Chilcott

[jared_7]

In defence of the newspaper editors (now that's a phrase I don't use often) they didn't have the full facts and knew that they didn't. They were still trusting Tony that there was some evidence, although some clearly would have been happy for HMG to set regime change as their goal and hang the consequences.

They have openly said they view reporting official statements as news, which is fair enough. But they have a duty to try and verify those facts, otherwise point out the one-sidedness of articles.

With regards to Iraq, a huge amount of the justification came from Bush's list of "suspicious" sites. I'm not sure how it was reported in the UK at the time but 3 months prior to the invasion 2 independent reporters on different trips visited every site on the list, found absolutely nothing and sent those articles out on the AP. Quite simply, they weren't picked up.

A year before the invasion there was also an interview with the lead weapons inspector in Iraq involved in de-weaponising the regime in the late 90s, he did a video interview bluntly saying there was absolutely zero chance Saddam had chemical or long range weapons (more than 150 miles) as the time that had passed since he gave the sign off was insufficient to develop them. Apparently every news channel skipped the interview except te BBC, who aired it once at 2am British time.

We'll never know, but I suspect these editors had knowledge of a lot of the doubts and holes in the stories but questioning official lines often results in priveleged being removed; they want to stay on side with officials so they get priority of information etc...

[Sandydragon]

I don't think Blair's a war monger/criminal. He probably genuinely believed it was Jus ad Bellum. What a pity he didn't recognise (or chose to ignore) the "make the world England" bellicosity of the JIC (and of course the MIC, who for different reasons would have lobbied for war).

Wolfowitz and his fellow Straussians in the white house were a greater threat to stability in the ME.

The JIC showed Blair what he wanted to see.

[Sandydragon]

In defence of the newspaper editors (now that's a phrase I don't use often) they didn't have the full facts and knew that they didn't. They were still trusting Tony that there was some evidence, although some clearly would have been happy for HMG to set regime change as their goal and hang the consequences.

They have openly said they view reporting official statements as news, which is fair enough. But they have a duty to try and verify those facts, otherwise point out the one-sidedness of articles.

With regards to Iraq, a huge amount of the justification came from Bush's list of "suspicious" sites. I'm not sure how it was reported in the UK at the time but 3 months prior to the invasion 2 independent reporters on different trips visited every site on the list, found absolutely nothing and sent those articles out on the AP. Quite simply, they weren't picked up.

A year before the invasion there was also an interview with the lead weapons inspector in Iraq involved in de-weaponising the regime in the late 90s, he did a video interview bluntly saying there was absolutely zero chance Saddam had chemical or long range weapons (more than 150 miles) as the time that had passed since he gave the sign off was insufficient to develop them. Apparently every news channel skipped the interview except te BBC, who aired it once at 2am British time.

We'll never know, but I suspect these editors had knowledge of a lot of the doubts and holes in the stories but questioning official lines often results in priveleged being removed; they want to stay on side with officials so they get priority of information etc...

The Sun and The Guardian both had very close links with no 10. I remember reading documents at secret in the run up to the invasion which were in the Sun a few days later.

[kk67]

We'll never know, but I suspect these editors had knowledge of a lot of the doubts and holes in the stories but questioning official lines often results in priveleged being removed; they want to stay on side with officials so they get priority of information etc...

Yup,......similarly our MP's are terrified of going against their Whips because they'll get thrown out of the party.
Sometimes our political process seems to be deliberately engineered to fight both of the notions of democracy and meritocracy.
It's not a series of checks and measures is it..?. It's engineered to protect vested interests.

[UGagain]

Most of the world's people knew it was all lies but the right would have it that the politicians, the journalists and the editors didn't.

All they had to do was go to the expert sources who were all available and talking.

They chose not to because their brief was to manufacture consent for (another) aggressive war against the people of Iraq.

This was very clearly the supreme international crime.

To claim the evidence was equivocal is naive at best.

To claim that there is no law against aggressive war is absurd. To claim there was some moral justification is obscene.

[cashead]

We'll never know, but I suspect these editors had knowledge of a lot of the doubts and holes in the stories but questioning official lines often results in priveleged being removed; they want to stay on side with officials so they get priority of information etc...

We have a winner! This has been the reality of political reporting for years, even decades, now. Call them on their shit today, miss out on access tomorrow, because suddenly, everyone clams up when you walk into the room. And kiss those exclusives you've got lined goodbye, because those are cancelled.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

We'll never know, but I suspect these editors had knowledge of a lot of the doubts and holes in the stories but questioning official lines often results in priveleged being removed; they want to stay on side with officials so they get priority of information etc...

We have a winner! This has been the reality of political reporting for years, even decades, now. Call them on their shit today, miss out on access tomorrow, because suddenly, everyone clams up when you walk into the room. And kiss those exclusives you've got lined goodbye, because those are cancelled.

