NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ...................................................... PANORAMA PANORAMA LIVE - TACKLING SADDAM RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 2:02:03 ...................................................... GAVIN ESLER: Hello and welcome to this special edition of Panorama in which you have the chance to put your questions to the BBC’s correspondents on the prospects of war with Iraq. We may well look back on the past week as the time when war really did seem to be inevitable. The White House is already talking about a final phase which could last about another six weeks. So where do we go from here? Well, four months ago in an earlier Panorama we asked for your emails and questions and we put them to our correspondents. We had a big response to that programme and so have decided to repeat this again for you tonight. I’m joined by the BBC’s political editor Andrew Marr has been on the plane with Tony Blair on his visit to Washington. John Simpson, our world affairs editor who has guided us through many a conflict in the past, Panorama’s Jane Corbin who’s just returned from Baghdad, and we hope to go across to his vantage point overlooking the White House to join our Washington correspondent Matt Frei. Well, to explain how all this is going to be put together, he’s Darshini David. DARSHINI DAVID: Thanks Gavin. Well throughout the programme you can continue to email or text us with your questions and opinions. We’ve been reading all the emails you’ve sent over the past week, that’s over 2000 of them, and I’m here with our team monitoring what you're saying to us throughout the programme – so keep them coming. Here’s how you can get in touch. You can send us an email through our website which his www.bbc.co.uk/panorama, or you can send us a text message. The short code is 82237. And, if you want to see more of what people have had to say you can visit ceefax page 155 or, if you're watching digital satellite you can press that red button on your handset and some of your comments will appear at the bottom of the screen. Gavin.. ESLER: Well our cameras have also been out and about all across Britain getting your views. Here’s one comment which sums up a lot of the concerns we’ve been hearing from you this week. RHIANNA KHAN Cardiff I’m Riana Curran from Cardiff and I’d like to know when Tony Blair is going to stop following George Bush and think for himself. ESLER: Well Andrew that, I suppose, is the poodle question, the question of this extraordinary relationship between the British Prime Minister and the American President, given that one would have thought when George Bush came to power, a very different man from Bill Clinton, perhaps the Prime Minister wouldn't get on with him. You've seen this relationship up close. How do they get on? ANDREW MARR Political Editor At a personal level they seem to get on remarkably well, given that alleged political difference. This weekend George Bush stood there and lavished praise on Tony Blair in the most toe-curling manner. I mean it was really quite extreme. And Tony Blair says in private that Bush is no idiot, he’s not like he’s made out to be, he does listen, and clearly Blair thinks that he has influence, that he’s kept George Bush inside the United Nations process for much longer than he would otherwise have done and that he is listened to, and it has to be said in Washington people on the Hawkish end of the spectrum sometimes talk about the relationship being reversed, that somehow George Bush has been conned by Tony Blair. ESLER: Ah, he’s bright is he? ANDREW: So the poodle was there. But clearly the poodle tag reflects a grossly unequal relationship and that is inevitable. I mean we are a flea compared to their elephant. ESLER: One question which will come up a lot and I think we’ll put to Matt Frei in Washington in a moment is this religious aspect. We know they’re both believers, and I’ve heard from people in the White House Press Co and so on there’s much speculation: do they pray together, do they have a sense of religious destiny? What do you make of all that? ANDREW: Well certainly the White House is extraordinary religious. They have Bible studies every morning and we’re told it’s ‘not compulsory’ to go to Bible study in the White House these days but it’s not ‘not compulsory’ either. Tony Blair is also religious. We put this question to him I have to say: ‘do you pray together?’ and you get this ghastly sort of rictus and he goes quite grey. He hates the question. He knows how damaging it is, and he knows that a lot of people out there who regard the Bush crusade as in some respect a fundamentalist religious one and that terrifies him. ESLER: Okay, well one big theme raised by a lot of you is where is the evidence and why now, why after the first Gulf War in 1991, are we apparently on the edge of doing the very same thing again? RICHARD HARPER Sheffield Normally I’m all for war, not in a sadistic way, but I really don’t understand why we’re going to war this time. We run the risk of opening one hell of a can of worms in a real volatile area and I think for a generation we’ll be forever looking over our shoulders with regards to terrorists and the like. MATTHEW RATHE Liverpool There just doesn’t seem to be the case for war and it’s going to cause uncertainty and instability in the Middle East and the whole world, and I think that’s the opinion of the British public. DON ARTHURS Birmingham My name is Don Arthurs of Birmingham. I’m very much against this potential war with Iraq unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. It’s not the