Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey: Iraqgate now

The main issue is the question of right winning the day over wrong
The suffix-gate has been used, not only in the USA, to classify an action by a government, official or administration which was dishonest and wrong from an ethical point of view. Irangate followed Watergate and now we have Iraqgate.

Iraqgate may go down in history as the greatest justice or injustice that has ever been committed by mankind, depending on whether the investigation is allowed to proceed. Iraqgate is all about telling the truth, ensuring that right is seen to win the day over wrong, testing the mechanisms which constitute the framework of international law and making sure they are functioning, laying the foundations for a management of crises based on diplomacy, discussion and dialogue - the fundamental principles of democracy- and not bullying, blackmail and belligerence, the ingredients for demagogy.

Iraqgate is not about the removal of an undemocratic regime (how many governments in that part of the world were elected by their people?) or about the fall of a tyrannical figure (Mugabe?).

Iraqgate is about an unjustified and unjustifiable, illegal act of violence against a sovereign nation, outside the auspices of the existing forum of law, an act in which many thousands of civilians were slaughtered. Iraqgate is about cooking the facts to present a causus belli when none existed.
Iraqgate is about the governments of the USA, UK, Portugal, Spain, Poland and Australia, lying to their institutions, to their people, quoting falsities as fact, presenting forgeries and hearsay as evidence, or supporting those who did so, their leaders showing qualities as fishwives, not statesmen.
Iraqgate is about the manifest disregard for the proper channels of international law and diplomacy by the perpetrators of this act of evil, these war crimes, this alarm signal which heralds the turning point between real freedom and democracy and the first signs of a renaissance of fascism on a global scale.

Iraqgate is about the worst kind of betrayal and derision shown to the United Nations Organization, whose Secretary-General Kofi Annan won the Nobel peace prize last year and who did not deserve such an unveiled and uncalled-for slap in the face.

Iraqgate is about the forgery of documents to present a case to the International Atomic Energy Agency (over the yellowcake uranium supposedly supplied to Baghdad), the presentation of hastily and rashly gathered documents (some pasted from the Internet and 12 years out of date) as proof that Iraq was in material breach of UN Resolutions on WMD development.
Iraqgate is about deliberately and systematically lying to the United Nations Organization, flouting the terms of international law and scorning the norms of diplomacy. Such behaviour, exacerbated by the fact that the only mass destruction caused was by the coalition forces, in which so many innocent lives were lost, goes against the grain of world opinion.
Like Hitler, Pol Pot, Bokassa, Suharto, among others, Bush, Blair and their sickening troupe of sycophants have committed an outrage against civilisation. History stands ready to judge not only them, but mankind, to see whether there is the courage to launch Iraqgate, or to conveniently forget that the first stages towards a totalitarian state on a world scale have already been set in motion.
In the name of what is right, in the name of reason, in the name of the values for which mankind has striven so hard, suffered so long and sacrificed so much, it would be unjust if we did not demand Iraqgate, now.