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XFM, 104. 9.
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I'm Ricky Gervais. With me Steve Merchant.
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I'll tell you what. I was walking here today,
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and the West End is crammed.
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There's helicopters. There's police.
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There's about a million people
sort of just milling around,
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standing around with placards and stuff.
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They've got too much time
on their hands. They need a war.
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You don't read the newspapers, do you?
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Boring.
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BBC Radio Four.
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What's thought to be the biggest
demonstration in British history
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is taking place in Central London.
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The organizers say nearly two million people
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have gathered to oppose war against Iraq.
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From Auckland to Athens, Berlin to Bangkok,
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some 600 cities across the world.
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Can you do that again?
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15th of February 2003.
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We're in London,
just outside Trafalgar Square.
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It's the anti-war march.
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There's lots and lots of people here.
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It's a terrible legacy...
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...for those people who died on 9/11,
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that we're now killing
more people in their name.
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That's my opinion, anyway.
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February 15th was the single largest
mobilization of people
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in the history of humanity, bar none.
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It was the biggest demonstration coordinated
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in the history of the whole Earth.
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Do you think we can stop this war?
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I think if we tried really hard, yeah.
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I think we can stop this war.
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The Prime Minister
avoided the protestors outside
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chanting "No blood for oil."
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Millions of British people telling you
we don't want this war.
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Now will you listen?
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Listen to the people, Tony.
Listen to the people.
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This is a battle with only one outcome.
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Our victory, not theirs.
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Something began on that day
that, uh... that cannot be reversed.
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Whoo!
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I was in New York. I'm a New Yorker.
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I work as a nurse practitioner,
and I was at work that day.
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I was at work at Tinker
Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
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It was an ordinary day.
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I was in an airplane on my way
from Stockholm to New York.
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And I remember waking up
in the morning, early, jetlagged,
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and I went out jogging,
and I came in and turned on the news.
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I'm going to interrupt
because of the latest news.
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A plane has crashed
into the World Trade Center.
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We've got Warner on the phone,
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who's watching and looking at it right now.
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You can see the fire, you can see the smoke.
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I mean, it's a monster hole, you know.
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Oh, my God.
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That looks like a second plane.
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Oh, my God.
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The second tower has exploded
in a gargantuan explosion!
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And at that point I didn't know
that my brother was at the Trade Center.
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It was horrific.
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And I knew, I knew in a flash,
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whatever was happening at that moment,
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this was the beginning
of something even worse.
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The deliberate and deadly attacks
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which were carried out yesterday
against our country
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were more than acts of terror.
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They were acts of war.
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September 12th 2001,
was the day that changed the world.
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Not September 11th.
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Because that was the day that
George W Bush announced to the world
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that the answer to this huge crime
would be our war.
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It was downhill after that.
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The evidence now shows that on the very...
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Well, within 24 hours of the attack,
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they had basically decided to attack Iraq.
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Was it Cheney or Rumsfeld, one of those,
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at the first meeting
after the attack on the Twin Towers,
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said, "That's it, let's go for Iraq?"
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And now's an opportunity
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to do, uh, generations a favor
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by coming together and whipping terrorism.
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It is a long-term campaign
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which is why we are characterizing it
as a war.
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Your loss we count as our loss.
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Your struggle we take as our struggle.
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Now that war has been declared on us,
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we will lead the world
to victory, to victory.
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This is a moment to seize.
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The kaleidoscope has been shaken.
The pieces are in flux.
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Soon they will settle again.
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Before they do,
let us reorder this world around us.
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We were fearful. We were concerned.
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We were anxious about the way
that the US was going to retaliate,
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and we had very little confidence
they were gonna behave sensibly.
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Over a few days,
we started talking on the phone,
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getting together, and said "Look,
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we're gonna set up a Stop The War Coalition."
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They set up the Stop The War Coalition.
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They asked me to be president of it,
which I very happily accepted.
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And there was a meeting called.
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They knew immediately
that there was going to be a war,
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and so they had a meeting
in Friends House here.
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I attended that meeting. It was amazing.
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Hall after hall after hall.
The entire building was taken over.
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It took just five days to organize,
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but the Stop The War protest
and meeting attracted so many people,
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they had to close the doors.
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I wrote a leaflet for that meeting,
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and the title of the meeting
was "Stop The War Before It Starts."
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That's what was on the leaflet.
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And that's why it became
the Stop The War Coalition.
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It's just absolutely unbelievable
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that that particular event
triggered such a momentous movement.
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The war on terrorism begins.
America and Britain strike Afghanistan.
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President Bush says the campaign
will be sustained,
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comprehensive and relentless.
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Afghanistan, I was completely gung-ho for it.
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We were excited to be doing our job
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and exacting retribution
on the enemy for 9/11.
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And in fact, I even had pictures
of myself on a ladder
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in the bomb bay of a B-1 bomber
signing bombs.
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Various obscenities
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and things like "This is for my sister
in New York City."
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It became clear that phase one
was going to be Afghanistan,
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and, of course, it wasn't going to take
much to defeat the Taliban.
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It wasn't much of a war, and it wasn't said,
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but the sense was there wasn't
much glory in it, either.
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It didn't somehow answer 9/11,
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and that's when the talk of phase two began.
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My fellow Americans, let's roll.
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Bush came up with his extraordinary
speech in January 2002.
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Our war against terror is only beginning.
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Iraq continues to flaunt
its hostility toward America
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and to support terror.
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States like these and their terrorist allies
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constitute an axis of evil.
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We wanted connection with 9/11,
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and we pressed that and pressed that
and pressed that
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until we lied to the American people.
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I mean, we had something like 51 to 60
percent of the American people
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believing that Saddam Hussein
was connected with 9/11.
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From then on we're building up
towards a war with Iraq,
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and we now know how closely involved
the British Government was with this.
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But to allow weapons of mass destruction
to be developed by a state like Iraq,
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without let or hindrance,
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would be grossly to ignore
the lessons of September 11th,
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and we will not do it.
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We were sharing intelligence.
We were sharing preparations
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for the kind of marketing campaign
we'd do if we decided to go to war.
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The weapons of mass destruction
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was an important thing
to hold up to the public,
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and I'm not saying
that they were in bad faith,
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but they had many other reasons
that pushed them about,
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and about which they didn't talk.
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8:00. The first element
of the government's strategy
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for winning over the doubters was released.
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MPs had three and a half hours
to read the dossier.
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This dossier is based on the work
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of the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
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It is extensive, detailed and authoritative.
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It concludes that Iraq has chemical
and biological weapons.
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That Saddam has continued to produce them.
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That he has existing
and active military plans
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for the use of chemical
and biological weapons,
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which could be activated within 45 minutes,
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including against his own Shia population.
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They were 100 percent sure
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that there were weapons of mass destruction.
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They had zero percent of knowledge
where they were.
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I felt I knew what had happened
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in the creation of an interior group
of knowing people.
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So what was going on
in the corridors of power was,
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"I've been there."
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"I've been to the Secret Service
headquarters."
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"I've seen the papers."
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"If you'd seen what I've seen,
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you'd know how to go
through those corridors."
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So there was the creation
of a bunch of insiders
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who were also, in a sense,
distributing the same lie.
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The intelligence was never there.
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I remember the dodgy dossier.
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I remember the front page
on the Evening Standard.
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I've got it somewhere in this room.
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I remember keeping it, you know,
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that Iraq could attack within
45 minutes or something.
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Those 45 minutes, I think,
was what really became famous
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because they wanted to create a fear.
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I remember hearing it on the news
and thinking, "45 minutes to attack?"
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"That... that's quite a peril."
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You just read that,
and that seemed pretty far-reaching,
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but you didn't know
what information they had.
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You don't want to disbelieve a Prime Minister
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when a Prime Minister puts out
a document like that
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from 10 Downing Street.
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I really wanted to find out
what the evidence was.
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So I wrote to the government
and I got a copy of the dossier.
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And I thought, "OK,
this is all very technical."
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"Can I check any of this?"
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So I found two weapons inspectors,
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and I asked them,
"How valid are these documents?"
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And they said,
"Well, we know this isn't true,
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we know that's not true,
we know this isn't true."
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Order!
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Now, it's amazing to me that I could do that,
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and yet none of the MPs
seemed to be able to do it.
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I think it also destroyed
Mr. Blair's credibility.
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He lost his credibility
in those 45 minutes, actually.
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It sort of completely caused me
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to become a different person politically...
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because I had to come to terms
with the fact, as a Conservative,
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that the institutions of the
British state had set out to tell lies.
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That is finally the bottom line.
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Lied to in order to go to war.
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There was a grand deception
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in which we all share
various amounts of, uh, responsibility
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and, uh, in which we, everybody,
didn't do their job.
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In the United States
the lies were told endlessly,
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and in Britain, the Murdoch Press,
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the Murdoch television networks,
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some parts of the BBC, all played the game.
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So, the military industrial complex is also,
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you know, has its analogue in the press,
the media industrial complex.
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America and our allies
are called once again...
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to defend the peace
against an aggressive tyrant.
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And we accept this responsibility.
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I remember saying...
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I don't know whether you can
say this on tape.
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But, "This bastard
is actually gonna take us to war."
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"This is not just rhetoric."
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I remember having these debates
a year before the invasion,
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and we'd say, "Oh, my God,
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it looks like
they're really going to invade Iraq,"
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and everyone would say,
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"Well, they're not that crazy.
It couldn't happen."
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US Central Command has been
moving aircraft carriers
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and war planes closer to Iraq.
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Now 600 of its specialists
are to move themselves
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to within a few hundred miles of Iraq.
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And so the global military enterprise
snaps into action.
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The public doesn't know about it.
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You can see pieces of it here and there.
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Units are being mobilized.
Tanks are loading on ships.
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The Marines are loading up.
You can see pieces of it.
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The bombing increased over Iraq
about 500 percent
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during the fall of 2002...
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with the purpose of trying
to goad Saddam Hussein
248
00:17:46,566 --> 00:17:49,536
into retaliating,
to give us a reason to go to war.
249
00:17:49,652 --> 00:17:52,326
And then I saw that. I was witness to that.
250
00:17:52,446 --> 00:17:55,040
But the President's still saying,
you know, "It may not..."
251
00:17:55,157 --> 00:17:56,784
"I hope it doesn't come to war."
252
00:17:56,909 --> 00:17:59,128
President Bush knows the real battle
253
00:17:59,245 --> 00:18:01,589
is to win support of the United Nations.
254
00:18:01,706 --> 00:18:04,550
When I saw Bush on TV saying,
"We're gonna try diplomacy first,"
255
00:18:04,667 --> 00:18:06,635
but then I saw the reality on the ground,
256
00:18:06,752 --> 00:18:10,882
something didn't sit right with me,
and I knew there was more to the story.
257
00:18:11,007 --> 00:18:16,355
On some level, globally,
people knew that this was not true,
258
00:18:16,470 --> 00:18:19,895
and I think that's what led to February 15th
259
00:18:20,016 --> 00:18:23,020
and the massive show on the streets
260
00:18:23,144 --> 00:18:27,490
was because people felt
like something's not right.
261
00:18:27,607 --> 00:18:31,453
Before our kids start coming home
from Iraq in body bags
262
00:18:31,569 --> 00:18:34,743
and women and children
start dying in Baghdad,
263
00:18:34,864 --> 00:18:39,040
I need to know, what did Iraq do to us?
264
00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:43,666
We had never raised money for an ad before,
265
00:18:43,789 --> 00:18:47,589
and we proposed this
"Let the Inspections Work" ad,
266
00:18:47,710 --> 00:18:49,758
sent it out to our members hoping to raise,
267
00:18:49,879 --> 00:18:51,756
you know, $20,000, $40,000.
268
00:18:51,881 --> 00:18:54,179
And we raised $400,000.
269
00:18:55,384 --> 00:18:57,182
And we made the ads,
270
00:18:57,303 --> 00:19:00,273
and we figured out everything
we could possibly do
271
00:19:00,389 --> 00:19:05,270
to build opposition to going to war.
272
00:19:07,146 --> 00:19:12,243
We organized demonstrations,
and it got bigger and bigger and bigger.
273
00:19:14,153 --> 00:19:16,076
Packing the streets to stop the war,
274
00:19:16,197 --> 00:19:18,575
the organizers of today's rally
275
00:19:18,699 --> 00:19:23,546
claim 300,000 people turned out
to show their anger over Iraq.
276
00:19:23,663 --> 00:19:26,633
I am in total opposition to the war.
277
00:19:26,749 --> 00:19:31,505
I think it's an obscenity,
and I think Blair is a scoundrel.
278
00:19:33,381 --> 00:19:35,930
The troop movements began to get underway,
279
00:19:36,050 --> 00:19:37,973
and that's when we really moved quickly
280
00:19:38,094 --> 00:19:40,938
to form the coalitions
in the US and internationally.
281
00:19:41,055 --> 00:19:45,526
It took a lot of courage for people
to raise their voices early on,
282
00:19:45,643 --> 00:19:50,319
prior to February 15th 2003.
283
00:19:53,526 --> 00:19:55,494
People were afraid to speak.
284
00:19:55,611 --> 00:19:58,285
They were afraid of being called unpatriotic.
285
00:19:58,406 --> 00:20:00,659
The Bush Administration and Saddam Hussein
286
00:20:00,783 --> 00:20:03,502
are not the only ones
cranking up the talk about war.
287
00:20:03,619 --> 00:20:07,089
So are American opponents of war with Iraq.
288
00:20:08,165 --> 00:20:11,886
We have a President
that is sending the ships,
289
00:20:12,002 --> 00:20:15,973
sending the war machines,
sending the bombs, sending the troops.
290
00:20:16,090 --> 00:20:18,809
And look what we have growing here at home.
291
00:20:18,926 --> 00:20:21,600
A mass, beautiful movement
292
00:20:21,721 --> 00:20:24,520
that's gonna stop them
from dropping those bombs.
293
00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:26,984
I'm becoming consumed with the thought
294
00:20:27,101 --> 00:20:29,820
that our country may soon be at war,
295
00:20:29,937 --> 00:20:32,531
waged partially in my brother's name
296
00:20:32,648 --> 00:20:37,324
and the names of thousands
killed last year in the terror attacks.
297
00:20:37,445 --> 00:20:39,038
We had to do something.
298
00:20:39,155 --> 00:20:42,375
To sit back and not do anything
was unbearable.
299
00:20:42,491 --> 00:20:47,338
We, as a civilized people,
must know better and do better.
300
00:20:47,455 --> 00:20:49,799
We must be a greater nation than that.
301
00:20:52,877 --> 00:20:55,050
You build confidence, and all
of a sudden you start daring
302
00:20:55,171 --> 00:20:59,267
to do stuff that you never ever thought
possible in the past.
303
00:20:59,383 --> 00:21:03,889
And the next step was to call
for a global day of demonstrations.
304
00:21:04,013 --> 00:21:06,186
I mean, I don't know
what we were thinking, actually,
305
00:21:06,307 --> 00:21:08,230
that there could be even
a global demonstration.
306
00:21:08,350 --> 00:21:10,023
I mean, nobody had ever done that.