Aye. I'd add that there's a world of difference between thinking that you are being deprived of the full picture and being sufficiently sure that the PM is bullshitting that you want to stake your career on it by calling him out on it. Get that sort of call wrong on the eve of war and you could be fucked.

[WaspInWales]

I thought Chilcott's summary of the report was a very effective, subtle, accurate and razor sharp evisceration of Blair, who looked near to collapse at the end of his own session, perhaps stunned by the significance of what had been leveled at him.
Surely this is, or should be, a simple issue.
Did Blair lie and deceive , I think the report concludes that he did, but if you wish to go with Blair and accept that he acted in good spirit then he must be dammed as a fool, incompetent and unfit for office, . How could anyone in their right mind believe that Iraq had WMD; the country had been the focus of extreme levels of surveillance by the US, Israel and god knows who else, Blix reported nothing to be found.
Blair is done either way, just a question of who and when.

Does it matter? He's probably made a fortune thanks to his efforts.

He may well be damned but without any legal action against him, I'm sure he will still sleep well at night (in his cosy bed, which is in one of his cosy houses, which are very secure, safe and cosy).

[kk67]

To claim there was some moral justification is obscene.

The good Doctor either topped himself because he agreed,.....or he was topped because he agreed.

[rowan]

Good story here:

The anti-war demonstration in London on 15 February 2003 was the biggest protest in British history. And probably the most popular slogan on the placards and banners that day was ‘No blood for oil’. It was a connection that seemed obvious to many on the march but was repeatedly ridiculed by supporters of the invasion of Iraq. Tony Blair said that ‘the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it.’

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/new ... on-the-oil

[rowan]

Also good:

Air pollution caused by war may be a major factor in the numbers of birth defects and cancers being reported in Iraq and other war zones, a study has suggested.

Human exposure to heavy metals and neurotoxicants from the explosion of bombs, bullets, and other ammunition affects not only those directly targeted by bombardments but also troops and people living near military bases, according to research published in the scientific journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.


Millions of Iraqi children repeatedly and relentlessly targeted, says UN
Read more
Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an Iranian toxicologist and lead author of the report, said “alarming” levels of lead were found in the “baby” or “deciduous” teeth of Iraqi children with birth defects, compared with similar teeth donated from Lebanese and Iranian children.

“Deciduous teeth from Iraqi children with birth defects had remarkably higher levels of Pb [lead],” she said during a recent visit to London. “Two Iraqi teeth had four times more Pb, and one tooth had as much as 50 times more Pb than samples from Lebanon and Iran.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... th-defects

[rowan]

This from the late great Zinny a decade ago:

We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn’t that Mexico “shed American blood upon the American soil,” but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.
We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to “civilize” the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.
President Woodrow Wilson—so often characterized in our history books as an “idealist”—lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to “make the world safe for democracy,” when it was really a war to make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.
Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was “a military target.”
Everyone lied about Vietnam—Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia, all of them claiming it was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanting to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.
Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.
The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country.
And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991—hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait (can one imagine Bush heartstricken over Iraq’s taking of Kuwait?), rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.
Given the overwhelming record of lies told to justify wars, how could anyone listening to the younger Bush believe him as he laid out the reasons for invading Iraq? Would we not instinctively rebel against the sacrifice of lives for oil?


http://howardzinn.org/americas-blinders ... o.facebook

& now it's all about "ISIS"

[rowan]

Latest from Chilcot:

Tony Blair’s “sheer psychological dominance” played a key role in the run-up to the Iraq war, and meant that flawed evidence justifying the 2003 invasion was never challenged, Sir John Chilcot told MPs on Wednesday.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ys-chilcot

[kk67]

Most of the world's people knew it was all lies but the right would have it that the politicians, the journalists and the editors didn't.

All they had to do was go to the expert sources who were all available and talking.

They chose not to because their brief was to manufacture consent for (another) aggressive war against the people of Iraq.

This was very clearly the supreme international crime.

To claim the evidence was equivocal is naive at best.

To claim that there is no law against aggressive war is absurd. To claim there was some moral justification is obscene.

All of the above is true.....no matter how much we don't want it to be.

[rowan]

Most of the world's people knew it was all lies but the right would have it that the politicians, the journalists and the editors didn't.

All they had to do was go to the expert sources who were all available and talking.

They chose not to because their brief was to manufacture consent for (another) aggressive war against the people of Iraq.

This was very clearly the supreme international crime.

To claim the evidence was equivocal is naive at best.

To claim that there is no law against aggressive war is absurd. To claim there was some moral justification is obscene.

All of the above is true.....no matter how much we don't want it to be.

Yes, I may have said this before, but as much as I despite Bush & Blair, I think trying to pin it all on one guy is a blatant cop-out that denies the responsibility of many - and moreover the system that produces them. It's not as if Iraq is the only invasion Britain has been involved in lately either.

[Mellsblue]

Worth a read:

https://samf.substack.com/p/iraq-20-yea ... ory-of-the