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4-02-2004 The Scotsman Analysis:Electoral timing is what really matters, on both sides of the Atlantic By Gethin Chamberlain TONY Blair must be cursing the timing of the US elections. George Bush knows his investigation into the role of the intelligence services in the run-up to war will not report until after his election campaign. If, by that time, he has secured a new mandate, it should be enough to carry him through. If not, he can expect a couple of awkward weeks before his successor takes the traditional route and pardons him. But Tony Blair does not have the same luxury. While his inquiry reports in July, Mr Bush's inquiry is likely to crash into the next general election campaign. Cut adrift by the president he supported so wholeheartedly, Mr Blair cannot afford to take risks. He needs his inquiry to report first, before the Americans start pointing the finger of blame across the Atlantic. What he really needs is an inquiry chairman who can be relied upon not to waver from the narrowly defined terms of his investigations. Mr Blair obviously believes that, in Lord Butler of Brockwell, he has found his man. The Conservatives clearly believe that Lord Butler can be relied upon to nibble away at the boundaries of his remit until he has exposed the inner workings of the political thinking that led to war. The Lib Dems and the SNP are not so sure. They suspect that, as with Hutton, the government has drawn the boundaries so tightly that it can weather the fallout without suffering any mortal blows. "This is an Establishment committee, set up to clear the Establishment, with the restricted remit needed to do that job," Alex Salmond complained yesterday. At least, unlike the Hutton report, Lord Butler's inquiry should not keep the media and the political establishment on the edges of their seats until it reports. There can be little doubt, even now, about what it will conclude: that intelligence information from Iraq was extraordinarily hard to come by because Saddam Hussein's regime was, by its very nature, secretive and, with nothing to compare it against, what little could be gleaned was accepted and passed on. Human error played its part, mingled with a degree of manipulation by parties with interests in an invasion of Iraq. But the inquiry will also conclude that those in government took that information at face value and in good faith. There will be recommendations about future handling of such information, but no heads will roll. The Americans, in contrast, should be in a position to stage a more wide-ranging inquiry. There are already grumblings in Congress and the Senate about the intelligence failures, and the timing of the inquiry conclusion holds less potential pitfalls for Mr Bush. And yet it is clear the US investigation will also be constrained by political considerations. The Democrats have already complained that the US commission will be han-picked by Mr Bush. But the White House has good reason to be cautious in how far it allows its investigation to roam. The president will be well aware of the embarrassment caused to his father when the intelligence claims that formed the basis for the first Gulf war began to unravel, and how doubts were later cast on the existence of classified satellite photographs purporting to show Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi border. So the White House appears to be taking no chances. And those who shouted "whitewash" so loudly when Lord Hutton published his report may yet have cause to wonder whether they would have been better keeping their powder dry.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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