Chilcot Report: The British public inquiry into the Iraq War published.
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ferrasvansen
Member
Yeah he looks a haunted man, unlike Bush and many others who if it was a mistake must surely shoulder the blame, if not more so.
When do you think they will learn? I go with umm never most probably.
ferrasvansen
Member
nelsonroyale
Member
Of course, he is going to double down on his decisions, as if they were the right thing to do. For him, they may have been. Obviously not for Britain or many Iraqis. He was aware of the lack of any compelling evidence for WMDs and yet asserted there was. He played up the the Saddam threat and the Bin Ladan connection. All these things he knew from the start were tenuous at best.
It was blatantly obvious that the interests of Blair and Bush were far from humanitarian at the time, although they were happy to tell themselves those lies to assuage what consciences they have. Blair especially is a zealout at the Church of Blair. Like Trump he believes what he says is right, regardless of whether it is true or false. It is part of his drive to power and influence. He is rotten and wrong on this, but he will never admit it. Because if he did so, he would spontaneously combust.
Saddam was also a criminal, but from a British perspective, he was far from a threat. In general, the UK and US have very poor records since WW2 on regime change. If they were more humanitarian in their outlook, genuinely, then intervention may have been justified. I think the gassing was tens of thousands (still an atrociously high amount) rather than millions. I am pretty sure more people died as a result of sanctions and the subsequent wars, however (Iran, Gulf1, Gulf2, Iraq War).
It was blatantly obvious that the interests of Blair and Bush were far from humanitarian at the time, although they were happy to tell themselves those lies to assuage what consciences they have. Blair especially is a zealout at the Church of Blair. Like Trump he believes what he says is right, regardless of whether it is true or false. It is part of his drive to power and influence. He is rotten and wrong on this, but he will never admit it. Because if he did so, he would spontaneously combust.
Saddam was also a criminal, but from a British perspective, he was far from a threat. In general, the UK and US have very poor records since WW2 on regime change. If they were more humanitarian in their outlook, genuinely, then intervention may have been justified. I think the gassing was tens of thousands (still an atrociously high amount) rather than millions. I am pretty sure more people died as a result of sanctions and the subsequent wars, however (Iran, Gulf1, Gulf2, Iraq War).
TheLaughingStock
Member
It's amazing how bad this man was at his job. Why more people don't shame him and create a perception that he shouldn't show his face in public is beyond me...
I was 16 when the war happened and even I could see how cherry-picked the evidence was. That's what struck me at the time, just how unprovoked it once. Absolutely nothing had changed in Iraq. There was no sabre-rattling, no flashpoint event like the shooting down of the a place. Nothing changed between 2000-2003, but we were still being told we needed to go in.
And an unprovoked war is considered the greatest of war crimes, as it creates the environment for all other war crimes to happen. The chaos and violence we saw is the norm for wars, not the exception due to some massive oversight in planning.
I wasn't just on about the gassing. I was on about the people he killed off etc as well. It seems to be around 500,000 including the Iran- Iraq war. But we will never know the true number. But I agree about the last part you put, the way they went about ousting him cost far more lifes.
j_k_redtail
Member
This is a huge report and its going to take a while to go through it and look for the points of interest.
This is an early find of correspondence from Blair to Bush
Wow. And I just watched this video. 18 March 2003:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg9aEV9bcxs
nelsonroyale
Member
Okay point taken.
He was horrible. Blair is of the same ilk in my opinion, just born and brought up in a society where the presentation and excercise of power take another form. He is an equally rotten individual in the context of our more internally prosperous and progressive society.
Both war criminals in my book.
The Hamburglar
Banned
The report pretty much confirms what anyone thought who had in-depth study this. Bush and blair planned this bullshit war far back as 2001. Pathetic blair trying to act relevant on the world stage plotting all these regime changes.
Are there going to be any lasting repercussions? Once the people in the report give their responses, the families of the soldiers give theirs, and tomorrow's op-eds are written, what's next? Will this even be in the news cycle come Friday? Hard to see why they delayed it past the GE and EU referendum.
