Strategy driven communications
Paranoia is not a kind word, and kind words are what I have been seeking for a long time now. I’ve tried to shut out the suspicions that nag. I have even clasped my hands over my ears but that only makes the laughter louder – I mean of course the monstrous guffaws of the conspirators who laugh at editorial staff everywhere. So how satisfying to see one of them unmasked this week at the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.
Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s communications adviser at the time that the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded Iraq. When it became clear there weren’t any nuclear weapons there, Campbell was accused of ‘sexing up’ the dossier that took us to war – you know – the one about the “weapons of mass destruction”.
I despise the man, but I must say he’s had a big influence on the English language already: I envy that.
For starters “weapons of mass destruction”: what a brilliantly vague expression for politicians to bandy around as if it was just a modern, noughties ways of saying H-bomb or nuclear missile!
But what is a weapon if it is not ‘of destruction’? A pen perhaps, when it feels like being mightier than the sword?
And ‘mass’? According to my Oxford English Dictionary – which happens to be the Tenth Edition, reissued (with new title and jacket) in 2002 when all this was going on – defines the adjective, mass as:
“relating to, done by, or affecting large numbers of people or things”.
So in retrospect ‘WMD’ or ‘weapons of mass destruction’ describes pretty well what hit Baghdad in March 2003. But that was then. This is now. Only minutes into the questioning and Campbell was using expressions like ‘silo-driven’.
This was just before he denied working closely with the intelligence services, and then had to explain himself when Sir Roderic Lyne pointed out this contradicted evidence he’d given the Hutton Inquiry. Apparently he told Lord Hutton that he’d worked in ‘close consultation’ with the intelligence services.
Perhaps this was him trying to get out of a ‘silo-driven’ system by ‘joining up’ government.
Campbell is a master of dodging questions and sounding like he’s answered the question when he hasn’t really. Classic Campbellisms to the Chilcot Inquiry last Tuesday include:
“I’m not aware and I’m not unaware of any precedent.”
And:
“What I wouldn’t like to say to you is that the Prime Minister didn’t ultimately fundamentally share the view that Saddam Hussein had to be confronted…”
Funnily enough, earlier in the year there was an enquiry in to the ‘Use and abuse of official language‘ where journalist Matthew Parris suggested:
“Members of select committees and others should not be ashamed or embarrassed to keep pulling people up on small matters of the way they express themselves even if the issue is larger.”
Let’s hope the Chilcot bunch catch on to that before they interview Blair.