307
00:21:10,144 --> 00:21:12,613
It was a, you know,
completely left-field idea
308
00:21:12,730 --> 00:21:14,198
even for us, and we'd had a few.
309
00:21:14,315 --> 00:21:19,572
And that day was put at 15th of February.
310
00:21:28,120 --> 00:21:31,499
So we started thinking together
what to do, what to do.
311
00:21:31,624 --> 00:21:37,381
We had a very strong European network.
312
00:21:39,089 --> 00:21:41,558
At the end of the European Social Forum,
313
00:21:41,675 --> 00:21:45,020
we had a massive assembly
in a disused railway station.
314
00:21:45,137 --> 00:21:49,108
There were thousands and thousands
of people packed into this meeting.
315
00:21:49,225 --> 00:21:53,696
We made the announcement
to say we have to make February 15th
316
00:21:53,813 --> 00:21:57,534
into the biggest day of global protest
there has ever been.
317
00:21:57,650 --> 00:22:03,123
I now hand over to my final speaker
on European coordination,
318
00:22:03,239 --> 00:22:04,911
Raffaella.
319
00:22:08,035 --> 00:22:11,460
To all citizens of Europe,
320
00:22:11,580 --> 00:22:16,051
we call on the movement
and the citizens of Europe
321
00:22:16,168 --> 00:22:18,387
to start from now
322
00:22:18,504 --> 00:22:23,931
organizing European anti-war demonstrations
323
00:22:24,051 --> 00:22:29,399
in every capital on February 15.
324
00:22:29,515 --> 00:22:32,314
We can stop this war.
325
00:22:37,189 --> 00:22:39,612
And the response was just overwhelming.
326
00:22:39,733 --> 00:22:41,201
It was absolutely tremendous.
327
00:22:41,318 --> 00:22:44,743
You need a moment
in which somebody says "Yes, we can,"
328
00:22:44,864 --> 00:22:46,741
and so you start.
329
00:22:46,866 --> 00:22:51,246
And after that, we knew that this day
was going to be something special,
330
00:22:51,370 --> 00:22:54,023
something the world had never seen before.
331
00:23:18,814 --> 00:23:21,363
The Stop The War Coalition
has been meeting in London
332
00:23:21,483 --> 00:23:24,987
to make plans for a demonstration
against war with Iraq.
333
00:23:25,112 --> 00:23:28,161
The London demonstration is due
to take place on February 15th
334
00:23:28,282 --> 00:23:32,287
to coincide with marches
in several other European capitals.
335
00:23:40,586 --> 00:23:42,554
Somebody said,
I don't even remember now who it was,
336
00:23:42,671 --> 00:23:45,470
that they had heard that folks in Europe
were planning
337
00:23:45,591 --> 00:23:50,597
for a day of international
demonstrations on February 15th
338
00:23:50,721 --> 00:23:54,476
against the war, and we said,
"Oh, OK, let's do that."
339
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,570
The notion that we could pull this off
on a global level...
340
00:23:57,686 --> 00:24:02,066
Oh, my God, this was huge.
This was an enormous challenge.
341
00:24:02,191 --> 00:24:06,116
The notion that we were
part of something global
342
00:24:06,236 --> 00:24:09,911
was terrifying and thrilling
all at the same time.
343
00:24:13,744 --> 00:24:16,167
And Saddam Hussein must understand
344
00:24:16,288 --> 00:24:20,509
that if he does not disarm
for the sake of peace,
345
00:24:20,626 --> 00:24:25,052
we, along with others,
will go disarm Saddam Hussein.
346
00:24:25,172 --> 00:24:27,220
This is a matter of weeks, not months.
347
00:24:31,136 --> 00:24:33,184
It was only much later
348
00:24:33,305 --> 00:24:38,937
that I came across
the single most devastating document,
349
00:24:39,061 --> 00:24:44,443
which is the legal memorandum
written by Lord Goldsmith,
350
00:24:44,566 --> 00:24:48,787
in which Lord Goldsmith
tells the British Prime Minister,
351
00:24:48,904 --> 00:24:53,660
"You cannot use force without
a further Security Council resolution."
352
00:24:53,784 --> 00:24:59,006
If you go down the document,
at paragraph four,
353
00:24:59,123 --> 00:25:01,842
you've got Lord Goldsmith
telling the Prime Minister,
354
00:25:01,959 --> 00:25:03,802
"I remain of the view
355
00:25:03,919 --> 00:25:08,095
that the correct legal interpretation
of Resolution 1441
356
00:25:08,215 --> 00:25:11,890
is that it does not authorize
the use of military force
357
00:25:12,011 --> 00:25:14,981
without a further determination
by the Security Council."
358
00:25:15,097 --> 00:25:18,226
And just to the left of that,
a little scribble.
359
00:25:18,350 --> 00:25:20,569
"I just don't understand this."
360
00:25:20,686 --> 00:25:25,237
Who wrote that? Tony Blair wrote that.
And then the document was filed away.
361
00:25:25,357 --> 00:25:28,987
The timing of the document
is very significant.
362
00:25:29,111 --> 00:25:32,206
It was written and signed off
on 30th January.
363
00:25:32,322 --> 00:25:35,917
The next day, 31st January,
364
00:25:36,035 --> 00:25:40,211
the British Prime Minister met the
American President in the White House,
365
00:25:40,330 --> 00:25:46,963
and I've seen the internal
British note of the meeting
366
00:25:47,087 --> 00:25:50,057
prepared by Sir David Manning.
367
00:25:50,174 --> 00:25:53,269
And that note makes very clear,
368
00:25:53,385 --> 00:25:56,730
beyond any possible dispute, two things.
369
00:25:56,847 --> 00:26:01,648
First, by 31st January,
President Bush had decided
370
00:26:01,769 --> 00:26:05,273
that the war on Iraq would begin in March
371
00:26:05,397 --> 00:26:09,152
with or without a further
Security Council resolution.
372
00:26:09,276 --> 00:26:14,157
And second point,
Tony Blair told Bush at that meeting
373
00:26:14,281 --> 00:26:17,376
he was with him, whatever happened.
374
00:26:24,041 --> 00:26:27,090
I do remember the steady drumbeat to war.
375
00:26:27,211 --> 00:26:29,930
There was one sane voice in that crowd,
376
00:26:30,047 --> 00:26:34,223
and I remember talking to my dad
on the phone from Saudi Arabia
377
00:26:34,343 --> 00:26:37,313
and saying, you know,
Colin Powell is the only one
378
00:26:37,429 --> 00:26:39,102
that's gonna be able to stop this.
379
00:26:44,728 --> 00:26:47,527
It was the moment the world has waited for.
380
00:26:47,648 --> 00:26:52,529
America's best case against Iraq,
made by its top diplomat.
381
00:26:52,653 --> 00:26:55,406
When the Secretary finished
his dress rehearsal,
382
00:26:55,531 --> 00:26:58,751
the night before the presentation
to the Security Council,
383
00:26:58,867 --> 00:27:01,370
he looked at his watch. It was a little long.
384
00:27:01,495 --> 00:27:02,963
He looked at me,
385
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:05,503
and he turned to Mr. Tenet,
the Director of the CIA,
386
00:27:05,624 --> 00:27:10,050
and he said, "George, you stand by everything
387
00:27:10,170 --> 00:27:13,299
that I just said, right?"
388
00:27:13,423 --> 00:27:18,224
And Mr. Tenet said, "I'm telling you,
what you just gave is solid."
389
00:27:18,345 --> 00:27:22,350
And he's telling the Secretary of State
it's a slam dunk.
390
00:27:22,474 --> 00:27:24,647
Saddam Hussein has weapons
of mass destruction.
391
00:27:24,768 --> 00:27:26,816
I mean, that's not the exact language
392
00:27:26,937 --> 00:27:29,861
George used with the Secretary,
but it was like that.
393
00:27:29,982 --> 00:27:32,326
And then the Secretary looked at him
394
00:27:32,442 --> 00:27:34,410
and got this smile on his face, and he said,
395
00:27:34,528 --> 00:27:36,781
"Well, George, you're gonna
be with me tomorrow."
396
00:27:36,905 --> 00:27:38,999
"You're gonna be in camera."
397
00:27:39,116 --> 00:27:40,914
That sort of surprised Mr. Tenet
398
00:27:41,034 --> 00:27:45,084
cos generally you don't put
the Director of the CIA on television.
399
00:27:45,205 --> 00:27:47,082
But you look at that film, and you will see
400
00:27:47,207 --> 00:27:49,801
that George Tenet is right
over the Secretary's shoulder.
401
00:27:49,918 --> 00:27:52,888
Saddam Hussein and his regime
have made no effort,
402
00:27:53,005 --> 00:27:58,557
no effort to disarm as required
by the international community.
403
00:27:58,677 --> 00:28:01,476
We have diagrammed what our sources reported
404
00:28:01,597 --> 00:28:03,144
about these mobile facilities.
405
00:28:03,265 --> 00:28:07,441
Colin Powell made his extraordinary
speech to the UN,
406
00:28:07,561 --> 00:28:09,234
in which there were sort of ice cream vans
407
00:28:09,354 --> 00:28:13,450
which we were told were
biological weapons things.
408
00:28:13,567 --> 00:28:16,320
They looked, actually, quite
like ice cream vans to me.
409
00:28:16,445 --> 00:28:18,493
They may well have been ice cream vans.
410
00:28:18,614 --> 00:28:21,083
What you're about to hear is a conversation
411
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:22,952
that my government monitored.
412
00:28:23,076 --> 00:28:25,374
"We have this modified vehicle."
413
00:28:25,495 --> 00:28:28,169
"What do we say if one of them sees it?"
414
00:28:28,290 --> 00:28:30,338
His delivery was superb.
415
00:28:30,459 --> 00:28:33,633
He really should have won
an Academy Award for that performance.
416
00:28:33,754 --> 00:28:37,258
"I have one." "Which?"
"From where?" "From the workshop."
417
00:28:37,382 --> 00:28:39,680
"I'll come to see you in the morning."
418
00:28:39,801 --> 00:28:43,146
"I'm worried you all have something left."
419
00:28:44,598 --> 00:28:49,024
When I sat there in the Security Council
opposite Colin Powell
420
00:28:49,144 --> 00:28:51,363
and I heard these things,
421
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:56,031
I kept a straight face, a poker face.
422
00:28:57,819 --> 00:28:59,321
But I was skeptical.
423
00:28:59,446 --> 00:29:01,323
And unless we act,
424
00:29:01,448 --> 00:29:05,669
we are confronting
an even more frightening future.
425
00:29:05,786 --> 00:29:08,539
He did not know that we were
perpetrating a hoax,
426
00:29:08,664 --> 00:29:11,258
but that is in effect what we were doing.
427
00:29:11,375 --> 00:29:15,596
I mean, we were telling the Security Council,
428
00:29:15,712 --> 00:29:18,807
people in the international community
and Americans,
429
00:29:18,924 --> 00:29:21,928
we were telling them all that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
430
00:29:22,052 --> 00:29:24,100
He did not. He did not.
431
00:29:25,681 --> 00:29:27,524
I don't really want to criticize him,
432
00:29:27,641 --> 00:29:32,738
but it was a debacle, really,
for him and for the world.
433
00:29:34,064 --> 00:29:36,817
At that point, I lost a lot of hope
434
00:29:36,942 --> 00:29:40,367
about our ability to prevent the Iraq war.
435
00:29:42,114 --> 00:29:44,617
When you sign your life on the line
for your country
436
00:29:44,741 --> 00:29:46,584
and swear to defend it,
437
00:29:46,702 --> 00:29:48,830
the only thing that you really ask for
in return
438
00:29:48,954 --> 00:29:51,423
is that it be for a good reason,
439
00:29:51,540 --> 00:29:54,965
and I didn't feel it was for a good reason.
440
00:29:57,504 --> 00:29:59,757
Yeah, I was in charge of it,
441
00:29:59,881 --> 00:30:03,135
and when I finished it and thought about it,
442
00:30:03,260 --> 00:30:05,183
I felt miserable because I thought
443
00:30:05,304 --> 00:30:10,401
we had just put a whole array
of circumstantial evidence up
444
00:30:10,517 --> 00:30:14,943
that could be interpreted
in any number of different ways.
445
00:30:15,063 --> 00:30:17,691
And we were probably going to go to war,
446
00:30:17,816 --> 00:30:20,820
and it sort of bothered me.
447
00:30:20,944 --> 00:30:23,242
And now I feel like it was the lowest point,
448
00:30:23,363 --> 00:30:26,833
as I've said before,
in my professional and personal life.
449
00:30:26,950 --> 00:30:28,577
I wish I had resigned.
450
00:30:33,081 --> 00:30:36,051
On this February day,
451
00:30:36,168 --> 00:30:41,174
as this nation stands at the brink of battle,
452
00:30:41,298 --> 00:30:46,850
this chamber is, for the most part,
453
00:30:46,970 --> 00:30:48,643
ominously...
454
00:30:49,806 --> 00:30:51,433
ominously...
455
00:30:52,476 --> 00:30:54,570
dreadfully silent.
456
00:30:56,521 --> 00:30:59,491
You can hear a pin drop. Listen.
457
00:31:03,737 --> 00:31:05,760
You can hear a pin drop.
458
00:31:15,624 --> 00:31:19,754
The battle lines are being
drawn in the Gulf and at home,
459
00:31:19,878 --> 00:31:21,346
these protestors in no doubt
460
00:31:21,463 --> 00:31:24,342
as to whose side they're on
and who they're against.
461
00:31:24,466 --> 00:31:27,345
I feel that I speak for, um,
462
00:31:27,469 --> 00:31:30,814
a growing number of people in this country.
463
00:31:30,931 --> 00:31:33,229
I think if you stopped anyone now on the road
464
00:31:33,350 --> 00:31:35,603
and asked them what they think,
they'd say "No."
465
00:31:35,727 --> 00:31:39,732
I've always been, uh...
466
00:31:39,856 --> 00:31:42,075
quite passionate about CND.
467
00:31:42,192 --> 00:31:44,661
Uh, it kind of sort of goes back
468
00:31:44,778 --> 00:31:48,408
to coming from a family
of conscientious objectors.
469
00:31:48,532 --> 00:31:50,375
So I did what little I could,
470
00:31:50,492 --> 00:31:53,712
in the sense of I could
just talk about it in the media,
471
00:31:53,829 --> 00:31:55,376
express myself.
472
00:31:57,249 --> 00:32:02,130
There was a moment where it felt,
well, we might be able to intervene.
473
00:32:06,591 --> 00:32:10,641
Inspections, not war.
War is not worth dying for.
474
00:32:10,762 --> 00:32:14,938
Inspections, not war. Inspections, not war.
475
00:32:15,058 --> 00:32:17,231
The Iraqis are real people.
476
00:32:17,352 --> 00:32:20,356
The majority of them are under 18 years old.
477
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:25,202
They're lovely, nice, wonderful people,
and we don't want to see them killed.
478
00:32:26,528 --> 00:32:29,122
February 14th. That would be the day
479
00:32:29,239 --> 00:32:33,494
the Security Council would hear
from the inspectors in Iraq
480
00:32:33,618 --> 00:32:36,337
responsible for the UN inspections.