Brerlappin
Member
Blairs letters to Bush make him sound like a complete lackey. "Im with you, whatever". "Yours ever, Tony". Sounds like a lovesick schoolgirl. Theyre both equally guilty as war criminals in my eyes. Scumbags, both.
nelsonroyale
Member
Definitely.
What did Blair even see in Bush? Why did he love him so much? Despite being the face of "new labor", George Bush still made Blair look like Marx in comparison.
Wow.
And the asshole kept trying to justify his decision even until today morning.
Probably so they could hide the bullshit with the junior doctors. Which hardly anyone is mentioning because of this.
One thing I didn't realise until recently was how awful Saddam Hussein actually was. I was too young to know about the horrific Iran-Iraq War, which lasted 8 years, and in which Iraq heavily used chemical weapons (WMDs) on not just military but civilian targets. It was also not the only war of aggression waged in the Middle East by Iraq either. There is no doubt in my mind that he was a tyrant.
If you are hearing intelligence reports, in whose integrity you trusted, that Iraq were planning to reactivate their weapons development programme, or had even already done so, and in the context of the two bloody conflicts Hussein had already initiated in the region, what would you do? I would not want to be in the position to make that decision.
As the memos in the report say, regime change was the "real prize" of the Iraq War. However, I think destabilising country, the displacement of millions, and the death of hundreds of thousands is a heavy heavy price to pay for that change. Rushing into conflict, as the report concludes the government did, was the biggest mistake they made.
If you are hearing intelligence reports, in whose integrity you trusted, that Iraq were planning to reactivate their weapons development programme, or had even already done so, and in the context of the two bloody conflicts Hussein had already initiated in the region, what would you do? I would not want to be in the position to make that decision.
As the memos in the report say, regime change was the "real prize" of the Iraq War. However, I think destabilising country, the displacement of millions, and the death of hundreds of thousands is a heavy heavy price to pay for that change. Rushing into conflict, as the report concludes the government did, was the biggest mistake they made.
Ship him off to the Security Council then, let the US veto it if they want. This, of all things, shouldn't be a 'lessons must be learned' moment. If politicians aren't held accountable for the decision to invade Iraq, what the hell will they be held accountable for?
Prosecuting Blair in a court of law, whilst certainly the most consequential, is not the only way in which he can be held accountable. For instance, he has been accountable in the court of public opinion for years. As a result, he will probably never again hold elected office, and he will have the shadow of Iraq hanging over him for the rest of his life. For some people that is obviously not enough, but it is not as if new laws can be written and retroactively applied.
Millions of pounds can buy you a very comfy bubble to insulate yourself from that "court", hence the countless money-grubbing arseholes throughout history.
You can't genuinely see that as punishment. Are you ok with a rapist being acquitted if the court of public opinion condemns him?
No I'm not, but I don't think there is much that can be done, especially in the light of this report sidestepping the legality of the war.
A war for which the United States provided large financial and military backing let us not forget.
Except most of the evidence that we now have access to, suggests that Iraq did not possess WMDs in a large enough amount to be considered any kind of threat. It is also pretty damning for the US and the UK that they went to war right as the Iraq government was starting to show clear signs of cooperation in this matter. In my opinion, the tides were shifting when it came to popular opinion and they wanted to strike fast for that reason before it was too late.
Heavy price is a euphemism, the levels of casualties, instability, and general chaos brought upon by the consequences of this war are of never seen before proportions in this region. To say that there were probably better avenues to take is quite frankly an insulting truism.
Coriolanus
Banned
Listen to the UN inspectors, who actually had concrete evidence to back their statements.
Would also remember what happened nearly every single time in recent history the West tried to force regime change on the middle east /shrug
It should be emphasised that the intel community was asked to provide any evidence that Saddam was continuing his WMD program to support the assertion that Saddam needing removing. They didn't notice a development and then bring it to Bush's attention, who then decided to go to war. The decision was made first, then the evidence scrounged up to support it. That's why you had ludicrous shit like the fabricated yellowcake story and satellite images of an old facility used to extrapolate a working WMD production line inside it.