British way to attack another nation unless we ourselves are attacked, and that’s something which we cannot ignore. ESLER: And we’ve got a stack of emails on pretty much the same theme. A couple of them for you John. Andy Lease from Hampshire says: Andy Lees, Hampshire The issue of war with Iraq arose very suddenly. Saddam has been a dictator for years so how did we get to this point? ESLER: And Paul White from Staines asks: Paul White, Staines Is the impending war with Iraq really about oil or is it finishing the job that George Bush senior failed to complete 10 or 12 years ago? ESLER: I mean there are so man potential motives here that people are worried about it. It’s as if the government has not been clear in spelling out why we’re going to war. JOHN SIMPSON World Affairs Editor Well, the key thing is that there has been a change of course because President Clinton’s idea was that you could simply contain Saddam Hussein with the kind of sanctions of course which may have killed a million people so it wasn’t a harmless way of doing it, but nevertheless it didn’t involve actual warfare with troops on the ground. The change came when President Bush came in and Britain, like every other western country really with the exception of France and Germany so far and their friends have had to sign up or back it or something, and the French of course will do that eventually, even if the Germans don’t, the Russians and the Chinese have already done it, and you hear an awful lot of people saying it’s all about oil it’s all about getting re-elected, it’s all about helping Israel. What it seems to me, from talking to senior people in the American administration is that it’s different things to different people there. Some of them see it as indeed a useful way of supporting their ally Israel. Others see it as an extremely good way of getting hold of a decent and protected supply of oil, other see it as indeed a really good chance of getting President Bush re-elected. All of those things put together, plus others, make it almost impossible that President Bush wouldn’t be quite keen on it, he must be keen on it. ESLER: That’s very interesting though, isn’t it, because it’s as if we’re saying, it’s not we’re going to war for this reason X, but we’re going for A, B, C, D, E… there’s a whole host of reasons for going to war. SIMPSON: And of course there is a justification if you choose to accept it. The Blix report, the statement that he made a week ago, makes it absolutely clear that the Americans are perfectly correct in saying that Saddam Hussein has not been open with the West and with the Weapons Inspectors. It seems clear from what Mr Blix said that there are all sorts of stocks of weapons which haven’t been accounted for. I mean this is not something that’s been invented by the Americans. This is Hans Blix who shows pretty clearly that he doesn’t think it’s a very good idea to go to war either, but honesty compels him to say that.. you know.. there’s VX.. there’s 1000 VX nerve agent that’s gone completely missing. There’s 1000 tons of chemical agents which are unaccounted for. There’s all sorts of missiles and so on that nobody’s accounted for. So if you choose to take that as the reason for attacking Iraq, you've got a reason. The question is, is it a good enough reason to overturn that policy of containment which President Clinton followed before. ESLER: Okay, well a lot of you also wanted to know whether the question of getting rid of Iraq’s weapons mass destruction is just an excuse and whether the real point of it all is getting rid of Saddam Hussein himself. Here is just one email of many, Matt from England says: Matt Is this war just an expensive assassination attempt? It can’t be about bombing weapons of mass destruction as we admit we don’t know where they are. ESLER: I mean Jane that’s presumably the way it’s seen in Iraq, whatever the UN resolutions say, people in Iraq will see this as simply a question of regime change. JANE CORBIN Yes, they do. They say the real reason that America, backed by Britain, wants to go to war is to remove our President, and that is our right, we are the people of Iraq, we should choose whether we have Saddam Hussein or anybody else. They are convinced that that’s the real reason, and they accept that the Weapons Inspectors have gone in there and are moving all over Iraq. Iraq by the way a huge country, a huge population, a vast country. I think nobody is under any illusion this is going to be easy for the weapons inspectors. I mean where do they look? It’s like sticking a pin in a map. So I think the view in Baghdad is that they feel very at bay, as it were, that they’re being pushed into a corner and they really see that the West has a number of excuses, as John has outlined, for wanting to go to war. ESLER: Okay, well I understand. Matt Frei is now joining us from his perch in Washington. Matt, there’s a couple of questions for you. One is from Richard Greenlow from Bexhill on Sea. He says: Richard Greenlow, Bexhill-on-Sea Mr Bush said that Freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it’s God’s gift to all of humanity. Do you think he, George Bush, sees America as God’s army with a mandate to free the world? MATT FREI Washington Well I guess, Gavin, that in the White House they feel that even if the French aren’t on their side, and the Germans, then God at least is. Andy, earlier, was referring to the devout nature of this White House and of course that’s all true. Now there have also been previous presidents who’ve been equally devout. The difference here is that President George Bush uses his Christian faith to underpin