481
00:32:38,290 --> 00:32:40,133
So important is this event
482
00:32:40,250 --> 00:32:43,754
that all the main foreign ministers
of the United Nations are here,
483
00:32:43,879 --> 00:32:45,973
including America's Colin Powell.
484
00:32:46,089 --> 00:32:47,716
They've insisted on turning up
485
00:32:47,841 --> 00:32:50,139
because this encounter could even determine
486
00:32:50,260 --> 00:32:52,479
the fate of the United Nations.
487
00:32:52,596 --> 00:32:54,598
The chamber of the Security Council
had never been
488
00:32:54,723 --> 00:32:57,317
as full of cameras
as they were in those days.
489
00:33:01,521 --> 00:33:03,615
We walked into this room and looked around.
490
00:33:03,732 --> 00:33:05,905
It was just full of cameras.
491
00:33:08,862 --> 00:33:13,163
How much, if any, is left
of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
492
00:33:13,283 --> 00:33:16,958
and related prescribed items and programs?
493
00:33:17,078 --> 00:33:20,252
So far, UNMOVIC has not found
any such weapons,
494
00:33:20,373 --> 00:33:23,627
only a small number
of empty chemical munitions.
495
00:33:23,752 --> 00:33:27,222
We have to date found no evidence
496
00:33:27,339 --> 00:33:31,845
of ongoing prohibited nuclear
or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.
497
00:33:31,968 --> 00:33:34,187
As I have just indicated, a number of...
498
00:33:34,304 --> 00:33:36,648
What the inspectors actually said
499
00:33:36,765 --> 00:33:39,109
was very, very unequivocal.
500
00:33:40,101 --> 00:33:42,775
"We have seen no evidence."
501
00:33:42,896 --> 00:33:45,194
They would not, they did not,
502
00:33:45,315 --> 00:33:49,616
provide the US with any excuse to go to war,
503
00:33:49,736 --> 00:33:52,205
and the Security Council knew it.
504
00:34:03,166 --> 00:34:05,715
When the two branches of the march meet here
505
00:34:05,835 --> 00:34:08,054
in Piccadilly Circus tomorrow afternoon,
506
00:34:08,171 --> 00:34:09,923
Eros may well be witnessing
507
00:34:10,048 --> 00:34:13,143
the biggest peacetime demonstration
in British history.
508
00:34:14,594 --> 00:34:18,849
The day before,
the Evening Standard and the Mail
509
00:34:18,974 --> 00:34:22,899
and all the others had a double-page
spread about the march route,
510
00:34:23,019 --> 00:34:25,613
what are the ideal clothes
to wear at a demonstration,
511
00:34:25,730 --> 00:34:28,984
and you suddenly realized
we'd become the mainstream.
512
00:34:29,109 --> 00:34:31,237
Saturday's demonstration
against the war on Iraq
513
00:34:31,361 --> 00:34:34,911
is expected to be the biggest peacetime
rally ever seen in this country.
514
00:34:35,031 --> 00:34:38,752
There will be other protests
from New York to Tokyo.
515
00:34:38,868 --> 00:34:40,461
In the course of the seven weeks,
516
00:34:40,579 --> 00:34:44,209
we must have distributed well
over a million pieces of literature.
517
00:34:44,332 --> 00:34:48,007
All of us became aware that
this thing was gonna be big.
518
00:34:48,128 --> 00:34:51,428
There is a large number of people
that are gonna be on this demonstration
519
00:34:51,548 --> 00:34:53,926
that have never demonstrated before
in their lives.
520
00:34:54,050 --> 00:34:58,180
Middle England are coming out
in their thousands on Saturday,
521
00:34:58,305 --> 00:35:00,774
and that is what is going
to make a difference.
522
00:35:00,890 --> 00:35:03,643
Tonight, final preparations
are underway here in London
523
00:35:03,768 --> 00:35:05,941
for the anti-war rally tomorrow.
524
00:35:06,062 --> 00:35:09,441
It's being billed as the biggest peace
demonstration in recent years.
525
00:35:23,455 --> 00:35:26,709
The rallies of February
15th followed the sun.
526
00:35:26,833 --> 00:35:28,801
They started in the South Pacific.
527
00:35:28,918 --> 00:35:30,841
After that it was New Zealand,
528
00:35:30,962 --> 00:35:33,010
and after that it was Australia,
it was Sydney.
529
00:35:33,131 --> 00:35:37,477
They came from everywhere
and from every walk of life
530
00:35:37,594 --> 00:35:40,143
to walk for life and for peace.
531
00:35:40,263 --> 00:35:43,142
It was an extraordinary display
of people power.
532
00:35:43,266 --> 00:35:46,270
So many voices with one simple message.
533
00:35:46,394 --> 00:35:49,819
No war! No war!
534
00:35:49,939 --> 00:35:53,489
I remember getting on the train
to go into the rally,
535
00:35:53,610 --> 00:35:56,159
and the train was absolutely packed,
536
00:35:56,279 --> 00:35:58,077
and you realized something huge was happening
537
00:35:58,198 --> 00:36:02,078
and it was just a complete cross-section
of liberal concerned Australia.
538
00:36:02,202 --> 00:36:04,671
And then it was North Asia and South Asia.
539
00:36:07,624 --> 00:36:10,093
And then after that it was Malaysia.
540
00:36:10,210 --> 00:36:12,338
It was Indonesia, it was the Philippines,
541
00:36:12,462 --> 00:36:14,314
it was India, it was Pakistan.
542
00:36:18,218 --> 00:36:19,736
And then across Russia.
543
00:36:22,806 --> 00:36:24,934
And then down into Africa.
544
00:36:26,976 --> 00:36:32,198
This is a war about the oil reserves of Iraq.
545
00:36:33,650 --> 00:36:35,027
And then across into Europe.
546
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:41,166
Roma was full of different marches,
547
00:36:41,282 --> 00:36:46,789
and we found another enormous march
coming against us,
548
00:36:46,913 --> 00:36:48,756
and we don't know who they are.
549
00:36:48,873 --> 00:36:51,626
And no, they are us!
550
00:36:58,299 --> 00:37:02,270
And then there was the huge protest in Spain.
551
00:37:09,936 --> 00:37:13,236
In Barcelona was something
that we couldn't imagine.
552
00:37:13,356 --> 00:37:15,404
It was no march because, in fact,
553
00:37:15,525 --> 00:37:19,200
all passage to the Grà cia
was occupied by people.
554
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,072
It was full of people.
555
00:37:23,783 --> 00:37:27,833
All over Spain it's around five million
people going into the streets.
556
00:37:27,954 --> 00:37:34,007
So it was the biggest demonstration
in the history in the Spanish State.
557
00:37:35,503 --> 00:37:40,509
You're reading all of the wire reports
increasingly from all of these cities,
558
00:37:40,633 --> 00:37:42,601
and you see France, Paris.
559
00:37:46,598 --> 00:37:49,602
Here in France,
everyone is united against the war.
560
00:37:49,726 --> 00:37:53,071
The people, the politicians, the newspapers.
561
00:37:53,188 --> 00:37:57,364
Hundreds of cities.
All of a sudden, this sea of humanity.
562
00:38:09,078 --> 00:38:12,753
And then... we had London.
563
00:38:18,838 --> 00:38:20,385
I thought I was on the wrong march.
564
00:38:20,507 --> 00:38:23,761
I did. I thought this must
be for something else
565
00:38:23,885 --> 00:38:28,015
because there were all these families,
people with pushcarts and babies
566
00:38:28,139 --> 00:38:30,267
and people I'd just never
seen on these things,
567
00:38:30,391 --> 00:38:32,519
and the outpouring of rage from the people.
568
00:38:32,644 --> 00:38:34,897
It was so beautiful.
569
00:38:35,021 --> 00:38:38,946
Really passionate and eloquent and beautiful.
570
00:38:39,067 --> 00:38:41,195
People crying out and shouting.
571
00:38:48,827 --> 00:38:53,674
This proposed war by Britain
is historically unpopular,
572
00:38:53,790 --> 00:38:56,964
and the mother of all focus groups
has descended on London
573
00:38:57,085 --> 00:39:01,306
to bring that fact home to Tony Blair today.
574
00:39:01,422 --> 00:39:04,801
And then the march began,
and we were millions.
575
00:39:04,926 --> 00:39:06,428
It seemed we were millions.
576
00:39:06,553 --> 00:39:10,353
A million people in...
on the streets of London.
577
00:39:10,473 --> 00:39:13,101
There hadn't been a demonstration that size
578
00:39:13,226 --> 00:39:15,228
in anybody in the government,
579
00:39:15,353 --> 00:39:19,699
let alone in Parliament's recollection.
580
00:39:19,816 --> 00:39:24,287
It was... It sort of shut you up.
581
00:39:24,404 --> 00:39:26,907
Virtually everybody I know was on it.
582
00:39:27,031 --> 00:39:29,409
I wish I'd been on it.
I should have been on it.
583
00:39:29,534 --> 00:39:32,959
People like my son and my granddaughters.
584
00:39:33,079 --> 00:39:35,047
He, not being a political activist,
585
00:39:35,164 --> 00:39:37,713
and he was texting me saying
"This is fantastic."
586
00:39:37,834 --> 00:39:39,427
"He can't go to war now."
587
00:39:41,421 --> 00:39:43,594
And it was beautiful.
588
00:39:43,715 --> 00:39:47,185
Many say they've never known
an atmosphere quite like it.
589
00:39:47,302 --> 00:39:48,849
Could that be in part
590
00:39:48,970 --> 00:39:52,565
because so many were moved
to protest for the first time?
591
00:39:52,682 --> 00:39:55,356
I'm not a demonstration
type of person, actually.
592
00:39:55,476 --> 00:39:58,980
I mean, it may well have been the first
demonstration I ever went on.
593
00:39:59,105 --> 00:40:00,607
I think the world's going mad.
594
00:40:00,732 --> 00:40:02,985
I just feel it's got to be stopped somewhere.
595
00:40:03,109 --> 00:40:08,661
Anybody who could come came,
of my lot. And family, I just...
596
00:40:08,781 --> 00:40:10,533
A couple of phone calls, and I should think
597
00:40:10,658 --> 00:40:12,626
we must have been a dozen.
598
00:40:12,744 --> 00:40:15,918
And they loved it and were very proud.
599
00:40:16,039 --> 00:40:19,293
This was the future of humanity,
and people felt it.
600
00:40:19,417 --> 00:40:20,669
That's why they came.
601
00:40:23,963 --> 00:40:25,806
I managed to get friends of mine,
602
00:40:25,924 --> 00:40:30,851
that I never considered for a moment
would come with me, to come that day.
603
00:40:30,970 --> 00:40:35,396
I hadn't been an activist before.
I hadn't protested anything before.
604
00:40:35,516 --> 00:40:38,565
There was a sense of "Come on,
come with me, come and join me."
605
00:40:38,686 --> 00:40:40,108
"We can do this together."
606
00:40:40,229 --> 00:40:42,698
I was very enthusiastic
that this was going to do it.
607
00:40:42,815 --> 00:40:44,567
This was going to stop the Iraq war.
608
00:40:44,692 --> 00:40:48,538
If Blair cared about democracy,
we wouldn't be doing this march
609
00:40:48,655 --> 00:40:50,703
because he would be representing his people.
610
00:40:50,823 --> 00:40:52,871
What Bush and Blair are actually planning
611
00:40:52,992 --> 00:40:55,120
is so disgusting, so bloody lousy.
612
00:40:55,244 --> 00:40:56,461
It's a war for oil.
613
00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:02,385
I don't think it was
until 15th February 2003,
614
00:41:02,502 --> 00:41:06,097
that we really understood
the enormity of the divide
615
00:41:06,214 --> 00:41:08,512
that existed within the country.
616
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:15,015
And we came to a halt in Whitehall,
and as it happened,
617
00:41:15,139 --> 00:41:20,441
my family and I were dead opposite
the entrance to Downing Street.
618
00:41:20,561 --> 00:41:21,687
And...
619
00:41:22,939 --> 00:41:26,864
a noise went up
that I've never heard before or since.
620
00:41:26,985 --> 00:41:33,083
A kind of visceral, feral grumble,
roar, rising sound.
621
00:41:35,451 --> 00:41:38,625
I remember coming up to Piccadilly Circus,
622
00:41:38,746 --> 00:41:44,753
and there was this just incredible howl
of, I don't know...
623
00:41:44,877 --> 00:41:48,723
Joy, really, as the two demonstrations
came together.
624
00:41:51,551 --> 00:41:55,601
I always feel like this
when, all of a sudden...
625
00:41:57,140 --> 00:41:58,767
millions of ordinary people,
626
00:41:58,891 --> 00:42:02,737
who are told they can't do this,
suddenly do it.
627
00:42:04,022 --> 00:42:07,401
Everybody in the world has a chance today
628
00:42:07,525 --> 00:42:13,282
to say no, absolutely no to war on Iraq.
629
00:42:14,699 --> 00:42:19,205
And there was this real desire.
"Come on, Tony Blair, listen."
630
00:42:19,328 --> 00:42:24,630
"You have to listen.
You can't ignore this many people."
631
00:42:24,751 --> 00:42:26,970
Blair went up to Scotland
632
00:42:27,086 --> 00:42:29,054
to speak at the Scottish
Labour Party Conference.
633
00:42:29,172 --> 00:42:31,971
His speech is greeted with stony silence,
634
00:42:32,091 --> 00:42:33,764
something that never ever happens.
635
00:42:33,885 --> 00:42:38,265
As you watch your TV pictures
of the march, just ponder this.
636
00:42:38,389 --> 00:42:40,733
If there are 500,000 on that march,
637
00:42:40,850 --> 00:42:43,103
that is still less than the number of people
638
00:42:43,227 --> 00:42:46,902
whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for.
639
00:42:47,940 --> 00:42:49,317
If there are one million...
640
00:42:50,943 --> 00:42:53,287
that is still less than the number of people
641
00:42:53,404 --> 00:42:56,658
that died in the wars that he started.
642
00:42:56,783 --> 00:43:03,883
We are starting something really big,
and our first task is peace in Iraq.
643
00:43:03,998 --> 00:43:08,048
Ridding the world of Saddam
would be an act of humanity.
644
00:43:09,212 --> 00:43:12,216
It is leaving him there that is inhumane.
645
00:43:13,299 --> 00:43:18,021
But we must not stop
until we have achieved the objectives
646
00:43:18,137 --> 00:43:21,983
that bring us all to Hyde Park
this afternoon.
647
00:43:24,936 --> 00:43:28,406
We had a counter at the background
of the stage,
648
00:43:28,523 --> 00:43:31,697
and I remember asking
"Can I make that announcement?"
649
00:43:31,818 --> 00:43:33,991
"Can I please make that announcement?"
650
00:43:34,112 --> 00:43:40,290
We had those who thought
we could never, never pull it together,
651
00:43:40,409 --> 00:43:47,167
and we have one and a half million
people marching in London today!
