Posted on 06/01/2003 5:57:41 AM PDT by may18
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent (Filed: 30/05/2003)
The first signs of a solidly-based Tory recovery for a decade are revealed today in an opinion poll that shows a collapse of trust in Tony Blair is beginning to hurt Labour.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph puts the Conservatives just one point behind Labour, their highest poll rating since 1992 apart from a blip during the fuel crisis in the autumn of 2000.
The results are a further shot in the arm for Iain Duncan Smith four weeks after the Conservatives gained 561 council seats to become the largest party in local government in England. Tory strategists insisted last night that they still had much to do but claimed that policies on university funding, taxation and Europe were striking a chord with voters.
For the first time since Mr Duncan Smith became leader in September 2001, more voters - 19 per cent - believe he would be a better prime minister than the 15 per cent who back Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader.
Click to enlarge The Tories also lie just one point behind Labour on the issue of economic competence, one of Labour's strongest cards at the 2001 general election. The findings will cause alarm in Labour ranks at a time when Mr Blair is under pressure from his backbenchers and the party rank and file to explain why no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
The YouGov survey puts Labour on 37 per cent, down three points, the Conservatives on 36 per cent, up four per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent, down one per cent.
A month ago, when the Government was enjoying a post-war rise in popularity - the so-called "Baghdad bounce" - the gap between Labour and Conservatives was eight points.
The Tories' recent pledge to abolish student tuition fees appears to be having a positive influence. Their proposals stand in contrast to Labour's plans to allow universities to charge up to £3,000 a year for courses.
Although 52 per cent of voters agreed that universities are "chronically underfunded", 43 per cent said they were "more sympathetic to the Conservatives" after their promise to scrap tuition fees. Among parents and students the figure was 53 per cent.
Even more worrying for Mr Blair is the dramatic fall in trust in his Government.
Just 29 per cent think that, on balance, the Government has been honest and trustworthy - almost half the level, 56 per cent, of the 2001 election. On the other hand, 62 per cent said it was not honest - more than double the 2001 level.
Mr Blair's personal ratings are also suffering - 38 per cent now think he would make the best prime minister, down five per cent on April and 14 per cent on 2001.
Strategists believe Labour's splits over the euro are harming the party in the same way that divisions dented Tory popularity during the later years of John Major's premiership.
Labour officials point out that the party is, in historical terms, still in a remarkably strong mid-term position. Most governing parties languish well behind the Opposition in mid-term. To maintain the momentum, Mr Duncan Smith is planning a major speech - entitled New Europe: Old Europe - next month in which he will outline his thinking on Britain's relations with the EU and Europe's relationship with America.
One aide to Mr Duncan Smith said the party was finally getting its ideas across. He said: "It's one thing to have the policies, quite another to communicate them. We are beginning to do that."
The philosophical guru of the neocons (Strauss), was a proponent of the "noble lie" theory of leadership (ie: the elite must tell necessary lies to the masses to achieve desirable goals). I don't think that this style of leadership will stand the test of time.
Great. Beat labour by outspending them. That'll do it. /sarcasm.
Patience is a sadly lacking commodity among quite a few people.
I think it amazing that some people think that both Blair and Bush, with their intelligence services, and their entire government, would manufacture a reason and not one dissenter would spill the beans. We had enough reason to go into Iraq without stating the WMD case...harboring terrorists, threats to neighbors, etc. Why make up something that would be easily disproven after the war?
Whatever the case, here's a concise summary of the prewar thesis as posted elsewhere:
Saddam Hussein had extensive, active, advanced, clandestine chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. UN inspectors couldn't find WMDs because they were inept, or corrupt, or because Saddam played the shell game so masterfully. US intelligence pinpointed dozens of high-value target sites, hundreds of intermediate-value sites and thousands of low-value sites. Chemical and perhaps biological weapons were deployed to commanders in the field, who had orders to use them against invading Coalition forces. Special Forces teams were dropping in to secure and neutralize high-value sites in advance of the ground assault, with high-tech analytic Mobile Exploitation Teams (MET's) close on their heels.
Anyone who would claim that this was not the impression created in the buildup to war is a dissembler, IMHO; anyone who can now seriously suggest that anything remotely resembling that scenario could have been the case needs to check in with their nearest reality ASAP...
These were the claims as I distinctly recall them: 15,000 to 30,000 chemical munitions; thousands of tons of weaponized chemical arms; hundreds of gallons of biological agents; a reconstituted nuclear program with procurement of uranium & missile cores; a fleet of remote-guide WMD drones; dozens of mobile biochem laboratories; dozens or hundreds of Scud missile systems.
Where is all this extensive panoply of prohibited, unconventional armament? Where are all the scientists & engineers & military personnel & just random facility workers that put them together and maintained them? Where are the facilities themselves? Did all this just vanish into the desert? Somewhere? Somehow?
If you want my personal opinion, our intelligence services - and by extension Bush and Blair - were misled by the Iraqi opposition groups. I stated a number of times prior the war that these were the people least credible in their claims about the Baathist regime and Iraqi sentiments. They had a vested interest in encouraging the war which would see them returned into the locus of power in Iraq and they played their cards to the hilt. Of course, they found a receptive audience willing to accept whatever casus belli they were fortuitously provided.
That's what the evidence at this juncture points toward and that's the inescapable conclusion, in my view. I have no problem if I'm eventually proven incorrect in this view. We shall see. This issue needs to get dealt with on FR sooner or later because it's not going to go away...
I think if you are smart enough to realize this, they are as well.
I did not expect to find WMD immediately. I also think that those chemicals were not used because we did a good job at warning the underlings that they would be held accountable, plus Saddam thought we would bomb for weeks before we sent our land forces in.
As I said...patience.
Saddam Hussein's government had the burden of proof. They had to prove they no longer had these weapons as a conditon of the cease fire agreement ending the first Gulf War. Instead his government thwarted inspections.
Too bad if Saddam had destroyed the stockpiles; he refused to live up to the cease fire agreement and give unfettered access to inspectors. Failing to live up to cease fire agreements or peace treaties is a casus belli. Bush and Blair had the cojones to call Saddam on his lack of compliance unlike Chamberlain and Daladier who allowed Hilter to repeatedly violate the Treaty of Versailles. I am not conviced Saddam destroyed everything. Bioweapon seed stocks are not bulky. All the documents recording how to make these weapons could easily be converted to just a few CDs or DVDs and the original paper documents destroyed. Its a problem of a very small needle in a very large haystack.
For good or for ill, depending on one's point of view, it has indeed stood the test of time from Caesar to the present.
A couple of points:
1) First, this style of leadership deteriorates into despotism (Augustus was OK...but Caligula and Nero soon followed). Hardly something to look forward to.
2) My main gripes about this war boil down to two issues of governance that really raise my hackles:
a) Dishonesty: We were manipulated into this war with a series of lies by various elites who had ulterior motives. The two big motives that were used (WMD and the link to bin Laden's terrorist network) were largely bogus. The elites who pushed for the war knew this at the time (I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt...he was probably gullible rather than consciously dishonest).
b) Special interest manipulation: I am sick and tired of seeing my government engage in actions and policies that benefit powerful interests while ignoring the interests of broad middle america. This issue pops up time and again, from immigration and government spending to affirmative action and foreign policy. The elites in this country no longer have a sense of stewardship towards the broad middle classes of america. They respond mostly to their own immediate self-interest and those of various influential special interest groups.
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