Downing Street Says » Iraq/War on Terror

Asked about the suggestion that the Prime Minister agreed in principle to a war on Iraq just after September 11th the PMOS said he had nothing new to add, but of course Iraq was an issue that as you would expect it came up in conversations not just with President Bush but also with his predecessor. But equally it had been made clear, and it was the government’s position the whole way through that if possible we had wanted to resolve the issue through the UN. As the Prime Minister had said at the time in his Sedgefield Press Conference, the UN was the way to deal with the issue, but equally it was not the way to avoid it. If possible we would have preferred to have dealt with it through the UN, but in the end that had not been possible. In response to further questioning the PMOS politely declined to offer any further commentary on specific allegations.

Asked if the Prime Minister was still confident in the 30 June deadline for transfer the PMOS reiterated that there was no change in the Government’s determination to meet the deadline and the important thing to recognise was that it was a very small minority within the Shia community that was carrying out these actions. The leaders of the Shia community had condemned the violence and the challenge to law and order. This was taken seriously and in case the perception was that Basra was in flames this was not true, Basra was calm this morning and UK troops were working in support of Governor and Iraqi police as they responded to the situation.

Asked if the Prime Minister had any message for the Spanish Government following the weekend’s dramatic events in Madrid, the PMOS said that what the weekend events had underlined in bold was the nature of the threat faced and that was why co-operation within and between countries was vital.

16 Comments »

I did wonder why the US had decided to stir up trouble in Iraq this week. Surely they would have realised that shooting peaceful unarmed demonstrators, closing down a newspaper, suddenly arresting a prominent figure for an alleged crime that occurred over a year ago and sending helicopter gun ships to attack a highly sensitive residential area was bound to cause trouble. This is also clearly the US troops stirring it up because in Basra, where the British patrol, this same group of shia radicals has staged a peaceful sit down protest in the Governors mansion. Then I remembered that this week Ms Rice gives her testimony before the investigation into the September 11th attacks.

Now this sounds far too much like a conspiracy theory for my liking but I couldn\x92t help thinking how convenient it all is to have the US press diverted to Iraq instead of what\x92s going on in their own capital.
Comment by Uncarved Block — 5 Apr 2004 on 8:45 pm | Link
Steady on, UB, you’re starting to sound like me (and a few, slightly more constrained, voices of ex-Whitehouse employees). I like the way you noticed the tendency to pigeon-hole yourself, but then realised that SOMETHING must be up. Still, ’tis but the tip of the tip of that iceberg known as the War on Terra.

But seeing as you’ve gone this far, why not surmise what you can from this little gem…

<a href="http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=52&mode=&order=0&thold=0">http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&fil…</a>

And this one requires more patience and scrutiny, but is at least thought-provoking, if not ultimately dismissable… we shall see, I guess.

<a href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/040104Trueblood/040104trueblood.html">http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/040104True…</a>

So many others, my friend. 2GB of research in 18 months and counting…!

And one for luck:
<a href="http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview.php?key=1916">http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview…</a>

Whatever you do, keep smiling. 😉
Comment by HH — 5 Apr 2004 on 9:19 pm | Link
Eh-up, the site truncated the links; try again…

<a href="http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=52&mode=&order=0&thold=0">http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&fil…</a>

<a href="http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/040104Trueblood/040104trueblood.html">http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/040104True…</a>

<a href="http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview.php?key=1916">http://www.nomorefakenews.com/archives/archiveview…</a>
Comment by HH — 5 Apr 2004 on 9:24 pm | Link
Mmmm, last go. Knit these bits together.

"http://www.tomflocco.com/modules.php?"
& "name=News&file=article&sid=52"
& "&mode=&order=0&thold=0"

"http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary"
& "/040104Trueblood/040104trueblood.html"

"http://www.nomorefakenews.com/"
& "archives/archiveview.php?key=1916"
Comment by HH — 5 Apr 2004 on 9:31 pm | Link
Don’t forget, you can use http://www.tinyurl.com to create URLs that are, er, tiny from big hulking long ones.
Comment by Marek Ostrowski — 6 Apr 2004 on 11:25 pm | Link
(Sorry about the cock-up with the URLs. I was trying to make Movable Type — our blog software — shorten URLs, but I messed it up. I’ve reverted the change now.)
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 6 Apr 2004 on 11:59 pm | Link
Off the topic, but – does anyone think this "Foiled Bomb Plot" is a bit suspect and vague?

The target was "probably" London, the group were/are "thought to be sympathetic to the aims" of Al-Quaida. But it definately "vindicates terror laws".
Comment by Lodjer — 7 Apr 2004 on 12:21 pm | Link
We don’t know who these plotters are. We don’t know what their plan was. We don’t know how they would have got hold of the chemicals they’re are alleged to have been thinking about using. We don’t know how this plot was foiled. And the security services are declining to comment.