652
00:43:49,836 --> 00:43:51,588
Then, minute by minute,
653
00:43:51,712 --> 00:43:54,807
the phone calls, the feedback,
getting a call from Egypt,
654
00:43:54,924 --> 00:43:57,302
people watching on Egyptian TV
655
00:43:57,426 --> 00:44:00,100
saying, "What is this? What have you done?"
656
00:44:01,139 --> 00:44:04,484
"This is absolutely miraculous.
How have you done this?"
657
00:44:15,111 --> 00:44:19,491
Everyone was in a state of shock
to find, like, one million Brits
658
00:44:19,615 --> 00:44:22,459
who were willing to take to the streets
to protest against the war.
659
00:44:22,577 --> 00:44:24,625
Everyone was shocked that, you know,
660
00:44:24,745 --> 00:44:27,624
there are three million
in the streets of Madrid.
661
00:44:27,748 --> 00:44:29,500
I mean, everybody was shocked.
662
00:44:29,625 --> 00:44:32,003
We were jealous that this
was happening in the West
663
00:44:32,128 --> 00:44:33,880
and not happening in the Arab world.
664
00:44:34,005 --> 00:44:38,385
Millions of Egyptians and Arabs and Muslims
665
00:44:38,509 --> 00:44:40,386
can watch on the TV screens
666
00:44:40,511 --> 00:44:44,641
those white, whisky-drinking infidels
taking to the streets on their behalf,
667
00:44:44,765 --> 00:44:48,736
while in their own countries, you know,
you cannot mobilize on that scale.
668
00:44:48,853 --> 00:44:51,322
The issue was, if they're doing that there,
669
00:44:51,439 --> 00:44:53,692
we should do at least as much here.
670
00:44:53,816 --> 00:44:57,036
In Egypt it was one
of my most depressing days.
671
00:44:57,153 --> 00:45:01,579
We had tiny turnout
for these calls of protest.
672
00:45:06,204 --> 00:45:10,801
On 15th February, we did
actually organize something small.
673
00:45:14,295 --> 00:45:19,517
And, of course,
we had the huge military police
674
00:45:19,634 --> 00:45:21,807
slash military mobilization of the time.
675
00:45:21,928 --> 00:45:24,056
But we knew it's going to happen
676
00:45:24,180 --> 00:45:26,899
because of the international mobilization.
677
00:45:28,976 --> 00:45:30,728
It was very frustrating.
678
00:45:30,853 --> 00:45:35,154
I give so much credit to the activists here
679
00:45:35,274 --> 00:45:37,777
who didn't give up on the Egyptian people,
680
00:45:37,902 --> 00:45:40,496
because I think I might have given up
on the Egyptian people.
681
00:45:42,865 --> 00:45:45,994
That day, 15th February 2003,
682
00:45:46,118 --> 00:45:51,090
gave us a real mobilization power
683
00:45:51,207 --> 00:45:53,551
to get the message across
684
00:45:53,668 --> 00:46:00,426
that whenever the US and the UK
would start their war against Iraq...
685
00:46:01,926 --> 00:46:05,396
we should be on the streets opposing that.
686
00:46:09,475 --> 00:46:12,479
And then, finally, it came to New York.
687
00:46:12,603 --> 00:46:14,605
# This land is your land
688
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:20,279
# This land is my land
689
00:46:20,403 --> 00:46:22,952
I heard the noise from the outside.
690
00:46:23,072 --> 00:46:27,794
Being out in the street early on
and as the day was going on,
691
00:46:27,910 --> 00:46:30,789
just watching what had to be
692
00:46:30,913 --> 00:46:33,382
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.
693
00:46:33,499 --> 00:46:36,127
It just... People kept coming.
694
00:46:37,670 --> 00:46:41,925
# To the Gulf Stream waters
695
00:46:42,967 --> 00:46:44,093
# I tell ya
696
00:46:44,218 --> 00:46:47,267
I needed some milk and some vegetables,
697
00:46:47,388 --> 00:46:52,235
and I went out, and I realized
what the demonstration was about.
698
00:46:52,351 --> 00:46:53,944
One, two, three, four!
699
00:46:54,061 --> 00:46:55,813
# As I went walking
700
00:46:55,938 --> 00:46:57,861
Five, six, seven, eight!
701
00:46:57,982 --> 00:46:59,199
# Down that...
702
00:46:59,317 --> 00:47:03,072
I felt compelled to fly out on a weekend
while I was on active duty
703
00:47:03,195 --> 00:47:07,792
to attend this protest in New York City
on February 15th 2003.
704
00:47:10,411 --> 00:47:14,837
I do remember getting off the subway
and seeing Grand Central Station
705
00:47:14,957 --> 00:47:18,211
and just seeing the people
that were in there,
706
00:47:18,336 --> 00:47:20,179
and it was overwhelming.
707
00:47:20,296 --> 00:47:22,094
I went outside the doors,
708
00:47:22,214 --> 00:47:26,139
and I just remember seeing
just so many people.
709
00:47:26,260 --> 00:47:29,935
Just people for blocks and blocks
and blocks and blocks.
710
00:47:30,056 --> 00:47:33,310
Who knows where they were to?
And you could almost...
711
00:47:33,434 --> 00:47:36,608
If you could look to 125th,
they may have been as far as 125th.
712
00:47:36,729 --> 00:47:41,200
I'm getting chills right now
just talking about it. Uh...
713
00:47:41,317 --> 00:47:43,820
# They tried to stop me
714
00:47:43,944 --> 00:47:48,745
# They put up a sign that said
715
00:47:48,866 --> 00:47:51,665
# Oh, it said "private property"
716
00:47:51,786 --> 00:47:53,880
I felt touched by it.
717
00:47:53,996 --> 00:47:59,924
I felt this is part of
the political drama that is played out.
718
00:48:00,044 --> 00:48:03,969
- Whose street?
- Our street!
719
00:48:04,090 --> 00:48:09,096
I also had some little fear that maybe
someone would identify me
720
00:48:09,220 --> 00:48:15,068
and hoist me up on a truck
as a mascot or something.
721
00:48:15,184 --> 00:48:18,028
But no one did that.
722
00:48:18,145 --> 00:48:20,944
Streets and parks and cities
across the US and the world
723
00:48:21,065 --> 00:48:22,942
were filled with demonstrators today
724
00:48:23,067 --> 00:48:26,446
protesting a possible
US-Ied war against Iraq.
725
00:48:26,570 --> 00:48:29,244
All told, anti-war demonstrations took place
726
00:48:29,365 --> 00:48:32,209
in at least 150 American cities
from coast to coast.
727
00:48:32,326 --> 00:48:37,958
We were attempting something
on this day that was historic.
728
00:48:38,999 --> 00:48:41,127
There was no way to not take notice.
729
00:48:41,252 --> 00:48:44,756
Surely President Bush must be watching,
730
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,884
and surely Tony Blair must be watching.
731
00:48:48,008 --> 00:48:50,431
You know, the size of a protest,
it's like deciding,
732
00:48:50,553 --> 00:48:53,432
well, I'm gonna decide policy
based upon a focus group.
733
00:48:53,556 --> 00:48:55,183
They can't hold us back!
734
00:48:55,307 --> 00:48:58,026
Bush, you can't hold us back!
735
00:48:58,144 --> 00:48:59,987
You can't hold the people!
736
00:49:00,104 --> 00:49:02,152
You can't keep the people down!
737
00:49:02,273 --> 00:49:05,573
# And this land
738
00:49:05,693 --> 00:49:07,695
# Was made for you and me
739
00:49:07,820 --> 00:49:14,294
The people will be heard!
There will not be a war against Iraq!
740
00:49:17,246 --> 00:49:19,340
There was unbelievable sense
741
00:49:19,457 --> 00:49:21,630
that maybe this could make a difference.
742
00:49:21,750 --> 00:49:23,673
Maybe, for the first time in history,
743
00:49:23,794 --> 00:49:27,048
we could actually stop the bad guys, right,
744
00:49:27,173 --> 00:49:29,096
from doing something horrendous.
745
00:49:32,553 --> 00:49:36,683
People are saying no to war!
746
00:49:36,807 --> 00:49:40,027
And we stand in solidarity,
747
00:49:40,144 --> 00:49:44,524
all the people of the world
who are marching at this very moment.
748
00:49:44,648 --> 00:49:48,278
I remember Harry Belafonte and his
long-time great friend Danny Glover,
749
00:49:48,402 --> 00:49:49,995
the great activist actor,
750
00:49:50,112 --> 00:49:54,208
who said "We stand here
on this threshold of history,
751
00:49:54,325 --> 00:49:56,327
and we say to the world..."
752
00:49:56,452 --> 00:50:00,127
Not in our names, not in our names.
753
00:50:00,247 --> 00:50:02,215
"Not in our name."
754
00:50:02,333 --> 00:50:06,509
And I remember the crowd picked it up,
and it was echoing.
755
00:50:12,259 --> 00:50:15,012
And I remember thinking,
I will never again...
756
00:50:16,180 --> 00:50:18,103
have an opportunity like this,
757
00:50:18,224 --> 00:50:22,445
to be present at a moment
that is changing the world.
758
00:50:22,561 --> 00:50:25,064
And all a sudden I felt elated,
759
00:50:25,189 --> 00:50:27,738
and I felt, "Of course we can stop the war,
760
00:50:27,858 --> 00:50:29,781
because we are so many people,
761
00:50:29,902 --> 00:50:32,781
and there's no leader
in any country in the world
762
00:50:32,905 --> 00:50:39,003
that could go ahead with a war when
they see a global movement saying no."
763
00:50:43,541 --> 00:50:45,384
- What do we want?
- Peace!
764
00:50:45,501 --> 00:50:47,754
- When do we want it?
- Now!
765
00:50:47,878 --> 00:50:50,631
Let you remember
and let your children remember
766
00:50:50,756 --> 00:50:57,355
that on February 15th you were here,
joined by 35 million people.
767
00:50:57,471 --> 00:50:59,815
Stop the war!
768
00:51:00,808 --> 00:51:03,311
Stop the war!
769
00:51:03,435 --> 00:51:04,937
Stop the war!
770
00:51:05,062 --> 00:51:08,783
We had the first global demonstration.
771
00:51:10,901 --> 00:51:14,451
There were demonstrations
in what, every continent,
772
00:51:14,572 --> 00:51:18,668
and 600 cities around the world
had demonstrations,
773
00:51:18,784 --> 00:51:21,207
including a demonstration in Antarctica.
774
00:51:35,384 --> 00:51:38,012
Saying this thing even happened
in Antarctica is like saying
775
00:51:38,137 --> 00:51:39,980
it happened on the moon
or it happened on Mars.
776
00:51:41,223 --> 00:51:42,896
I think Antarctica stills exists
777
00:51:43,017 --> 00:51:45,736
as this sort of mythological place
to most people,
778
00:51:45,853 --> 00:51:47,901
that it is the end of the earth.
779
00:51:48,022 --> 00:51:52,027
And it's remarkable to people
that there are people there at all.
780
00:51:57,656 --> 00:52:00,205
We knew that there was demonstrations
781
00:52:00,326 --> 00:52:02,374
gonna be going on around the world
for February 15th,
782
00:52:02,494 --> 00:52:04,121
and we knew it was gonna be really big.
783
00:52:04,246 --> 00:52:07,967
And I had a subscription to The Nation
that was coming to me in McMurdo,
784
00:52:08,083 --> 00:52:10,836
and I was reading a column
by Alexander Coburn,
785
00:52:10,961 --> 00:52:13,805
and he was talking about the upcoming
February 15th demonstration.
786
00:52:13,922 --> 00:52:16,641
He was saying, "Even in Antarctica
there's gonna be demonstrations."
787
00:52:16,759 --> 00:52:19,137
I thought, "Huh? Who would that be?"
788
00:52:19,261 --> 00:52:21,138
And I thought, "Wait a minute, he means us."
789
00:52:21,263 --> 00:52:24,813
And so, I thought, "Well, we can't let
down the great Alexander Coburn,
790
00:52:24,933 --> 00:52:26,355
so we're gonna have to do something."
791
00:52:26,477 --> 00:52:29,731
And so we got this one together
in fairly short order.
792
00:52:31,523 --> 00:52:35,448
Saying what you think isn't something
that's easily done down there.
793
00:52:35,569 --> 00:52:39,574
First we were told no protest
at all would be tolerated,
794
00:52:39,698 --> 00:52:40,790
and I think they were saying,
795
00:52:40,908 --> 00:52:45,709
"Well, it's OK to be for peace,
but you can't be against the war."
796
00:52:45,829 --> 00:52:50,175
"You do that, you'll go home in a box."
797
00:52:50,292 --> 00:52:52,545
"Try that, you'll go home in a box."
798
00:52:52,670 --> 00:52:53,717
I'm not sure I was aware
799
00:52:53,837 --> 00:52:56,431
that you could actually lose your job
for stuff like this
800
00:52:56,548 --> 00:52:58,642
until I actually lost my job
for stuff like this.
801
00:52:58,759 --> 00:53:01,262
And, that said, even if I'd known,
802
00:53:01,387 --> 00:53:03,310
I think I would have done
just the same thing.
803
00:53:06,642 --> 00:53:10,146
If we could get enough people
who were willing to do it,
804
00:53:10,270 --> 00:53:14,650
that just was hopeful to me,
805
00:53:14,775 --> 00:53:16,994
and when we did, it was joyful to me.
806
00:53:20,531 --> 00:53:24,206
And so we fervently hoped
that we could be part
807
00:53:24,326 --> 00:53:27,500
of this movement that was going on,
this February 15th movement.
808
00:53:27,621 --> 00:53:30,625
Just... we want this to stop.
We don't want this to happen.
809
00:53:36,463 --> 00:53:38,136
- This is how we'd look.
- That's right.
810
00:53:38,257 --> 00:53:40,555
And there was 70 of us
who looked just like this.
811
00:53:49,226 --> 00:53:52,651
This is "Democracy Now."
812
00:53:52,771 --> 00:53:55,741
The world says no to war.
813
00:53:55,858 --> 00:53:59,533
Sites included Australia, Johannesburg,
Tel Aviv, Syria,
814
00:53:59,653 --> 00:54:02,827
Tokyo, Bangladesh, South Korea,
Hong Kong, Thailand,
815
00:54:02,948 --> 00:54:05,292
Puerto Rico, Brazil, East Timor, India,
816
00:54:05,409 --> 00:54:08,083
and even the South Pole.
817
00:54:40,319 --> 00:54:43,664
And when, the next day, The New York Times,
818
00:54:43,781 --> 00:54:47,502
on the front page above the fold,
said this great truth,
819
00:54:47,618 --> 00:54:50,747
"Once again there are two superpowers
in the world."
820
00:54:50,871 --> 00:54:54,125
"The United States
and global public opinion."
821
00:54:54,249 --> 00:54:55,592
That was huge.
822
00:54:58,045 --> 00:55:00,298
Some of my friends in the anti-war movement
823
00:55:00,422 --> 00:55:02,390
got rather puffed up about it.
824
00:55:02,508 --> 00:55:05,682
I thought they were gonna do t-shirts.
"Second Superpower."
825
00:55:05,803 --> 00:55:07,976
You know, there was a bit of that.