his philosophy of the world and essentially that is, if you absolutely have to, you have to use American force to spread American values and why do you need to do that because by spreading American values and turning let’s say Iraq into California eventually you’ll reduce the number of people who hate America more than they love their own lives, in other words, the number of people who are prepared to fly planes into buildings. That’s the dream, that’s the new American dream of George Bush. Whether it’s workable or not of course is another question. ESLER: A number of our correspondents were interested in whether America is actually falling into line behind their president in this. George Mason from Brighton says: George Mason, Brighton How well informed is the American public about the upcoming conflict? Is the media there being jingoistic?” ESLER: Are they, the media, painting a very slanted picture of events, what do Americans really know about this I suppose is what he’s asking. FREI: That’s a very good question. You were here last week yourself Gavin, and you probably realise that it is not on the whole a very jingoistic debate. You get the whole range. I mean I came to the White House here this morning in a taxi, and while I was trying to get through a stack of papers from the Washington Post to the Philadelphia Inquirer, all with a very reasonable debate about the pros and the cons and what kind of nation America should be at this very important juncture, the taxi driver was listening to a radio talk show that was unbelievably jingoistic in its language, I mean stuff that I really don’t want to repeat on this programme. So you do get the whole range, but I think it’s often underestimated outside America that there is a very serious debate going on here, not just about Iraq but about what kind of nation America should be today. Should it be the world’s policeman? Should it withdraw behind it’s borders and put up the shutters? And I think, in a sense, what the White House is trying to do is answer that question. And what they’re saying is that you can’t basically take refuge inside America, 9/11 destroyed that particular myth. You have to go after enemies wherever they are, even if it means treading on some toes and upsetting a few Europeans. ESLER: Andrew, one thing that did strike me when I was in America last week was they are indeed having a debate there; 64% of people according to ABC news would like more time for the UN weapons inspectors. I just wondered if you thought we too are having that kind of debate or whether many people here feel it’s rather hopeless. The government decides.. Tony Blair decides and therefore we all have to fall into line. ANDREW MARR Political Editor Well under our system prime ministerial power is enormous so long as he’s got a majority in the House of Commons, and so long at that pertains, there isn’t a huge Labour revolt inside the House of Commons, then Tony Blair can frankly do more or less what he wants. But I don’t think anyone should underestimate the scale of disagreement inside the Labour Party, inside the government, inside White Hall, among civil servants, right the way across the spectrum, and I was shown a website recently for combat pilots, RAF pilots, and it’s only a chat show and it’s not scientific, but last week 61% of them were against the war. ESLER: And they’re the people who drop the bombs! MARR: And they’re the people who are going to have to do it, yeah. ESLER: Ah, that’s a very interesting point because Patricia Baquer from Woking says: Patricia Baquer, Woking Iraq is probably weaker now than it was at any time since the 1990s so why the sudden urgency to disarm it? ESLER: John, that’s also one of the themes that we’ve seen very much in this correspondence from viewers. We’ve put up with this for 12 years. Iraq is contained many of them say. Is there something in that argument? JOHN SIMPSON World Affairs Editor Well I think it goes back again to this question that the government in the United States has changed and everybody has changed accordingly. I don’t think it’s a great deal more than that. It’s true that Iraq is weaker now than it was before. This time I hope we wont get that that kind of turgid propaganda that kept talking about the fourth largest army in the world which we had in 1991, and all those tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of soldiers dedicated to giving their lives for Saddam Hussein, because we know that’s not true now, and that will be even less true this time. A leading Arab political figure said to me the other day: “The problem that the Americans are going to have when they invade Iraq is going to be.. the major problem is going to be fending off all those generals coming towards them with white flags in jeeps. That was an Arab leader, that wasn’t an American. So we’re not talking about a tough and heavily defended government, we’re talking about a government which has got some very nasty weapons and may use them, but doesn’t have the kind of.. that kind of backup support we managed to delude ourselves back in 1991 that Saddam Hussein had. ESLER: Well maybe the generals and the RAF website should get together. They might have some agreement. Another big theme anyway in a lot of your questions is alleged American hypocrisy. Why, many of you want to know, if the point is protecting us from weapons of mass destruction, is the target Iraq and not North Korea? MOHAMMED FAROOQ Edinburgh My name is Mohamed Farook, I’m in Edinburgh. I would like to know why America is picking on Iraq? They’re not picking on other countries, for example North Korea, Zimbabwe