Blair just said “You would be hard pressed to find anyone who in September 2002 doubted that Saddam had WMD”.
It wouldn’t have been that hard. If he had asked members of the Near East and North Africa Department of the FCO, the Middle East experts in the FCO’s Research Analysts, or in the Defence Intelligence Service, he would have found absolutely no shortage of people who doubted it, whatever position No 10 was forcing on their institutions.
One of the many failures of this Inquiry has been a failure to ask individual witnesses before it whether they personally had believed in the existence of any significant Iraqi WMD programme. I know for certain that would have drawn some extremely enlightening answers from among the FCO and probably MOD participants.
Sir Martin Gilbert allowed Blair to conflate Iran, Iraq, Al-Qaida, WMD and terrorism in a completely unjustified way. When Straw tried exactly the same trick, Rod Lyne did not allow him to get away with it.
A further stark contrast with Straw is that both Blair and Straw were asked about the failure of the UK to secure movement in the Middle East peace process by using our role in Iraq to influence the USA. A major, detailed and fascinating part of Straw’s answer was that Israel’s – and specifically Netanyahu’s – political influence in the USA had prevented progress.
By contrast, Blair did not even mention Israel in response to the questions on the failure to achieve progress in the Middle East. He solely blamed the Palestinian Intafada. He has been anxious to widen the discussion beyond Iraq at every opportunity, and frequently referred to destabilising factors in the Middle East, and again and again pointed to a growing threat from Iran and Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, and to Palestinian terrorism (including Saddam Hussein’s past sponsorship of it).
He has made not one single comment about Israel’s behaviour as a contributing factor in Middle East instability. Given Blair’s official position as Middle East envoy, this lack of any bare pretence at impartiality is most revealing.
“Blair has told the Chilcot Inquiry that 9/11 is the key to everything in understanding why he invaded Iraq.”
It explains one thing that I was noticing during the ’02/’3 run-up, which was that, regardless of the strength of the ‘intelligence’, nobody semed to be offering any reasons for the urgency, any tangible necessity why it had to be done _then_.
My contribution to ‘religion is just this tentative link from another thread that furthered my understanding of ‘Zionism’ after a conversation with ‘technicolour’ who laid out the ground-work for me.
The ‘Elephant in the Room’ is an interesting read and highlights can be read at http://tinyurl.com/Jews-against-zionism
Without the www this background information would be completely unchallenged through lack of understanding.
My great-grandfather Benjamin Waterman was a telegraphist before becoming a news reporter in London. He frequently complained in his reports of out of date information from foreign correspondents.
How times change!
My Wife and I were brought up as Catholics, which meant we had to eat fish on friday.
Whilst we had both decided it was a load of old bollocks, long before we met, when the kids grew up we decided that Friday was a special day.
Instead of a family meal where we would all eat the same, we would all independently decide what we wanted to eat, and cook it ourselves independently on Friday.
This I found quite liberating, because I do most of the cooking in our house, and I can cook the most bizarre things from all over the world on a Friday and don’t have to impose it on anyone else. Sure sometimes the kicthen is a smell exclusion zone until I have cooked it and eaten it, but I refuse to eat in the shed.
Our kids haven’t been programmed with any of this religious nonsense, yet seem far more sensible than their parents, and at least our daughter can cook.
We bought my brother-in-law a book when he finally left home at the age of nearly 40.
How to boil an egg.
Tony
We Eat Oyster Mushrooms everytime I go to the Chinese Shop to buy some. They are really meaty. Everyone should try some. Cook them in butter with a little bit of salt and pepper.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Obama_abandons_bid_to_return_Man_to_02012010.html
Gah, if only we had that lost magic of 1960s technology. We could crank those Apollos out every few months back then. With 2010 technology – nearly 1/2 century of development later! – think how much more efficiently, cheaply and quickly we could do it.
Surely the Stimulus Funding Programme could have spared a bit of cash for this. After all, they were a bit strapped for money in the 1960s too but still managed to get those old Apollos cranked out by the dozen.
I’d really been looking forward to seeing spanking brand new, hi-res live pictures of our brave boys dancing around on the moon too.
