The Telegraph’s exclusive report last Friday of a batch of leaked documents from the Foreign Office and Cabinet office told us little that was new other than the lengths to which the British diplomatic establishment is now going to cover its own ineptitude by pointing fingers at the violence in Iraq and saying ‘I told you so’. The fact that the Foreign Office said that it thought the war was illegal demonstrates little other than the intellectual deficiencies of that part of Whitehall. (In any event, these documents preceded UN resolution 1441, which was a key component of the war’s legality — a fact which was unaccountably omitted from the Telegraph’s somewhat confusingly written report). Its advice — that whatever came after Saddam would be no better, that even if it was better it wouldn’t last, that even if it lasted it would revert to being as great a threat and that anyway the whole thing would be messy and violent and take until kingdom come to sort out, was a classic example of the British establishment at its most negative and defeatist. Its bottom line was quite simply that whatever Saddam was up to, he should be left there to do it.

One does wonder why on earth we have a Foreign Office, when it is so patently an office on behalf of foreigners and against the interests of this country.

Posted by melanie at September 20, 2004