or any other country that’s got weapons of mass destruction. ESLER: Well I’d like to bring in Matt Frei about this. We’ve also the question on a similar theme, Matt, from David Darius Ghani from Edinburgh who says: David Darius Ghani, Edinburgh There are terrible double standards going on here. Blair and Bush are doing nothing about North Korea, China, Israel and others, they’re just going after Iraq because it’s a soft target. ESLER: I mean how do the Americans justify going after Iraq which does not have nuclear weapons but might have them, as opposed to going after North Korea which does have nuclear weapons we think. MATT FREI Washington With great difficulty Gavin. I mean when this whole North Korea issue came up at the end of last year not only did the administration’s jaws drop, especially when the North Koreans admitted that they were enriching uranium for a bomb, but also the White House was at a complete loss at how to deal with this. This was the last thing the President wanted. I was told by someone in the White House that he literally just said: “Get this North Korea thing out of my sight. It is absolutely muddying the waters as regards Iraq. This is destroying our argument.” So they realise what they’re up against, and it is of course a very inconsistent foreign policy because we know that North Korea has got these weapons, the White House has said as much. We might even have pictures of these weapons. So you have a far better case against North Korea. You've got all the evidence to go after them. But the point is, you don’t pick fights with people who you can’t defeat. That’s essentially the White House foreign policy. You can’t go after North Korea in the same way that you can go after Iraq because they have got nuclear weapons because Seoul, a city of 50 million people is literally within artillery range of North Korea, because it would be a very bloody and immediate conflict. In other words, you negotiate with the people who have the nukes and you threaten the people who don’t. And of course if you like that is a wonderful argument for the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any country, any so called rogue state that wants to be taken seriously in the world now is probably doing its damnedest to try and develop its own nuclear weapons. ESLER: Andrew, does this mean that Britain is fully signed up with the ‘axis of evil’ idea, in other words that we are shoulder to shoulder with the United States in confronting North Korea perhaps as well and maybe Iran too, given that we spent a couple of years trying to rebuild relationships with Iran? MARR: Well if you listen to the Prime Minister the answer is yes, we are signed up. There was quite a dramatic moment in the House of Commons last week where at the end of Prime Minister’s questions Labour back benchers started to heckle him and they were shouting: “Who’s next? North Korea?” And Tony Blair turned around and said: “Yes, absolutely North Korea.” And somebody else shouted: “Where does it stop?” And he said: “It stops when we are secure against weapons of mass destruction and rogue states around the world.” Now once you say that, you then start to spin it on to the rest of White Hall it’s a bit more difficult because for instance Jack Straw was in Iran, which is on the American’s ‘axis of evil’ list. President Assad of Syria was in Downing Street not that long ago and Tony Blair was over there. So there is a more Arabist and perhaps a more moderate, open attitude inside most of White Hall. The strange thing at the moment is that it doesn’t appear to be shared, certainly as far as the rhetoric goes, by the guy at the top, the Prime Minister. ESLER: And just briefly on that, is part of it that British people don’t actually trust George Bush? They didn’t vote for him, they don’t trust him, and they’re wondering why the Prime Minister that the British people did vote for is so close to him. MARR: Absolutely, they regard him frankly as an idiot a lot of people in this country. Tony Blair is insistent that that is a gross misunderstanding, that he’s a very, very formidable, intelligent character with his own agenda, and that because of the link between terrorism and rogue states it’s a reasonable agenda, but he’s a long way from convincing the British public of that. ESLER: Okay, well the emails are still coming in. Let’s hear what Darshini has got for us. What more emails have been coming? DARSHINI: Gavin they’ve been flooding in. Now we’ve had 4000 emails and text messages, and talking of North Korea we’ve had a hundred on that subject alone. I’ve just had a text in here from Vince saying: “Isn’t anybody worried that Korea will support Saddam?” But if that’s a popular subject, well the subject of ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda has been far more popular in fact. It’s worrying a lot of people. This week of course Tony Blair did tell us that there’s likely to be a link between the two. A lot of people are very sceptical about that. Take Nancy from London, she’s asking: Nancy, London What evidence is there of a link between the two. After all, as we know, Iraq is meant to be a secular state. A lot of people think this is a lot of spin perhaps to turn public opinion. After all, Blair’s statement did come on what could be almost the eve of war. DARSHINI: Philip Kerr is also saying that: Philip Kerr How can anyone say that Iraq has ties to Al Qaeda? Saddam has opposed fundamentalists in his region, that’s why we supported him in the 80s. DARSHINI: Which is of course something that we’ve kind of forgotten about since the Gulf War. And let’s bring the issues slightly