Bloody hell, Everyone here is really old?
I think I’m in the wrong forum?
Arsalan: I don’t like to think of myself as old, mate… I’m not even old enough to have watched that magic 1960s technology deployed!
“I think I’m in the wrong forum?”
Hey, you’re good to talk with. I think you’ve got your work cut out with that shark, though, shouldn’t you be off eating it ?
glenn,
I’d really been looking forward to seeing spanking..
so have I glenn!
Don’t start that, now, boys …
“I think I’m in the wrong forum?”
No, but I suspect I’m old enough to be your mother. Don’t leave, I find your comments interesting. Even if I am a god-forsaken atheist who murders and steals all around me. 🙂
Must watch…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aewzh_QxlI
dreoilin
You are female!!!
Surely age does not denote gender?
Suhayl Saadi
There is only one thing to remember, and that is to forget everything you have heard from feminists.
The type of men women like is not the type they would like to like.
They want the wrong man and to make him right.
To the best of my knowledge I had thought all the ones who proposed hated me, before they did so?
I think that may well have been the case. They did hate me, and they thought they could change me my marrying me?
When my wife complains about me, I tell her she knew I was like that before she married me, and she says that she thought she could change that after marriage.
I’m probably not the best person to ask about women, because quite a large percentage of those who proposed changed their minds soon after they found out more about me.
That’s why my Mum rushed the wedding when this one proposed. and told me to keep my mouth shut until after the marriage. I think I was married less then two weeks after she proposed?
Ed,
You said:-
” None of Blair’s dissembling should be surprising, and even skilled cross-examiners would have difficulty keeping pace with this torrent of bullshit. The best thing Chilcott can do is to keep Blair talking, then go over the transcript, possibly summon “rebuttal” witnesses, and then re-question Blair afterwards.
Rough the bastard up with some aggressive challenging of his credibility, wait for him to start changing his story, and then rip into his mendacity.”
Recall, that I gave a “tongue in cheek” award to Blair in 2003, for his mendacity.
I agree that a skillful lawyer, well practiced in the art of cross-examinaition, can use a calculated strategy to expose Blair.
A. B.A sensible time-line drawn, to equate information given related to time of first actual knowledge about an issue in question, and oblige acceptance of the fact and have it read into the record. He can be shown a printed time-line crossed referenced to some extent, to get an initial agreement that he accepts same as accurate ?” then work forward from that which he accepts to that which the cross-examiner seeks to prove.
B. Memoranda that deny his suggestion of lack of prior knowledge about the existence of WMDs in Iraq ?” must be put to him.
C. Put the case to Blair, forcefully, and each time after he circumnavigates with a lot of verbiage, then bring him back to the core question:-
” Mr. Blair, I am grateful, for the extensive explanation you have proffered, but before I deal will some inconsistencies and errors arising, I need to try once more to obtain a simple and direct answer. The question was:- ( restate…) – now having had the benefit of the elaboration and full explanation ?” and with the manifestly clear question before you, as put again – will you be kind enough to give this a direct and, if possible, short answer.
He must be pulled repeatedly to the undeniable facts, and this is a game of skillfully interfacing his answers, the facts and his exposable mendacity.
However, remember – I awarded him the 2003 prize for liar of the year (http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/01/iraq_inquiry_el.html ) go to second comment.
I see they’re going to bring him back for another try :-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/01/chilcot-inquiry-recalls-tony-blair
I shouted to the drummer…
Hey Mate I Love Your T-Shirt
It was all black and white and perhaps subtley silver…
But I had no idea what they were going to play
And probably neither did they – until they got on stage together and talked to each other – and said – well what should we do…
And we had this bunch of musicians on the stage from every part of the world you can think of…
And my mate was getting really annoyed because he wanted to get on stage…
And he said they are spending absolutely ages tuning up
Why don’t they tune up before they get on stage?
I said – well they’ve probably never played together before
They are tuning up their instruments – whilst they are sussing each other out
And then these musicians from apparently almost every part of the world you can think of.
