[Futurework] Saddam's capture and Blair's body language

[Keith Hudson]

208. Saddam's capture and Blair's body language

The news has just come through here that Saddam has been captured. On TV we have seen Bremer's triumphalist announcement from Baghdad but also Blair's announcement from 10, Downing Street.

This was far from triumphalist in tone. He spoke the measured words that everybody expected him to speak about Muslims pulling together in Iraq and so on, but what struck me very forcibly was his body language. I have never seen Blair quite so stressed before. His words were saying one thing, his facial _expression_ was saying something else. He'd been speaking with Bush a few minutes before, apparently, and I couldn't help thinking that whatever Bush had told him hadn't cheered him up much.

Quite what his agonised face was saying we cannot know at this point. My guess is that now Saddam has been captured, we shall soon know whether Blix and his UN team of inspectors were correct in saying that there were probably no more weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) left in Iraq at the time of the invasion. If so, it could be that this will bring about Blair's resignation quicker than it would have been otherwise. I think he was preparing to go soon after Christmas on a separate issue (losing a vote of confidence on university students' loans) and was then hoping that Lord Hutton's report on Dr Kellys' death would have let him off relatively lightly on the matter of his agreeing to allowing Dr Kelly's name to be released. But now, it might be that events will move too fast for him. In addition, president Chirac of France is hurling vituperation at Blair for the breakdown in the European Union constitutional summit yesterday. So Blair may be thinking that, on several counts, now he'll be resigning under a cloud -- two or three of them, in fact.

So far, Grand Atatollah Sistani has acted with wisdom and restraint since the invasion. Much rests now on what sort of elections he will insist upon and whether a majority Shia government will  allow secular education to continue in the schools or whether they will be now be dominated by Shia clerics as they are in Iran or as the Wahabi clerics do in Saudi Arabia. The future is still fraught with immense problems for the Americans. If they accept Sistani's demands, and a legitimate government ensues, can Bush be sure that US and UK oil corporations will be able to negotiate development contracts in the northern oilfields? Aftyer all, this is what America badly needs as a form of insurance if an insurrection erupts in Saudi Arabia.

Keith Hudson


Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>