The establishment has again wheeled out ex-MI6 boss Richard Dearlove to try and cement smears that Jeremy Corbyn is a ‘security risk’. But shadow chancellor John McDonnell dealt with Dearlove perfectly the first time.
‘He should contemplate his role in the Iraq war’
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Dearlove demanded:
Do not even think of taking the risk of handing this politician the keys to No 10.
He claimed Corbyn would be a “present danger to our country” if elected, without any clear evidence other than innuendos about Corbyn’s previous “political company”.
Back in 2018, McDonnell responded to similar claims from Dearlove :
https://twitter.com/Corbynator2_0/status/1198373683703828482
Dearlove was head of MI6 from 1999-2004. McDonnell said:
Well I’m not surprised. This is… a reactionary member of the establishment. So I don’t think he’d welcome a Labour government of any sort… I’m disappointed with him, but there you are…
I think he should spend his retirement in quiet contemplation of the role that he played with regard to the Iraq war where over half a million people, at least, were killed. He was strongly criticised as the head of an organisation whose intelligence took us into that war.
“Facts were being fixed around the policy” of invasion
As The Canary reported, history doesn’t look good for Dearlove’s role in the Iraq war. Known as the ‘smoking gun memo’, a 2002 Downing Street document concerning the case for war in Iraq was leaked to the Times (which published it in 2005). A section on Dearlove (known officially as ‘C’) attending a meeting in Washington reads:
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
“Hysterical”
On social media, people were unimpressed with Dearlove:
With this latest (hysterical) intervention by former MI6 director to stop Corbyn, amidst various others, the onus is increasingly on analysts to prove that the deep state is *not* intervening in the election and U.K. politics. https://t.co/nvDPTwQ2RZ
— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) November 24, 2019
Richard Dearlove’s successor as head of MI6… Now on the board of the Times newspaper https://t.co/xTfNYTztqA
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) November 24, 2019
Dear Richard Dearlove,
Corbyn is a Privy Councillor, vetted to the max.
I’ll tell you what a security risk is – it’s a boss of Mi6 who deliberately falsifies evidence to support an illegal war.
Have a nice day.
— Bernie Banter (@BanterBernie) November 24, 2019
The motive for an invasion that left hundreds of thousands dead
So why were Dearlove, Tony Blair, George Bush, Alastair Campbell, Donald Rumsfeld, and the rest apparently fixing “intelligence and facts” to invade Iraq? Well, the answer lies outside the conclusions of the Chilcot report, which ignored or downplayed compelling evidence that the explicit motive was oil.
Corbyn opposed Iraq
The Iraq war further destabilised the region, led to the death of up to one million Iraqis, and provided fertile ground for the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS (Daesh). Dearlove’s support for the war raises the question of who is really a security risk.
By contrast, Corbyn led opposition to the Iraq war. At one of the biggest protests in UK history in 2003, Corbyn said:
Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right. It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.
Corbyn is only a risk to the economic security of the British establishment and its Tory Party, as McDonnell alluded to. The Labour leader opposed Iraq, predicting the knock-on impact the war would have. Judging by Corbyn’s record, we’d be safer with him as prime minister. Get out and vote on 12 December.
Featured image via Garry Knight/ Flickr
