The Chilcott Report

As this is due to come out in a couple of days, and wagons are being circled, excuses dreamed up, fingers pointed already, etc, I felt a new thread was called for.

I will start it off with this image of Blair's legacy in Iraq:

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/with_replies

 ian bremmer ‏@ianbremmer  15h15 hours ago Every Baghdad car bomb in the last decade (ht @rezahakbari)



Oddly, you don't see too many 'progressive' types lighting candles for the dead in Baghdad, or *tilting their heads to one side while singing Imagine*.

I watched An American Sniper last night.  One of the best movies I have seen in quite a while.  Iraq should not have happened at all IMO.

Isn't it staggering just how many of those bombs there were?  

Bonny, the snowflakes would be singing 24 hours a day if they did that.  They do not seem able to understand what happens to people in war situations.  Thank heavens that body prosthetics are getting better.......

Just look at the meltdown the UK snowflakes have had since the EU referendum - they're a bunch of footstamping, spoiled crybabies, more worried about their roaming charges than about anything important that effects real people in real lives.

After all this time, I hope the Chilcott report doesn't whitewash Blair, or the fact that he took the country to war on a pack of lies. He lied in Parliament, let us not forget, and while waffling is allowed, outright lying most certainly is not.

As I recall, it was actually that that brought Profumo down?

Oh yes.  Christine Keeler (who was a friend of one of my best friends) and Mandy Rice-Davies and John Stonehouse?

I seem to remember Michael Caplan QC doing something or another at the behest of Margaret Thatcher in relation to people like her having some kind of immunity?  I do not remember the details so this could be totally wrong.

Hopefully someone will be able to shed more light on it?  Of course, I might be totally off my rocker.....

I can't remember that bit of it, Lily, I will have to go digging....it was this bit I was thinking of:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/5/newsid_2660000/2660375.stm

Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, has resigned from government, admitting he lied to Parliament about his relationship with a call girl.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan accepted the resignation calling it a "great tragedy".

Profumo, 48, made a personal statement to the House of Commons on 22 March in which he admitted being misleading about his relationship with 21-year-old call girl Christine Keeler

I think lying to start a war is considerably more serious than lying about a call girl.....

Er......about a thousand times more?  Or even more......

I have found this....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/13/pinochet.chile

At first the issues seemed simple: could one country try another country's former head of state for crimes against humanity? When the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, heard the case with two other judges in the High Court, the judges had only two lever-arch files of documents, and they quickly decided that Pinochet was immune from prosecution under the State Immunity Act.


Apologies, Blair is not a head of state.  Thank goodness.

There's a lot to be said for a non-political head of state, Lily.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14597766.Admiral_Lord_West__Iraq_invasion_planned_before_Tony_Blair_told_public/

The decision to invade Iraq was made before Tony Blair publicly announced it "but they were looking for a reason" to do it, the head of the Royal Navy at the time has said.

Admiral Lord West, who was first sea lord when the war began in March 2003, said he was told by "some b*****d" to ready his forces in preparation for the conflict.

Lord West said: "I think there had been a decision that we were going to invade Iraq, that that was going to happen, but they were looking for a reason to actually do it."



He told The House magazine: "Of course Blair and everyone else will say, 'No, we didn't make the decision until right up to it'. You can always say that, can't you?

"But I would not have told the fleets, the Royal Navy and the Marines, to be ready for war in the northern Gulf by the end of the year. I would not have sailed the Mine Counter-measures Force for the Middle East so they were in place for operations.

"You don't wake up in the morning and think that. Some b*****d told me to do it. That's why I did it.

"All the people involved say, 'We hadn't made our decision right up until the UN resolution', and all these other things. Well, you can argue that you never make the final decision till you make your decision. But, actually, they'd bloody decided. That's the reality."

READ MORE: The coup against Corbyn was planned to stop him calling for Blair’s head after Chilcot

It is not known when Admiral West, who served as a security minister in Gordon Brown's government and is now a Labour peer, was asked to prepare his forces.

He added the findings of Sir John Chilcot's report would be seized on by activists in the Momentum movement that is loyal to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Sir John is due to publish his long-awaited report on the Iraq War on Wednesday. Admiral West said: "If they find that people did certain things that were wrong, they should be exposed.

"It will be used by Momentum and people like that to say how awful these Blairites are. But I don't think it will do what we wanted it to do, which was to let people really study it to learn the lessons.

"I will be fascinated to see what it says. What one really wants out of it is lessons so that we don't make the mistakes again. I have a horrible feeling what other people want is to be able to get at people. It should be there to learn real lessons."


Alas, lessons are NEVER learned.

