Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has a despicable track record of wanting to see evidence before concluding that people are guilty – and it’s simply not the British way. Corbyn did it with Iraq, with Afghanistan, with Libya and with Syria – and now the meddling nelly is up to his old tricks again with Russia.
Today after Theresa May’s statement on the Salisbury attack, the know-it-all Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn began asking the Prime Minister completely irrelevant questions such as if the Tories had ordered samples of the nerve agent to be sent for analysis to see if it originated in Moscow (which the Tories hadn’t), and about why the Tories decided to make sweeping cuts to the British Diplomatic Service – a service which definitely wouldn’t have prevented the attack despite this kind of attack being one of the things the service would have previously made plans to try and prevent.
These questions were about as irrelevant as when the public and a small minority of MPs had the temerity to ask the government for proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before we invaded Iraq and killed around a million civilians. It doesn’t matter one jot that Saddam turned out not to have them – what matters is that he was an evil dictator and deserved what was coming to him – much like Putin.
Evidence should always be irrelevant when it comes to our decisions to attack the bad guys – and, as Britain and our Western allies are so clearly always the good guys because we try (and sometimes inevitably fail) to spread freedom, we should simply be forgiven for making catastrophic mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and be allowed to flout whatever international laws we like and jump to whatever conclusions we see fit based only on flimsy evidence in the pursuit of our strangely murderous but definitely righteous version of freedom.
Dr Patricia White, who served on the 2004-6 WMD Commission and is now the Research Director for International Security at Chatham House, said that British experts would definitely be able to detect minute trace elements in the Novichok nerve agent used in Salisbury that would prove the country of origin, stating:
“There are very high resolution analysis techniques that can track down trace elements, certain types of chemicals in the particular region where it has been made.
Russia knows there are techniques to pinpoint where something came from” adding that “Whoever did this would know this was traceable back to Russia. So why use such an obvious thing, leaving such an obvious trace?”
And, whilst briefing journalists after his traitorous rebuttal to our glorious leader in the Commons today, Corbyn’s spokesman Seamus Milne grumbled that:
“I think obviously the government has access to information and intelligence on this matter which others don’t; however, also there’s a history in relation to WMD and intelligence which is problematic to put it mildly.
So I think the right approach is to seek the evidence; to follow international treaties, particularly in relation to prohibited chemical weapons, because this was a chemical weapons attack, carried out on British soil. There are procedures that need to be followed in relation to that.”
But the fact that Corbyn is whining on about wanting to see proof again shouldn’t pressure the government into releasing the definitive scientific evidence that British authorities should already be in possession of – because it would only tell us what we already know, that Russia are definitely culpable. Plus, it would vindicate Corbyn’s obvious lack of trust in the establishment – an establishment who quite rightly need the general public to place their blind trust in everything they say without feeling like they need to ask valid questions or wanting to see evidence.
And the fact that ex-MI5 agent Annie Machon also questioned the government’s rush to judgement to blame Russia – saying that the “UK facility for identifying those agents was able to identify this very quickly [which would] indicate that they [knew] exactly what this nerve agent is, which means that they have the chemical formula for it too.” – should simply be ignored. British secret service agents are notoriously untrustworthy and unintelligent – MI5 have virtually no background checks and regularly let any Tom, Dick or Harry work for them and trust to keep Britain’s most important State secrets.
Former MI5 agent Machon also ridiculously speculated that Russia may not have had a motive for poisoning Mr Skripal, saying that “From the very start of this story… they need to work out what the motive was […] Skripal was a guy who had been caught by the Russians. He’d been tried and convicted, sent to prison, and then released and pardoned by the Russians, and sent back to the UK. He had been debriefed – picked clean, intelligence-wise, both by the Russians… and by MI6 when he came to live in the UK. So what is the motive there?”
It makes no odds that Skripal had been released from a Russian prison and pardoned – Putin is evil and would clearly jump at the chance to risk potentially catastrophic ramifications by deploying a banned chemical weapon which could obviously be traced back to him on British soil to try and murder someone who he had released from prison and pardoned.
And, as Theresa May said in her incredibly strong and stable statement today:
“[…] on Monday I set out that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with Novichok: a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia.
Based on this capability, combined with their [Russia’s] record of conducting state sponsored assassinations – including against former intelligence officers whom they regard as legitimate targets – the UK Government concluded it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for this reckless and despicable act.”
For the Tories and almost every Labour right-winger who got it completely wrong about Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the circumstantial evidence set out by Theresa May today is, quite rightly, all the proof that these truly patriotic Brits need to jump to conclusions once again.
I mean, what possible harm can getting it completely wrong and jumping to conclusions on such an important foreign policy decision do again?
There were cries of “shame” from both the Tory benches and the Labour backbenches after Jeremy Corbyn failed to condemn the Kremlin outright for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, and they were right. Shame on Jeremy Corbyn for yet again wanting to see the evidence before jumping to conclusions.
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