Greg Sheridan: Conjurer Extraordinaire

"The Western tradition of the just war is dominated by two fundamental thoughts. Wars have to be the last resort. They can only be waged in a clear-cut case of self-defence. During 2002, after the terrorist outrage of 9/11, George W Bush's administration claimed the right to fight what was effectively a preventive war. As Iraq had committed no act of aggression since 1990, to many of those schooled in the Western tradition of the just war what the Americans and their ally, the British, were proposing to do looked like an act of unprovoked aggression, the most serious of all international crimes. A war of this kind, without the sanction of the United nations, was always going to be difficult for John Howard's government to sell. Its task was made much easier than it might otherwise have been by the conspicuous support offered by the Murdoch press. From a mountain of potential evidence, three significant and concerted contributions stand out - the pre-invasion commentaries of The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan and the Herald Sun's opinion columnist Andrew Bolt, and the post-invasion editorials of The Australian." Murdoch's War, Robert Manne, The Monthly, July 2005

Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan again. The man's magic!

In one and the same propaganda piece (Saddam, the terrorist's friend, The Australian 22/3/08) he manages to spin something out of nothing and nothing out of something! How does he do it?

Spinning Something Out of Nothing:

"This study," Greg says of Saddam and Terrorism, the US Institute for Defence Analyses summary of 600,000 captured Saddam-era documents (See my last post), "found no smoking gun (that is, a direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qa'ida." But then, he continues, the report does refer to "Iraqi support for terrorist organizations that include numerous groups the report identifies as 'part of al-Qa'ida'." You see, he explains, when the report says it's found no smoking gun linking Saddam and al-Qa'ida, it "presumably refers only to Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida central itself." Damn, it's such a dashed "restrictive and precise view of al-Qa'ida," he wails.

"But in any event this report is not claiming...that there was no link with al-Qa'ida, merely that it found no absolute smoking gun in the translated documents." In fact, he concludes, "It is reasonable to assume the most sensitive stuff in a paranoid state such as Saddam's was not written down."

Just as for Donald Rumsfeld there were "known knowns" and "known unknowns," for magic Greg there's "al-Qa'ida central" and your common and garden al-Qa'ida, your "absolute smoking gun" and your common and garden smoking gun.

Spinning Nothing Out of Something:

Reporting the words of yet another of those awesome Israeli visitors to these shores, cabinet minister Isaac Herzog, Greg writes, "He repeats that the Israeli government took no formal position on the operation against Saddam's regime 5 years ago, but notes that Saddam was an enemy of Israel..." Put another way, there's no absolute smoking gun linking Israel with the US rape of Iraq.

But what does the public record say?

"On August 12 2002, Sharon told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset that Iraq 'is the greatest danger facing Israel'. Then, on August 16, ten days before Vice President Cheney kicked off the campaign for war...several newspapers and television and radio networks...reported that Israel was urging the US not to delay an attack on Iraq. Sharon told the Bush administration that postponing the operation 'will not create a more convenient environment for action in the future'. Putting off an attack, Ra'anan Gissen [Sharon's spokesman] said, would 'only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction'. Foreign Minister Peres told CNN that 'the problem today is not if, but when'. Postponing an attack would be a grave mistake, he said, because Saddam would be better armed down the road. Deputy Defense Minister Weizman Shiry offered a similar view, warning, 'If the Americans do not do this now, it will be harder to do it in the future. In a year or two, Saddam Hussein will be further along in developing weapons of mass destruction'. Perhaps CBS best captured what was going on in the headline for its story: 'Israel to US: Don't Delay Iraq Attack'. " The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer & Walt, 2007, pp 234-235

Add Israel's dissemination of dodgy intelligence, opposition to weapons inspections and demonization of Saddam, throw in pro-war statements by other Israeli public figures, the machinations of pro-Israel American neocons and a pro-war push by the Israel lobby, and hey, if it looks like an absolute smoking gun and smokes like an absolute smoking gun, then it probably is an absolute smoking gun.

You've got to hand it to Greg, he can do what you or I can't. He can see absolute smoking guns when there are none, and none where there are.