From NOTHING
Produce Complete and Utter Magic in 5 Minutes?
I Mean FFS
This is Not Supposed To Be Possible
But This Is in ENGLAND
Where Anything is Possible
Race and Religion is Not an Issue in
MUSIC
Do it Live
Tony
dreoilin
Even if I am a god-forsaken atheist who murders and steals all around me. 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/6r2see
😉
dreoilin
You are female!!!
–arsalan
You’re surprised? I am indeed.
I’m all “commented out”, as the Yanks might say. I’ve been on here several times and written several comments, and my DSL would then kick out when I’d hit Post, and I’d get an error message.
We’re so spoiled. When one gets used to permanent-on, fairly-fast broadband, being without it seems like an abuse of our rights or something. And meanwhile I’m reading about 10 Americans trying to abduct 33 Haitian children … Someone said they were “worth” $15,000 each to them.
Mark,
I’m just going to your link, if this connection stay live. 🙂
It seems that there are those who think that Blair put in a praise worthy performance, and managed, if not to answer all his critics, at least redeem himself to the extent that nobody can accuse him of not doing what he sincerely thought was “the right thing”. The panel of course did their best to calm his initial nerves, and soon he was into in his defiant & arrogant stride. So much so that not only was he proud to boast that the attack on the Iraq was the correct thing to do, but that he would do it again even knowing all that is known now, and in fact he went even further in positively advocating a 2010 repeat act against Iran. He’s also could help bragging that it was himself, rather than Clinton, who was the driving force behind the equally immoral & illegal NATO attack on Yugoslavia, and additionally confirmed beyond all doubt the error of the common misconception, that far from being a “poodle”, or even a restraining force on the US iro Iraq, he was just as determined to topple Saddam as Bush was, regardless of pretext.
Far from exonerating himself, his slimy weasel worded disingenuous lawyers’ performance fooled only those unwilling to see the stark self confession of a modern day monster; the toxic end result of a nasty little racist & Islamophobe who managed to get his hands on the levers of power; and the combination of these traits with a psychopathically deluded sense of self-righteousness, an inability for human empathy, the demoniac ability to fake sincerity, with a talent of camouflaging lies with a barrage of misrepresentations, and there you have a person able to act on his lunatic belief that he has a messianic divine right to “do the right thing”, no matter the consequence, be it causing the deaths of countless people, and actually making the World a much more dangerous place for the next generations.
The Monster called Saddam a “monster” again, reminding us of the intense demonization that was a pre-war necessity, but the self-evident truth on display was that Anthony Charles Lynton Blair really has more in common with Adolf Hitler than Saddam Hussein ever had, even excluding the incomparable larger mountain of dead bodies.
I read an article in the Independent last Thursday about the UN report on UK complicition in rendition and torture.
Here is the online version (seems a little more toned down in wording, but mostly the same)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/furious-exchange-over-uk-complicity-in-rendition-1880861.html
I’ll throw the cat among the pigeons – oh, wait a minute, it’s a flying rodent:
http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/2010/01/chilcott-case-for-war.html
– “the only service the inquiry can perform is to utterly expose the lunacy at the heart of our decision to join the Americans in their deranged Iraq enterprise, and to make sure the lesson is drummed into the public one more time, hard enough to prevent even partial repeats. Here’s a brief recap of exactly how we wound up taking part…
Let’s recall that the Americans invaded Iraq to fend off Iraqi aggression.
I’ll write that again, for clarity. The United States – the world’s only remaining superpower, with a defence budget of five hundred billion dollars per annum – invaded the castrated, two-soldiers-in-a-Fiat-Panda dictatorship of Iraq in self-defence.
Now, I can already hear the objections about Tony Blair’s humanitarian agenda, but none of that matters at all. Tony wasn’t in charge – the US was deploying the most terrifying military machine in history, and made it clear they could squash the Iraqi military like an asthmatic beetle without our help.
This was the Bush White House’s war, and they wouldn’t start babbling about painting schools and helping those poor women vote until the collapse of Iraq had turned the country into the Hammer House of Horror. Their justifications were the terrifying, anthrax-filled model planes that Saddam might use to genocide Dogdick, Alabama and those awful mushroom clouds that would be shaped like smoking guns, or whatever.
