This week, hearings began in the official UK inquiry into Britain's role in promoting the Iraq War, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, hence known as the Chilcot inquiry. It's a weird feeling following them, since they take for granted a framework of facts that utterly demolishes the Versailles picture of the last 8 or 9 years--beginning with the fact that Bush was keen to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11--but at the same time (at lest so far) they're a form of damage control for the British, apparently calculated to air all the dirty linen that's already been seen, plus only a tiny bit more that's traceable to those at the top. Above all, Tony Blair's conduct must remain unwise, but nothing worse, no matter what the facts may be.
The chief result so far has simply been to confirm, somewhat clarify and fill out some of the information released over four years ago in the Downing Street Memos. At the same time, it's very much an establishment affair. So however embarrassing the basic facts may be, the proverbial stiff upper lip is preventing the mouthing of certain basic truths too uncomfortable for official Britain to bear, even as it nonchalantly skewers the official Versailles line with almost every breath. As a result, so far at least, one might well subtitle the Chilcot inquiry "Where the Poodles Wasn't." Thus, on Thursday, Julian Borger reported for the Guardian:
Chilcot inquiry: Tony Blair decided on Iraq war a year before invasion - envoy Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 20.25 GMT
Tony Blair's government decided up to a year before the Iraq invasion that it was "a complete waste of time" to resist the US drive to oust Saddam Hussein, opting instead to offer advice on how it should be done, the former British ambassador to Washington said today.
Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in the war, made it clear that once the Bush administration decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it.
He said that the timing of the invasion was dictated by the "unforgiving nature" of the military build-up rather than the outcome of diplomacy or UN weapons inspections, which had not been given sufficient time. British officials were left "scrabbling for the smoking gun" - evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - as preparations continued.
Meyer, ambassador to Washington from 1997 to 2003, described a critical moment in March 2002, as Blair was preparing a visit to George Bush's Texas ranch.
New instructions were brought to the embassy by the prime minister's foreign affairs adviser, Sir David Manning.
The message from Downing Street was that the 11 September attacks and the subsequent US determination to oust Saddam were established facts, "and it was a complete waste of time ... if we were going to work with the Americans, to come to them and bang away about regime change and say: 'We can't support it'."
He rejected the suggestion that British policy changed to stay in line with Washington. "I wouldn't say it was as extremely poodle-ish as that," Meyer said, arguing Blair had long been a "true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein".
Of course, believing that Saddam Hussein was wicked is like believing that the Sun rises in the East: (A) Neither belief is the least bit controversial or unusual. (B). Neither belief is justification for war under international law. And thus we are treated to the spectacle of discussing Tony Blair and his minister's long train of dissembling while struggling alternatively with, against, and in support of George Bush and his administration's long train of dissembling, all the while laying down fresh layers of further dissembling simultaneous with revealing unavoidable scattered bits of truth.
In short, they are all poodles now, for in order not to be, they would inevitably have to call for Bush and Blair's indictment as war criminals at the Hague.
In other non-news from the Chilcot inquiry, we learn that Bush wanted to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11, and we get further fleshing out how things changed after 9/11, until Britain finally agreed. Still, what's non-news for the rest of the world is still forbidden knowledge in Versailles, so it's worth taking note of, if for no other reason.
One symptom of the total dysfunction of our political system is the fact that we just suffered a catastrophic economic system failure without anything remotely approaching a coherent political response. Although the economy as a whole shows signs that it may soon bottom out and begin to recover, jobs will continue to be lost for some time, and there is no assurance that we will not see another severe downturn in the near term, given that the systemic problems behind the recession have not yet been fathomed, much less addressed.
Still, at least we know that there is a recession, and that its orgins lie in the financial sector and its facilitation--if not outright creation--of the housing bubble, as discussed in the previous diary. But is that simple fact itself a distraction from even more fundamental problems? I would argue yes, on two counts: First, that the Bush economy was already a miserable failure compared to the Clinton economy before it. Second, that the Clinton economy was actually much, much better for those at the very top levels, and thus was not substantially any different than the Bush economy, when viewed in comparison to the pre-1970s economy, for example. Indeed, it was during the Clinton economy that housing bubble got its start. One can, in a sense, see the Bush economy as an outgrowth of the Clinton economy, in which all the flaws of the latter are heightened, while a whole new round of flaws are larded on top. This was visible first in the recession, then the incredibly anemic employment recovery, and then the income data--all before the ultimate crash.
In this diary, I only look at data through 2007, so there's only the impact of the early slowdown to be seen--nothing of disastrous crash.
We begin by looking at the income levels for the top of the first four quintiles, plus the bottom of the top 5%, collected by Census Bureau, and published in the H1 Table. The second part of the diary will look at the high-end income data--up to the top 0.01% of income-earners--compiled by Dr. Emmanual Saez of UC Berkeley (Excel spreadsheet here). A simple visual inspection is enough to see that growth of all income levels in the census data came to a virtual stand-still during the Bush years:
Here's the underlying data:
As can be seen, income growth basically stopped for just about everyone. Those on the bottom lost a substantial amount, however. Does the phrase "worst President ever" ring any bells?
Removing the top 5% allows us to rescale the first graph, for a clearer view of what's happening with the lower quintiles:
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