Blair Getting Away With Murder 561

 in War in Iraq by

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.

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561 thoughts on “Blair Getting Away With Murder”

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  • tony_opmoc

    Mark,

    Your website is very impressive, but today is the first time I have seen it. I’m almost certain the last time I clicked on your link a few weeks ago, I was redirected to somewhere else. Maybe you’ve changed it, maybe I’m mistaken, or maybe someone deliberately misdirected it.

    Tony

  • technicolour

    Guardian summary misses the point where Blair refers to the ‘2010 view- – where he can see if Saddam Hussein had been left in power *Iran* & Iraq would now be engaged in a nuclear/WMD weapons race and Al Queda might well be involved in iraq

  • mary

    A quote from the late Howard Zinn is very relevant –

    “The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth. Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson?”that everything we do matters?”is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.”

    http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/marvelous-victories-5-lessons-from-the-late-great-howard-zinn/

  • LeeJ

    The Middle East envoy has just given an example of how Israel gets attacked and then retaliates resulting in Israel get the blame!!! Apart from the obvious bias, he must have utterly no knowledge of the history of the conflict from the Palestianian perspective.Or from a reality for that matter. Incredible.

  • CheebaCow

    Richard –

    Surely you can agree that being fucked is a bad thing when it’s Blair doing it?

    Thanks for the link, the headline definitely makes me want to read more.

  • dreoilin

    “It simply wasn’t in our self-interest — which is what our foreign policy should be based on.”

    –alan campbell

    That’s delightful. No humanitarian considerations to bother you.

    “If you can stand watching that grinning killer ..”–glenn

    I haven’t watched since my last comment either. I’m guessing that Craig will give us a round-up later. Blair, being a consummate politician, never answers any question directly, but talks around it for at least 5 minutes. It’s always easier to analyse text from these people.

    “The Middle East envoy has just given an example of how Israel gets attacked and then retaliates resulting in Israel get the blame!!!”

    christ

  • CheebaCow

    To be honest I was very surprised by Blair so obviously targeting Iran, but only because I can’t see how the US/UK have the resources to do it. There are still large numbers of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US/UK economies are in the toilet and I can’t imagine the US/UK populations would be very happy with another war being started. I think the only real threat to Iran is a CIA coup. I think the Pakistanis have more reason to be afraid of a full scale war (they are already half way there). Anyone notice the US media often refers to the Afghan war as Af-Pak war now?

  • arsalan

    Hay you know what I have noticed?

    There isn’t a single post by Larry and Angry here!

    That 911 thread worked, let them talk to each other.

    Anyway, No surprise that Blair hasn’t continues with his war mongering lies.

    What country do you think is going to be next after Iran and Pakistan?

  • Arsalan

    Cheeba

    That is because it takes many years of sanctions to get a country ready for an invasion.

    Iran has had sanctions for a long time, Just not long enough for Blair to call for an invasion yet.

  • CheebaCow

    I forgot to say I also think that Russia and China are more likely to protect Iran from both sanctions and military aggression.

  • Photos

    My photo’s of todays demos are here:

    http://www.killick1.plus.com/chilcot_demo.zip

    or click on the link below. However, they are all in a 128 megabyte ZIP file, and my web space seems to be sending them rather slowly; it looks like a two hour download.

    The ZIP unpacks into a folder containing 72 jpeg images. I haven’t edited them except to turn the portrait pictures upright. There are pictures of the demonstrators, the speakers, and the “Tony Blair in Prison” performance. Anyone may use them in any way they see fit.

    Clark

  • Richard Robinson

    “Surely you can agree that being fucked is a bad thing when it’s Blair doing it?”

    Ah.

    That, I have no answer to, and will withdraw from the position I have taken.

    I’ve also noticed myself using the same phraseology. No problem, I’m happy to argue against myself, too.

    “Thanks for the link, the headline definitely makes me want to read more.”

    It’s a long-running feature (as per the numbering), just oozing with colourful examples. Not for the squeamish (but then, arguably, nor is paying attention to any of this mess). I chose to mention this one (as well as the tie-up with the analogy) because it’s on-topic.

    And because I can’t make up my mind whether it’s heartening or cause for despair, to see USA dissenters looking up to this.

  • technicolour

    I agree with CheebaCow: nowhere’s going to be next. As well as Iran, and Bush, Blair blamed everyone from William Haig to something new called ‘AQ’. Perhaps he means GQ; he was looking impressively tailored. His talk of ‘nation building’ in the future is, I suspect, nicely calculated to get everyone panicking?

  • CheebaCow

    AQ = Abdul Qadeer Khan

    {en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#Nuclear_Proliferation_and_Rise_to_Fame}

  • Rob Lewis

    Is there some sort of tunnel out of the QE2 conference centre? This guy has been fucking invisible all day, at least from street level.

  • mary

    Quite so CheebaCow. Mine was a feeble joke aimed at Gordon Brown’s pronuciation of Al Qaeda.

  • tony_opmoc

    Clark,

    Your photos are fantastic.

    It took only about 5 minutes to download them.

    Thanks

    Tony

  • angrysoba

    Arsalan: “Hay you know what I have noticed?

    There isn’t a single post by Larry and Angry here!

    That 911 thread worked, let them talk to each other.”

    Good. Can we be reprieved from our status as agents provocateurs now? Or pro-Iraq War bloogers [sic]?

  • George Dutton

    “Tony Blair is guilty of mass murder”…

    http://tinyurl.com/yb7gg5p

    “An Illegal War is State-Terrorism”

    “As the toothless Chilcot Inquiry collates the evidences from the various individuals, not many are asking some basic questions regarding the Iraq War.”…

    tinyurl.com/ydwklvr

  • Rob Lewis

    Talk of heckling in the chamber as Blair left. One cry of ‘liar’ and one of ‘murderer’.

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