The only thing that seems to be clear is that David Blunkett wants us all to be scared and to support his infringements of our freedoms.

Surely trying to achieve political ends through use of fear is called terrorism. So as part of the ‘war on terror’ Tony Blair should imprison David Blunkett and the unnamed US officials who started this scare mongering in the first place.
Comment by Uncarved Block — 7 Apr 2004 on 12:48 pm | Link
It does have a bit of the "Sunday Times Exclusive" to it, doesn’t it? I’m surprised the BBC picked it up, and it was interesting that the Guardian reported that the group had actually planted a device.

Osmium tetraoxide would be a strange substance to use in a bomb; it is readily available, but only in quite small quantities (see, e.g.,
http://www.bdh.com/show_Module.asp?Product_ID=294225T
or other chemical supply websites). Odder and odder.
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 7 Apr 2004 on 12:54 pm | Link
I agree – I’ve been searching for info on just who what where ….

This substance is easy to clean up – and has side effects like Chlorine. I can think of much better ingredients to cause havoc.

The osmium tetraoxide would have had to be used with some dispersing agent – like explosive (or a chemically inert carrier) and would only be useful in a confined space.

and oh what a surprise –

David B has just announced more news on ID cards – he says in a radio report that whilst it IS possible to forge a card ‘once’ it is not possible to do it twice because the information is held on a database.
Fat lot he knows about databases then 😉
Less than he knows about card cloneing
Comment by Roger Huffadine — 7 Apr 2004 on 1:25 pm | Link
Ah yes. This is (I guess) the claim that biometric information will stop people from getting several cards on the same set of fingerprints. Nice idea, but it turns out to be wrong, because the error rates are too high for this to work. I wrote about this here:
http://ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20040405-is_all_hope_now_lost.html
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 7 Apr 2004 on 1:35 pm | Link
Lodjer’s suspicions can only be heightened by the fact that details of this alleged plot were first revealed yesterday by ABC News, rather than in the UK media.

Might it thus conveniently provide a re-election friendly ‘war on terror’ pretext for next week’s Blair/Bush emergency discussions in the US, instead of what would otherwise inevitably be dubbed ‘Bush and Blair in Iraq crisis talks’?
Comment by Patrick Haseldine — 7 Apr 2004 on 1:43 pm | Link
Chris, We have not been told how the planned system is supposed to work. If the ID cards incorporated a variety of identification tests, for example, photographs, fingerprints, iris scans, personal data known ‘only’ to the holder plus a pin number then the chances of false negatives/positives on ALL the tests would, surely, be very small indeed?

The question as to how one legitimises applicants who already have some form of false ID is much more interesting.
Comment by nigel — 8 Apr 2004 on 11:03 am | Link
What happens if I pass 4/5 tests? Am I the right person? And if 3/5? What if I pass 1/5, but the one I’ve passed is the most expensive one? How do you decide? The answer to that question will determine what false accept and false reject rates you obtain. Obviously there is a trade-off, and if you are wise in your choice of technologies the error rates should be independent (meaning that probabilities can be multiplied) but this will make the card a lot more cumbersome to use.

Another problem is that adding more than one type of biometric will make the card more expensive. And in some application profiles it might not be affordable to check all the different biometrics. The discussion I’ve seen so far indicates that the card will have a single type of biometric on it (which might even be "face recognition", which has hilariously bad failure rates of 20% or so).

Since you have to legitimise the whole population, there’s absolutely no way to avoid giving out ID cards for false IDs. It just can’t be done.
Comment by Chris Lightfoot — 8 Apr 2004 on 2:28 pm | Link
Gotta say Chris, I agree completely. It would be utterly impossible to legitimise every ID card unless you could verify the ID of every member of the population. The only way to do that would be a complete individual census carried out, with someone having to physically visit every single person in the country to verify everyone is who they say they are, living where they’re supposed to be in the first place, etc etc. But again, it would be utterly impossible to do, for many reasons, – and even if that census were possible, just HOW exactly DO you verify someone is who they say they are? It is simple to obtain a complete new identity, there are many ways to do it – I myself know of at least half a dozen completely different methods; how do you achieve even a very rough baseline from which to start?!?!
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 8 Apr 2004 on 9:10 pm | Link
Let’s hope there will be no more mistake as Iraq war in the future. Only in Africa – a whole nation could be led an owned by just one idiot
<a href="http://www.skillipedia.com">http://www.skillipedia.com</a>
Comment by recruiter — 14 Nov 2006 on 1:25 pm | Link

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Iraq/War on Terror

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