Chip

With Tony Blair in the clear (again) and everyone else in Government seemingly faultless, the only people that have done the honourable thing and resigned are Gilligan, who told the truth and Dyke. And of course there was Dr Kelly who died after also telling the truth.

Shouldn't someone from our Government take just a little responsibility for the 1000's of deaths that have happened over the last 18 months in Iraq.

Chip.

jaycee

Politicians are experts in avoiding blame. Don't hold your breath waiting for somebody to put their hands up to it.

Jason

MattN

No.

It's a war and people die.

Freak

using the term 'war' is a little wide of the mark IMHO

Unprovoked attack fits it slightly better methinks.....

gsm1

Copied and pasted from another site:



concludes = suggests tentatively

"It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability..." 24.9.02

clear = vague

"The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression. 25.2.03

believe = guess

“The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin and ricin. All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death." 25.2.03

palpably absurd = true

"We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years-contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence- Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd." 18.3.03

literally thousands = none

"There are literally thousands of sites. 4.6.03

will = will not

"I have absolutely no doubt at all that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programmes." 8.7.01

massive evidence = no trace

"The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles." 16.12.03

good faith = ?

as in 'For any mistakes, made in good faith, I take full responsibility' 14.7.04

More Blair bullsh*t:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...263899,00.html

Chip

But was it justified?

Chip

Alan C

There are some people who will only except one answer; Tony Blair is guilty.

Two independant enquiries similar answers. When will you accept that maybe there's nothing to pin on the guy? Maybe he is honourable and fair after all?

Tell you what.. Let's keep having independant enquiries until we find the right person to find him guilty.. you lot will be happy then..

I don't know Blair, I'm sure you don't either. Just what we see and read about. But he doesn't come across as a despotic madman hell bent on war for the sake of it. The Government took us to war, becuase they thought it right. You don't like it? Use your hard fought democradtic right to vote them out.. If you voted them in and you vote to keep them in.. then you don't have much ground to rest any arguments on. If you voted Tory, do you think they'd have acted any differently? No, neither do I.

Lib dem? Do me a favour. We'd be so caught up in PC crap that we'd still be arguing about whether Kuwait needed freeing..

This is way to complex... how can we even begin to understand the complexity of the whole picture? We're sitting at home typing into a motoring BB.. What are we doing to help those in Iraq or elsewhere?? We're polishing our cars and looking at the next modification, that's what.

The guy's doing what he feels right... He's at the top making the decisions based on personal & political agenda's, personality, what he feels is right and what he's being fed by various committees and advisors and under immense pressure from many many angles..

If you can do better.. stand for local councilor and work your way up..

Rant over..

Chip

I couldn't. One because I'm too honest and two because Ive got a conscience.

Chip.

Alan C

Chip.

So in answer to your question 'was it justified?'.. then the answer is 'Yes' in our Govermnets eyes.

You and I are not in a position to know whether it truly was or wasn't... we have to trust them to do the right thing.. like we do on everything else..

dba

ask your question another way

is Tony Blair more to blame that Saddam Hussain?

Brit_in_Japan

Sorry, long rant this....
[rant]

In invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussain this country and the US turned on it's head a principle which has stood the international community in good stead since WW II. That principle was that you cannot go and attack another country just because you feel like it. You can act in self defence, but you cannot take just go and attack without provocation. To take military action without such provocation is against international law.

The argument given at the time was that the UK and US were in imminent danger of attack, therefore justifying taking pre-emptive action in invading. Given that we were turning a 50 year principle on it's head, you might think that the evidence that the UK and US were in imminent danger would be absolutely concrete...

But many at the time did not believe we were in imminent threat. Germany, France etc had access to the same type of intelligence on Iraq and they came to a different conclusion. Sure we were under imminent threat by Al Qaeda, but as everyone acknowledged then and ever since, there was no connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Therefore one must conclude that the inference drawn from the intelligence by the UK govt was motivated by politics and the relationship with the US rather than the hard facts.

