it.
The scene in which the ironclad ���Thunder Child��� rams the Martian fighting machine off the Essex coast is one of the most intensely exciting things ever written. The slow opening of the first space capsule is among the most sinister and suspenseful.
Now we have the technology to make this wonderful story come to life on the screen, and what do we get from the BBC? A saga about a miserable single mother ��� played by Eleanor Tomlinson ��� moping about the place and repeatedly squealing with fear (the best way to attract hungry Martians, as it happens), and about her almost unbelievably stupid boyfriend, who keeps looking for her and then, when he finds her, losing her again. Someone very like Dr Who seems to have crept into the story, too, an irritatingly wise astronomer with fiddly Left-wing glasses.
This is mixed up with a dim teenage caricature of the imperial age with some digs at Christianity thrown in. If the British ruling class of the Edwardian era had been as thick as they are made to look, I do not think they could have governed Woking, let alone the largest empire in the world.
For heaven���s sake, Wells���s original book is already a clever story about the rise and fall of civilisation, full of bright cynical thought about religion and morals in the midst of chaos and defeat.
But Wells, a ferocious Left-wing radical (and an appalling womaniser), had more sense than to clutter up his story with clunky, obvious propaganda. That is why it will survive the BBC���s theft of its great title and idea, replaced with something not remotely as good. You can only enjoy this if you don���t know the actual story.
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November 23, 2019
November 17, 2019
PETER HITCHENS: We'll laugh at these sensitive students and their virtuous opinions - but one day these mini-censors will lock us all up
This is Peter Hitchens���s Mail on Sunday column
I enjoy being banned, or demonstrated against, by intolerant students. In some ways, I wish it happened to me more often. So should we worry much about the Policy Exchange report showing that a huge number of today���s students are either against fully free speech, or too easily persuaded to give up on it, on the grounds of ���sensitivity���?
So far, the problem seems trivial. Many universities still hold to proper free speech. When they don���t, it is usually quite easy to make them look foolish and crabby. It���s even possible to get round it with a bit of ingenuity. I did this once by holding the meeting in the open air.
And it���s not new. The first time it happened to me was at a student conference in Blackpool 20 years ago. Even then, I was still trying to argue against the mad policy of legalising marijuana. Some jack- in-office switched off my microphone and ordered me from the stage because I had been falsely denounced by a screeching group of zealots ��� who reminded me all too much of my own Trotskyist days in the 1970s. My fellow-speaker and fierce opponent, the convicted drug-smuggler Howard Marks, responded like a proper British gentleman by declaring in his lovely rumbling voice: ���If he���s going, I���m going too.���
He then put his arm round my shoulder and marched beside me through the protesters. I almost wept. Much as I disagreed with Howard, I ever afterwards regarded him as a fundamentally decent person, however much I differed with him about drugs. He placed liberty of thought and speech above practically every other possession of our civilisation, and instinctively defended it.
So no-platforming can be fun. But I am also frightened by it. Slowly, it is winning. When these mini-censors begin to fan out into the law, the media, the Civil Service, the legal profession and schools, they will be a real threat. Unlike Howard Marks, they have never been taught to value their liberty. They genuinely think their own opinions are so virtuous that they are entitled to silence others. I have read the attacks on me that have been circulated in these seats of learning, and they are enough to make the blood run cold. They look like charge sheets in some revolutionary show trial ��� a trial which I increasingly fear I may one day face in reality. Someone has usually spent days looking for things that I have said in the past, and then twisted them to give a false impression to the ill-informed.
The people involved clearly think they are doing a good thing. They sincerely feel that I should not be allowed to say the things I say, or write what I have written here. Many of them, I am sure, would like to see me punished for having said them, preferably after a public confession of wrongdoing. Interestingly, many of the passages they have twisted come from some years back, when speech in this country, especially on the sexual revolution, was undoubtedly freer than it is now.
And that scares me too. How much that we can freely say now will be regarded as borderline illegal ten years hence?
And I suspect my opponents do not have any objections to prosecuting people for things which were legal when they did them, but are not now. And when they come hammering on my door, I fear there���ll be no Howard Marks to take the side of liberty.
*******
In a few short words the diaries of the deceased old gossip Kenneth Rose have said far more about David Cameron than his breezeblock of a biography ever will.
���I am deeply disturbed by the conduct of David Cameron, the PM, who has declared a planning free-for-all in the construction industry, apparently in return for huge donations to the Conservative Party. He is not a true Tory at heart but a spivvy Etonian entrepreneur.���
I think the concreting over of so much of our countryside will be Mr Cameron���s main memorial, remembered with a bitter sense of irrecoverable loss long after all the rest is forgotten.
********
Don't scream, but Olivia HAS got a Left-wing face
My old friend Charles Moore, biographer of Margaret Thatcher, has been in a bit of trouble for saying that the actress Olivia Colman has a Left-wing face. Of course she does. And she has now declared in the Radio Times that she has a Left-wing mind behind it. I once said the same thing about another thespian, Andrea Riseborough, who was hopelessly miscast on TV as the young Mrs Thatcher a few years ago.
You can���t easily explain it but perhaps people like me (who certainly have Right-wing faces) are especially able to tell. It���s one of the reasons why I won���t be watching Colman, left, portray the Queen in the new Netflix series of The Crown. It simply isn���t believable, and all the signs are that this fancy soap opera will once again be seeking to rewrite the past.
At first I thought this habit, of portraying the past through a politically correct and generally radical lens, was mildly annoying. Various aspects of it couldn���t be criticised without risking stupid, false accusations of bigotry. So weird things, way out of their right time and place, which would normally have been mentionable became unmentionable. But now I have begun to think it sinister, another aspect of a fast-accelerating cultural revolution in which almost everything I value in this country is being wiped out of existence and memory. Most of our history is simply not taught to most children, so it is easy to introduce rubbish into their minds.
As George Orwell wrote in words often only partially quoted from 1984: ���If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed ��� if all records told the same tale ��� then the lie passed into history and became truth. ���Who controls the past,��� ran the Party slogan, ���controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.��� ���
More painfully, he also described his hero, Winston Smith, despairing ���within twenty years at the most��� the huge and simple question, ���Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?��� would have ceased once and for all to be answerable��� and the new revolutionary rulers could insist that they had improved life ���because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested������
That is what comes to mind when I see dramas that portray a Britain that never existed, and when important books that I know well, such as War Of The Worlds, are altered and edited to wipe out all memory that the past was different from now. This is what is going on. It is not as trivial as it looks.
Welby still won't do the right thing
It is a shocking thing to say, but it is true that it is fortunate for the late Field Marshal Lord Bramall, who died last week, that he was falsely accused while he was still alive. Had the attack happened years after his death, as was the case with the comparably great Bishop George Bell of Chichester, the law would not in the end have rescued his reputation.
You can say what you like about the dead, and nothing will happen to you. The accusations of terrible sex crimes made decades after his death against Bishop Bell have been comprehensively shown to be mistaken, to put it charitably.
But some people, most notable among them the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, Justin Welby, continue to refuse to admit they were mistaken when they first accepted them.
He claims sulkily that there���s still a ���significant cloud��� over Bishop Bell. By behaving in this way, Mr Welby shows he does not properly understand the faith of the church he heads.
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November 11, 2019
At last - an interview in which I am not asked why I stopped being left-wing 40 years ago.
Some readers may be interested in this interview of me, actually conducted last August. The interviewer was warned in advance not to ask me that boring old question about ���why did you stop being left-wing?���. https://inspiredinburgh.com/peterhitchens/
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