closer to home. Moira Gillespie from London points out that: Moira Gillespie, Hamilton All the people recently arrested here on suspicion of terrorism, particularly in London, are of North African origin. Why aren’t we chasing after those countries? Why in fact are we looking at Iraq instead? ESLER: Are now that is a very interesting point because a lot of you are concerned about the war on terror, and the war on terror indeed has affected countries as far apart as the Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya, and some of you see a war on Iraq as a distraction. Here at home since September 11th British police have arrested 270 people in connection with terrorism. A series of raids took place in and around Manchester. Four men were arrested and a Special Branch Detective was fatally stabbed. Other raids and arrests have extended from Edinburgh to Bournemouth and of course to London where the deadly poison ricin was discovered. The Home Office doesn’t release information on the nationality of those arrested but reports from London and Manchester, as Darshini was suggesting, described the men of being of North African origin. There is no confirmed report of any Iraq being arrested for these kind of offences in Britain since September 11th. Nevertheless in his state of the Union address this week President Bush was clear. He said: “Evidence from intelligence sources secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al-Qaeda.” Jane, if you can, can you make some sense of this? I mean are there links between Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime and if so what are they? JANE CORBIN There’s a real problem here, Gavin, because the Americans have been consistently trying to draw the links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq and really they haven’t made it at all, and in the meantime the British Government has been sort of sitting on the sidelines hoping they’re not going to make too much of it because British intelligence basically just doesn’t agree with that assessment. I’ve been covering Al-Qaeda for a number of years for Panorama. I’ve been to Afghanistan, I’ve travelled very widely. I have never managed to put my finger on any direct link. That’s not to say that there are some Iraqis who are members of Al-Qaeda. But Al- Qaeda is a broad spectrum, it covers many, many countries, many Arab and Moslem countries. But the real nub of it comes down to organisational links – are there any? And we just haven’t got any firm evidence on this. Now the American administration has made a lot in recent days – and I think we’re going to hear more next week when Colin Powell produces more evidence to the United Nations, a sceptical United Nations, the administration has made a lot of Al-Qaeda links with a Jihadian Islamic group in the North of Iraq, they’re call Al-Salal Islam. But the fact is that these people are operating in an area that isn’t even controlled by Saddam Hussein, so they’re clutching at straws when they try to make these connections. So a real problem for the American administration. I think it’s something that the people who’ve emailed us and spoken to us have really picked up on. There’s a lot of uncertainty as to why we’re suddenly getting these pronouncements, even from Tony Blair in the last few days, and yet we’ve got no real backup evidence, we’ve got no real ‘how, when, where who’. There’s a real problem here. ESLER: I have to say Andrew, another big theme is that British people are very suspicious about all this. They really do think, as Darshini suggested, they’re being spun. There was no links a few months ago. Suddenly when we’re about to go to war there are links. MARR: It is very odd. I mean up to no it has to be said Tony Blair has always said that there is no firm evidence of links. He hasn’t thus far tried to demonstrate that. But that’s changed over the last few days. I asked him, when he was in Washington, whether he’d actually seen the evidence that Colin Powell was going to produce next week and he said he had seen it and just wait. He said it’ll be.. you know.. it’s really quite impressive. But he knows very well that if he can’t persuade people that there is a real link between Iraq on the one hand and terrorism on the other, it will be almost impossible to sell this week, and sell it in the United Nations on the basis of the UN’s will be flouted and resolution 1441 and all the rest of it if Hans Blix allows him to do that. But to sell it on the streets and in the House of Commons requires that link to be made, and absolutely Jane is right, we have not seen that evidence yet. ESLER: John, I just wondered what your hunch was on this. Is the old Arab proverb about ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ I mean is there at least a community of interest between Al-Qaeda and the Baathists in Baghdad? They don’t like America. JOHN SIMPSON World Affairs Editor No, but don’t like each other, or they haven’t traditionally liked each other. I think.. I mean you perhaps might expect that my enemies in this case my enemy’s enemy might be at least the person that I could sympathise with in some way, and you can see where I think a little bit of what the Americans are thinking about and what perhaps they’ll try and sell us next week. I mean they and the Israelis have made a great deal of the fact that Saddam Hussein pays for instance for the families of suicide bombers in Israel and in Palestinian areas. So in that sense you could see kind of parallel movements going on. But I mean all the contacts I’ve had with intelligence sources on this side of the Atlantic have all said, and