The subsequent "discoveries" in Iraq only go to prove that the evidence of continued WMD activities was far from concrete. The former head of the Joint Security Commity (John Scarlett's predecessor) wrote recently that in the summary of the dodgy dossier, many "facts" inferred in the summary from the intelligence reports were at the extreme end of what it was possible to infer. The summary was far from balanced and included none of the caveats the original text contained.

The 45 minute claim was instrumental in the govt's arguement that this country was is imminent threat. At a time when the vote in the commons on whether to go to war was in the balance, the 45 miinute claim was instrumental in tipping the balance in the govts favour. Therefore Tony Blairs insistance that this "fact" has only assumed greater weight in hindsight is disingenuous.

Who was responsible for the wording and approval of that summary? Somebody must be accountable.



And for the record it's easy to have a pop at the Lib Dems, but
1. The Lib Dems are not a pacifists. They were calling for the UN to go into Kosovo to stop the ethnic cleansing well before the other major UK political parties. Their position regards Iraq was that invasion would be conditional on Hans Blix' team having sufficient time to complete their task and should be supported by UN resolution.
2. 149 Labour MP's voted against sending troops into Iraq, the motion was carried because of the Tories. Does that make Labour PC??

[/rant]

Alan C

Cheap pop at the Lib Dems I admit, but I feel that times have moved a touch since the Second World War.

Hitler's war machine was bound by phsical limits (location, size, geography etc); Our new 'enemies' now have a disproportinate amount of power available for their size. This is achieved through technology and WMD.

Hitler couldn't explode a nuclear bomb in London (though he nearly succeeded in building one). Biological & chemical weapons were relatively difficult to make, transport and deliver effectively. Times have changed such that a small ephemaral group have or shortly will have the potential to deliver weapons that are orders of magnitude easier to make, transport and deliver effectively enough to kill thousands.

This is no country sized machine. This is a small band of committed terrorists willing to die for their cause. They have the money, technical know how and the free range ability that this country offers to do something quite terrible. They may also have some decent backing from a few mates.

Now, we either sit around and wait for it to happen (rub our hands an hope they don't do it again) and ask politely to stop it or we do something about it.

I appreciate the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy, but 911 made us sit up and listen.

How many times are we going to turn the other cheek? I don't proclaim to have the answer (I wish I did), but states like Iraq that behave the way they do need something done..

I liken it to living in a street with a house up the road where the father mistreats the kids badly. Beats them for doing things wrong, slaps his wife around and proudly boasts the fact. He dislikes everyone in the street and lets you know by letting his mates pop over to mug the residents & rob your house. He does nothing about it, in fact, he encourages it because he gets a cut and rather enjoys seeing you suffer because he thinks you're a rich snob who drives a snob car and who needs bringing down a peg or two becuase of the way you act and live your life..

What you going to do? Ignore it? Get together with a few residents and have a chat? How many times are you going to let him laugh at you before you kick his **** with a few good mates and a baseball bat?

A bit simplistic, but put this on world stage. How many more times we going to offer a leaflet campaign or pop over for a nice chat before we have another 3,000+ killed?

Time to smell the coffee and get together with a few mates..

gsm1

Alan C, I think it's you who needs to smell the coffee. Iraq had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or 9/11.

Brit_in_Japan

So it's OK for a country to attack another because it feels threatened ? In that case it is OK for North Korea to attack South Korea and Japan, it is OK for China to invade Taiwan, it is OK for India to attack Pakistan (and they both have nuclear WMD), it isOK for half of former Yugoslav countries to start attacking the other half, it's OK for Israel to take on all their neighbours and vice versa. Wouldn't the world be so much safer if they all thought like that <doh!>

Yes the new threat from disparate terrorists groups is something we haven't seen on the same scale before. Yes we have to do something about it. But the terrorists WERE NOT IN IRAQ. Saddam was no fan of Osama Bin Laden, in fact he'd have happily topped the guy in person given half an opportunity. There was order in Iraq which would have insured that any WMD if they did exist, would not have got into the hands of Al Qaeda. The biggest risk was if a power vacuum was created in Iraq and the control over any such weapons was removed. And what have we done?? We've created a power vacuum in Iraq. If there were any weaponised WMD (which now seems unlikely) then we have created the perfect conditions of disorder necessary for them to find their way to the terrorists.

