Debunking the "Thatcher Revealed Doubts about Iraq War" Claim

IRIS Blog

Friday, October 14. 2005

Debunking the "Thatcher Revealed Doubts about Iraq War" Claim

Thatcher Reveals her Doubts Over Basis for Iraq War

Dozens of sites are taking this story seriously. An example on the left is Timothy Noah of Slate, who has added Thatcher to the "Bush Abandonment Watch". An example on the right is Et Tu, Iron Lady?

On the face of it, this is ridiculous. Here are some facts that should cause extraordinary skepticism:

1. The alleged quote sounds suspiciously close to far-left talking points:

The former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Lord Palumbo, who lunched with Mrs. T six months ago, told me recently what she said when he asked her if, given the intelligence at the time, she would have made the decision to invade Iraq. "I was a scientist before I was a politician, Peter," she told him carefully. "And as a scientist I know you need facts, evidence and proof -- and then you check, recheck and check again. The fact was that there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof. As a politician the most serious decision you can take is to commit your armed services to war from which they may not return."

2. The allegation is that Thatcher was asked whether she still supported the war and then delivered an anti-Bush diatribe. The implication is that her answer was "no."

3. The quote is second-hand, after transmission by two leftists. Tina Brown, in the same column upon which the Independent story is based, said Supreme Court nominee Miers poses a risk of getting a "stem-cell-banning, abortion-denying, Bible-thumping presidential sycophant." She also has a history of outrageous claims such as blaming the closing of her magazine on 9/11. Lord Palumbo appears to support anti-Bush propaganda as well. Here is his name on the list of sponsors of the lefist group "Torture Care" on a report alleging:

In both the War against Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the torture of prisoners has been widespread....puncture the lie that some of the techniques used in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay don't really amount to torture.

Serendipitously, his name appears next to today's anti-American Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.

4. The article claims that Thatcher's office "did not dispute her reported remarks" (probably because the article was written in a rush and there was not enough time for her secretary to check with the 80-year old Thatcher). Her office, however, confirmed her strong endorsement of the Iraq war and her long-standing positions on it.

5. Those long-standing positions are not subtle. No one made the argument more candidly than Thatcher that Saddam should be deposed militarily because of his nuclear and chemical capabilities. Here is an article she published in the New York Times saying exactly that:

The third phase is to deal with those hostile states that support terrorism and seek to acquire or trade in weapons of mass destruction. We have gotten into the habit of calling them "rogue" states....The most notorious rogue is, without doubt, Saddam Hussein ? proof if ever we needed it that yesterday's unfinished business becomes tomorrow's headache. Saddam Hussein will never comply with the conditions we demand of him. His aim is, in fact, quite clear: to develop weapons of mass destruction so as to challenge us with impunity.

How and when, not whether, to remove him are the only important questions. Again, solving this problem will demand the best available intelligence. It will require, as in Aghanistan, the mobilization of internal resistance. It will probably also involve a massive use of force. America's allies, above all Britain, should extend strong support to President Bush in the decisions he makes on Iraq.

Here is a similar speech she delivered in America six years prior saying essentially the same thing:

Compare this hubris with the failure to act effectively against the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the means to deliver them....Given the intellectual climate in the West today, it is probably unrealistic to expect military intervention to remove the source of the threat, as for example against North Korea - except perhaps when the offender invites us to do so by invading a small neighboring country [i.e. Kuwait]. Even then, as we now know, our success in destroying Saddam's nuclear and chemical weapons capability was limited.

And we cannot be sure that the efforts by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Authority to prevent Saddam putting civil nuclear power to military uses have been any more successful; indeed, we may reasonably suspect that they have not....

The Soviet collapse has also aggravated the single most awesome threat of modern times: the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons - and the ability to develop and deliver them - are today acquired by middle-income countries with modest populations such as Iraq

6. This fits into a pattern of flimsy anti-Bush claims seized upon by the news media (such as this week's allegation that was immediately denied by all concerned).

Add to: |

Posted by Barak at 08:17 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (3)

Click here to subscribe to our email list and receive a daily summary of our top blog stories.

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

Moonbat Masquerade
Another Moonbat Masquerade underway, a VERY late masquerade at that. So, let’s get started shall we? This first entry comes from a very serious post and it is sent in by Barak at IRIS (Information Regarding Israel’s Security) he present...

Weblog: thegraytie.com
Tracked: Oct 22, 09:57

New Blog Showcase
Welcome to this weeks edition of the New Blog Showcase; a round-up blogs created in the last three months (or so). Yeah, I’m stretching the rules a teeny tiny bit in order to have something to talk about. First up we have Debbie over at Just Th...

Weblog: cybervassals
Tracked: Oct 24, 04:33

Carnival Of The Vanities #162
Welcome to Baboon Pirates and the 162nd Carnival Of The Vanities! My nom de blog is El Capitan, and I'll be the ringmaster/sideshow operator/skeevy carny for this week's festivities.

