`At the start of the process he presented us with a pack of complete and utter lies. Then, as we gathered the evidence, he backtracked to an entirely new set of complete and utter lies."
What's that? The diary of a Revenue Appeals Commissioner? Wrong. A Republican congressman justifying his impeachment vote? Guess again. That, in fact, was a former UNSCOM inspector describing to the BBC's Five Live Breakfast what it was like to deal with the unco-operative master of Iraq's unconventional arsenal, Saddam Hussein.
While the account lacked nothing in vividness and righteous indignation, it may have overlooked the extent to which this is standard operating procedure in political and legal circles. Granted, Saddam differs from other evasive witnesses in being the sovereign of a defeated state failing to meet the terms of his surrender, but it is hard to see this as justification for cruise missiles.
It follows a Middle East visit by that other beleagured president, Clinton, in which he backslapped the region's chief ignorer of UN resolutions and stockpiler of genocidal weapons, Israel, and smilingly blessed further ritual surrender by the Palestinians. Add a pinch of Monica, and it's no wonder that even the British media have hesitated to find a semblance of sense in last week's attacks on Iraq.
Of course, it was not always thus. During 1991's lopsided "Gulf War", it could be credibly claimed that the best and most objective place in the English-speaking world to read about those events was The Irish Times; RTE radio and television also provided some safe haven from the incessant propaganda.
In 1998, while it will doubtless emerge that the chorus of praise for the avoidance of "collateral damage" sang out too early and way too loud, it's been possible to hear criticism of the attacks on all points of the radio dial. Yes, Maggie O'Kane - who baldly accused Tony Blair of lying about the effects of sanctions on Iraq - and Robert Fisk made Thursday's Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday-Friday) an especially worthwhile programme, but their likes could be heard elsewhere.
Not, however, on Wednesday's Tonight with Vincent Browne (RTE Radio 1, Monday-Thursday). While the bombs started to fall on Baghdad, and further bombs had dropped in the Dail, with unfortunate, unforeseeable bad timing the show was coming live from a Dublin pub during its annual Christmas piss-up. By and large, the songs and jokes on offer made it a useful illustrative follow-up to the previous week's discussion about the achievements and arguments of the Pioneer Total Abstainance Association, but that's about all the credit it gets from this quarter.
In the spirit of the season, I've no problem granting Browne and his team dispensation to present us with this amiable mess and pass over an important breaking story. (And I'm sure they're mightily relieved.) But in the circumstances, and since I wasn't asked to the party, I hope they won't mind that I changed the station.
Over on Today FM, where earlier in the evening B.P. Fallon had been beautifully proving that he's the best of the possible replacements for John Kelly, Donal Dineen was casually showing he's the fairest DJ of all. But I didn't hear him mention the war either.
FM104 had its mind on higher matters, as a woman coherently argued that profit is actually a form of theft; okay, she was a shoplifter justifying her crimes, but still it was great to hear the intellectual level of Adrian Kennedy's show so elevated. (Shame about the foul mouth on that O'Connell Street security guy, though . . . )
On Britain's Talk Radio, James Whale was annoying many of his "go get 'im" callers by quickly presenting critical views of the attack on Iraq, some of them from unimpeachably military perspectives. It may be inevitable that a phone-in programme like his will end up with a Boy's Own flavour on such a topic as the armchair generals pick up the phone, but Whale sorted them out all right.
Radio 4's The World Tonight was inevitably stodgier, but like the World Service, all week it kept its eye steadily on Iraq itself and the (apparently unchanged) prospects for change there.
Late Night Live (BBC Radio 5 Live), Auntie's populist progeny, was the most interesting mix of officialese and sceptical comment. Host Nick Robinson was rather ungallantly accused by Labour MP George Galloway of being "duped by the greatest journalistic hoax of the late 20th century" for his questions about Iraq's chemical weapons programme. But the fact that Galloway and other trenchant opponents of the Blair government were getting airtime in the first hour of "Desert Fox" suggests either that media pluralism has actually improved since 1991 or that this military operation is, behind all the guff, so meaningless in Britain that normal propaganda rules don't apply. Perhaps both.
Certainly, there must have been a confidence that Tornado pilots weren't going to be coming out of Iraq in black bags. Imagine Day One of Desert Storm eight years ago and a BBC topic, "The special relationship - partner or poodle?" All improvements gratefully accepted.
