Tony Blair has admitted he is guilty, his illegal and disastrous Iraq War adventure has detroyed Iraq and led to the creation of the Islamic State (‘so-called’ BBC™)
Or that is what the BBC has always wanted us to believe and yesterday they spun a bit of Blair spin to their reflect their own narrative…
Tony Blair concedes link between Islamic State and Iraq War
Most significant, though, in terms of new revelations is the former prime minister’s admission that getting rid of Saddam Hussein may have had some bearing on the rise of so-called Islamic State.
Only that’s not really true, there is very little ‘significance’ to what he said on ISIS…what Blair alluded was that the democratically elected Iraq government’s sectarian behaviour, it is Shia and it neglected the Sunnis, allowed ISIS to get a foothold in Sunni areas of Iraq and that it was more to do with the Arab Spring and Assad than the Iraq War that created ISIS….ISIS, under a different name was long in existence, created in Afghanistan as part of Al Qaeda.
And curious that the BBC refuses to mention the Labour leader who is the real culprit in this huge failure of geo-politics….Ed Miliband, whose betrayal of the Syrian people in his refusal to honour his word to vote for military action against Assad letting Assad stay in place and allowing him to then go on to release Islamists from his prisons who went on to reform their terrorist group that is now known as Islamic State…a group that Assad, Turkey and many Gulf states have backed one way or another.
So who is to blame for the creation of the Islamic State? Not Blair, but Miliband and the countries with vested interests in the prospering of ISIS…..and let’s not forget that the BBC refused to broadcast film of an Assad attack on a school with chemical weapons just before the Common’s vote on military action….a very political choice by the ‘impartial’ BBC?
All the more ironic when today Justin Webb ( Today 07:52 ish) suggested that military action by the Russians could be forcing the peace process in Syria….something that could have happened years ago if Miliband hadn’t been such a coward and the BBC hadn’t hid the evidence of Assad’s atrocities.
I don’t understand Alan’s post. Blame Blair? Although I take issue with some points, sure. He was Prime Minister.
Blame Ed Miliband? Why? He served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster They are two junior positions no one can really explain. What did he have to do with military action against anybody?
Alan, Regardless of beeboid wishful thinking, Blair learned about ‘telling the truth’ from the Clinton’s. Failed lawyers all, they can still spin the most outrageous bilge; which, while appearing to give the impression of truth, is always ambiguous enough to avoid trial. See Hillary’s latest dog and pony show regarding her desertion of the Benghazi US Embassy staff as an example.
As for Millibean, you give him too much credit. That muppet can’t even spell geo-political. His short-term aim, indeed long-term aim, was to vote against HMG regardless of their intent.
Millibean’s U-turn in voting intention has had unintended consequences; it is the Russian military support for their friend Assad that has started to bring some thoughts towards peace in Syria. Blair, supporting Bush deposed Saddam without a fallback governing body to rely on; the UN supported the deposing of Ghaddafi, which has turned Libya into a stepping stone to the EU. The so called ‘Arab Spring’ should more accurately be titled the ‘Moslem Spring’, where the opposition tribe got their hands on the levers of power and led the way to such atrocities as carried out by ISIS. If the UK had agreed to bomb Assad into the 21st century, we would have worsened conditions in the region. Assad may never be assessed as a democratic leader, but as the results in Iraq, Libya and Egypt have shown democracy is over-rated in such places.
I’d rather we referred all problems and issues to the UN (yes, I know they are a corrupt and useless) after all we pay to support such an organisation, perhaps it’s time they pulled their collective finger out. It would reduce blame on ‘The West’ for the troubles of people who seem happy to live under medieval lifestyle, with 21st century luxuries for some.
As an aside, we pay £53M per day to the corrupt EU (almost 20 years of unsigned audits) but does anyone know how much we pay to the UN to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed?
Nothing nastier than a load of self-loathing camp followers who also wanted Iraq bombed, Saddam done away with.
All the liberal elite were in full agreement with what Blair was doing-and they seem to think we don`t remember that.
To be fair to Corbyn and the like-they were against it-but the BBC and all the political class wanted Blair to go in.
No wonder they hate him now-but responsibility for the shambles that is Iraq etc is not Blairs alone.
Not that they`ll ever admit as such-spineless swines, cemented minds.
True.
I was a fanatical researcher of the reasons, and logistics and the facts of why we were going to war in Iraq, from 1990 onwards. I had an OCD like obsession with the reasons and rationale for going back into Iraq ever since the WEST demanded we withdraw weapons inspectors back in 1998. I fully read up EVERYTHING I could find about the false reasons given for war in the run-up to the invasion.
Given that I had spent hundreds of hours researching this as it was happening, I post a tiny fraction of my thoughts about it here.
One question I was hoping to hear anyone in the media ask of Blair in the run-up to the invasion,
“What is the shelf life of B.L.A., or any of the other known chemical or biological weapons that we know the west supplied to Saddam in the late 1980’s?”
The US administration admitted on numerous occasions, that they knew Saddam had no NEW WMD or WMD capabilities developed after 1995, and they were only looking at the old, “unnacounted for” stocks which they believed still existed. Considering they knew what these unnacounted for stocks allegedly contained, and their ages, they should also have known what the shelf life of such chemical and biological weapons were, even if kept in perfect laboratory conditions.
Several experts, from the UN weapons inspectors through to senior military NBC specialists were writing at the time about the supposedly “known” unnaccounted for weapons and were emphatic that, even in the highly unlikely event that they still existed, then they would be utterly useless as WMD, as they would have degraded and become militarily inert, due to the passage of time, by 2002. Hence, IF the only WMD the west suspected Saddam of retaining, were the old, unncounted for stock as listed in several UNSCOM reports, then it was certain, that Saddam, in 2002, did NOT pose any WMD threat whatsoever to the west.
The BBC NEVER confronted Blair with those facts. He was never properly confronted with the facts surrounding the 2002 “dodgy” dossier, or the February 2003 “Horlicks” Dossier either. And IF he had such solid intelligence, why did he have to publish such blatant lies as was in those two utterly fraudulent dossiers?
The September Dossier, collated by the JIC in draft format, was nothing like what was eventually published. The government of the day published the finished dossier online in Microsoft Word format. Unfortunately for Blair, Cambell et al, they left the edit history turned on,. so we know what was in the original draft, and what the ACTUAL intelligence was. The original “intelligence” as reported in the draft dossier unabiguously wrote that “Iraq is NOT a threat to us, or indeed, even her neighbours” Unfortunately “NOT a threat,” is the opposite of what is required by law for an invasion.
So Bad Al Campbell, the liar of Downing Street was required and a meeting of the JIC and No10 Press-team, chaired by Alistair Campbell, which was presented as a “Presentation” meeting, took out all those factual caveats, and turned “NOT a threat” into something much more innacurate and menacing. Add in Blair’s utterly false preface, and it turned “NOT a threat” into something that Blair’s friends in the Murdoch media called “45 minutes from DOOM!” It was nothing but a wholly false prospectus for an illigitemate, unecessary and illegal war. Some presentation meeteing, eh? Presenting “NOT a threat” as “45 minutes from DOOOOOOM!!!!”
As for the February “Horlicks” dossier, which was nothing more than an American student’s thesis about pre-1990 Iraq, which was selectively edited and re-written by a junior staffer in No10, to fraudulently pass off the old Iraq, as today’s Iraq, but with even more lies about how capable they alegedly were.
So both dossiers were a total pack of lies, from start to finish.
So, bearing in mind, that both the US and UK governments were routinely telling massive and blatant lies, and getting caught out on those lies online within days, (if not hours), How come the media NEVER asked Blair, “If your intelligence is so strong, How come you have been telling so many blatant lies to push your case for war?”
I am not anti-war. I fully believe and support that war can be utterly necessary. But if a government is going to go to war, it MUST (A) have a truthful just reason, (B) plan, fund and execute the war to be as overwhelming and short as possible, (C) WIN it convincigly, (D) clear up the mess afterwards properly.
Blair failed in ALL four of those requirements and the BBC never, ever challenged him on any of them, until well after he was out of office.