Weblog: Baboon Pirates
Tracked: Oct 26, 06:38

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Hi Barak,

Thanks for your posting at my blogsite about this.

I'm fairly new to the whole left vs right blogging stuff. You probably realise that I come from a lefty perspective. Nevertheless I will always attempt to respect another person's pov.

It strikes me as slightly odd that Tina Brown is worthy of being debunked based on her obvious political bias. I know this may sound strange, but biased people may often tell the truth. Just because you're from "The right" doesn't mean I write you off as being a liar on similar issues.

I've been trying to work out what Thatcher may have actually meant. I think that, at the time of the Iraq invasion, she was supportive of the war because she trusted both George W. Bush and the British government's intelligence that was given to Tony Blair.

Now that time has gone by, she may have done her research and found out that all the evidence of WMDs was, in fact, spurious. Had she been PM at the time and privvy to the correct information, she may not have made a decision to attack.

This may mean that Thatcher has actually changed her mind about the threat that Saddam posed. In other words, her strong support throughout the 90s and in the lead-up to the Iraq war was based upon her solid belief that Saddam posed a great threat. Now, in hindsight, she has realised that he did not pose such a great threat at all.

Although I think it was wrong for the US to invade Iraq in 2003 (I may have ended up supporting the invasion if things had turned out right for Iraq), I was truly angry that Iraq wasn't occupied after the 1991 Gulf war. One of the major differences between then and now is that in 1991, most of the Arab world was, officially at least, supportive of America's war against Iraq. Had America occupied Iraq in 1991, I honestly doubt that lawlessness and guerilla war would have followed (as it has after 2003). Moreover, Arab military forces would have been able to occupy Iraq while the UN would take a leading role in determining the nation's political future. The US would have been able to get out relatively quickly to let others do the work of winning the peace.

And, of course, Thatcher was ousted as leader before the 1991 war. Had she stayed in power, she may have convinced George H.W. that taking over Iraq was a good thing, and not something he should go "wobbly" over.

Good to comment here - I'll visit again on a regular basis.

#1 One Salient Oversight (Link) on 2005-10-14 17:43 (Reply)

Thank you for your respectful comments.

I didn't make the point that Tina Brown must be a liar. Rather, the story should be treated with high skepticism because it is sorely lacking in journalistic integrity. The headline conveys as fact that Thatcher has turned on Bush. This is how dozens of exuberant bloggers on the left and dozens of depressed bloggers on the right have read the story. Two leftists transmitted orally a recollection of a private conversation from six months ago with the most consistently aggressive instigator of deposing Saddam as a nuclear threat and coincidentally come away hearing left-wing anti-war talking points?

Then the article implies that "silence is assent" because her office didn't deny on the spot the specific words of a private conversation? As I emphasized, her secretary strongly contradicted the main implication of the story--that she had turned 180 degrees on the war. Why did the article have to then be rushed into print? It was one day from the time Tina Brown published her column until the time when the Independent researched, wrote and published their story. I strongly doubt that there was time for Thatcher's secretary to contact an 80-year-old in ill health and return an answer to the reporter with her specific comments when she had withdrawn from public life long ago.

Clearly they were trying to tie the story to Thatcher's 80th birthday party. When I first saw the story, I automatically connected the story to the celebration and assumed she had denounced the war there.

Of course all of your speculative comments about Thatcher reversing her opinions based on subsequent research "may" be true. But that is not journalism. The only "facts" in that story say exactly the opposite.

This from a British press that ran hyperventilating front-page stories this week about another private conversation related by from notorious Palestinian liars that seemed to confirm the fantasies of the far-left of Bush as a religious fanatic. The reporters had not bothered to confirm the wild allegations with their alleged sources (PA President Abbas and PA official Nabil Sha'ath). Abbas and Bush immediately denied the claims after the stories were published. Ironically, the Abbas retraction story noted that Sha'ath was "unavailable for comment." It didn't say that either of them had confirmed the allegations when the story was being vetted. It is therefore reasonable to assume that journalistic integrity was abandoned in the face of a chance to embarrass Bush.

Many other examples can be brought of this pattern, notably Dan Rather's "October Surprise" documents and recent Nobel Peace Laureate ElBaradei's debunked "October Surprise" on the "missing Iraq weapons" (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13813&only).

#2 Barak (Link) on 2005-10-14 19:02 (Reply)

I don't understand why this matters so much. Baroness Thatcher is a half-crazed-with-dementia alcoholic old lady and has been for some time now. Not for nothing have her aides kept her (publicly) silent since 2002. Her opinion is as valid (or not) as your local Baglady's

#3 The Shab on 2005-10-15 01:49 (Reply)

Shab doesn't understand why it matters if the
Main Stream Media propagates a myth that
impugns the president of the United States.

Maybe Shab is the local baglady.

#3.1 George on 2005-10-15 08:00 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
In reply to
Comment	NOTE: Please list any URLs without the "http://" or your comment will be refused by our spam filter. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry