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’s a megalomaniac… who like so many others before him… believes… honestly and sincerely… hand on heart… in witchcraft.
“I think he might have a bit of a surprise when he meets Peter at the Gate.”
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Mark 8:36
“Sir Richard [Dalton] said that it was now essential that all the political parties made clear in the run up to the general election that there would be no repeat of Mr Blair’s actions in respect of Iran.
“‘One result of Tony Blair’s intervention on Iran – he mentioned Iran 58 times – is to put the question of confronting Iran into play in the election,’ he said.”
Independent.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/yevpysd
I had the feeling after reading a lot of what T Blair said, that he was speaking at Chilcot on behalf of the USA.
“Someone asked if there was a transcript.
If they really want 249 pages of bilge,
it is here.”
Thank you, Mary.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope with wading through it all (usual whinge: “I have work I should be doing”), but … the reporting is (necessarily) so incomplete, I just wanted a more complete feel for what it was like, what questions might have been raised that the reporters didn’t have time for, and so on. The actual facts, such as they are.
At least the 249 pages seem to be double-spaced. That’ll help.
Again, thanks.
“I had the feeling after reading a lot of what T Blair said, that he was speaking at Chilcot on behalf of the USA”
I had the feeling he was speaking on behalf of Israel.
I believe we have seen the true meaning of the word perverse displayed by Tony Bliar.
I agree MJ, it was all about something else, he diverted the scope away from Iraq to escalate todays wardrumming against Iran, without mentioning Israel’s dastardly stand off in Gaza, or their continued land steal.
To the groaning background noise of the audience, he managed not only to anger them with his belligerent refusal for remorse, he had the ludicrous audacity, and was allowed to proceed, to use this inquiry into the legitimacy of the attack on Iraq for his wholly obscene and disgusting warmongering against Iran, all in one sentence, he must have rehearsed this for days.
I’m beginning to believe that this man is not worth a fair trial anymore, just as I would not waste any time or money on characters like Vladic. Evidence a plenty bang em’ up. St. Helena was good enough for Napoleon, it’ll sufice.
Fraaazeeer, we need a hand here!
Basking in sunlight & imagining if he had come on and said “look, this was all a terrible, terrible mistake”.
By the way, I think foreign policy should be self-interested – you’re nice to people, they’re nice to you, you trade, everyone’s happy…
Otherwise, lovely point earlier about the FCO standing up to Hitler.
Craig.
How about you drawing up a list of all the questions that the inquiry should have asked but did not.
Sometimes the question itself is illuminating even though the person who needs to be asked it will not be so asked.
“I had the feeling after reading a lot of what T Blair said, that he was speaking at Chilcot on behalf of the USA”
“I had the feeling he was speaking on behalf of Israel.”
Posted by: MJ
Hand in glove. One way or another, he is more interested in them than in the British people and their concerns. Those he dismissed out of hand.
“I think foreign policy should be self-interested – you’re nice to people, they’re nice to you, you trade, everyone’s happy…”
You mean like the USA does?
I see that this psycho is now urging war on Iran.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/30/tony-blair-iran-spin-chilcot
Why is it that we can’t be protected from evil men like Blair?
Sir Martin Gilbert has been whining to some right wing Israeli media outfit about anti-semitism.
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58301.shtml
How can anyone have confidence in any enquiry into Iraq that has this Zionist as part of the panel.
Not only that. He’s also a supporter of the war.
Has everyone gone totally mad, or have these loopy right wing racist Israelis really taken over.
No, dreoilin, I would say “not like the US does”.
I agree it’s not a fashionable point of view; and if you play Civilisation with it, you get trashed. Still, Sweden seems to manage it.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry this morning. Bits of it keep coming back to haunt – the fact that Abu Ghraib made him ‘angry’ because it was, basically, bad PR, among them. Simon Carr is making the good point that a classified document confirming his decision to go for regime change even before Crawford is all over the net btw.
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I’ve just found out that Adam Crozier (the Thug-in-chief at RMail) has been appointed as ITV’s new CEO. Bloody hell. The man with the reverse-midas touch – wonder how that’ll work at ITV?
Sorry, tech, I was being sarcastic.
That’s what happens when I’m in a rush and talking about Bliar/BushCo.
“We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq. It is clear that Bush is grateful for your support and has registered that you are getting flak,” wrote David Manning, Blair’s foreign policy adviser, in a secret memo to the prime minister after dining with President Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on 14 March 2002. “I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States.
“Blair’s decision “not to budge” in support of regime change was confirmed by a subsequent memo, this time from the then British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, to Manning. This summarised a conversation he had had with Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, on 17 March 2002: “I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option.”
“By the time Blair went to discuss the issue of Iraq with Bush in Crawford, Texas, on 6 April 2002, regime change – and not just disarmament – seems to have become his settled, private position. Alastair Campbell’s diary entry for 2 April 2002 notes that participants at one meeting “discussed whether the central aim was WMD or regime change”, and that “TB felt it was regime change”.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/02/iraq-war-invasion-blair-regime
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that not only did Blair know the invasion was illegal but that he personally, along with a number of accomplices, was involved in looking for ways round the law.
If these criminals aren’t brought to book then there’s nothing to stop future criminals doing the same thing.
Blair and his gang of co-conspirators need to be arrested and held to account at the earliest opportunity, otherwise no one will have respect for international law.
Eddie
You come across as such a decent, kind human being. I can only hope that when you are dying, alone and frightened, like a child, that you remember some of the opinions you held. It is because of people like you that people like _that_ get away with the horror they inflict.
I do hope it’s a slow, cruel degenerative disease, so that you may have time to consider the world around you in a different light.
Have fun out there.
This ‘inquiry’ will do fuck all, as is the norm for such nonsense.
What is required is a Dragunov and a steady aim.
Lyne is probably doing quite nicely from his directorship of Aricom a Russian iron ore mining company now owned by Peter Hambro Mining (gold mining) descendants of the Hambro banking family. See how it all works?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hambro_Mining
mary –
I agree that enquiry is filled with establishment figures who won’t rock the boat. However…..
“Both Freedman and Gilbert are Jewish.”
What’s that got to do with the price of fish? Would you be upset if it were Chomsky or Finkelstein asking Blair questions?
“Hand in glove”
On the matter of Iran I suspect US and Israeli views diverge. Yhe US seems much more circumspect about attacking Iran than Israel. It has consistently refused Irael the right to over-fly Iraq for instance. This is probably because Iran gives the US a great deal of assistance (in terms of intelligence and tactical advice) in Afghanistan. No-one hates the Taliban more than Iran.
“(the US) has consistently refused Irael the right to over-fly Iraq for instance. This is probably because Iran gives the US a great deal of assistance (in terms of intelligence and tactical advice) in Afghanistan”
Well, good lord, can you imagine it ?
“Oh golly gosh, look at that, who’d have thought it ? There we were asserting control of an airspace, and oh silly us, some other airforce flies its planes right through from one end to the other, all loaded full of weaponry and ready to kill, and we never noticed. Gosh. Our bad. Lucky it wasn’t us they were going for, eh ?”
It wouldn’t exactly be a deniable half-measure, they’d be all the way in.
Yes, I know the stories about Turkey and the Kurds, “but that’s different”. They don’t have the same power to do evil in return.
“Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had “no sound mandate in international law”. Last month Lord Steyn, a former law lord, said that “in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal”. In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was “a serious violation of international law and the rule of law”.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/bounty-blair-war-criminal-chilcot
It appears that the only lawyers who thought this war was lawful are the usual right wing American murderers and a political lawyer, Goldsmith.
Can’t really see how Blair can escape justice in the longer term.
“George Galloway denounces Iraq inquiry (establishment stitch up)”…
http://tinyurl.com/ycpbpgn
“In addition to facing a toothless inquiry, Blair also knows that he is not the only man with blood on his hands.”…
tinyurl.com/y8m4b3x
I don’t think Earthquakes are man made, for the simple reason that Seismic Monitoring Stations are widespread across the world, and scientists can easily tell the difference between a nuclear explosion and an earthquake, and some of them would undoubtedly speak up.
https://www.llnl.gov/str/Walter.html
However, in order to convince myself, that in this respect Chavez was probably talking nonsense with regards to Haiti, I came across this article by Terry Jones with regards to how the Iraqi disaster with enormous loss of life, is treated completely differently by the media, the governments and most of the world population’s mindset. The sad thing is that the vast majority of people aren’t interested and would rather have as headlines the sex lives of footballers.
A man-made tsunami
Why are there no fundraisers for the Iraqi dead?
Terry Jones
The Guardian, Tuesday 11 January 2005 09.11 GMT
guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/11/iraq.media
Tony
To me Blair is a very weak character, just a puppet of the global aristocracy, who has no doubt been amply rewarded by them. He’ll be able to wash away his sins in the confessional and perhaps the priest will understand as his argument might be that he killed a million Iraqis to save us from economic downfall and as a consequence maintained the dominance of Christianity.
But I have to say the man looks haunted. He may have the friendship of the global aristocracy who of course will spare no effort in protecting him but he lives amongst a people who loathe him. And maybe just one day there’ll be a security lapse and someone will get him. So for the rest of his life he’ll live in fear.
Global aristocracy ?
Such people would be noted for their integrity, humanity, intellect, and knowledge of history. Blair belongs to a group of people noted for their greed, callousness, stupidity and inability to concede the lessons of history. The present government and its opposition belong to it too.
UK plc is like a computer with a virus. The best thing to do with it is to re-install the software or buy a new one. If salt loses its taste, with what will you salt it? Where will you find integrity, humanity, intellect and wisdom? This inquiry was a video of the existing aristocracy. Did you see any evidence of any of these qualities. Please tell me.
An intelligent man in Blair’s position would have said, in my opinion. You have to balance the 1.5 million dead and 6 million displaced Iraqis with the political interests of the West. Saddam would have sold our economic competitors the second largest existing oil-field, and made Iraq more prosperous and sophisticated in culture and technology than East or West.
We were not prepared to stand by and allow a non-democratic ruler from Sunni Islam create another mini-superpower in the Middle East as a rival to Israel. We do have double standards in world politics. Zionist terror and extremism is acceptable but Islamic terror and extremism is unacceptable. You have to learn that fact about our history to understand why Iraq had to be crushed.
We regard our main economic rivals, China and Indian as basically uncivilised, and our main cultural rival, the Islamic world, as dangerously superior to us. We live in a political world. Get used to it. As UK Prime Minister I didn’t do anything different from any of the politicians or monarchs of this country’s past. There are people out there who are better than us. We send out troops to disrupt their economic and cultural progress. Always have and always will. Looking forward to my Knighthood and Peerage. I knew you would eventually agree with us.
“Can’t really see how Blair can escape justice in the longer term”
“So for the rest of his life he’ll live in fear”
If it gets too hot in the kitchen he will be granted political asylum in Israel. Requests for extradition will be politely refused.
SECRET MEMOS – TORTURE – IRAQ INQUIRY
From ‘Newsweek’ we learn:
Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor?”violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed ‘poor judgment,’ say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action?”which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-fire.aspx
“Even though the secret memos are no longer secret, even though they constitute the most serious crimes possible, even though complicity in torture is a felony, and even though Bybee lied to the United States Senate in order to be confirmed a judge, our representatives in the House of Representatives can’t impeach him because the Justice Department, the very same institution of organized crime in which he committed his abuses, only deemed Bybee’s crimes to be “misconduct” in the first version of its report but not the new and improved version? Both the Robert Jackson Steering Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the initial report, but what was in it has been widely reported. And why we need it has not been explained.”
impeachbybee.org/
The questioning by the Iraq commission parallels the strikingly unconventional retention of important documents in America.
Tony Blair lied to the nation on British involvement in the Iraq war. This is widely known in detail from undisputed memos and documents. The commission however, who have the documents in their possession, cannot publically refer to them because of their security classification.
How these documents can possibly legalise the Iraq war, or any war of aggression has still to be explained.
An FOI request will/has been made with the argument that without this information the British public will learn nothing.