911 gave the US a golden opportunity to tackle Al Qaeda worldwide, they had the sympathies and co-operation of virtually every country in the world. And what do they do? They invade Iraq, an islamic country, a country with no links to Al Qaeda which was not a threat but which just happened to have the world's second largest oil reserves. And we did it without any legal basis for doing so. We all knew Saddam was a tyrant, we knew that when we were supplying him with weapons for the fight against Iran, but there are plenty like him in the world that we are doing nothing about. But I forgot, you now think it's alright that we go and invade any country we feel like even if they are not a direct threat to us.

So not only have we failed to even go after the real enemy which is the Islamic fundamentalist groups, we have created a huge wave of resentment in the middle east which will help breed future generations of islamic terrorists. Not very smart. I am not surprised that George W Bush and his neo conservative cronies thought this was a good idea, but I though Tony Blair would have been intelligent enough to see the bigger picture and not just be Bush's poodle.

Regarding your analogy about the father up the street
1. The police (UN) should be able to go and sort him out. It is true that UN resolutions have been ignored far too many times by far too many countries. We had an opportunity via a second resolution to give UN resolutions some teeth. Comply with the resolution or the boys will be sent in. But the US wanted to enforce a timescale which was not compatible with letting Hans Blix finish his task. Result: US/UK went in on their own and completely bypassed the UN, weakening it's position even further. Way to go George and Tony!

2. The fathers "mates" were not mugging and robbing other houses, they were nothing to do with him.

3. We should be going after the real "muggers and robbers", not fannying around with some a###hole up the street even if he was a tyrant. The whole Iraq affair has been a completely irrelevent sideshow to hunting down Al Qaeda. The only effect has been to alienate ourselves even further from much of the middle east and create more resentment towards the west.

Freak

your posts speak the truth and nicely put too.

dij

Have to agree,well put.

If anything GB is more likely to be a terrorist target now rather than before its attack on Iraq.

Leslie

In the first place, I don't think that the government is in the clear yet, thay have to hope that the summer recess will take the heat off them eventually. Although the Butler enquiry sounded like a whitewash initially largely due to the narrow remit that he was allowed, there is a lot in the report that cannot be glossed over. I cannot see that they will ever be forgiven by the majority of the electorate or by the rest of the world, particularly the Arab countries, for taking us into this ill advised adventure. we are now more vulnerable than ever to terrorist outrages.

Brit in Japan is absolutely right when he says that long held and good principles were overturned or ignored in order to attack Iraq. We know that there was no threat to our country from Iraq and there is plenty of evidence to show that the government must have realised that and also witheld caveats given by the JIC from the country. No mention was made of the plagiarised dossier produced by No 10 in an effort to convince us further which was shown to be a 12 year old thesis written by an Iraqi student. We are now informed that the decision to attack Iraq was made long before the unreliable dossiers anyway.

Attack of a country for the sake of regime change has never been an acceptable reason for starting a war in the past, that is one principle which was thrown away, and it should also be remembered that the attack was illegal since it was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council of which we are a signed up member! There was no excuse not to allow the Weapons Inspectors to complete their work before attacking Iraq, unless the Allies were scared of the answer!

Your blind faith in politicians is touching Alan C. but very much misplaced.

Les

CrisPDuk

IMO there is no difference between the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces this year, and the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces in '91. Both were unprovoked acts of aggression against a sovereign state.

Dubya wanted to invade because he wanted to show he had more backbone than daddy.

Rumsfeld wanted to invade because he needed to find all them chemical weapons delivery notes with his signature on them, before Hans Blix found them.

