Why are they still free? Why are they still in power?

Perusing the Independent website before going to work the other day, I was excited by a story relating to information that had just been made public, concerning the invasion of Iraq. The story described how the tesimony of a diplomat, Carne Ross, to the Butler Inquiry Whitewash had been supressed, with the Foreign Office threatening him with the Official Sectrets Act if he made what he knew public. Now, it seemed, he had decided to speak out, regardless.

I didn't have time to follow it up then. All day at work, I was angry about it - HOW DARE THEY? - and imagine my shock when I returned home and discovered the article had vanished. Clearly, the Foreign Office had acted. This, unsurprisingly, made me even angrier. HOW DARE THEY? multiplied by HOW COULD WE LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT?

I checked other newspapers, but none were carrying the story. Clearly, it had been crushed by the Powers That Be and all copies of the Indepenedent, and any other newspaper imprudent enough to tell the truth to power in Brown's Britain were currently being shoved down the Memory Hole as quickly as possible.

I started googling key words to see if I could find it online. SUCCESS!! (1) The Iron Heel of the Oligarchs might have crushed the brave beetle of truth in Britain, but here in New Zealand, a little ant was willing to make sure the story wasn't lost. I swung into action. It was easy - I'd been rehearsing my post all day. Now that I'd discovered the article had been suppressed as well, I was even angrier.

It was a good post - a livid dennunciation of the abuse of power against the right of the citizens of a country to subject their leaders to necessary scrutiny. It might not have brought the British government down, but it was strong, heartfelt stuff. After all, Britain is my country.

Pedantry and passion vie for control of my soul. Having laid down my Hellfire tract, I had to list my sources diligently. This is what saved me. I always put footnotes at the end of my posts. This is partly because someone once told me that some browzers can't use embedded links, but is mostly because I think it it makes my posts look nice and authoritative. They are, probably, completely unnecessary, but this time they saved me from an embarrassing blunder.

Typing up the footnote for the Independent article that had caused all this furore, I spotted what I had missed before - the date on the article: 15th of December, 2006. I blinked. Looked again. Searched elsewhere. Found confirmation. It was all true. Some gremlin in the Independent website had caused an archived article to appear on the front page. Suddenly, the disappearance of the story was explained. I cursed the cruelty of fate, for playing this trick on me, wasting my eleoquence and anger. I deleted my post, and went back to reading Don Quixote - perhaps approopriate, given my own confusion of reality and fantasy.

Then today I realsied that even though the story was old, the anger I had felt wasn't misplaced at all. For the bastards who engineered the Iraq war are still there. Bush is still President for months. Brown, who could have halted everything with a quiet word in Tony's ear, connived with it all and is now Prime Minister. Blair himself is still at large, flattering his ego with the delusion he might manage to sort out the problems of the Middle East. If he is as successful with that mission, as he was with dealing with Britain's far less daunting problems, then the region won't know peace for five hundred years.

Each one, and many more, should have to account for what they did to Iraq, in the name of their countries and the people they (mis) lead. They should be extradited and forced to stand trial at the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague, alongside this vermin (2), who is their model in many ways.

1 - "Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war," by Colin Brown and Andy McSmith in the Independent, 15th of December, 2006. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/diplomats-suppressed-document-lays-bare-the-lies-behind-iraq-war-428545.html). The transcript of his testimony is available here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-full-transcript-of-evidence-given-to-the-butler-inquiry-428550.html
2 - "Radovan Karadzic arrives in The Hague after extradition from Serbia," by Alex Todorovic in the Daily Telegraph, 30th of July, 2008. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/serbia/2472876/Radovan-Karadzic-arrives-in-The-Hague-after-extradition-from-Serbia.html)