indeed on the other side of the Atlantic too because if you talk to people in the CIA they are also deeply unconvinced about the whole thing. I think that’s all creating problems for the very people that you might think would normally be most in favour of action. I talked to General Sir Michael Rose earlier this week who said he hasn’t met a single British general who believes in this war. That’s quite a heavy thing to say. ESLER: Okay, well let’s move on because there’s another aspect of all this related to Al-Qaeda which really does worry people up and down the country. Are we more of a terrorist target because we are, in Tony Blair’s words, standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States? LAWRENCE BURRELL Belfast Hello, my name is Lawrence, I live in Belfast and I would like to know if the concentration of troops around Iraq brings attention to ourselves when maybe terrorists didn’t think of us as a target in the first place. BARBARA CIVIL Kettering Hello, I’m Barbara Civil from Kettering. I feel that the threat to us of germ warfare is very real, but unless it can be resolved by going to war I don’t think we should go to war just for the sake of it. ESLER: Jane, do you think Britain is more of a terrorist target because of this or were we just always a target anyway? CORBIN: Well the argument goes like this Gavin, that if Al-Qaeda does link up with Saddam Hussein they can give him, or give his agents, weapons of mass destruction, a canister of some nasty poison or a few germs in a bottle to drop in a British city or an America city. But the problem is that even the CIA has advised President Bush that this war could force Saddam Hussein into the arms of an Al- Qaeda or a terrorist group. ESLER: The very thing that we want to prevent. CORBIN: Yes, and that’s why I think the CIA itself, as John mentioned, desperately uncertain about this. So there’s a real risk that you might even push the terrorist towards the supplier if you like, in this case Iraq. But I think though that we already do have a huge problem with Al-Qaeda. We are already a target. We’ve been a target since September 11th because of the support that we gave to America in the war against terror in Afghanistan. So I don’t think we should kid ourselves that we aren’t already a target for Al-Qaeda. But I think there’s a lot of doubt about what this war will do. ESLER: Andrew, the government seems very fatalistic about this. I mean the impression I certainly get from ministers, you’ve seen them up close, but the impression I get is that we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. They do expect an attack. They can’t tell us much more about it. We’d better look after ourselves. MARR: Yes, I mean this is a very porous country, in all sorts of ways. We’ve got many, many different communities and language groups. We’re an open country. We don’t have identity cards, we don’t have a tradition of any kind of tough police state atmosphere or action. We are a relatively easy country to hit, there’s no doubt about that. Ministers do say one day somebody will get through. But so far, because of intelligence - and good intelligence and we don’t hear about it – they have managed to stop a serious terrorist attack, and they just think, you know.. you pour the money into the intelligence, you keep trying, you keep trying to break up these cells, you work with the French and the Americans, that’s all you can really do. ESLER: Okay, let’s move on, back to Darshini again, see if you've got any more emails coming in for us. DARSHINI: Gavin, we’re struggling to keep up here. We’ve had thousands in since we’ve been on air, and just to give you a flavour of what people are saying, about 10% of the messages we’re getting mention oil, another 10% Israel. A lot are mentioning the possibility of using nuclear weapons and also the threat of terrorism as well. And there’s also a vocal minority out there who think that conflict is a good idea. Now take Geoffrey Riesel from Ipswich. He’s defending Tony Blair saying: Geoffrey Riesel, Ipswich He’s bravely acquitting his obligation and responsibility to protect us from Saddam Hussein. There’s no political mileage in it for him. It’s easy for those without that responsibility to dismiss difficult and unpopular decisions. DARSHINI: Having said that, the vast majority do think the Prime Minister is heading down the wrong road. Take Jackie Crossley for instance in Leeds who says that: Jackie Crossley, Leeds Mr Blair has his priorities wrong. How much will this war cost at a time when we have a failing NHS, problems with pensions, education and crime? Is this war a Blair tactic to take our mind off domestic problems? DARSHINI: And in fact this issue about the economy is quite a big one for people emailing. We didn’t have that many emails coming in about the subject last time we had a special programme in September. This time a lot of people are very worried, probably because the stock market has fallen so far in recent weeks and these worries about the war. Michael Robson’s just emailing in now pointing out that this isn’t a good vote winner for Mr Blair. Meanwhile opinion polls are telling us that most of the population is against war and Richard Hardwick is saying: If Blair does go to war in his name, could we see a conflict without a formal debate or vote?” ESLER: Andrew, it’s just struck me that the last Gulf War was largely paid for by the Arabs, by the Kuwaitis, also by the Japanese and others. It’s not going to be like that this time, so are we going to end up paying for it, and if so, either way Mr Blair is going to face this.. you know.. why aren’t