826
00:55:08,096 --> 00:55:11,441
My view was, this is fantastic.
We worked for it.
827
00:55:11,558 --> 00:55:14,732
It's not gonna last for long,
but it's a marker.
828
00:55:14,853 --> 00:55:18,232
It was a big marker. Tremendous.
829
00:55:18,357 --> 00:55:22,533
I think I made an observation
at a critical period
830
00:55:22,653 --> 00:55:27,750
as our country was spooling up for war,
that there was another power out there,
831
00:55:27,866 --> 00:55:31,245
and I think we live at our peril
in ignoring it
832
00:55:31,370 --> 00:55:33,338
and certainly in denigrating it,
833
00:55:33,455 --> 00:55:36,379
because that tends to be the next generation,
834
00:55:36,500 --> 00:55:38,127
and that is the future.
835
00:55:51,640 --> 00:55:56,020
I was actually overseas
when the big demonstration took place.
836
00:55:57,437 --> 00:55:59,565
The whole of my family went on it.
837
00:56:01,024 --> 00:56:03,277
My parents, my sisters.
838
00:56:03,402 --> 00:56:06,201
There was a real feeling that actually
you could make a difference
839
00:56:06,321 --> 00:56:09,791
because going to war was an absolute nonsense
840
00:56:09,908 --> 00:56:12,752
and there had to be another way out of this.
841
00:56:12,870 --> 00:56:15,214
I was trying my best to see
842
00:56:15,330 --> 00:56:17,424
whether there was anything
behind the scenes I could do
843
00:56:17,541 --> 00:56:22,547
to, you know, hopefully avert the war.
844
00:56:25,591 --> 00:56:28,470
To an extent, Saddam Hussein
was now a cornered animal,
845
00:56:28,594 --> 00:56:33,191
and an animal when they're cornered
is extremely dangerous.
846
00:56:33,307 --> 00:56:35,401
With the build-up to the war,
847
00:56:35,517 --> 00:56:40,614
the likelihood was that he was going
to end up being executed or killed.
848
00:56:40,731 --> 00:56:44,076
And therefore I felt that
there was a reasonable chance
849
00:56:44,192 --> 00:56:45,660
in trying to persuade him
850
00:56:45,777 --> 00:56:48,326
that he should bow out
and go to another country.
851
00:56:48,447 --> 00:56:51,326
We'd definitely had these conversations
beforehand,
852
00:56:51,450 --> 00:56:53,794
and there definitely did
seem to be an alternative
853
00:56:53,911 --> 00:56:55,288
than doing what we did.
854
00:56:55,412 --> 00:56:57,665
I was fortunate enough
to know Nelson Mandela.
855
00:56:57,789 --> 00:57:00,338
One power,
856
00:57:00,459 --> 00:57:07,593
with a President who has no foresight,
who cannot think properly...
857
00:57:08,751 --> 00:57:15,650
...is now wanting to plunge the world
into a holocaust,
858
00:57:15,766 --> 00:57:21,193
and I'm happy that the people
of the world are standing up.
859
00:57:21,313 --> 00:57:24,362
Nelson Mandela had spoken vehemently
860
00:57:24,483 --> 00:57:28,078
out against the idea of the war
and against the invasion,
861
00:57:28,195 --> 00:57:34,043
and so I felt that there was a chance
that if he came to see Saddam Hussein,
862
00:57:34,159 --> 00:57:40,007
and if he agreed to fly out
on the same plane as Saddam Hussein,
863
00:57:40,123 --> 00:57:41,921
that we might have a success.
864
00:57:43,961 --> 00:57:46,680
Kofi Annan also agreed to go on the trip,
865
00:57:46,797 --> 00:57:50,097
so we arranged a plane to go to South Africa
866
00:57:50,217 --> 00:57:53,391
to pick them up to take them to Baghdad.
867
00:58:05,983 --> 00:58:10,159
I can think of nothing that
Saddam Hussein could do diplomatically.
868
00:58:10,278 --> 00:58:12,701
I think that time is now over.
869
00:58:14,241 --> 00:58:16,960
The time for diplomacy has passed.
870
00:58:17,077 --> 00:58:21,048
Sadly, the very week that they were due
871
00:58:21,164 --> 00:58:26,887
to go to Baghdad to sit down
with Saddam Hussein,
872
00:58:27,004 --> 00:58:29,757
bombing started,
and the visit never took place.
873
00:58:32,926 --> 00:58:38,103
Now, whether the Americans or British
874
00:58:38,223 --> 00:58:40,897
had discovered what was going on,
we don't know.
875
00:58:41,018 --> 00:58:45,740
I mean, we had on purpose
not informed the authorities
876
00:58:45,856 --> 00:58:48,905
because we felt they might
bring the war forward
877
00:58:49,026 --> 00:58:52,326
if they knew this trip was to take place.
878
00:58:52,446 --> 00:58:56,371
But I still think every time
he looks at the news,
879
00:58:56,491 --> 00:58:59,665
he must think, "If only, you know,
if only it had worked."
880
00:58:59,786 --> 00:59:03,165
It was that close to having a solution.
881
00:59:13,133 --> 00:59:15,306
After the big march, February 15th,
882
00:59:15,427 --> 00:59:18,397
it was clear that the waving of placards
wasn't going to be any good
883
00:59:18,513 --> 00:59:20,356
and writing letters
wasn't going to be any good.
884
00:59:24,061 --> 00:59:26,814
And I decided, you know,
I was going to do something,
885
00:59:26,938 --> 00:59:29,657
and I was prepared to get arrested,
and da-dee-da-dee-da.
886
00:59:32,611 --> 00:59:35,114
So my friend Dave and I
were talking about it one evening.
887
00:59:35,238 --> 00:59:39,209
"Where would the most effective
place to paint a slogan in Sydney be?"
888
00:59:39,326 --> 00:59:41,545
And I said, "Well, to put it bluntly,
889
00:59:41,661 --> 00:59:43,880
it's on the sails of the Sydney Opera House."
890
00:59:44,915 --> 00:59:46,542
And it was this sort of real sinking feeling
891
00:59:46,666 --> 00:59:48,418
because, of course, he was absolutely right.
892
00:59:48,543 --> 00:59:52,764
It was the, you know, the iconic place
that the thing,
893
00:59:52,881 --> 00:59:56,351
that the message was inescapable,
and it was, you know...
894
00:59:56,468 --> 00:59:58,311
I sort of swallowed three times
and said, "OK."
895
00:59:58,428 --> 01:00:00,772
There I am, feeling very strongly about this.
896
01:00:00,889 --> 01:00:03,233
Do I feel strongly enough to, you know,
897
01:00:03,350 --> 01:00:05,569
probably to go to prison
for quite a long time?
898
01:00:05,685 --> 01:00:08,905
He said, "I could well get deported
if we do this,"
899
01:00:09,022 --> 01:00:12,242
and I said, "Well, ring me back
when you've thought that one through."
900
01:00:12,359 --> 01:00:15,989
And sure enough, he rang me back.
901
01:00:16,113 --> 01:00:19,208
Well, yes, I mean, the answer was yes.
902
01:00:19,324 --> 01:00:23,875
It was this once-in-a-Iifetime thing
where if we didn't...
903
01:00:23,995 --> 01:00:27,249
Even if we failed to stop it,
at least if the world could see
904
01:00:27,374 --> 01:00:30,628
that the people didn't want
what was being done in their name.
905
01:00:34,548 --> 01:00:37,017
With death-defying bravado,
906
01:00:37,134 --> 01:00:40,764
the anti-war movement's protest
scaled new heights.
907
01:00:42,889 --> 01:00:44,516
It was all very amateurish.
908
01:00:44,641 --> 01:00:46,393
We had paint, we had backpacks.
909
01:00:46,518 --> 01:00:49,112
We had great long paint rollers,
910
01:00:49,229 --> 01:00:51,823
like three or four of them to join together.
911
01:00:51,940 --> 01:00:56,195
We climbed up without any trouble.
Dave climbed up after me.
912
01:00:56,319 --> 01:01:00,540
Will, being a nonsmoker,
got to the top way quicker than I did.
913
01:01:00,657 --> 01:01:02,409
When he got up there, he said,
914
01:01:02,534 --> 01:01:05,208
"Will, I should tell you
I'm very scared of heights."
915
01:01:05,328 --> 01:01:07,797
I felt sick.
916
01:01:12,294 --> 01:01:14,922
This sort of overwhelming feeling
of not wanting to stuff it up.
917
01:01:15,046 --> 01:01:17,549
This sort of terror that you were
going to paint "No Wa"
918
01:01:17,674 --> 01:01:19,642
or that the "N" would be the wrong way around
919
01:01:19,759 --> 01:01:21,227
or, you know, something like that.
920
01:01:23,513 --> 01:01:26,858
To my amazement,
the font came out beautifully.
921
01:01:30,145 --> 01:01:31,647
And the police finally arrived
922
01:01:31,771 --> 01:01:34,399
just as we were touching it up
for the last time,
923
01:01:34,524 --> 01:01:38,404
and I said to the policeman,
"Can I just finish this bit?"
924
01:01:38,528 --> 01:01:45,127
And he was very polite. He said,
"No, I think you've done enough."
925
01:01:45,243 --> 01:01:48,292
This afternoon, the two men
were released on bail.
926
01:01:48,413 --> 01:01:51,257
We're charged with malicious damage,
which is quite ironic,
927
01:01:51,374 --> 01:01:53,593
because if war isn't the ultimate
malicious damage,
928
01:01:53,710 --> 01:01:55,178
I don't know what is.
929
01:01:55,295 --> 01:01:58,014
But freedom for Will Saunders
was short-lived.
930
01:01:58,131 --> 01:01:59,724
A scientist from Britain,
931
01:01:59,841 --> 01:02:03,891
he was quickly rearrested
by immigration officers.
932
01:02:31,539 --> 01:02:33,712
People say this place doesn't matter anymore,
933
01:02:33,833 --> 01:02:38,179
but hours before a war,
your MP can vote for or against it.
934
01:02:38,296 --> 01:02:42,176
And if that doesn't matter,
I simply don't know what does.
935
01:02:42,300 --> 01:02:47,272
The more momentous the particular
decision you're dealing with,
936
01:02:47,389 --> 01:02:50,518
the more you feel that obligation to do it
937
01:02:50,642 --> 01:02:52,736
on the basis of your own analysis
of what's best.
938
01:02:52,852 --> 01:02:53,978
And...
939
01:02:54,104 --> 01:02:56,573
But isn't it better to carry
the country with you?
940
01:02:56,690 --> 01:03:00,820
Of course. Of course it would be better
to carry the country with you,
941
01:03:00,944 --> 01:03:03,413
but the demonstration indicated
942
01:03:03,530 --> 01:03:06,909
that a great seam of the country
wasn't with us.
943
01:03:07,033 --> 01:03:08,706
What do you do then?
944
01:03:09,661 --> 01:03:13,291
You look to Parliament for support,
945
01:03:13,415 --> 01:03:16,259
and if you can't get support
in Parliament, then you don't do it.
946
01:03:17,836 --> 01:03:20,430
Now, the night before, Robin Cook resigned
947
01:03:20,547 --> 01:03:24,097
and made an astounding resignation speech.
948
01:03:24,217 --> 01:03:28,222
Iraq probably has no weapons
of mass destruction
949
01:03:28,346 --> 01:03:31,350
in the commonly understood sense of the term.
950
01:03:31,474 --> 01:03:33,226
Namely, a credible device
951
01:03:33,351 --> 01:03:37,572
capable of being delivered
against a strategic city target.
952
01:03:37,689 --> 01:03:41,319
It probably does still have biological toxins
953
01:03:41,443 --> 01:03:44,287
and battlefield chemical munitions.
954
01:03:44,404 --> 01:03:46,953
But it's had them since the 1980s,
955
01:03:47,073 --> 01:03:50,794
when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents
956
01:03:50,910 --> 01:03:55,666
and the then-British government approved
chemical and munitions factories.
957
01:03:55,790 --> 01:04:01,342
Why is it now so urgent
that we should take military action
958
01:04:01,463 --> 01:04:05,809
to disarm a military capacity
that has been there for 20 years
959
01:04:05,925 --> 01:04:07,927
and which we helped to create?
960
01:04:08,053 --> 01:04:09,225
Hear, hear.
961
01:04:09,346 --> 01:04:13,476
Mr. Speaker,
the longer I have served in this place,
962
01:04:13,600 --> 01:04:15,602
the greater the respect I have
963
01:04:15,727 --> 01:04:18,947
for the good sense and the collective
wisdom of the British people.
964
01:04:19,064 --> 01:04:20,281
Hear, hear.
965
01:04:20,398 --> 01:04:26,906
I intend to join those tomorrow night
who vote against military action now.
966
01:04:27,030 --> 01:04:30,000
It is for that reason and that reason alone,
967
01:04:30,116 --> 01:04:33,461
and with a heavy heart,
that I resign from the government.
968
01:04:33,578 --> 01:04:35,876
Hear, hear!
969
01:04:37,248 --> 01:04:39,421
It made a most profound impact.
970
01:04:39,542 --> 01:04:41,169
I think for the first time in my life,
971
01:04:41,294 --> 01:04:45,299
I heard people actually clapping in
the House of Commons when he sat down.
972
01:04:45,423 --> 01:04:48,848
Because normally you don't do that.
You just say "Hear, hear."
973
01:04:48,968 --> 01:04:52,188
But people actually applauded him
as he sat down.
974
01:04:56,810 --> 01:04:58,437
And then, all through the day,
975
01:04:58,561 --> 01:05:02,407
MPs that were thought to be
skeptical about the war
976
01:05:02,524 --> 01:05:07,655
were being hauled in to see
Tony Blair or Gordon Brown,
977
01:05:07,779 --> 01:05:10,658
and Blair was sort of straight at them
saying, "OK,
978
01:05:10,782 --> 01:05:13,080
are you with me or against me?"
979
01:05:13,201 --> 01:05:15,750
And there were all kinds of deals done,
no doubt.
980
01:05:15,870 --> 01:05:17,497
The Noes to the left 149...
981
01:05:17,622 --> 01:05:19,670
We had estimated at the start of the day
982
01:05:19,791 --> 01:05:21,793
there were possibly 200 Labour MPs,
983
01:05:21,918 --> 01:05:24,637
more than half the Parliamentary
Labour Party, a crucial figure,
984
01:05:24,754 --> 01:05:26,677
who were opposed to the war.
985
01:05:26,798 --> 01:05:29,517
By the end of the day,
that had come down to 139.
986
01:05:29,634 --> 01:05:35,482
The Ayes to the right 412,
the Noes to the left 149.
987
01:05:35,598 --> 01:05:37,225
The Ayes have it.
988
01:05:42,605 --> 01:05:45,154
An awful day because of the consequences.
989
01:05:45,275 --> 01:05:49,826
MPs knowingly voted for lies to go to war,
990
01:05:49,946 --> 01:05:52,540
which has killed thousands of people.
991
01:05:53,783 --> 01:05:58,163
Back! Get back! Get back! Move!
992
01:06:00,248 --> 01:06:03,092
Many of them now come out and say,
993
01:06:03,209 --> 01:06:09,433
"If we knew then what we know now,
we wouldn't have supported the war."
