Dutch tv station goes to court for Iraq disclosure

Dutch tv station goes to court for Iraq disclosure

www.nu.nl

Since the source is in dutch I'll translate a snippet, english is not my native tongue so there might be typo's and it's translated freely:

RTL News has filed a case against the Dutch government forcing disclosure about the war in Iraq. The news agency asked the judge for certain documents from the ministry discussing political support for the war in Iraq.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
en.wikipedia.org
www.rtl.nl

"For 5 years now the Dutch government refuses to give disclosure about this war and why it was supported by the Netherlands" according to Harm Taselaar, chief editor of RTL News.

Taking responsibility

Taselaar wants the involved politicians to take responsibility about why the country went to war.

"We were being told there were WMD, but those were never found".

The chief editor believes the political establishment is withholding information. "That is why we asked the judge what our rights for information exactly means in such cases".

Facts

RTL News has been trying for some time now trying to find out what decisions were made and by whom. In a previous case against the government it tried to make several rapports about political meetings held in the 6 months before the actual invasion public. Despite a law made in 1980 somewhat similar to the Freedom of information legislation the government refuses to release the documents.

Not acceptable

"We think it is not acceptable in a democratic society for the government to withhold information, especially concerning this particular controversial war. It shouldn't matter whether one is against or in favor of invading of Iraq, everyone should be able to find out what exactly happened that made the government decide to support it. Have we been mislead? If the government wants to shorten the gap between the ordinary citizen and the political establishment it is taking responsibility in this matter."

The dutch news agency wants to make an indepth documentary on what exactly happened just before the war in Iraq.

My opinion in this is that it is understandable for the politicians involved not to release the documents as it might lead to their downfall. It is typical an obvious error has been made and the involved politicians do not want to admit it. I personally believe those politicians (like the prime minister) were very enticed to be given so much attention, to actually mean something in the world (the Netherlands is only 16/17 million people on a tiny piece of Europe) and impressed by agencies like CIA and NSA, I'm sure they simply assumed the presented information as being true and pledging support. And ofcourse there is Dutch Shell and many other companies/parties that had interests.

I believe most of the government (and country as a whole) is hesitant to send troops and if there was no WMD argument we might not have gone along with the USA but would try diplomatic means instead, possibly an even stricter embargo. But then again if a slow approach was taken there would have been the risk of the Arab world uniting which would make armed conflict even more difficult (and a likely oil shortage).

If there are readers interested maybe I'll try and update this thread once the case starts, the eventual verdict (might take months or year).

www.nu.nl
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 16-10-2008 by Dragonfly79]

Excellent stuff, the first of hopefully many law suits against the governments that got involved in the Afghanistan/Iraq rape.

Im delighted to see people going to these lengths.

"We think it is not acceptable in a democratic society for the government to withhold information, especially concerning this particular controversial war. It shouldn't matter whether one is against or in favor of invading of Iraq, everyone should be able to find out what exactly happened that made the government decide to support it. Have we been mislead? If the government wants to shorten the gap between the ordinary citizen and the political establishment it is taking responsibility in this matter."

This quote right here made me shutter because it is so true. In a country like ours that should be controlled by the people and the government is just there to represent them why is this government withholding information especially information regarding a war. To me this is common sense but obviously for the Dutch and us here in the US it isnt.

Originally posted by mybigunit

This quote right here made me shutter because it is so true. In a country like ours that should be controlled by the people and the government is just there to represent them why is this government withholding information especially information regarding a war. To me this is common sense but obviously for the Dutch and us here in the US it isnt.

Ofcourse there should be "transparancy" but it is 'logical' why and how this government system came to be. It is an interesting case since the government is basically sued and I'm also interested in the political events leading up to the war. But it can also be interpreted as looking for a scapegoat and the end of several prominent figures' political careers. At least we don't live in an obviously censored state but we're not too far away from becoming that either.