we spending the money on schools and hospitals argument. MARR: Absolutely, I mean it’s going to cost us quite a bit. We don’t know how much, we don’t know how long it’s going to go on for, assuming that it happens. And we don’t know whether we’re going to be left garrisoning downtown Baghdad while the Americans go home, a very, very big issue and one of the things I think that Tony Blair and George Bush talked about a couple of days ago. It is going to cost a lot. It’s hard to see it being popular under almost any circumstances. If it goes ahead, we will be shown, I’m quite sure the torture chambers and bone pits and all the rest of it of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in an attempt to convince us that it was the morally right thing to do, but no, I don’t think this is easy for Tony Blair electorally under any circumstances. I don’t think he’s going into it as a cynical electoral ploy, put it that way. Those things can’t both be true. ESLER: I think you seem to be on safe ground on that one Andrew. Now, we’re going to expand our panel of correspondents and go over to Baghdad where there are reports tonight. Iraqi officials are still optimistic that war can be averted. Rageh Omaar is there. Rageh, a question to you from Paul Cooper from London. He wants to know: Paul Cooper, London If American troops find themselves in Baghdad would they been seen as saviours or as invaders? RAGEH OMAAR Baghdad Well Gavin, I’m sure you can understand that as a foreign correspondent here it’s really just very hard to gage exactly what ordinary Iraqis think about the subject to go and ask them that and really feel you're getting their full and honest answer. But I mean I think one thing I can safely say is, having spoken to a lot of friends and families I’ve got to know over the last 3 or 4 years here and am able to speak to in private and in confidence is that there is a deep concern about what happens after an invasion, an American and British invasion, of Iraq and then overthrow the government. And the deep, deep fear amongst ordinary families is that within a vacuum in such a situation that all kinds of forces would be unleashed that would lead to chaos throughout this country, and I think that more than anything else really deeply frightens many ordinary Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere. And the other thing I think you have to bear in mind is that even before the era of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein here that politics in this country have been always I think two things, I mean violence and highly nationalistic, and I think that people would have a very, very hard time, whatever they think of the nature of the rule here, about any kind of American military administrator basically being in charge of Iraq. I mean many people are aware of an idea that was muted of general Tommy Franks, the American military commander somehow being a military governor of Iraq, and that is something that I think would go down very, very badly amongst ordinary Iraqis here. ESLER: Rageh, another question to you from Frances Mommert from Devon who asks: Frances Mommert, Devon What evidence is there that Saddam is preparing his people or indeed mobilising for war? ESLER: Perhaps I should add to that: what evidence is there that ordinary Iraqis are trying to do something, stocking up with food and so on? OMAAR: As far as ordinary Iraqis go, I mean it’s almost a surreal atmosphere in Baghdad because on the face of it, on the surface of it – and it is just on the surface – there is just normality. There isn’t panic buying in the markets if you go there. But there are some telltale signs of I suppose middle class Iraqis just making some preparations. People are digging wells, water wells, in their back gardens and so forth, but that’s very sort of small scale stuff, and you don’t have the situation which you had in the immediate run up to the Gulf War in 1991 where I think 50% of the city of Baghdad, that’s two million people, left the city. I’m sure people are making such preparations if a war is started. But in terms of the Iraqi authorities preparing, and one really interesting thing has happened over the last week, I mean every single night on Iraqi state television they’ve been broadcasting at length, the Iraqi leader meeting with all of his senior military commanders, I’m talking about 25, 30, 40 commanders from air defence units, republican guards, special republican guard, all the security and intelligence services, and they’ve been describing to him all in detail, all of the sort of rings of defences that they’re preparing, that the idea is to suck in any invading army into a messy urban gorilla warfare. So I mean that’s his state of mind. ESLER: Okay Rageh, thanks for joining us from Baghdad. Let’s cross over to Paris now and our correspondent there Jon Sopel. John, many of our viewers want to know about the alternatives to war, what the French and the Germans and others propose. Here’s a question from Anthony Oakley who asks: Anthony Oakley, Isle of Wight If we don’t go to war with Iraq, how else do you deal with and disarm Saddam? ESLER: So what do the French think about that? JOHN SOPEL Paris Correspondent Well the French would say that the foreign policy that’s been in place since the last Gulf War has worked rather effectively, that you've got a weakened Saddam unable to attack any of his neighbours, but you've still got the territorial integrity of the country in tact and the French would also say that the weapons inspectors must be allowed to continue their work and that nothing they’ve seen so far justifies war, and