994
01:06:09,549 --> 01:06:13,474
"We wouldn't have believed Tony Blair.
We were misled."
995
01:06:13,595 --> 01:06:15,313
It's rubbish.
996
01:06:15,430 --> 01:06:19,776
When you had two million people
telling you the truth
997
01:06:19,893 --> 01:06:23,443
and giving you the strong case
for why this war would be a disaster,
998
01:06:23,563 --> 01:06:27,113
you cannot say you did not know.
You just did not care.
999
01:06:27,233 --> 01:06:29,201
This was when people suddenly realized
1000
01:06:29,319 --> 01:06:32,448
well, what is a democracy
if you can demonstrate like this
1001
01:06:32,572 --> 01:06:35,325
but it doesn't make any difference
to what happens?
1002
01:06:35,450 --> 01:06:41,048
And war suddenly happened
one night in March 2003.
1003
01:06:53,092 --> 01:06:56,187
At this hour, American and coalition forces
1004
01:06:56,304 --> 01:07:00,605
are in the early stages of
military operations to disarm Iraq,
1005
01:07:00,725 --> 01:07:03,274
to free its people, and to defend the world.
1006
01:07:03,394 --> 01:07:07,695
Tonight British servicemen and women
are engaged from air, land and sea.
1007
01:07:07,815 --> 01:07:11,115
Their mission, to remove Saddam Hussein
from power
1008
01:07:11,236 --> 01:07:13,659
and disarm Iraq of its weapons.
1009
01:07:13,780 --> 01:07:15,782
On my orders, coalition forces have begun
1010
01:07:15,907 --> 01:07:19,036
striking selected targets
of military importance
1011
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:21,834
to undermine Saddam Hussein's
ability to wage war.
1012
01:07:21,955 --> 01:07:24,253
I hope the Iraqi people hear this message.
1013
01:07:24,374 --> 01:07:25,921
We are with you.
1014
01:07:26,042 --> 01:07:29,387
Our enemy is not you
but your barbarous rulers.
1015
01:07:35,343 --> 01:07:37,266
And then "shock and awe" came.
1016
01:07:39,138 --> 01:07:42,642
And then, and then the horror.
1017
01:07:45,645 --> 01:07:47,318
It was over.
1018
01:08:09,961 --> 01:08:12,214
I think a lot of us cried.
1019
01:08:13,256 --> 01:08:17,682
And a lot of us screamed in fury
1020
01:08:17,802 --> 01:08:20,601
that these demons had started this war.
1021
01:08:27,895 --> 01:08:32,901
When I'm watching these missiles or rockets
1022
01:08:33,026 --> 01:08:36,246
or whatever they were flying across Baghdad,
1023
01:08:36,362 --> 01:08:40,583
it's kind of like when you see imagery
of the World Trade Center.
1024
01:08:40,700 --> 01:08:46,548
To most people, it's this iconic image
of a tower burning.
1025
01:08:46,664 --> 01:08:50,089
To me, it's an image of my brother dying
1026
01:08:50,209 --> 01:08:54,259
because it's very, very real
because I know he's on the 106th floor.
1027
01:08:59,469 --> 01:09:02,769
There's a piece in all of us
that intuitively knows
1028
01:09:02,889 --> 01:09:07,190
that someone's being killed
and some family is being harmed.
1029
01:09:07,310 --> 01:09:10,689
I think kind of the challenge for all of us
1030
01:09:10,813 --> 01:09:15,284
is how much of that are we willing to let in
1031
01:09:15,401 --> 01:09:19,781
and how much is too much to bear
and we have to turn it off.
1032
01:09:32,502 --> 01:09:36,006
When the hope was dashed and the war began,
1033
01:09:36,130 --> 01:09:38,849
I think that depressed people,
1034
01:09:38,966 --> 01:09:42,470
and it led to a simplistic concept
1035
01:09:42,595 --> 01:09:45,815
that we had the biggest demonstration
in history
1036
01:09:45,932 --> 01:09:47,980
and nothing happened, so we're giving up.
1037
01:09:50,144 --> 01:09:52,146
The morale just dropped.
1038
01:09:57,652 --> 01:10:00,246
It's hard to put "George Bush"
and "brilliant" in the same sentence,
1039
01:10:00,363 --> 01:10:02,491
but one of his more brilliant moves
1040
01:10:02,615 --> 01:10:04,788
was just to see 20 million people
around the world
1041
01:10:04,909 --> 01:10:07,037
saying, "We want you to do something,"
1042
01:10:07,161 --> 01:10:10,506
and then him turn around and say,
"We're gonna do it anyway
1043
01:10:10,623 --> 01:10:12,546
and you have no power."
1044
01:10:12,709 --> 01:10:14,962
All that sense of hope and possibility
1045
01:10:15,086 --> 01:10:18,386
that maybe we could prevent this,
we couldn't in the end.
1046
01:10:18,506 --> 01:10:20,133
We were still not strong enough.
1047
01:10:21,843 --> 01:10:24,813
Everybody please onto the sidewalks
in an orderly fashion.
1048
01:10:24,929 --> 01:10:27,432
Everybody on... Keep on walking.
1049
01:10:27,557 --> 01:10:32,529
Once you get past a demonstration,
1050
01:10:32,645 --> 01:10:35,068
a big demonstration
or a couple of big demonstrations,
1051
01:10:35,189 --> 01:10:36,611
what do you do?
1052
01:10:41,738 --> 01:10:44,742
We can identify probably
in retrospect positive things,
1053
01:10:44,866 --> 01:10:48,621
and maybe we averted other conflicts,
and all that kind of stuff,
1054
01:10:48,745 --> 01:10:50,668
but we didn't stop the Iraq War.
1055
01:10:50,788 --> 01:10:54,167
That was something that I think,
you know, it was painful.
1056
01:10:54,292 --> 01:10:57,262
And it made a lot of us then reflect
on why have we failed,
1057
01:10:57,378 --> 01:11:02,430
and certainly for me, now running 38 Degrees,
1058
01:11:02,550 --> 01:11:06,600
I think I can see the roots
of some of my thinking and my ideas
1059
01:11:06,721 --> 01:11:10,396
which lead me to want to start
a people-powered campaigning movement.
1060
01:11:10,516 --> 01:11:14,237
That did come out of the experience,
I think, of feeling the failure.
1061
01:11:14,353 --> 01:11:16,401
I got the sense from the people on the podium
1062
01:11:16,522 --> 01:11:18,900
that they in a way felt the job was done,
1063
01:11:19,025 --> 01:11:21,778
that this was gonna change
the government's opinion.
1064
01:11:21,903 --> 01:11:25,908
Now, we will never know
what Tony Blair and his advisers
1065
01:11:26,032 --> 01:11:30,378
were thinking on the eve of that day.
1066
01:11:33,664 --> 01:11:37,009
I'm sure they gambled on us not coming back.
1067
01:11:37,126 --> 01:11:42,098
Now, I really believe that
if we'd have come back the next weekend,
1068
01:11:42,215 --> 01:11:43,717
they may not have changed then,
1069
01:11:43,841 --> 01:11:45,639
but they would have certainly been nervous.
1070
01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:47,979
But if we'd have come back
the weekend after that,
1071
01:11:48,095 --> 01:11:50,644
then you never know what would have happened.
1072
01:11:50,765 --> 01:11:54,144
And in that sense,
1073
01:11:54,268 --> 01:11:59,195
I feel very frustrated
and a deep sense of regret
1074
01:11:59,315 --> 01:12:03,491
about the fact
that we just didn't finish the job.
1075
01:12:03,611 --> 01:12:08,367
I did believe, I think as many of us
believed on that march,
1076
01:12:08,491 --> 01:12:11,290
that we could actually change something,
1077
01:12:11,410 --> 01:12:15,415
and the fact that we couldn't
has stuck in our craws ever since.
1078
01:12:15,540 --> 01:12:18,089
It was a huge missed opportunity
1079
01:12:18,209 --> 01:12:22,305
because I don't think the march
in itself would ever stop the war
1080
01:12:22,421 --> 01:12:27,143
because people go home
and the government can live with that.
1081
01:12:27,260 --> 01:12:31,310
What they can't live with
is serious organization,
1082
01:12:31,430 --> 01:12:34,104
and that's what we needed out of that.
1083
01:12:34,225 --> 01:12:38,150
You have a couple of days
of mass demonstrations
1084
01:12:38,271 --> 01:12:41,150
during a weekend in London.
1085
01:12:41,274 --> 01:12:43,242
What does that do to the powers that be?
1086
01:12:43,359 --> 01:12:45,327
Nothing, nothing.
1087
01:12:45,444 --> 01:12:47,947
You need to escalate.
1088
01:12:55,705 --> 01:13:00,836
We had this decision
that on the day of the attack,
1089
01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:04,885
on 1:00pm, we're going to assemble
in Tahrir Square.
1090
01:13:05,006 --> 01:13:08,476
Once the strikes begin, we all go to Tahrir.
1091
01:13:08,593 --> 01:13:12,314
Once the war starts, at 12 noon,
1092
01:13:12,430 --> 01:13:15,934
everybody would go out
on the streets towards Tahrir.
1093
01:13:16,058 --> 01:13:18,106
So I went with my high heels,
1094
01:13:18,227 --> 01:13:21,481
thinking it was going to be
just an hour-Iong demonstration
1095
01:13:21,606 --> 01:13:24,325
and that the anti-riot police
are just going to break it,
1096
01:13:24,442 --> 01:13:31,417
and, you know, I had evening plans,
and, uh, I went home at midnight.
1097
01:13:35,202 --> 01:13:37,330
That's when hell broke loose in Egypt.
1098
01:13:39,749 --> 01:13:42,969
You had the biggest protests
1099
01:13:43,085 --> 01:13:47,511
that this capital had witnessed since 1977.
1100
01:13:47,632 --> 01:13:49,384
Young people, old people.
1101
01:13:49,508 --> 01:13:51,602
Poor people, rich people,
middle class people.
1102
01:13:51,719 --> 01:13:53,562
Men, women, students.
1103
01:13:53,679 --> 01:13:55,352
Everybody was there. Everybody was there.
1104
01:13:57,516 --> 01:14:02,272
I arrived on Tahrir Square with 15 people.
1105
01:14:04,190 --> 01:14:07,444
14 out of the 15
never demonstrated in their lives
1106
01:14:07,568 --> 01:14:10,868
before 20th March 2003.
1107
01:14:10,988 --> 01:14:15,368
It was like, for the first time,
we could see a popular movement.
1108
01:14:17,286 --> 01:14:21,587
From 30,000 to 40,000
or 50,000, even, protestors
1109
01:14:21,707 --> 01:14:24,460
were in run-in clashes in with the police.
1110
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:27,968
Briefly taking over Tahrir.
1111
01:14:28,089 --> 01:14:30,183
That really was a turning point.
1112
01:14:30,299 --> 01:14:33,974
The protests here were huge
1113
01:14:34,095 --> 01:14:36,518
on the night of the Iraq invasion.
1114
01:14:39,433 --> 01:14:41,936
It was the first time I had ever seen
1115
01:14:42,061 --> 01:14:46,658
that protestors had overwhelmed
the security forces.
1116
01:14:50,444 --> 01:14:52,867
They withdrew,
and I remember a comrade, a friend,
1117
01:14:52,989 --> 01:14:55,742
said, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God."
1118
01:14:55,866 --> 01:14:59,416
For the first time, the really first time,
1119
01:14:59,537 --> 01:15:05,544
we are able to win this small victory.
1120
01:15:06,877 --> 01:15:08,971
The American occupation of Iraq
1121
01:15:09,088 --> 01:15:13,059
is the occupation of the entire Arab world,
1122
01:15:13,175 --> 01:15:15,052
including Egypt,
1123
01:15:15,177 --> 01:15:19,603
and therefore, the impotency
of our regime is very clear.
1124
01:15:26,355 --> 01:15:31,236
That's exactly when I was thinking,
and others,
1125
01:15:31,360 --> 01:15:36,742
that if we were triple that number,
or four times that number,
1126
01:15:36,866 --> 01:15:38,914
we could take down Mubarak.
1127
01:15:40,077 --> 01:15:41,875
Little did we know
1128
01:15:41,996 --> 01:15:46,877
that that was a rehearsal
for the 2011 revolution.
1129
01:15:49,712 --> 01:15:52,591
That spring of 2003
1130
01:15:52,715 --> 01:15:55,559
was really the beginning
of the democracy movement.
1131
01:16:03,142 --> 01:16:05,645
Iraq was torn to shreds.
1132
01:16:05,770 --> 01:16:09,741
It was a consequence of the invasion,
but it wasn't presented that way.
1133
01:16:12,109 --> 01:16:16,956
Like the Fallujah attack,
which was a major war crime.
1134
01:16:18,407 --> 01:16:22,002
For example, I haven't seen a word
in the United States,
1135
01:16:22,119 --> 01:16:23,712
in the mainstream, at least,
1136
01:16:23,829 --> 01:16:26,799
about the fact that the radiation levels
1137
01:16:26,916 --> 01:16:30,796
and effects of excessive radiation
in Fallujah
1138
01:16:30,920 --> 01:16:32,843
are apparently worse than Hiroshima.
1139
01:16:42,306 --> 01:16:47,688
We know exactly how many people were
killed on September 11th, exactly.
1140
01:16:47,812 --> 01:16:51,316
We have no idea how many civilians
were killed in Iraq.
1141
01:16:51,440 --> 01:16:52,657
Why is that?
1142
01:16:54,735 --> 01:16:57,659
Hey, back up! Back up!
1143
01:16:57,780 --> 01:17:01,000
Sure, Saddam Hussein was awful.
He was a murderer.
1144
01:17:01,117 --> 01:17:05,668
But when Saddam was harming
his own people, that was on him.
1145
01:17:05,788 --> 01:17:07,882
But the American invasion is on us,
1146
01:17:07,998 --> 01:17:11,844
and the people who are harmed
post-invasion is on us.
1147
01:17:11,961 --> 01:17:15,090
It's on our collective national conscience.
1148
01:17:17,216 --> 01:17:20,891
Every person is important,
and every person does matter,
1149
01:17:21,011 --> 01:17:25,562
and we should know exactly
how many people have died
1150
01:17:25,683 --> 01:17:27,481
as a result of this invasion.
1151
01:17:32,648 --> 01:17:34,616
This was a total failure.
1152
01:17:34,733 --> 01:17:38,488
Cost, most of all for the Iraqis,
1153
01:17:38,612 --> 01:17:41,115
lives and property
1154
01:17:41,240 --> 01:17:44,585
and now ten years near anarchy.
1155
01:17:44,702 --> 01:17:47,672
My father fled Iraq
when I was barely a year old.
1156
01:17:47,788 --> 01:17:53,295
I have all my life been an opposition
figure to the Baathist regime.
1157
01:17:55,045 --> 01:18:01,473
But as horrendous and as dark
and as bad and as miserable
1158
01:18:01,594 --> 01:18:05,144
as things got in Iraq under Saddam Hussein,
1159
01:18:05,264 --> 01:18:07,858
incredibly enough,
now they are far, far worse.