How can people still be this uninformed?
We have access to that evidence now, but not at the time, and it was not presented in that manner to MPs either by Blair, which is kind of the perspective I was trying to present that question from. There was an MP in parliament today who said something similar, but better than I did.
I'm sorry if you found that insulting, I didn't really know how best to word it. What I'm basically trying to say is that there is a clash between the desire to achieve something ostensibly noble, and the morality of the action you take and the consequences that would ensue. I'm not trying to say that "well in hindsight we shouldn't have done it", because that's blindingly obviously as you say, but when put in that position I would not have done it.
As far as I can recall, every single attempt by the West to force a regime change in the Middle East has been an unmitigated disaster. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria. I do not think there was a contemporary example of this near the time of the Iraq war though?
There's a good BBC documentary about the intelligence stuff, I'm not sure if that's the exact one I saw. I should clarify that I'm not trying to speculate from the perspective of George Bush or Tony Blair. I was essentially trying to speculate that, given what I have learned since about Iraq historically, and what I would have been told at the time of the Iraq war, would I support such a war?
Coriolanus
Banned
Afghanistan. They made Karzai interim president in december 2001. Situation remained all sorts of fucked well into march 2003, which is when the iraq invasion started.
They legit went "hey, we havent even begun to determine how we'll sort out THIS mess, but how about we start another, eh?"
Again, the UN inspection went directly against the kinda shite they were saying. They most certainly had access to the UN's briefings, which were presented before the invasion started. There was a deliberate choice to ignore the UN's findings.
And then they tried to find shit on blix in an effort to tarnish his findings.
I was a little older, and it was this decision, along with the propaganda level coverage on the BBC and other news media at the time that turned me into the cynical shitbag I am today. At least where the UK government is concerned.
Palette Swap
Member
Yeah, let's not forget how much they tried to character assassinate Blix because his facts didn't align with their beliefs.
Or how Plame (and others as a result) was outed as a CIA operative by the Bush administration because her husband had dared to publicly come out and say Bush's Nigerian connection was complete bullshit. In retrospect, Clinton's "scandals" seem incredibly tame compared to what the Bush administration got away with.
Seriously, I hate that revisionism that somehow the information wasn't there. It was, dozens of governments called it out, millions of people protested, and as a result were called cowards by idiots buying into this idiocy.
There never was anything ambiguous about this clusterfuck.
Audioboxer
Member
I knew it. Sadaam was a chemical SUPERFREAK.
Those are some serious looking anal beads.
No wonder big Tony went to war after seeing them.
I think that's unlikely.
They're British spies after all, so the inspiration would have been the little glass vials containing deadly toxin in Moonraker.
MisterFalcon
Member
Those 100 unarmed helicopters supplied by the US ? Not really a big thing compared to the thousands of Soviet tanks and artillery supplied to Saddam.
Cosmonaut X
Member
Saw this quick piece by comic artist, Dave Kendall, today...
D
Deleted member 80556
Unconfirmed Member
What an amazing report. Very thorough. It's even more amazing that having this, there's nothing done about it.
With the amount of lives Blair and others have ruined because of Iraq War, I wouldn't be surprised.
Saw this quick piece by comic artist, Dave Kendall, today...
With the amount of lives Blair and others have ruined because of Iraq War, I wouldn't be surprised.
It's also missing the forest for the trees in that conflict. The us backed both sides just enough to ensure neither won and had enhanced regional hegemony, while both left the conflict worse for wear. Saddam had his army crippled while Iran had its navy anihilated, and both stalemated out and were thus stuck in their own little holes for the foreseeable future.
Can't believe this isn't getting more posts. There was that one thread where everyone was calling to Corbyn to resign.... is this the alternative people want and think will win elections? It is hypocritical to bash Republicans for Iraq and not "New" Labor for the same... what they did here was criminal and evil.
Xisiqomelir
Member
The charges at Nuremberg were (bolding mine):
Is there a reason not to hang Bush and Blair?
[*]Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace
[*] Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace- War crimes
- Crimes against humanity
Is there a reason not to hang Bush and Blair?
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