Bliar wanted to invade because he thought it would increase his international stature, and besides his mate george said it was a good idea.

Apparition

Saddam........................ SAS in ........Kill........... Out.. JOB DONE.

Instead of which, we have lost scores of good men in the name of politicians seeking glory. Makes me sick.

SJ_Skyline

All Bliar is concerned with is his mark in the history books....

....at the moment, this mark is looking very much like a skid mark.

EddScott

IIRC wasn't it the US that had a hand in putting Sadam in place in Iraq in the first place? and although poorly armed who armed him? the west?

SJ_Skyline

We trained his troops but I think his tanks and planes were Russian....

OllyK

If only. Allied intel within Iraq was (and indeed still is) pretty **** poor. The SAS would have gone in because they were ordered to, but I doubt many of them would have been happy with it as they knew damn well that nobody knew for sure where Saddam was, or in many cases if it was him or a double.

Put half a squadron in there to recce the place and a couple of months down the line you may be able to snipe him, but it would have been almost impossible to conceal that many SAS considering how tightly run Iraq was, hence why intel was so poor.

OllyK

Yes Sadam was a bit of a US puppet initially, and got a lot of support from the US in the fight against Iran. But then the US was supplying Iran as well Sadam got a weeny bit upset when he found out, and at that point the US pulled the plug on the whole lot and the Iran / Iraq war fizzled out pretty rapidly there after. Sadam, however, always one to carry a grudge, was quite plain that he would have revenge against the US in one way or another.

Alan C

Brit. It’s nice to have a good debate without any bad feeling or reducing it to a slanging match.

I agree with all of what you say. It’s on the application that we differ. Of course I’m not advocating that settlements are best handled with violence (as we reply, you will see that my stance is normally quite passive). The UN (and back to my anology) or the Police should be used in the first, second and other instances. But as a Police force, the UN are a slow moving prevaricating organisation. Plenty to say, but with little in the way of teeth & trousers.

Resolution 1441 clearly stated that Iraq was in breach of certain charters and that it’s actions were highly suspicious. We could debate the resolutions themselves all day long but in effect Iraq had plenty of warnings over many years, not once but twice the inspectors were sent in and got screwed around. The UN’s answer? Give them just a little more time..even if they'd still found nothing, do you think we could have ultimately believed that the process was a success? People can't except that two independant investigations, carried out in the UK under such media intensity and democracy into related topics was a success. How can we beleive that Blix would have come up with a definitive answer?

You can’t keep turning the other cheek.. you have to act at some time.. Look at how the UN ‘handled’ Rwanda. Not exactly a confidence inspiring and strong message to send out.

Don’t get me wrong. The UN /Police is the right route. But after the Police tell you that this guy has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, it’s time to change the law or take it into you own hands.

Afghanistan was first. The link to that country and Al Queda was relatively tenuous, but the US & UK (as well as others) felt it the right thing to do. Yes there are plenty of ulterior motives for all involved, but as I stated earlier, Blair is not a warmonger. He’s doing what he feels right for the long term future. He’s acting proactively rather than reactively. We are probably at higher risk than before, but it can’t be quantified. When would we have suffered our own 911? Never? It would have been a matter or when not if.

As the big lads in the road (well the smaller friend of the big lad), they feel that they have to go out and take the conflict to the terrorist groups, states and whoever feel that this type of behaviour is acceptable.

Are we bullies? Quite possibly, but it will have to get worse before it gets better.

There have been plenty of mistakes made by all sides, lessons learnt and plenty of soul searching, but it’s here and we have to work to make it better. If that means standing up and confronting the guy up the road then so be it.

Nothing else has worked. You cannot say that the UN and our policies up to now have helped at all. Were we safe before 911? No. This has been building way before 911 and now certain leaders feel the need for some forceful application.

I would again like to add that I don’t have the answer. I don’t even have the question as to where all this started. But we find ourselves in a bad street with bad people who don’t give a stuff. We can’t move, hide or ignore it any longer. Can we?