As for Syria. There are no good guys there. If we go in, it would have to be to cleanse the country entirely, and Russia would want to nuke us for the genocide of one of their most strategically important allies.
The US plan for intervention? Fund Al Qaeda’s mates to overthrow Assad? What are they, Crazy? As soon as Assad had been defeated, the Western funded rebels would have been slaughtered by ISIS and thus we would have handed Syria, complete with their very real full complement of WMD, to ISIS, and right on Israel’s border.
How utterly insane.
Great post Geyza. I could never understand why Campbell expected anyone to think an ‘intelligence’ report could be produced that was caveat-free. Having produced more than a few such documents, the words ‘possible’ and ‘probable’ always featured heavily. It would be foolish to expect otherwise, unless humint had the facts hammered down. Any journalist worth his salt would have questioned the lack of caveats. Then again, the bBC only employ churnalists. 8,000 of them. It’s a pity Mad Al didn’t publish it on Twitter, the beeboids might have paid more attention.
Agreed – Geyza produced great summary of the Blair and Labour spin machine, total horlicks, the consequences of which, even 13 years after the invasion, is daily still having unbelievable grave repercussions!
Basically, even without Colin Powell’s recent evidence which sparked this latest debate, enough INTEL is duplicated in the de-classified Chilcot papers for us to reach factual conclusions, but the sooner they get that Chilcot Report out the better so the wider world get’s to know the truth.
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/transcripts/writtenevidence-bydate.aspx
I understand Gorgeous George has his damming expose on Blair coming out soon. That should be a great talking point too!
https://www.facebook.com/thekillingoftonyblair?fref=nf
Mr Campbell, Mr Blair and their associates were reasonably safe in their expectations, since they had practised the art of media-control for some time before this episode. The control of mass-media, coupled with the pervasive reach of those media, is now the central characteristic of democratic politics across the entire world, regardless of political orientation. It is simply the logical extension of an appeal to the demos for its mandate, in the absence of a moral compass to restrain it.
We are all too accustomed here to the bias of the Corporation, which speaks loudly of news management and underlying opinion control. What I am noticing increasingly, both from comments on this site and my own attempts to find independent synoptic news-gathering and brodcasting, is the recent spread of control. This has affected both other broadcasters, who have previously appeared capable of pursuing alternative lines, and also the printed media, where there have been some astonishing recent examples of convergence. Are we now in a new situation, where the avenues of free expression are effectively being cut off to the mass media as a whole?
I say nothing about some single conspiracy to exert such control – my guess is that every political inclination has now been fatally attracted towards manufacturing consent for its actions by technological means, rather than continuing to make the effortful and uncertain commitment to honest persuasion. Are we really now in such an unprecedented situation, or is this simply ‘business as usual’?
That nutcase Yankee Vietnam draft dodger, together with his NEOCON mates and Blair all got confused. It was next door they meant to have invaded, since it was IRAN, with their clandestine uranium enrichment program, under the hand of the mad Mullahs, was the greater weapons of mass destruction danger.
Although obviously nobody ideally wanted would want any of the Middle East dictators. like despotic Saddam in power, he was pretty much kept in his box by the No Fly Zones and Hans Blix’s team on the ground.
Just like Assad, Qaddafi, King Saud, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman and all the other mad and bad varying degrees of medieval Dictatorships in the area, it is better to leave them in situ, unless you can come up with a better plan than Bush and Blair. Much preferable to the millions now displaced, wounded, in body bags with daily incidents from bombs, killings, be-headings and hundreds of thousands escaping the traumas by dinghies or on foot through the forests of EU in attempts to reach safety.
Still any apology is better than nothing in the absence of the farcical Chilcot for the absolute oblivion Bush & Co with Blair have inflicted upon the world.
A very good series of posts, but I have a couple of comments about the BBC’s role:
“despotic Saddam in power, he was pretty much kept in his box by the No Fly Zones and Hans Blix’s team on the ground.”
Charlatans, as I remember it the sanctions against Saddam were falling apart. The British public were being influenced against them by daily stories on the BBC about the huge numbers of Iraqi children dying because the sanctions meant that Saddam couldn’t import medicines – not mentioning that he was finding the money to rearm. The BBC campaign made war more likely because the alternative was to leave Saddam uncontained.
