Memorandum from Gareth Howell
1. For someone in possession of Sky Television
including the Parliamentary Channel and Al Jazeera, and in possession
of an enforced stay at home due to RTA on the British roads, I
have probably grasped rather better than most Jo Publics, the
complexity, and the simplicity, of the Decision to go to War in
Iraq. Your detailing me with a number of postponed, and now cancelled,
discussions on the question of the "War against Terror"
allowed me to research your committee's interview of the Foreign
Secretary with regard to the maneouverings of the UK at the security
council, and Resolution 1441. I felt that the Rt Hon Jack Straw's
reasoning was immaculate at all times, and that the procedure
followed was the next best thing to a favourable security council
resolution vote.
2. If the Prime Minister did make up his
mind in August/September last year at Camp David as Claire Short
suggests, and I believe that she is correct in this contention,
then the wrong questions were being asked. If the Prime Minister
and government persuaded the House of Commons to agree to a war
on the basis of an amendment and substantive resolution, which
provided for all shades and sympathies, other than the outright
Arab sympathiser, then it is no harm done to the government, which
wanted its way and not much good done to the reputation of parliament,
who were persuaded in a thoroughly foolish way to discuss WMD
ad infinitum.
3. Let us acknowledge that a large Nation
of Nation states, which has its seat of military power and weapons
of mass destruction (!) destroyed on one fateful day in late 2001,
that nation is likely to imagine rightly or wrongly, that there
are other states in the world which are now prepared to use WMD
against civilian populations as the USA did in Japan in 1945,
and that the world order has irrevocably changed.
4. Let us also acknowledge that the discovery
that the tragedy of that day in 2001 allowed them to discover
that it was one of their own former trained agents, a son of Saudi
Arabia, who was the principal protagonist, and there was a perfect
recipe for that Nation of Nation states to lash out fairly wildly
at anybody who breathed a word against them.
5. Don't let us look at all at the possibility,
discussed by Washington bureaucrats, that this was a colonialist
or imperialist campaign of perfectly clear identity. It may extend
the power of the dollar as the only currency available in Iraq
today but so what? The socialist groups in the UK are not the
only ones who talk in such language.
6. The God given right of the US government
to determine the complexion and identity of governments and leaders
worldwide has been only slightly disputed for some time now, but
to find a leader by proxy, such as Bin Laden calculated, gave
much greater frustration, than the possibly laughable and unseatable
Fidel Castro in Cuba.
MILITARY BASES
AND SOVEREIGN
STATES
7. There are three military US airforce
bases in Saudi Arabia. As we recall from the OPEC stranglehold
of the early 70's the Saudis had the power and still have the
power to exert total chaos on the world oil markets. Thirty per
cent of the oil on the international markets comes from the Kingdom;
if it were turned of even out of whim, the world economy would
be turned to chaos, lots or little, as the Saudis might have had
the gift to choose. Within two days of the US forces approaching
Baghdad, they began to build an air/military base North West of
the city. An announcement in the press stated that the airbases
of the US in Saudi were to be closed, which of course is as unlikely
as the sands to run out in the Sahara desert. What is verifiable
fact though is that the US government has another base in the
area and quite close to Saudi Arabia from which to enjoy further
freedom of Arabia. With regard to the rights of sovereign states
it would be rather easier to make a local incursion into Saudi
Arabia from a neighbouring country than it would from the country
itself. Imagine the worldwide contempt for US bases in every home
country if a US strike against a sovereign state were made from
that state itself!! It is a most unusual circumstance to find
a "Holy Terror" calling the tune worldwide for a few
months after foul terrorist acts, but an even more unusual circumstance
to commit destructive acts on a host nation state from the territory
of that nation state itself.
8. Remarks such as these are highly speculative,
and although I agree with the Member for Blaenau, Gwent in the
debate of the 4 June 2003 that from the beginning to end the whole
conflict has been about OIL, it is still begging the question
not to discuss the meaning and deception of the expression developed
in political parlance and jargon as WMD.
WMD
9. I have recently made a short and belated
study of E=Mc(squared) the illustrious Einsteinian formula which
says that energy equals mass times the square of the constant
where the constant is the speed of light. With such leaps of imagination
the nuclear bomb came into being in the 1940's, but not everybody
is aware, and certainly few parliamentarians, that a primitive
nuclear device may be created using Heavy Water. Heavy water may
be extracted from Sea water. It is there in the Gulf. It is not
a dangerous substance except in so far as it is necessary to slow
down the excessively fast movement of atoms which creates the
reaction. To my understanding Heavy Water is part of a weapon
of mass destruction. If I were a weapons inspector intent on playing
up the importance of the job and playing politics too, if I found
Heavy Water in somebody's backyard I would most certainly be able
to report back to the powers that be and confide that the owner
of the back yard had those weapons. However if I were quick, and
I were the owner of the backyard, and I thought that the IAEA
inspector/former chairman Hans Blix were going to cause trouble
and catch me with the Heavy Water in my back yard, I think I know
what I would do with it. "Pour it down the drain", and
let it flow gently back to the Arabian gulf. To me this has been
the most amusing aspect of the Parliamentary debate, that absolutely
nobody to my knowledge has mentioned the details of nuclear devices
and their simplicity.
OUTSPOKEN
10. Chairman you don't need me to lecture
you or your committee on the rights and wrongs of the Campaign
of the Scottish member who has been suspended from parliament
Mr Jack Galloway, the eloquent Scottish member. I happen to believe
that he was the only member who represented the Arab view effectively;
I believe there are a good many British citizens of all religious
persuasions who think the same. I do not want to devalue my comments
above by making any such conciliatory remarks other than to say
that Mr. Galloway's contention to me, outside your committee room
18 months ago that if I had any real feelings for the Arab cause,
which I do on account of personal relationship, I would not go
any where near a committee which is merely a puppet of government
policy. I neither believe that your committee's work is just that.
Mr Straw's evidence to you is always useful, but the appointment
of an enthusiast for the orthodox synagogue after the last election
to the Foreign Office suggested clearly that the Middle East would
be the centre of Foreign office policy in these sessions.
Gareth Howell
June 2003
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