STOTTY ON SUNDAY

Sunday Mirror; London
2003-09-14

TWO years on and another reckoning. TV screens full of painful memories and devastated families, the heartrending symbolism of a single white rose and the poignant legend on the new memorial in London's Grosvenor Square: Grief is the price we pay for love. There is also a price we pay for freedom and the chance to live in a society where we elect our leaders and they rule with the consent and trust of the people who put them there. They test that trust at their peril.

Al-Qaeda made a murderous attack on Western freedom and beliefs in a challenge to US supremacy as the world's solitary superpower. The result was the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The first was high risk, the second, as we now know, the result of a political agenda backed by flimsy, inaccurate and selective intelligence.

The consequence was what so many feared. By removing Saddam we would create the disasters we sought to avoid. Tony Blair was warned of this possibility, but that wasn't what he wanted to hear so we weren't told of that advice.

No, the dossier wasn't sexed-up, No 10 didn't put pressure on the spooks, we are assured by the Commons Intelligence and Security committee. But it was what was left out and asserted out of context that is revealing.

The overwhelming thrust of Tony Blair's argument was that Saddam was a clear and current danger to us, yet we were not told that intelligence chiefs had warned the Prime Minister: "Any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare agents finding their way into the hands of terrorists, including al-Qaeda."

It is difficult not to feel we were used and manipulated, patsies for an American agenda that had been planned suspiciously far in advance. Nine Eleven became an excuse for invading Iraq, not a genuine, evidence-based consequence of it.

As a result Iraq is close to anarchy, bin Laden's gloating is released as a grotesque TV recruiting advert for al-Qaeda in the Muslim world and a grisly home movie for the rest of us.

Meanwhile US and British soldiers are sitting ducks in the desert as an increasingly- desperate George Bush seeks a way to involve the rest of the world in the lethal mess he has created.

It is true that freedom is something occasionally we have to die for. But it is a word easily abused. Real freedom means honest and open debate with open and honest minds and a conclusion honestly reached.

Tony Blair believes that is what happened in the months before the invasion of Iraq. It is a view fewer and fewer of us share and the MPs' report has done nothing to help his cause. We may have been told the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth we are entitled and expect to hear.

Grief is the price we pay for love. In the war on terror, thousands have paid it and thousands more will do so. Two years on and President Bush and Tony Blair are beginning to see the spectre of the price you pay for losing a people's trust.

It is the same as losing a war. Oblivion.