Leslie. This a particularly big mess that can't be argued either way by a few simple statements. I'm just a realist who's looking at what's happening now. I have not put any personal solutions into any of my statements. How can I? I'm just a simple guy with a simple life who's got a fraction of the facts available to him all available through sources with their own agendas.

I have no blind faith with any politician. Just as much as your blind faith in posting here makes any difference? Of course it doesn't as we are all along for the ride..

But you, Brit & I must have some sort of faith with hoping that we're on the right side doing the right thing?

gsm1

AlanC, just like Blair and NuLabour, you continually keep banging on about Al-Qaeda and 9/11 when it has NOTHING to do with Iraq. No Threat, No WMD. Iraq was invaded because it was weak and there for the taking, not because it was a threat. Blair was not misled by the intelligence services, he lied.

How do you back that up? If there ever was a threat to the UK from Al-Qaeda then it is post Iraq invasion.

Here's some more lies from your great leader about the mass graves:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...263899,00.html

Alan C

Firstly, he's not my great leader becuase I never voted for him. He's our countries leader becuase the the majority voted him in.

Secondly, I don't bang on about Al Q'ueda or WMD. They are mentioned because that's what the whole crux of the situation is centred on.

You appear to be correct. There is no WMD or Iraq/ Al Q'ueda alliance. We know that NOW, but even the UN at the time thought there was the possibility of WMD.

No one lied. Where's your proof? Are you part of the let's keep having investigations until the right person finds Blair guilty?

They just interpreted the information they were given. Regardless of the party or person, that information would have beed used to ease the case for or against war.

Twice you state the word 'Lies'. How do you know he lied? You have no proof either way. You are simply reacting on your personal opinion based on tiny fragments of information gathered from the paper, TV, pub & here. Until you have the whole picture, then you are in no position to judge.

vindaloo

In this country I'd have to say the major political parties are culpable. There's no lynch mob because both major parties backed the dodgy dossier and can't throw **** about without getting covered in it themselves.

TB needed to convince enough MPs and the public that Iraq was a significant enough theat to go to war to pre-empt an attack. He also had to adopt a position which both supported yet restrained (slowed?!) the USA.

Ultimately, the reasons used to persuade have proven false, due to wrong intel. and politicians maximising the spin on the story. From a UK perspective this has resulted in a number of families never seeing Daddy again, has harmed our standing with the Arabs and gotten us involved in a protracted peace management operation where we tore the place up in the first instance. It's made the UK a more prominent terrorist target and strained relations between communities within the UK.

J.

gsm1

No, many people knew before the invasion that there was no connection with Al-Qaeda. Some other countries believed that Iraq may have had some weapons but certainly not enough to be a threat.

In which case we may as well take the word 'lie' out of the dictionary. You could never prove anyone had ever lied. If Tony Blair told me that it was dark and rainy outside and I found out that it was dry and sunny, would he have lied? Who am I to judge? Maybe he was just 'under pressure' or 'doing what he thought was right'.

Faire D'Income

Alan, being pedantic the majority didn't vote for Bliar. If you look closely at the last general election less than 50% of the electorate actually voted which has to be one of the most frustrating issues with Bliar - not enough people care about how this country is led or what effect it has on our lives.

Alan, there never was any credible evidence to suggest that there ever was any link between Al Qaeda and Iraq - this was one of several points that HMG tried to use to justify the war and was proven incorrect both at the time and subsequently.

At the time, the UN requested more time to search for WMD and despite Blix's constant repetition that he didn't believe Iraq had any weapons we still went to war. The UN weapons inspection teams even had T-shirts printed up with the logo "Ballistic Chicken Farm Inspections Team" as they were so fed up with CIA analaysts confusing cylindrical sheds (chicken sheds) for Scud missiles.

Your argument works both ways - until you have the whole picture, then you are in no position to judge. That is what Phoney Tony is relying on - the fact that we won't ever get to the truth. He believed the intelligence because he wanted to believe it and for that he was willingly gullible.