By PATRICK COCKBURN
It is a problem for journalists that states often launch cover-ups even when they have nothing very grisly to conceal. This is partly because the local police chiefs or middle-ranking security men may strongly suspect that their leaders have been up to no good but do not want to find out about it.
In 1999, for instance, I arrived in Moscow just after a series of devastating bomb explosions there and in other cities that had killed 300 civilians. These atrocities led to the second Chechen war and enabled Vladimir Putin to get a grip on power which he has never since relinquished.
It was widely suspected by Russians at all levels that that the Kremlin had a hand in these highly convenient attacks. There were undoubted signs of a cover-up by the police which journalists latched on to as a sign of government involvement. But Russian security men may have been concealing or destroying evidence because no local police chief wanted to risk his job by appearing too eager to investigate his own bosses. The Chechen rebels were quite stupid enough to carry out on the bombings themselves and thereby provide the Kremlin with an excuse to renew the war.
Experts, whether they are assessing the stability of the Soviet Union or the likelihood of Saddam invading Kuwait, are always in danger of being proved wrong because their expertise is based largely on precedent. The way people have behaved before is generally a good guide to how they will behave in future. But what can be foreseen can also be averted, and turning points in history therefore tend to happen by surprise. Diplomats, academics and journalists who had claimed to know what was happening in the Soviet Union or Iraq end up with a humiliating amount of egg on their faces.
The April Glaspie cable reveals little that was not known before. She did not tell Saddam not to invade Kuwait because neither she nor anybody else thought he would be stupid enough to do so.
The criminal error of the US, Britain, the Arab states and much of the rest of the world in dealing with Saddam before the invasion has never in fact been a secret. They were so eager to prevent him being defeated by Iran, which he had invaded, that they helped him become the greatest military power in the Gulf. They allowed him to use poison gas against Iran and winked at his slaughter of 180,000 Kurdish civilians. If he was a monster they created him.(End)
(CourtesyCounterpunchâ
It is a problem for journalists that states often launch cover-ups even when they have nothing very grisly to conceal. This is partly because the local police chiefs or middle-ranking security men may strongly suspect that their leaders have been up to no good but do not want to find out about it.
In 1999, for instance, I arrived in Moscow just after a series of devastating bomb explosions there and in other cities that had killed 300 civilians. These atrocities led to the second Chechen war and enabled Vladimir Putin to get a grip on power which he has never since relinquished.
It was widely suspected by Russians at all levels that that the Kremlin had a hand in these highly convenient attacks. There were undoubted signs of a cover-up by the police which journalists latched on to as a sign of government involvement. But Russian security men may have been concealing or destroying evidence because no local police chief wanted to risk his job by appearing too eager to investigate his own bosses. The Chechen rebels were quite stupid enough to carry out on the bombings themselves and thereby provide the Kremlin with an excuse to renew the war.
Experts, whether they are assessing the stability of the Soviet Union or the likelihood of Saddam invading Kuwait, are always in danger of being proved wrong because their expertise is based largely on precedent. The way people have behaved before is generally a good guide to how they will behave in future. But what can be foreseen can also be averted, and turning points in history therefore tend to happen by surprise. Diplomats, academics and journalists who had claimed to know what was happening in the Soviet Union or Iraq end up with a humiliating amount of egg on their faces.
The April Glaspie cable reveals little that was not known before. She did not tell Saddam not to invade Kuwait because neither she nor anybody else thought he would be stupid enough to do so.
The criminal error of the US, Britain, the Arab states and much of the rest of the world in dealing with Saddam before the invasion has never in fact been a secret. They were so eager to prevent him being defeated by Iran, which he had invaded, that they helped him become the greatest military power in the Gulf. They allowed him to use poison gas against Iran and winked at his slaughter of 180,000 Kurdish civilians. If he was a monster they created him.(End)
(CourtesyCounterpunchâ