Same story:

http://news.sky.com/story/1721586/west-iraq-war-planned-before-blair-told-public

West: Iraq War Planned Before Blair Told Public

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36706265

Iraq Chilcot inquiry: Bitterness in Baghdad
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor, Baghdad


The price ordinary Iraqis are paying for Blair's lies.

Just for once, a not-dire cover-



Well, it's all about to kick off....

Oh, this is bad....I am surprised Chilcott hasn't been found dead in a field, clutching a butter knife.

So, Bush and Blair decided to attack Iraq - and then falsified evidence to justify that attack.

http://news.sky.com/story/1722372/blair-backed-bush-eight-months-before-iraq-war

The inquiry found Mr Blair led the UK into the Iraq War before the "peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted".

Monsters.

And Blair doesn't seem to have cared greatly about the safety of UK troops once they were in Iraq.

The Mirror has been quick off the mark with some damning exchanges between Blair and Bush:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/11-revealing-private-notes-between-8359795

“It would be excellent to get rid of Saddam,” Blair said.

But he added “there needed to be a clever strategy for doing this... An extremely clever plan would be required.”

Was he watching Blackadder at the time?

Blair's idea is to secretly support “opposition groups” in Iraq and then “when the rebellion finally occurs, we back it militarily.”

Blair adds: “We need to be clear that if an uprising occurs, we are willing to act militarily in support.”

Just like they've been trying in Syria.

Blair admits an invasion would involve significant casualties and that “doing this in the context of international opposition would be very tough”.

Cnut - happy to shed other people's blood.

A week after the invasion of Iraq begins, Blair writes to Bush to say the 'fundamental goal' of the war should be to create a new 'world order'.

He admits that WMD is only the 'immediate justification' for war but the 'real prize' is toppling a murderous dictator.

Blair writes: “This is the moment when you can define international priorities for the next generation – the true post-Cold War world order.

“Our ambition is big – to construct a global agenda around which we can unite the world”.

Blair says the war is part of a bigger push to “spread our values of freedom, democracy, tolerance and the rule of war”[sic] across the world.

Just to make sure this isn't overlooked:


Blair's idea is to secretly support “opposition groups” in Iraq and then “when the rebellion finally occurs, we back it militarily.”

Blair adds: “We need to be clear that if an uprising occurs, we are willing to act militarily in support.”

That is EXACTLY what Obama and Cameron have been trying to do in Syria.

Well, so much for all those people that announced, pre-publication, that the report was going to be a 'whitewash'.

It's actually appalling, and has destroyed any shred of legitimacy the invasion of Iraq ever had.

http://news.sky.com/story/1722443/blair-ill-take-responsibility-for-mistakes

ony Blair has said he will take "full responsibility for any mistakes without exception or excuse" following the release of the Chilcot Report.

In his response to the Iraq Inquiry's findings, the former prime minister said he took the decision to go to war in Iraq "in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country".

Mr Blair said the 2.6 million-word report should lay to rest any allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit - irrespective of whether people agree or disagree with his decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein.

A woman whose brother was killed in the Iraq War described Mr Blair as "the world's worst terrorist" - and described his reaction to Sir John Chilcot's report as "PR" and a "lawyer approved offering".

Mr Blair pointed to three "clear" findings in the report that there was no falsification or improper use of intelligence, that there was no deception of his Cabinet, and no secret commitment to war made with then US President George Bush.

He must be reading some other Chilcott report......

BREAKING NEWS: Chilcot's damning verdict on Blair's Iraq War: 'WMD threat was NOT justified', military action 'was NOT a last resort' and invasion was based on 'flawed intelligence'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3676748/Chilcot-s-damning-verdict-Blair-Inquiry-Iraq-war-slams-former-PM-misrepresenting-intelligence-dodgy-legal-advice-hubris-failing-protect-troops-says-did-not-need-invade.html#ixzz4DcvX5tvY
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Count Two of the Indictment charges the defendants with committing specific crimes against peace by planning, preparing, initiating, and waging wars of aggression against a number of other States. It will be convenient to consider the question of the existence of a common plan and the question of aggressive war together, and to deal later in this Judgment with the question of the individual responsibility of the defendants.

The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent States alone, but affect the whole world.

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.


~Nuremberg.

bb1 wrote:Just to make sure this isn't overlooked:


Blair's idea is to secretly support “opposition groups” in Iraq and then “when the rebellion finally occurs, we back it militarily.”

Blair adds: “We need to be clear that if an uprising occurs, we are willing to act militarily in support.”

That is EXACTLY what Obama and Cameron have been trying to do in Syria.

Yes it broody well is.... 

It's a pity the old treason laws have been abolished; Blair is responsible for more bloodshed than the generals that ordered young men over the top at the Somme.

Blair's death toll must be over the million by now.