Jack Chirac, the Foreign Minister Dominic de Villepin have been very forceful in expressing that point of view, and the third thing they would say is that if there is going to be an attack, the only people that can authorise that are the United Nations. There mustn’t be anything unilateral done. ESLER: So Tony Blair’s meeting Jacques Chirac in Le Touquet in a couple of days time, Tuesday I think it is. Do you think the French would actually go so far as to veto a second resolution, which they obviously could do under the composition of the UN? SOPEL: Gavin I think that is the French dilemma at the moment. I think were they to threaten using the veto as Dominic De Villepin did at the UN Security Council a couple of weeks ago, all that’s going to achieve is ensuring the George Bush sidesteps the United Nations completely because he doesn’t want to see himself being humiliated by a western ally the French voting against him, so I think if we just change the metaphor that you were using at the start of the programme where you were talking about Tony Blair being perceived as the poodle, I think we’ll use the other metaphor, Tony Blair, on Tuesday, when Jacques Chirac will try to be the bridge between Europe and the United states to try and find the areas of common ground that exist and what it would take to get the French on board because I think that Tony Blair wants it to go to the UN, public opinion in Britain demands it, public opinion in France demands that as well, and the question is can Tony Blair bring Jacques Chirac back into the tent so that there could be unity at the Security Council. ESLER: Okay, just a final point briefly if I may John. Peter Kane from Inverness wants to know: Peter Kane, Inverness Does Britain run the risk of becoming isolated in Europe if it goes to war alongside America? ESLER: I suppose that depends on what you mean by Europe, whether it’s the old Europe of Donald Rumsfeld. SOPEL: Yes, I think what we saw is an exercise in kicking sand in each other’s face. Two weeks ago the Franco German Summit where it was the mighty forces of France and Germany standing together saying: ‘this is the voice of Europe’ and then you had that letter in European newspapers last week signed by eight leading European leaders including Tony Blair saying actually we speak for Europe as well. I think what it shows is that Europe is bitterly divided on this and all talk of a European defence policy, a European foreign policy must seem like so much hot air when you have the principal players so deeply split over this issue. ESLER: Okay John, thanks for joining us from Paris. Andrew I wanted to bring you in on that. I mean Tony Blair and his gang of eight? One kind of Europe and another kind of European vision that we’ve been hearing from there. MARR: Yes, high risk stuff I think to assemble all those leaders and to confront France and Germany with a provocative alternative voice at the very same time that you're trying to woo them and bring them round. I think Le Touquet is going to be a very, very interesting summit indeed. But it’s true that it’s a very, very big problem for Tony Blair. His whole strategy has been about keeping the European Union and the United States together. If France vetoed a second resolution, that would collapse entirely. It would be a very, very big diplomatic blow for Britain too. SIMPSON: It wont happen though. ESLER: It wont happen? SIMPSON: No. ESLER: Okay, we’ve got a couple of minutes left and all of the panel here joined us in our previous programme in September and they were virtually unanimous then that war with Iraq seemed to be inevitable. I’d like to put one final question to you all beginning with Jane. Is there anything now that can be done to stop this – no war? CORBIN: I think that war is looking increasingly inevitable. I met Hans Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector just a couple of days ago in New York, I’ve been following him for several weeks for a Panorama programme on the Weapons Inspectors. I think even Mr Blix realises time is running out. He says he almost can’t ask for more time because he knows he’s not being told the real truth by the Iraqis. He wants to know where the anthrax is, he wants to know where the VX gas.. the nerve gas is, and he feels in his gut I think, he gut feeling that he’s not getting the truth from the Iraqis. I think everybody, including the weapons inspectors, feel that war is getting closer. ESLER: John, in about 15 seconds, what do you think? SIMPSON: Yes, it’s inevitable, always was inevitable. This is brought about.. in a way it’s not about Iraq, it’s about how other countries manage to deal with the preponderance of America. Britain deals with it by going along with the Americans, the French, the Russians, the Chinese make a show of going against them and also are forced to come into line virtually. ESLER: Let’s just quickly go over to Matt Frei on that point. About 15 seconds Matt. War inevitable, no way to avoid it? What do you think? FREI: There are three things that can stop war, Gavin: one is the silver bullet for Saddam Hussein, the other is the golden handshake and the third is total capitulation and all those three at the moment seem rather unlikely. ESLER: Briefly, Andrew Marr, what do you think? MARR: I’m in the happy position of agreeing with my colleagues on all of that. I think war is almost inevitable unless something extraordinary happens in Baghdad very soon. ESLER: Something extraordinary. Okay, thank you all very much, and thanks to all of you who took part by sending us your emails and text messages. From all of us on Panorama goodnight.