And the plan? The plan went like this – Invade Iraq = Freedom! ”
Who could argue with that?
Blair had a chance to redeem himself by renouncing his misjudgements and perhaps, in time, a generous nation would have been lenient.
Those that shouted, waved and cheered on a warm sunny morning in May 1997 now look with contempt and anger.
That will be his legacy.
There will be no act of contrition, no ear for confession, no act of atonement, only the pain, fear and trauma of those that fell will haunt his mind, surfacing as he struggles with the lies that lurk within in his conscience.
Here is a link to the UN’s report which the Foreign Office flatly denies and wishes buried.
http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/HRC_AHRC1342_JointStudy_SecretDetentionInTheContextOfCounteringTerrorism.pdf
Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.
http://tinyurl.com/DU-cancers
Posted on a Tory website half of which is controlled by a 70 year old Vicar, and the other half is controlled by another much younger Tory who I suspect also thinks Cameron is a Tosser.
Very Occasionaly when things get a bit heated between me and an extremely Right Wing American Who Has Got His Own Private Army and I am doing my best to wind him up something rotten with my working class Oldham accent…
He LOCKS The THREAD – Because It Is On FIRE
But the Tories Have Never Banned Me, And I Don’t Actually Think They Have Deleted Anything
Sure They Know I am a Nutter
But Even The Mad American Invited Me As a Guest To Speak at a University
I Seriously Fucked Him Off, When He Posted His Son Was Going Off To Afghanistan
He DEFINITELY Wanted To Kill Me, and Probably Still Does
He Has a Starring Role in The Film Avatar
You Should See It Just To See Him
He Played The Best Part
So I Said This on The Tory Website
Cos They Were Fucking Me Off a Bit
Bestbear,
I didn’t go to St Bedes Catholic College, because both my elder brothers went there.
And they told me about what was going on.
And so when I was doing my 11+
I finished after 30 minutes a- and left the rest of the paper blank
I reckon I had scored just enough not to pass
Such that I could go to a normal school with boys and girls
And not be controlled by Fascist Priests
I had two older Sisters Too
Who went to Notre Damn
And I escaped All This Religious Controlling sh*t
And So Have Our Children
Of Course We Gave Them The Opportunity To Take The Tests
When They were 11 Year Olds
But we also took them round all the schools near where we live – and let them make their own choice
They could come up with the result they wanted to
And both of them chose the schools they wanted to go to
And my daughter is at a top University and doing exactly what she wants to do
And my Son, is currently working out the details how he can take his business to the next level
And both our kids are Lovely People Who Can Mix At ANY Level.
When my Son was 18
A Spotty Teenager
He Was Welcoming Business People Who Had Flown Into London From Various Parts of The World
In a T-Shirt
And Showing Them What He Could Do
He Took His 15 Year Old Girlfriend Along in a Business Suit
So What Have You Private School Educated Tossers Been Doing in The Meantime?
Tony
“Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.”
Good.
I remember Jon Pilger did a program on that, it was a problem even before the invasion. Horrible.
I sometimes think, no wonder there’s this paranoia about dirty-bombs, some people might well wish they could just scoop the muck up and return it to sender.
@Tony –
HUH?
He kind of made it obvious that all the fish that we caught and we put in the fishnet we would return to the river – includng the really BIG ONE I wanted to Eat For My Tea
So All the Fish Went Back In The River Ribble
I didn’t have this problem when I went fishing with My Mum when I was 7 Years Old.
at 5:00 am
I caught The Fish
I Reeled Him in
And I Knocked Him On The Head To Kill Him Quickly
And We Rowed Back
And All Our Family Ate Him For Breakfast
Some People Don’t Know
And Buy Their Fish in Tins
Tony
Barbara,
Now that is a name I have got Great Affection For
So, Convince Me You Really Are Living in a Time Zone Over 5 and a Half Hours To The East
Cos I Reckon You Live Round The Corner From Me
Tony