“a meeting of the JIC and No10 Press-team, chaired by Alistair Campbell, which was presented as a “Presentation” meeting, took out all those factual caveats, and turned “NOT a threat” into something much more inaccurate and menacing.”
Geyza, that’s how I remember it, but when Andrew Gilligan reported on the BBC that the government had misrepresented the intelligence the BBC sacked him. If you’re a BBC employee it’s dangerous to tell the truth.
RJ
You certainly right about the Oil for Food and Drugs corruption and shenanigans, like Kofi Annan’s Son and Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas (BNP) and others:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/kofi-annans-corrupt-enterprise/
But once the ‘whistle-blowers’ outed such corruption it would not have taken too much for the UN. EU. US, WTO to persecute, sanction and correct those wrongs, which was certainly more desirable than the disastrous results from invading IRAQ.
Once, whilst on exercise in a NATO bunker under the Dutch/Belgium border, I did a study exercise with fellow NATO colleagues, studying the USSR campaign in Afghanistan and concluded that if the might Russians had it so difficult in Afghan, a Western Alliance would certainly duplicate that, due to the nature of insurgency thier .
Come on Alan, to blame anyone in the UK is getting as mad as the Lefties who blame Britain for everything !
ISIS was funded by the oil rich Sunni Muslim gulf states particularly Saudi & Qatar, BLiar has become very wealthy as a result of his doing their bidding.
The reasons for Sunni backing for ISIS are many, but hatred of Syrias Alawite Muslims who they regard as heretical, is one driving factor, and the reason why the compromised Obama government refuses to destroy ISIS, but sees Assad as a greater problem. Russian involvement has now forced Saudi & therefore the puppets in the West to reconsider.
Then there is the issue of Iran which the Sunnis fear gaining more influence in Iraq and Syria
Until the bribery & corruption of Western leaders is even considered a possibility then there is no hope of Islamisation slowing down. The Sunnis are winning not because they have a better option, but because those people in the West who should be capable of seeing corruption cannot bring themselves to believe their political leaders are anything less than honest and honourable. They couldn’t see it with FIFA despite it being shouted from the rooftops and they refuse to see it in their politicians.
However Blair tries to spin it with tricky lawyer’s answers and deflections there is no doubt whatsoever that the invasion of Iraq and the loss of any realistic goals in Afghanistan created a tidal wave of destabilisation in the entire region that will probably continue for decades. Of course the events in Syria and the present migration crisis are part of this tidal wave. To suggest otherwise is a lie of monumental proportions. But then Blair is a monumental liar.
Spot on oldartist:
It is clear that the Iraq invasion is the main cause of the wholesale destabilisation of most of the current Middle East that is still on fire.
It created the vacuums for radical Islam to fill and establish its deathly, medieval ideology, particularly after the Arab Spring infection in North Africa, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other Islamic radicalisation.
After 25 years Army service, I am by no means a pacifist and approved the US taking some decisive action against the home of the perpetrators of 9/11, particularly knocking out Al Qaeda Afghanistan HQ and training resources and their Taliban facilitators. But it should have been more selectively targeted at the AQ and Taliban villains and once the main core destroyed they should have quickly got out.
I believe aid and trade incentives should have then been on the table for Afghanistan to rid itself of the radical Islam with the threat of no fly zones and selective attacks on any further radical Islamic terrorist training camps or takeovers.
It was pretty clear to me that if the mighty Soviet military machine had to retreat in Afghanistan, after an attempted socialist putsch just a decade before 9/11, then that was a massive indicator as to the likely failure of any US attempt to democratise this country so entrenched in Islamic Sharia ways which are totally incompatible with democracy.
As far as the Iraq invasion decision, well that was just such a Bush, NEOCONs and Blair nutcase thing to do it is beyond belief that they had the idiocy to do itl
Roll on Chilcot and lets have the debate.
I would make just one alteration to that. I’d change: “Roll on Chilcot and lets have the debate” to Get a move on, Chilcot. There’s a dock at the Old Bailey and a long overdue trial for treason.