Lying, conniving political 'leaders' cannot keep their jobs following Iraq

The inability to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has created a political crisis in the United States and Britain. Within the two governments there are recriminations and brutal political infighting over responsibility. Stratfor warned in February that the unwillingness of the U.S. government to articulate its real, strategic reasons for the war - choosing instead to lean on WMD as the justification - would lead to a deep crisis at some point. That moment seems to be here.

The most damning implication of all this is that people at the very top of the "democratic" pile are liars and cheats - liars and cheats to their own people.

We don't even need to point a finger at the likes of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. They are, after all, only unelected officials.

The most important thing is that Bush and Blair knew what they were doing and they knew that what they were saying - indeed swearing to a largely gullible public - was a lie or a whole pack of lies.

To believe anything different is to stamp Bush and Blair as ingenuous fools. Nobody believes that they are.

What does this do to any belief in the integrity of Bush and Blair and, indeed, of our "democratic" politicians generally?

It's hard to believe that the elected Cabinet in Britain did not know that they were selling a package of fake intelligence to the country.
Robin Cook knew. So must all the other members of Blair's Cabinet have "known".

Only one other member of the Cabinet resigned, so far as I know.Did they know all the details? Probably not.

But they didn't deserve positions of high governmental responsibility if they did not know that there was a hidden agenda and guess, without knowing all the details, what that agenda was.

Did Colin Powell know? Powell is not elected but he was respected.

He must have known and must have known that he was acting out a lie.

These apparent conclusions go to the very heart of responsible government and to the heart of the trust we should have in our elected governments and their officials.