1160
01:18:11,478 --> 01:18:15,654
That's what we were there for
on 15th February 2003.
1161
01:18:15,774 --> 01:18:17,401
To stop this from happening.
1162
01:18:17,526 --> 01:18:21,451
My husband is going
to make a short statement.
1163
01:18:21,572 --> 01:18:27,250
He has felt extremely upset
of the injustice of the war,
1164
01:18:27,369 --> 01:18:30,589
and he remains very upset.
1165
01:18:30,706 --> 01:18:33,029
Professor Stephen Hawking.
1166
01:18:40,799 --> 01:18:44,224
The war was based on two lies.
1167
01:18:44,345 --> 01:18:49,897
The first was that we were in danger
from weapons of mass destruction.
1168
01:18:50,017 --> 01:18:54,363
The second was that Iraq
was somehow to blame for 9/11.
1169
01:18:56,398 --> 01:19:01,575
It has been a tragedy for all
the families that have lost members.
1170
01:19:02,071 --> 01:19:07,999
As many as 100,000 may have died,
half of them women and children.
1171
01:19:08,953 --> 01:19:12,753
If that is not a war crime, what is?
1172
01:19:17,544 --> 01:19:19,512
The deaths in Iraq mount daily,
1173
01:19:19,630 --> 01:19:23,726
but we haven't had a running total
or indeed an accurate body count.
1174
01:19:24,843 --> 01:19:27,312
Now we have a shocking figure.
1175
01:19:27,429 --> 01:19:30,524
American and Iraqi
public health experts calculate
1176
01:19:30,641 --> 01:19:35,568
that about 600,000 Iraqis have been
killed as a result of the invasion.
1177
01:19:50,494 --> 01:19:55,751
The number of orphans created
by the Iraq war, 1.25 million.
1178
01:20:07,469 --> 01:20:12,600
Iraqi children suffering from
chronic malnutrition, 28 percent.
1179
01:20:32,161 --> 01:20:37,042
The number of refugees created
by the Iraq war, four million.
1180
01:21:04,234 --> 01:21:07,587
So tonight I'm gonna do one of my slideshows.
1181
01:21:09,698 --> 01:21:11,666
These are actual unstaged photos
1182
01:21:11,784 --> 01:21:16,506
pulled from the files
of the White House photo office.
1183
01:21:19,833 --> 01:21:22,856
Those weapons of mass destruction
have got to be somewhere.
1184
01:21:31,720 --> 01:21:33,017
Nope. No weapons over there.
1185
01:21:48,987 --> 01:21:50,489
Maybe under here.
1186
01:22:19,560 --> 01:22:23,656
Yes, there are consequences of war.
1187
01:22:23,772 --> 01:22:26,616
People will die and some will be innocent,
1188
01:22:26,733 --> 01:22:31,113
and we must live with the consequences
of our actions,
1189
01:22:31,238 --> 01:22:33,661
even the unintended ones.
1190
01:22:33,782 --> 01:22:37,912
I wanted to ask him,
"Have you ever seen what happens
1191
01:22:38,036 --> 01:22:40,915
as somebody rolls a grenade into a tent?"
1192
01:22:41,039 --> 01:22:43,041
"Have you ever imagined what it would be like
1193
01:22:43,167 --> 01:22:47,718
to kneel down beside a soldier
you sent into battle
1194
01:22:47,838 --> 01:22:49,761
and tell him why he's dying?"
1195
01:22:51,091 --> 01:22:58,475
Well, I'd never say that the mass loss
of life of those in the conflict,
1196
01:22:58,599 --> 01:23:03,651
civilians, is worth intervention.
1197
01:23:03,770 --> 01:23:07,400
But I would say that,
were I in the same situation
1198
01:23:07,524 --> 01:23:11,574
with the same information
and the same perspective,
1199
01:23:11,695 --> 01:23:13,242
I would have done the same again.
1200
01:23:13,363 --> 01:23:15,957
I mean, now we know so much more.
1201
01:23:16,074 --> 01:23:21,672
I believed, and I believe,
that the decision was right.
1202
01:23:23,624 --> 01:23:26,343
The Secretary General of the United Nations,
1203
01:23:26,460 --> 01:23:29,964
a man who's always insisted
that America and Britain went to war
1204
01:23:30,088 --> 01:23:33,262
without the legally required authority
of the UN.
1205
01:23:33,383 --> 01:23:35,977
Well, Kofi Annan was asked
1206
01:23:36,094 --> 01:23:42,147
whether he thought that the action was legal.
1207
01:23:42,267 --> 01:23:45,146
I have stated clearly
that it was not in conformity
1208
01:23:45,270 --> 01:23:48,194
with the Security Council,
with the UN Charter.
1209
01:23:48,315 --> 01:23:51,194
And then the next question was,
"So you mean it was illegal?"
1210
01:23:51,318 --> 01:23:53,412
It was illegal?
1211
01:23:53,529 --> 01:23:55,657
Yes, if you wish.
1212
01:23:55,781 --> 01:23:59,126
Which I think the vast majority of
international lawyers in the world
1213
01:23:59,243 --> 01:24:02,588
would say yes, he was right,
and I certainly affirm that it was true.
1214
01:24:02,704 --> 01:24:05,253
Crimes against humanity
were plainly committed.
1215
01:24:05,374 --> 01:24:08,799
War crimes were plainly committed.
There's no issue.
1216
01:24:08,919 --> 01:24:11,763
The photographic and documentary
evidence is overwhelming.
1217
01:24:11,880 --> 01:24:17,057
The holding nations accountable, you know,
1218
01:24:17,177 --> 01:24:22,775
that's for Liberia,
or that's for some small country.
1219
01:24:22,891 --> 01:24:25,189
None of the major heads of state,
1220
01:24:25,310 --> 01:24:29,736
when they engage
in these crimes against humanity,
1221
01:24:29,856 --> 01:24:32,735
are made accountable.
1222
01:24:37,489 --> 01:24:40,914
He's probably the only British
Prime Minister there has ever been
1223
01:24:41,034 --> 01:24:43,583
who cannot appear on the streets of London
1224
01:24:43,704 --> 01:24:47,174
or anywhere in the country
without there being near riots.
1225
01:24:47,291 --> 01:24:53,469
Why are the people who basically
pressed the button and said go
1226
01:24:53,589 --> 01:24:59,096
not accountable for the fact
that they blatantly lied to all of us?
1227
01:24:59,219 --> 01:25:01,692
It was a crime of the century.
1228
01:25:10,022 --> 01:25:13,322
We've campaigned now for an inquiry
for six and a half years.
1229
01:25:13,442 --> 01:25:16,696
Please, Mr. Blair,
give us 15 minutes of your time.
1230
01:25:16,820 --> 01:25:19,824
That's all we're asking.
Our loved ones gave their lives.
1231
01:25:19,948 --> 01:25:22,167
They gave the rest of their time.
1232
01:25:22,284 --> 01:25:24,378
Tony, we want just 15 minutes of yours.
1233
01:25:24,494 --> 01:25:28,294
We have formally sent a letter
through to his office,
1234
01:25:28,415 --> 01:25:32,465
and that request has been totally ignored.
1235
01:25:32,586 --> 01:25:36,432
We, like you, have also experienced
at first hand
1236
01:25:36,548 --> 01:25:40,052
the anger which is still felt
by many people in this country.
1237
01:25:40,177 --> 01:25:42,896
Can I ask whether you have regrets?
1238
01:25:44,014 --> 01:25:48,941
Responsibility, but not a regret
for removing Saddam Hussein.
1239
01:25:49,061 --> 01:25:50,779
- Come on!
- I think he was...
1240
01:25:50,896 --> 01:25:51,988
Be quiet, please.
1241
01:25:55,984 --> 01:25:58,112
They've got to give the appearance
of an inquiry
1242
01:25:58,236 --> 01:26:01,536
because people are so angry
about what happened,
1243
01:26:01,657 --> 01:26:03,876
but it's set up and framed in such a way
1244
01:26:03,992 --> 01:26:05,619
that nobody will be challenged.
1245
01:26:05,744 --> 01:26:08,167
Um, and it's...
1246
01:26:09,623 --> 01:26:13,048
It's what we call a whitewash.
1247
01:26:13,168 --> 01:26:14,795
Blair will go to his death
1248
01:26:14,920 --> 01:26:19,676
with Iraq printed on his heart,
and unforgiven.
1249
01:26:43,615 --> 01:26:46,209
Injustice doesn't go away.
It stays in the psyche.
1250
01:26:46,326 --> 01:26:50,297
It will eventually need to come out.
It will come out. Blood will have blood.
1251
01:26:50,414 --> 01:26:51,836
Sir Roderick...
1252
01:26:51,957 --> 01:26:54,551
There may be things said behind closed doors.
1253
01:26:54,668 --> 01:26:58,718
There may be doors
that are closed silently to Tony Blair.
1254
01:27:00,298 --> 01:27:02,266
But from my point of view, I'm sorry,
1255
01:27:02,384 --> 01:27:04,887
I think he should be, you know, at The Hague.
1256
01:27:05,011 --> 01:27:09,107
He should be tried
for war crimes against society.
1257
01:27:09,224 --> 01:27:11,226
I think he should.
1258
01:27:11,351 --> 01:27:16,357
If it were my choice to have
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
1259
01:27:16,481 --> 01:27:20,281
George Bush go before some kind of tribunal,
1260
01:27:20,402 --> 01:27:22,700
and I had to go with them in order to be...
1261
01:27:22,821 --> 01:27:25,916
in order for that tribunal to be successful
1262
01:27:26,032 --> 01:27:28,205
or to even have a chance for success,
1263
01:27:28,326 --> 01:27:34,299
and that it was also possible I would be
in that conviction, if you will,
1264
01:27:34,416 --> 01:27:36,669
I'd do it in a heartbeat.
1265
01:27:36,793 --> 01:27:40,343
- You feel that strongly about it?
- I feel that strongly about it.
1266
01:27:41,465 --> 01:27:43,888
- Hello, ladies.
- Hello, Mr. Rumsfeld.
1267
01:27:44,009 --> 01:27:45,101
- Hi. How are you.
- Hi.
1268
01:27:45,218 --> 01:27:46,435
- How are you doing?
- Terrific.
1269
01:27:46,553 --> 01:27:48,146
They're all war criminals.
1270
01:27:48,263 --> 01:27:51,233
I saw Donald Rumsfeld
on the street in Washington
1271
01:27:51,349 --> 01:27:53,147
last year one time, and I was aghast.
1272
01:27:53,268 --> 01:27:55,066
"They let you walk around on the street
1273
01:27:55,187 --> 01:27:57,110
like a normal person?
Why aren't you in jail?"
1274
01:27:57,230 --> 01:28:01,781
- What are you here for tonight?
- It's the Correspondents' Dinner.
1275
01:28:01,902 --> 01:28:04,621
OK. Well, enjoy your evening, sir.
1276
01:28:04,738 --> 01:28:06,240
- Thank you very much.
- And madam.
1277
01:28:06,364 --> 01:28:07,581
Thank you.
1278
01:28:10,577 --> 01:28:12,124
- Good evening.
- Hello, folks.
1279
01:28:12,245 --> 01:28:14,293
- Welcome back.
- Thank you.
1280
01:28:14,414 --> 01:28:16,963
- Mr. Secretary.
- War criminal!
1281
01:28:17,083 --> 01:28:20,587
War criminal! War criminal!
1282
01:28:20,712 --> 01:28:24,012
Arrest this man! Arrest the war criminal!
1283
01:28:24,132 --> 01:28:26,226
War criminal!
1284
01:28:26,343 --> 01:28:28,311
- Arrest this man!
- Joyce, Joyce.
1285
01:28:28,428 --> 01:28:30,726
War criminal!
1286
01:28:30,847 --> 01:28:32,849
War criminal!
1287
01:28:32,974 --> 01:28:34,897
You're protecting a man
1288
01:28:35,018 --> 01:28:38,864
who's responsible for the deaths
of millions of Iraqis!
1289
01:28:38,980 --> 01:28:41,199
Shame on you!
1290
01:28:41,316 --> 01:28:46,072
Here comes the war criminal Donald Rumsfeld!
1291
01:28:46,196 --> 01:28:48,449
War criminal!
1292
01:28:48,573 --> 01:28:50,951
He killed people in Iraq!
1293
01:28:51,076 --> 01:28:53,044
War criminal!
1294
01:28:53,161 --> 01:28:58,383
We follow Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bush
and Condoleezza Rice and Karl Rove
1295
01:28:58,500 --> 01:29:02,550
and the people in these think tanks
that lied to get us into the war
1296
01:29:02,671 --> 01:29:05,299
and the journalists who lied
to get us into the war.
1297
01:29:05,423 --> 01:29:08,427
We are constantly following them.
1298
01:29:08,552 --> 01:29:11,601
We feel that we are
the sanity in this country.
1299
01:29:11,721 --> 01:29:15,351
We are the people who are
the conscience of this country,
1300
01:29:15,475 --> 01:29:17,853
and I think history will prove that we are.
1301
01:29:17,978 --> 01:29:22,074
Donald Rumsfeld, war criminal!
1302
01:29:22,190 --> 01:29:24,568
He killed people in Iraq!
1303
01:29:24,693 --> 01:29:28,664
War criminal! There's the war criminal!
1304
01:29:28,780 --> 01:29:32,080
After seeing everything
that the media was feeding us
1305
01:29:32,200 --> 01:29:36,831
and being misled by the Bush administration,
1306
01:29:36,955 --> 01:29:40,004
seven of us young veterans
got together in the same place
1307
01:29:40,125 --> 01:29:42,503
at the Veterans For Peace Conference
1308
01:29:42,627 --> 01:29:46,177
and formed this organization
called Iraq Veterans Against The War.
1309
01:29:48,425 --> 01:29:51,929
We continued to demonstrate
throughout all those years...
1310
01:29:53,722 --> 01:29:56,942
and ever since February 15th 2003,
1311
01:29:57,058 --> 01:30:00,483
we now thought of ourselves
as a global peace movement.
1312
01:30:00,604 --> 01:30:03,357
I never blinked. I never blinked.
1313
01:30:06,610 --> 01:30:09,329
I knew what my morals were.
1314
01:30:09,446 --> 01:30:12,245
I knew that the war was wrong,
1315
01:30:12,365 --> 01:30:18,793
and every ounce of my being compelled me
to continue protesting that war.
1316
01:30:19,789 --> 01:30:23,384
- No NATO, no war!
- No NATO, no war!
1317
01:30:23,501 --> 01:30:27,506
- We don't work for you no more.
- We don't work for you no more.
1318
01:30:27,631 --> 01:30:29,725
My name is Jason Hurd.
1319
01:30:29,841 --> 01:30:33,095
I spent ten years in the United States
Army as a combat medic.
1320
01:30:33,219 --> 01:30:36,143
I deployed to Baghdad in 2004.
1321
01:30:36,264 --> 01:30:39,564
I'm here to return my Global
War On Terrorism service medal
1322
01:30:39,684 --> 01:30:44,155
in solidarity with the people of Iraq
and the people of Afghanistan.
