December 4, 2007
Truth and Competence
When then Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN that Saddam Hussain had chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, I believed him. When he said that US and UK intelligence had incontrovertible evidence that Saddam Hussain had an active programme to create nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to targets I cared about, I believed him. When then Prime Minister Tony Blair went beyond even what Powell had asserted and told us that Saddam’s chemical weapons could be activated within 45 minutes, I believed him also.
We now know that none of this was true. What is unclear is whether Powell and Blair were lying or relying on bad intelligence - or both.
This morning, I read in the papers that US intelligence has, in the words of the Financial Times, "downgraded its assessment of the risks posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions with a surprise declaration that the country, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad …, halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and may not have restarted it".
If this is true, I should be relieved. Ahmedi-Nejad is a religious fanatic with strong Millenarian tendencies, who is waiting for the return of the hidden Imam. He is confronted by George W. Bush, a religious fanatic with strong Millenarian tendencies, who is waiting for the return of Jesus Christ. That’s the kind of configuration likely to expedite the end of the world. News that Iran has taken its foot off the nuclear accelerator would would be welcome indeed.
But can we believe it? I have reached the point that, when an official spokesman in the US or the UK makes an assertion about a fact or issue that I cannot verify directly myself, I really only consider two possibilities: (1) (s)he is lying; (2) (s)he doesn’t know what (s)he is talking about. The possibility that the authorities could be both truthful and competent is barely worth considering.
Truth telling has become a tactical option in political life. You do it when it is convenient - when it serves your purpose, rather than because it is the right and self-evident thing to do. Competence is no longer expected of our political leaders and hardly hoped for. The moral, political and economic cost of this erosion of trust and social capital will be with us for a long time, unless of course either the hidden Imam or Jesus Christ make an unexpected (by me) early return.
Stewards of public assets tend to be reticent. Hence checks and balances, such as audit and the Freedom of Information Act.
In fact it was this legislation that the FT had to use in order to prise information from the Treasury about the Black Wednesday financial debacle. As a result we learned that our stewards spent £27 billion. Policy? But no answers were given to quell suspicions about the huge loss to the public purse. A full investigation of the 1992 incident has apparently still to take place.
Posted by: Slightly Optimistic | December 4th, 2007 at 4:43 pm | Report this commentPossibly the Americans, after committing a type I error (false positive) over Iraq, are now committing a type II error (false negative) over Iran. The FT characterises the latest report as the most ‘nuanced’ to date. That is bad. Intelligence reports are not supposed to be ‘nuanced’ — that is best left to philosophers.
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | December 4th, 2007 at 6:26 pm | Report this commentInteresting that you underwent a kind of religious conversion some time since 2003: from believing everything to believing nothing.
Posted by: JonA | December 4th, 2007 at 6:29 pm | Report this commentI would like to pose a question: If the Iranians suspended their weaponisation programme in 2003, as is claimed in the report, why did they not come clean as Libya did? If you are not to believed, you might as well go on with it.
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | December 5th, 2007 at 6:33 am | Report this commentFinancial regulation has failed, say the European Commission and key EU finance ministers . . . chiefly because the supervisors are answerable to national politics. A “single rule book that will be enforced uniformly all over the EU” is called for, which is said to be a warning to Britain.
See above. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/12/04/cneu104.xml
Posted by: Slightly Optimistic | December 5th, 2007 at 9:47 am | Report this commentMy previous post seems to have been too terse, so I’ll expand on it:
Why would they halt the program but keep bluffing? The report claims that they suspended weaponisation in reaction to the threat of sanctions or military attack. But what is that worth, if you don’t let it be known? You might be erroneously attacked anyway! This is not fiction — we saw it happen to Saddam Hussein.
Either they suspend weaponisation because of the risks and signal they had done so, or they continue development because they view this as a net asset: if you’re going to take on the risks, you might as well get the bomb! Any other possibility would be truly irrational, contradicting another assertion in the report — that they act rationally.
(Therefore the report is inconsistent. QED)
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | December 5th, 2007 at 10:46 am | Report this commentIt seems that a single rule book for audit in the EU is on its way (see above). The ECOFIN council met yesterday and agreed that the audit of finances within the EU should be effective.
However Britain is said to oppose effective audit, arguing that adequate safeguards are in place here. The OECD, Transparency International, and many countries disagree.
Posted by: Slightly Optimistic | December 5th, 2007 at 4:45 pm | Report this comment