{"id":3846,"date":"2010-02-01T21:46:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T02:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3846"},"modified":"2010-02-02T12:39:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T17:39:08","slug":"unlikely-heros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/01\/unlikely-heros\/","title":{"rendered":"6. Iraq and the UN Security Council: unlikely heros&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<table width=\"95%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div><strong>he&middot;ro<\/strong> [Greek&nbsp;\u00e1\u00bc\u00a5&rho;&omega;&sigmaf;, h\u00e1\u00b8\u2014r\u00c5\u008ds]<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">A hero in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. Later, hero [male] and heroine [female] came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice for some greater good, originally of martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p align=\"justify\">I&#8217;ve been obviously obsessed with the UK Chilcot Inquiry and how it informs our understanding of the Iraq War. I think I&#8217;ve come to the end of the period because what&#8217;s coming is about what happened after the war started &#8211; which is of less compelling interest to me. In these last five posts, I&#8217;ve tried to put closure for myself on this dark piece of our history &#8211; not closure on the war, but on how we came to be in it. There is one more thing I wanted to add &#8211; the heros along the way. Earlier, I&#8217;d mentioned two &#8211; <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Richard Clarke<\/font><\/strong>, the US counterterrorism czar who did his level best to warn the Bush Administration of the coming al Qaeda attack and <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Joseph Wilson<\/font><\/strong> [and his wife <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Valerie Plame<\/font><\/strong>] who said the truth &#8211; that the Iraq prewar intelligence had been distorted to force us into war. As a result, both Richard Clarke and Valerie Plame had their careers prematurely interrupted. I was reminded by D.C. of another, <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Dr. David Kelly<\/font><\/strong>, who had also said the intelligence was &quot;sexed-up&quot; in the UK, and ultimately lost his life [suicide on the record, more likely murder]. Their stories&nbsp; have been duly noted in these pages.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">I&#8217;d like to add two more women from England to the list &#8211; <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Katherine Gun<\/font><\/strong> and <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Elizabeth Wilmshurst<\/font><\/strong>. The latter has been on our radar since her testimony at the Chilcot Inquiry last week. Ms. Wilmshurst was a lawyer in the British Foreign Office who gave up an almost thirty year long career to resign over the Attorney General&#8217;s decision that the Iraq War was legal.<\/p>\n<table width=\"95%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"justify\"><sup><strong>1. <\/strong> I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution to revive the authorisation given in SCR 678. I do not need to set out my reasoning; you are aware of it. My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UN security council resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March. [The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.] I cannot in conscience go along with advice &#8211; within the Office or to the public or Parliament &#8211; which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law. <br \/>                 <strong>2. <\/strong> I therefore need to leave the Office: my views on the legitimacy of the action in Iraq would not make it possible for me to continue my role as a Deputy Legal Adviser or my work more generally. For example in the context of the International Criminal Court, negotiations on the crime of aggression begin again this year. I am therefore discussing with Alan Charlton whether I may take approved early retirement. In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation.<br \/>                 <strong>3.<\/strong>  I joined the Office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.<\/sup><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p align=\"justify\">There is another, actually the first one to go public. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Katharine_Gun\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Katherine Gun<\/font><\/strong><\/a> was a translator who worked for <strong>Government Communications Headquarters<\/strong> [GCHQ], a British intelligence agency. On January 31, 2003, she received this email that we [the US] were bugging the offices of UN Security Council members to find out how they were going to vote:<\/p>\n<table width=\"95%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>To<\/strong>: [Recipients withheld]<br \/>              <strong>From<\/strong>: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV\/NSA<br \/>             <strong>Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16<\/strong> <br \/>             <strong>Subject<\/strong>: Reflections of Iraq Debate\/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions<br \/>              <strong>Importance<\/strong>: HIGH<br \/>              Top Secret\/\/COMINT\/\/X1            <\/div>\n<p><sup>All,<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>As you&#8217;ve likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies\/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances\/ dependencies, etc &#8211; the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive\/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters.<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>We&#8217;ve also asked ALL RT topi&#8217;s to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations\/ debates\/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives\/ insights\/ whatever. We recognize that we can&#8217;t afford to ignore this possible source.<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>We&#8217;d appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you&#8217;ll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels &#8211; especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState&#8217;s presentation to the UNSC.<\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>Thanks for your help<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p align=\"justify\">Katherine leaked the Memo to <strong>The Guardian<\/strong>. Here&#8217;s their expose`:        <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2003\/mar\/02\/usa.iraq\"><strong>Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war<\/strong><\/a><br \/>      <sup>Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members<\/sup><br \/>         <strong>the Observer<\/strong><br \/>        by Martin Bright and Ed Vulliamy in New York and Peter Beaumont<br \/>        2 March 2003<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>The United States is conducting a secret &#8216;dirty tricks&#8217; campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq. Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency &#8211; the US body which intercepts communications around the world &#8211; and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input. The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations &#8216;particularly directed at&#8230; UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)&#8217; to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York &#8211; the so-called &#8216;Middle Six&#8217; delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia. The memo is directed at senior NSA officials and advises them that the agency is &#8216;mounting a surge&#8217; aimed at gleaning information not only on how delegations on the Security Council will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also &#8216;policies&#8217;, &#8216;negotiating positions&#8217;, &#8216;alliances&#8217; and &#8216;dependencies&#8217; &#8211; the &#8216;whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises&#8217;&#8230;<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>Suggesting the levels of surveillance of both the office and home phones of UN delegation members, Koza also asks regional managers to make sure that their staff also &#8216;pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms [office and home telephones] for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations&#8217;. Koza also addresses himself to the foreign agency, saying: &#8216;We&#8217;d appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar more indirect access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines [ie, intelligence sources].&#8217; Koza makes clear it is an informal request at this juncture, but adds: &#8216;I suspect that you&#8217;ll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels.&#8217; Disclosure of the US operation comes in the week that Blix will make what many expect to be his final report to the Security Council. It also comes amid increasingly threatening noises from the US towards undecided countries on the Security Council who have been warned of the unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the US&#8230;<\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>The existence of the surveillance operation, understood to have been requested by President Bush&#8217;s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is deeply embarrassing to the Americans in the middle of their efforts to win over the undecided delegations&#8230;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">In <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1441\" target=\"_blank\">the following days<\/a><\/strong>:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>Blix&#8217;s <strong><font color=\"#200020\">March 7<\/font><\/strong> report stated &quot;Iraq, with a highly developed administrative system, should be able to provide more documentary evidence about its proscribed weapons programmes. Only a few new such documents have come to light so far and been handed over since we began inspections.&quot; At this point, the US Administration asserted that Iraq remained in material breach of the UN Resolutions, and that, under 1441, this meant the Security Council had to convene immediately &quot;in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security&quot;.<\/sup><\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>Before the meeting took place, French president Jacques Chirac declared on <strong><font color=\"#200020\">March 10<\/font><\/strong> that France would veto any resolution which would automatically lead to war. This caused open displays of dismay by the U.S. and British governments. The drive by Britain for unanimity and a &quot;second resolution&quot; was effectively abandoned at that point. In the leadup to the meeting, it became apparent that a majority of UNSC members would oppose any resolution leading to war. As a result, no such resolution was put to the Council.<\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>At the Azores conference of <strong><font color=\"#200020\">March 16<\/font><\/strong>, Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Spanish prime minister Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Mar\u00c3\u00ada Aznar announced the imminent deadline of <strong><font color=\"#200020\">March 17<\/font><\/strong> for complete Iraqi compliance, with statements such as &quot;Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world&quot;. On the 17th, speeches by Bush and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw explicitly declared the period of diplomacy to be over, as declared by Resolution 1441&#8217;s prohibition on giving Iraq new opportunities for compliance, and that no further authorization from the UN would be sought before an invasion of Iraq.<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Katherine Gun readily admitted leaking the memo. The case became a cause celebre` for a time, but was then abruptly dropped when it came to trial. To my mind, Katherine was the biggest hero of all. She lost her job and faced prison if the UK had pursued the case. Moreover, the Memo debunks the whole US\/UK contention that the second UN resolution didn&#8217;t matter. If it didn&#8217;t matter, why in the hell did they go to the trouble to bug the UN to try to influence the vote?<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"92\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t1.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:N74xUUZHdC81hM:http:\/\/yearofdemocracy.co.uk\/guests\/katharinegun.jpg\" alt=\"Katherine Gun\" title=\"Katherine Gun\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chathamhouse.org.uk\/files\/15395_elizabeth_wilmshurst65x85.jpg\" alt=\"Elizabeth Wilmshurst\" title=\"Elizabeth Wilmshurst\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t1.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:-nTt4JqtXrXSjM:http:\/\/www.alien-earth.org\/news\/images\/davidkelly.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. David Kelly\" title=\"Dr. David Kelly\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t2.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:7g5K3VwHjGF1tM:http:\/\/msnbcmedia3.msn.com\/j\/msnbc\/Components\/Video\/040325\/tdy_nod_clarke_040325.vsmall.jpg\" alt=\"Richard Clarke\" title=\"Richard Clarke\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:PVuMk2OZeICr0M:http:\/\/www.infoimagination.org\/politics\/features\/niger\/wilson.jpg\" alt=\"Joseph Wilson\" title=\"Joseph Wilson\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"2\" height=\"70\" border=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:8MtH3-xykEjKLM:http:\/\/www.antemedius.com\/files\/images\/M1_062309J_story.jpg\" alt=\"Valerie Plame\" title=\"Valerie Plame\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">the unlikely heros<\/font><\/strong>   <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">They all lost something important to them in order to stand with the truth &#8211; their jobs, their careers, and in the case of Dr. Kelly, his life. We are the richer for their efforts. There should&#8217;ve been more of them&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>he&middot;ro [Greek&nbsp;\u00e1\u00bc\u00a5&rho;&omega;&sigmaf;, h\u00e1\u00b8\u2014r\u00c5\u008ds] A hero in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. Later, hero [male] and heroine [female] came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}