1323
01:30:44,272 --> 01:30:46,570
These were lies. I'm giving them back.
1324
01:30:52,238 --> 01:30:56,664
I'm one of 40,000 people that left
the United States Armed Forces
1325
01:30:56,785 --> 01:30:59,629
because this is a lie!
1326
01:31:07,253 --> 01:31:10,427
Our enemies are not 7,000 miles from home.
1327
01:31:10,548 --> 01:31:13,768
They sit in boardrooms. They are CEOs.
1328
01:31:13,885 --> 01:31:17,856
They are the millionaires and
billionaires who control this planet,
1329
01:31:17,973 --> 01:31:19,941
and we've had enough of it.
1330
01:31:20,058 --> 01:31:22,060
So they can take their medals back.
1331
01:31:41,496 --> 01:31:45,091
Egypt is tasting
its own dose of people power.
1332
01:31:45,208 --> 01:31:47,461
Such defiance here is rare
1333
01:31:47,585 --> 01:31:49,758
and could mark the beginning
of something bigger.
1334
01:31:49,879 --> 01:31:53,258
There is a big myth both in Egypt,
in the Arab world,
1335
01:31:53,383 --> 01:31:55,010
as well as the West
1336
01:31:55,135 --> 01:31:58,435
that this revolution in Egypt
broke out of the blue.
1337
01:31:58,555 --> 01:32:00,557
Some people deliberately tried to call it
1338
01:32:00,682 --> 01:32:02,855
a Facebook revolution or a Twitter revolution
1339
01:32:02,976 --> 01:32:06,401
or an internet revolution
or even a youth revolution,
1340
01:32:06,521 --> 01:32:12,824
uh, in order, more or less, to dismiss
the fact that this revolution
1341
01:32:12,944 --> 01:32:16,539
has been in the making
for at least ten years.
1342
01:32:16,656 --> 01:32:18,829
The demonstrations did not stop
1343
01:32:18,950 --> 01:32:21,328
after the invasion of Iraq. They went on.
1344
01:32:25,206 --> 01:32:29,177
True credit goes to these people
who were out there
1345
01:32:29,294 --> 01:32:33,344
ten years before it would actually
flower into something.
1346
01:32:33,465 --> 01:32:39,143
So God bless. That's what...
That's what revolutions come from.
1347
01:32:44,642 --> 01:32:49,944
11th February at 6:00 p.m.,
my mother told me, "Open the TV."
1348
01:32:59,991 --> 01:33:03,871
This huge, you know, headline
was spread across the screen.
1349
01:33:05,705 --> 01:33:08,003
And I was screaming and jumping up and down
1350
01:33:08,124 --> 01:33:10,593
and saying, "He's gone.
He's stepped down. He's stepped down."
1351
01:33:10,710 --> 01:33:13,884
I don't know. I lost control.
1352
01:33:16,966 --> 01:33:20,516
The first thing people of my generation
when they met,
1353
01:33:20,637 --> 01:33:24,232
obviously, you know, you get
the hugs and kisses and so on.
1354
01:33:24,349 --> 01:33:28,650
But the first words we would say is
"We lived to see it."
1355
01:33:36,986 --> 01:33:38,829
No matter what happens,
1356
01:33:38,947 --> 01:33:44,670
even if we end up in the short term
having an authoritarian military regime,
1357
01:33:44,786 --> 01:33:48,711
I think we realize that nobody
can do to us what used to be done.
1358
01:33:48,832 --> 01:33:50,675
Nobody can boss us around anymore.
1359
01:33:50,792 --> 01:33:54,092
No one can enslave us anymore
the way Mubarak did,
1360
01:33:54,212 --> 01:33:57,136
and eventually I think we're going
to get rid of the military.
1361
01:34:09,185 --> 01:34:11,404
This is one of the fruits
of the anti-war movement,
1362
01:34:11,521 --> 01:34:13,819
of the global anti-war movement, of course.
1363
01:34:31,791 --> 01:34:35,796
This, according to a UK intelligence
document released today,
1364
01:34:35,920 --> 01:34:39,891
was a chemical attack which killed
more than 300 people in Damascus.
1365
01:34:40,008 --> 01:34:44,434
This kind of attack threatens
our national security interests.
1366
01:34:44,554 --> 01:34:47,398
I don't believe we can let that stand.
1367
01:34:47,515 --> 01:34:52,487
Every war that comes along,
it's the same damn language.
1368
01:34:52,604 --> 01:34:56,654
"They are horrible. They are not human."
1369
01:34:56,774 --> 01:35:00,574
"They cannot be trusted.
We cannot negotiate with them."
1370
01:35:00,695 --> 01:35:02,823
How many times and how many wars?
1371
01:35:02,947 --> 01:35:07,373
Take out Vietnam, put in Afghanistan.
Take out Afghanistan, put in Iran.
1372
01:35:07,493 --> 01:35:10,542
Take out communism, put in terrorism.
The same thing.
1373
01:35:10,663 --> 01:35:15,294
Hands off Syria! Hands off Syria!
Hands off Syria! Hands off Syria!
1374
01:35:15,418 --> 01:35:18,016
It was like this feeling that...
1375
01:35:18,588 --> 01:35:21,808
Take a deep breath and go full steam ahead.
1376
01:35:21,925 --> 01:35:27,182
Once again we are out on the streets
to stop yet another war.
1377
01:35:27,305 --> 01:35:30,525
The controversial decision
to go to war in Iraq,
1378
01:35:30,642 --> 01:35:32,736
made here ten years ago,
1379
01:35:32,852 --> 01:35:34,854
has had a profound influence
over this debate.
1380
01:35:34,979 --> 01:35:38,529
Overwhelmingly, the people of Britain
are telling us
1381
01:35:38,650 --> 01:35:41,119
no to immediate action, no to strikes.
1382
01:35:41,236 --> 01:35:43,409
MPs are doing their job.
1383
01:35:43,529 --> 01:35:45,998
They are listening to what the public want.
1384
01:35:46,115 --> 01:35:52,748
All of our constituents are scarred
by the Iraq and Afghanistan experience.
1385
01:35:52,872 --> 01:35:56,126
I cannot sit in this House
and be duped again.
1386
01:35:56,251 --> 01:36:01,132
The well of public opinion was well
and truly poisoned by the Iraq episode,
1387
01:36:01,256 --> 01:36:04,760
and we need to understand
the public skepticism.
1388
01:36:04,884 --> 01:36:07,763
The MPs in Parliament should do
1389
01:36:07,887 --> 01:36:11,391
what not enough of them
had the guts to do ten years ago
1390
01:36:11,516 --> 01:36:13,109
and vote against!
1391
01:36:18,356 --> 01:36:21,576
Order, order.
1392
01:36:23,027 --> 01:36:24,995
Recite.
1393
01:36:25,113 --> 01:36:31,746
The ayes to the right 272,
the noes to the left 285.
1394
01:36:35,957 --> 01:36:39,962
The House of Commons
sees itself in a new light today
1395
01:36:40,086 --> 01:36:44,387
after last night's historic defeat
for a British Prime Minister.
1396
01:36:51,222 --> 01:36:53,350
It is clear to me
that the British Parliament,
1397
01:36:53,474 --> 01:36:55,647
reflecting the views of the British people,
1398
01:36:55,768 --> 01:36:58,988
does not want to see British military action.
1399
01:36:59,105 --> 01:37:01,483
I get that,
and the Government will act accordingly.
1400
01:37:03,192 --> 01:37:07,618
What? The retrieval of democracy in the UK?
1401
01:37:07,739 --> 01:37:08,831
This is one of the occasions
1402
01:37:08,948 --> 01:37:11,292
when something sensational
has happened in Parliament.
1403
01:37:11,409 --> 01:37:12,706
- Parliament matters.
- Yeah.
1404
01:37:12,827 --> 01:37:15,706
As of now, I think we would all agree
1405
01:37:15,830 --> 01:37:18,379
that we're in some kind of state
of social revolution.
1406
01:37:18,499 --> 01:37:20,092
Quiet, quiet revolution.
1407
01:37:30,136 --> 01:37:32,764
MPs have, as you say, listened to the public,
1408
01:37:32,889 --> 01:37:36,314
and the public was so appalled
by what happened
1409
01:37:36,434 --> 01:37:40,234
under the Prime Ministership
of Tony Blair and the Iraq War
1410
01:37:40,355 --> 01:37:43,074
and the dodgy dossier
that actually they say, "No more."
1411
01:37:44,776 --> 01:37:47,620
And I have been on this platform
over many years,
1412
01:37:47,737 --> 01:37:51,116
from the time of Suez onwards, over 50 years,
1413
01:37:51,240 --> 01:37:55,120
and usually we've found
that we have lost a battle.
1414
01:37:55,244 --> 01:37:57,121
But what we must remember
1415
01:37:57,246 --> 01:38:00,375
is that all the campaigns
we've been engaged in
1416
01:38:00,500 --> 01:38:05,902
have culminated in the decision
taken by Parliament last week.
1417
01:38:07,548 --> 01:38:09,425
It's been without any doubt
1418
01:38:09,550 --> 01:38:13,680
the most powerful political campaign
in my lifetime.
1419
01:38:15,765 --> 01:38:18,393
We said, "Wow, if the British Parliament
1420
01:38:18,518 --> 01:38:21,692
is actually listening to the British people,
1421
01:38:21,813 --> 01:38:27,661
then why can't the US Congress
listen to the American people?"
1422
01:38:28,986 --> 01:38:31,239
Protestors have been outside the White House
1423
01:38:31,364 --> 01:38:33,287
almost constantly.
1424
01:38:34,534 --> 01:38:38,630
The President has spent days huddled
with his advisors at the White House,
1425
01:38:38,746 --> 01:38:40,794
but when he emerged from the Oval Office,
1426
01:38:40,915 --> 01:38:42,838
no one expected this outcome.
1427
01:38:42,959 --> 01:38:47,260
Many people have advised against
taking this decision to Congress.
1428
01:38:47,380 --> 01:38:49,178
And undoubtedly they were impacted
1429
01:38:49,298 --> 01:38:51,892
by what we saw happen
in the United Kingdom this week
1430
01:38:52,009 --> 01:38:54,262
when the Parliament of our closest ally
1431
01:38:54,387 --> 01:38:56,856
failed to pass a resolution
with a similar goal.
1432
01:38:56,973 --> 01:39:00,147
Then came the decision that borrowed
from David Cameron's playbook.
1433
01:39:00,268 --> 01:39:04,489
I will seek authorization
for the use of force
1434
01:39:04,605 --> 01:39:07,950
from the American people's
representatives in Congress.
1435
01:39:13,156 --> 01:39:16,330
Now we must stand up and act.
1436
01:39:16,451 --> 01:39:19,303
Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
1437
01:39:20,288 --> 01:39:22,336
The Committee will be in order.
1438
01:39:22,457 --> 01:39:25,085
The Committee will be in order.
1439
01:39:25,209 --> 01:39:28,804
- We don't want another war!
- May I ask the police to escort her?
1440
01:39:28,921 --> 01:39:32,050
Wait a minute! Nobody wants this war!
1441
01:39:33,050 --> 01:39:35,678
Launching cruise missiles means another war!
1442
01:39:35,803 --> 01:39:38,647
- Easy with her.
- The American people do not want this!
1443
01:39:38,764 --> 01:39:42,189
You know, the first time I testified
before this Committee
1444
01:39:42,310 --> 01:39:44,608
when I was 27 years old,
1445
01:39:44,729 --> 01:39:49,735
I had feelings very similar
to that protestor.
1446
01:39:49,859 --> 01:39:51,532
That is exactly why it is so important
1447
01:39:51,652 --> 01:39:56,328
that the Congress itself will act
representing the American people.
1448
01:39:56,449 --> 01:39:58,918
It was like a magical moment.
1449
01:39:59,035 --> 01:40:01,413
It was one of the rare moments
1450
01:40:01,537 --> 01:40:05,167
that our Congress people
were actually listening to us.
1451
01:40:05,291 --> 01:40:08,010
And we won. That was the extraordinary part.
1452
01:40:08,127 --> 01:40:09,595
We're finished.
1453
01:40:12,840 --> 01:40:16,219
History will record this vote on Syria
1454
01:40:16,344 --> 01:40:19,769
as the time that the American people,
1455
01:40:19,889 --> 01:40:23,439
thanks in large part to the British people,
1456
01:40:23,559 --> 01:40:29,066
were able to stop the empire
from going to war before it started.
1457
01:40:30,983 --> 01:40:32,826
What everybody now knows
1458
01:40:32,944 --> 01:40:35,868
is that these deranged lefties
were absolutely right,
1459
01:40:35,988 --> 01:40:40,209
that the Stop The War Coalition
was incredibly right,
1460
01:40:40,326 --> 01:40:45,298
whereas all the people with MI6,
the CIA, the British Foreign Office,
1461
01:40:45,414 --> 01:40:48,133
the Prime Minister, the Conservative Party,
1462
01:40:48,251 --> 01:40:51,346
the mainstream Labour Party, were wrong,
1463
01:40:51,462 --> 01:40:53,135
and that's quite something.
1464
01:40:53,256 --> 01:40:58,183
This handful of people
have kept this movement going,
1465
01:40:58,302 --> 01:41:00,225
and the result is good
1466
01:41:00,346 --> 01:41:03,350
because it maintains an anti-war presence
1467
01:41:03,474 --> 01:41:05,602
in British political culture.
1468
01:41:05,726 --> 01:41:12,200
If you keep coming back, at some point
you will make the change.
1469
01:41:12,316 --> 01:41:15,570
If a million people come out
on the street in the future,
1470
01:41:15,695 --> 01:41:18,323
then what government is going
to say they're wrong now?
1471
01:41:18,447 --> 01:41:24,454
When the last time the public expressed
the opposition that way,
1472
01:41:24,579 --> 01:41:27,958
namely 15th February 2003,
1473
01:41:28,082 --> 01:41:30,835
history said that the people
on the street were right
1474
01:41:30,960 --> 01:41:33,338
and not the people in the government.
1475
01:41:42,138 --> 01:41:44,015
I think it shaped people.
1476
01:41:44,140 --> 01:41:48,987
The fact of that march
has shaped political debate
1477
01:41:49,103 --> 01:41:51,902
and the public understanding ever since.
1478
01:41:58,946 --> 01:42:04,043
The Iraq War marks a turn
in history in this respect,
1479
01:42:04,160 --> 01:42:06,003
and I'm optimistic about it.
1480
01:42:06,120 --> 01:42:11,126
I think there will be less use
of military action in the future.
1481
01:43:47,722 --> 01:43:53,149
They are few, and we are many,
and if we come together, we are a force.
1482
01:43:58,983 --> 01:44:01,702
There are two forces at work always.
1483
01:44:01,819 --> 01:44:05,699
A hatred of injustice, which makes you angry,
1484
01:44:05,823 --> 01:44:09,956
and a belief you can make a better world,
which makes you optimistic.
1485
01:44:10,077 --> 01:44:13,581
And anger and optimism coming together
1486
01:44:13,706 --> 01:44:15,879
are a very powerful force.
125810
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