BEING PRO-WAR MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY ‘SORRY’

Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president, US Deputy Defense Secretary and Iraq war architect, has been appointed to head a high-level advisory panel to the State Department on arms control and disarmament.

Is this some sort of bad joke?

I have blogged before on how out of touch with reality the Bush administration is but to task the man who helped launch a fraudulent war against Iraq to disarm it of non-existent weapons of mass destruction with the job of giving ‘high-level’ advice on how to now disarm the rest of the world’s weapons of mass destruction is a new and improved form of madness and illogic. (To quote arms-control specialist Joseph Cirincione: “The advice given by Paul Wolfowitz over the past six years ranks among the worst provided by any defense official in history. I have no idea why anyone would want more.”

It also reminds us of how the chief architects and supporters of the Iraq war, on both sides of the Atlantic, have basically carried on with their lives and their careers, continuing to prosper and polemicize while refusing to offer even the mildest or gentlest of apologies.

Wolfowitz left the Pentagon in 2005 under the cloud of Iraq, yet managed to land the prestigious post of World Bank President. He then left the World Bank in 2007 under another cloud (this time related to his authorisation of a large compensation package for his girlfriend) and yet now he is invited to offer official advice on defence policy to the very same US administration he left behind in ignominy.

Has he since apologized for all the grandiose (and inaccurate) claims he made in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Not in the slightest. Yet he is the man who argued, before the war, “Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction, and he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them or provide them to a terror network.” He is the man who testified, before the war, “We're dealing with a country [Iraq] that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He is the man who said, before the war “Some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.” He is the man who predicted, before the war, that it was “reasonably certain that they [the Iraqis] will greet us as liberators.” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Then there is Wolfowitz’s close pal and neoconservative ally, William Kristol, the editor of the Murdoch-owned, Bush-supporting Weekly Standard. Kristol penned this prophesy (!) on the eve of the war, in 2003:

“…the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.”

Is it even possible to be more wrong? Every word is fraudulent, inaccurate and diametrically opposed to the truth.

Was Kristol sacked from his post as editor of the Weekly Standard, in the wake of Iraq? Of course not. Has Fox News sacked him as one of their leading on-air political pundits? Nope. On the contrary, the supposedly liberal and left-of-centre New York Times recently hired him as a new ‘star’ columnist. So much for accountability. So much for an apology.

On this side of the Atlantic, all of the overpaid, overrated columnists and correspondents in the press who hyped the threat from Iraq and pushed us towards war in 2003 are still in their jobs, still pontificating on the Middle East and on issues of war and peace. None – bar the Independent’s Johann Hari and the Observer’s David Rose – has offered an apology for their role in propelling us into an illegal, bloody and disastrous invasion and occupation.

And then there’s our former Prime Minister. Like Bush in 2004, Blair too was maddeningly re-elected in 2005 despite the carnage in Iraq and the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction. He left office without being defeated in an election or deposed by his party, and now blissfully and arrogantly wanders the killing fields he helped create in the Middle East as an alleged 'peace envoy'. Oh, and don’t forget: while Iraq burns and its children grow increasingly malnourished, Mr Blair gives $500,000 speeches and accepts $1 million-a-year consultancies from international banks.

As I said, being pro-war means never having to say ‘sorry’. It means never having to worry about your job, your career, or your self-respect. There is no accountability. There are no consequences. And these people, basically, have no shame.