The Hounds Of Hell

PROLOGUE

Dark outside. Powercut wiped-out London. Much talk of 'chaos' and ‘terror’. There is fear in the air but it's about more than a disrupted tube-ride.

Just lights from the passing cars. Rain falling, the sounds it makes under tyres on wet roads. The sky is beautiful. Heavy deep grey clouds.

But everywhere, unease. It’s not the electricity thing. The bad feelings run deeper than that.
I´m stuck in the office, with little hope of getting out soon. Power cut means a long time before the tube runs. Busses too busy to even think of. Too much time to think. I could be here for the night.
The best thing about being in The Central Office is that there is Power. Electricity. Must ensure the news can get out, no matter what happens in this city.

This bunker is as close to the centre of the world and immoral immortality as a mortal fool will ever get.
The lights are on, so are both TVs. I flip between Sky, C4, BBC24, CNN. Seeing what´s up, what everyone made of the day. Of Blair. To find out why there is no such thing as paranoia.

HOUNDS OF HELL

I´ve decided no shit will stick. Not to Blair anyway, not in the obvious sense of the term. Maybe just a smell in the air to follow him around. Something left on his shoes and clothes, but not his skin, not in his teeth.

There is no way to blame him for Kelly´s death. That was Kelly´s responsibility, I´m almost certain of that. Naming him had nothing to do with it: the Press would have hunted him down like a lame animal regardless. But that´s not the point.
The government DIDN’T have to make him public. Blair wanted to because he thought it would get him off the rusting knife he is impaled on. They figured, made public, Kelly would deny the comments he DID make on the faked-up threat. But even that is just side-salad, incidental to the nut of the issue.

Closer to it is the fact Downing Street DID forceably exaggerate the issue of Iraq. It got boring, unremarkable and old stuff from the intelligence services, which failed to make their grade. They were told to come up with better; told how to really SELL the idea that we could all be killed in short-order by a homicidal maniac with his finger on the button.
But as Blair said, even the re-written, hyper, version of the dossier was cleared by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Scarlett said as much, although lots of what he said made no sense.

He claimed there were indications WMD could be launched in 20 minutes. Why did that one stay out of the dossier? Because it´s all just detail and didn´t matter to the thrust of the argument. Three-quarters of an hour is good enough for the headlines. And maybe 20 minutes would have made more incredulous WMD experts come out sooner and say it was all obvious lies, undermining the government BEFORE it got the war. No, 45 minutes was a safer bet but, as the government has learned, just not quite safe enough. If they’d said doom was “24 hours away”, the Kelly story would never have broken and all the cheese eaters would watch their televisions and think they were happy.

What must be remembered when dealing with these people is that NONE of what they at the Hutton Inquiry has been said under oath. So of course Blair can say he was “personally” involved in making sure Kelly’s name got out, despite claiming at the time of his death that he had no involvement whatsoever.

The same principle holds for Scarlett, and then some. The man is a spy so would probably argue he can lie in any court, under any oath, to any man or woman, if he deems it is in the national interest. His licence-to-kill the truth; killing aforethought is murder and illegal, but not always, not if it´s for The Man; not if you´ve got permission from The Right people who sign the checks and see we all sleep safe at night. Oh no.
You get closer to the centre of the whole Hutton issue when you realise the idea behind the dossier rewrite was to SELL the idea of a war. Very specifically.

Not, as Blair claims, to sell the idea of a real threat which could be dealt with by the United Nations. That was never the question and he knows it, even though he´ll pretend not to. The Prime Minister even admitted as much by making clear there was no intention to publish the dossier, but then he had a phone conversation with the United States President in which they decided on a strategy over Iraq.

And that strategy was regime change. Bush never claimed otherwise, at least not to begin with. Bush was never going to be mollified by the UN, by inspections. He said REGIME CHANGE and that is what there was going to be. There was never a chance for the peaceful overthrow of that sorry country’s foul leaders.

So the hyped dossier was a war sales trick, and a big seller. But, as noted, the trick was cleared by the spies.
Which leads to the real fucking nut. Who are these people, who do they work for? Why does anyone listen to them when espionage is their business? When, like the CIA, they have a track record of deceit and failure?

How can it be a defense for the man Britain elected Prime Minister to say that, ´well there may be no real weapons of mass destruction threatening our troops in Cyprus, threatening you and your children and your dog and its fleas, BUT I was told there was deadly danger by some utterly disreputable men with an agenda and no real sources at all.´
That is his argument, and it cannot be accepted as good enough.

It comes down to him in effect admitting there has been a ´mistake´ -and clearly there has - but that is was someone else’s fault.

It comes down to him saying he was a fool for believing fools. But he KNEW they were fools and helped them be MORE FOOLISH. He helped convince them of something they themselves were unsure of. And then he let them convince him right back because, like Bush, he is a man with a mission.
He believes he is Right. Certainly. No room for doubt. No second thoughts. No sneaking suspicions. Just the Sole Truth. The Big Answer.

Which brings us all back to the start, somehow. Blair is not guilty, I can see and hear that much. But he´s also guilty as hell, that´s for sure. That’s what all the shit puddled at his feet tells us, the stuff that doesn’t quite stick but that he walks on and in.

But does any of this even matter? Saddam was a killer, a genocidal monster. He should have been dealt with and that´s what´s happened. That is one of Blair´s Absolute Beliefs. That the END makes the RATIONALE nothing more than a matter of nuance and friendly debate.

Saddam had to go. That’s the bottom-line and that happened. Why fight among ourselves about our degree of Rightness?

The trouble with this argument, despite its elements of truth, is that it is wrong. If Hussein was bad enough to deal with in a violent and dishonest way, why not do so years ago, instead of letting him kill more innocents and then deciding to take action, instead of sanctions and extended misery for the Iraqis?

And if he needed to be dealt with, does that not require - for the sake of legitimacy in the very country being simultaneously freed AND occupied - a genuine international mandate?

I´m certain Iraqis and so many more people would be less pissed off if there had been a genuine UN solution, even if that meant war, which it certainly could have IF the issue had been truly about weapons and he had defied the inspectors. This UN war would have included a post-war plan and cash-on-the-line for reconstruction.

But it was not about weapons. It was about international chancers looking for legit reasons to do what they wanted in the face of good sense.

The whole Hutton inquiry is packed with details and confusing. Static everywhere, static and commentary and agendas and fools. Too much context, too much background.

But anyone with sense must get a feeling of unease from the whole thing. That´s because it´s a long walk through a dark night. It´s walking through a midnight graveyard: you know in your bones something isn’t right, you suspect foul play somewhere.

Only it won´t be the ghost you fear that gets you - there´s no such thing as evil spirits, after all. The trouble is, while you´re distracted with irrational thoughts, you´ll stop paying attention to what really matters. Oh yes: The trouble is, you´ll fall in a hole some bastard dug on purpose, but how can anyone prove the spade-man was out to get you.
You’ll fall in his hole, break your legs and lie unconscious to die a lingering death from exposure, your body eaten by the stray cats and worms before it´s even cold, before anyone even notices you never got home.

We´re all wandering alone through that fucking mundane hell-hole now, but we´ll all end up in The Pit together. We´re stuck in the grip of the grimmest days. Not in the belly of the beast, but fast on our way.So, the bell strikes as Big Ben hits 9pm. Some lights returned to outside. My headache is back. And my legs ache.


POSTSCRIPT;

The next morning now. Cold light of day and the electric is back. But the darkness is still everywhere.