Official Brit report on Iraq war

[kallend 2,175]

Blair comes off very badly (and by extension, Bush does too).

www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/06/484964871/7-years-in-the-making-report-finds-british-rushed-into-iraq-war

"Military action in Iraq might have been necessary at some point, but in March 2003 there was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein,"

www.economist.com/news/britain/21701749-official-inquiry-war-delivers-scathing-verdict-its-planning-execution-and

Lots more coverage...

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Directly leading to the rise of ISIS all because of bloodlust and a need to keep military spending as high as possible.

[normiss 905]

Meanwhile the media is focused on the deletion of digital calendars.
Stoopid mailbox size limits.

[gowlerk 2,283]

Blair and his apologists are calling the report 20/20 hindsight. I would remind those apologists that large parts of the world, including Canadians and many Americans, were not fooled at the time. And we pretty much predicted the results correctly. I don't know Blair's motivations, but the neo-cons who started up the war machine in the US had the very worse of reasons. Religious fervor.

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[jakee 1,609]

gowlerk

Blair and his apologists are calling the report 20/20 hindsight. I would remind those apologists that large parts of the world, including Canadians and many Americans, were not fooled at the time. And we pretty much predicted the results correctly.

According to the Guardian Chilcot actually points out in the report that "Hindsight was not neccessary" since yeah, pretty much everything that's happened since was warned about before the invasion.

Bush responded saying he still believes that the whole world is better off without Saddam - despite the insane and unpredictable ISIS (allowed to come into existence by his "wholly inadequate " planning for the aftermath of the invasion) providing an international threat that Saddam never did.

And as we all knew, Bush and Blair were talking about invading Iraq immediately after 9/11. Honestly I think the saddest thing in there is this memo from Blair to Bush: "How we finish in Afghanistan is important to phase 2. If we leave it a better country, having supplied humanitarian aid and having given new hope to the people, we will not just have won militarily but morally; and the coalition will back us to do more elsewhere," when the shift in resources to Iraq was always going to leave Afghanistan vulnerable to insurgency and re-invasion by the Taliban. It was so god-damned obvious.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[rifleman 70]

The Executive summary is 150 pages long and can be found here:

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246416/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_executive-summary.pdf

The full report with all the evidence is 12 volumes and can be downloaded from the Iraq Inquiry website at

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk

Atheism is a Non-Prophet Organisation

[SkyDekker 1,465]

Years spent on Benghazi, but of course no report of this kind in the US.

[jakee 1,609]

SkyDekker

Years spent on Benghazi, but of course no report of this kind in the US.

Ironically, the major problem with the Chilcott investigation was that it was set up specifically not to look at whether there were any illegal, or legally dubious, actions in the run up to the war.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[SkyDekker 1,465]

jakee

***Years spent on Benghazi, but of course no report of this kind in the US.

Ironically, the major problem with the Chilcott investigation was that it was set up specifically not to look at whether there were any illegal, or legally dubious, actions in the run up to the war.

That would be up for the courts to decide. If these were heads of some little African nation, they would be in The Hague.

[GeorgiaDon 385]

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Bush responded saying he still believes that the whole world is better off without Saddam - despite the insane and unpredictable ISIS (allowed to come into existence by his "wholly inadequate " planning for the aftermath of the invasion) providing an international threat that Saddam never did.

Frontline recently ran an excellent documentary on the rise of ISIS. Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby deliberately ignored CIA warnings about ISIS founder Zarqawi and passed on several opportunities to eliminate him, so they could try to use him to press their "intuition" (=a belief held in contradiction of all the available facts) that Saddam Hussein was working in concert with Bin Laden. Their efforts to strong-arm CIA analysts was reprehensible, and the speech they wrote for Colin Powell to give at the UN was filled with wholly made-up "intelligence" intended to show Zarqawi was the go-between connecting Iraq to Al-Quaida. This deliberate inflation of Zarqawi's significance, done to provide political justification for the invasion of Iraq, raised Zarqawi's reputation to the point he was able to recruit the insurgency that eventually became ISIS, while killing hundreds of US soldiers and thousands of Iraqi civilians along the way. As the insurgency grew, Donald Rumsfeld and others in the administration refused to act, indeed denied that suicide bombings were even happening (despite obvious evidence to the contrary), because it contradicted the narrative that Iraq would welcome the American presence.

Bush may or may not have been a dupe, but Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Donald Rumsfeld are truly evil. They could not have been a better ally of Zarqawi and ISIS if they had tried.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[normiss 905]

Which is where Bush and his ill-advisors should be.

Now, back to emails.

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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Bush may or may not have been a dupe, but Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Donald Rumsfeld are truly evil. They could not have been a better ally of Zarqawi and ISIS if they had tried.

I am sure their holdings in the "defence" industry took a real beating.

But, can you believe Clinton got money to speak. Scandalous, we should have an investigation.

[jakee 1,609]

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Their efforts to strong-arm CIA analysts was reprehensible, and the speech they wrote for Colin Powell to give at the UN was filled with wholly made-up "intelligence" intended to show Zarqawi was the go-between connecting Iraq to Al-Quaida

And yet some like Rush continue to push the naive assertion that Congress supported the war too, based on the same intelligence as Bush. Bush and Blair set the intelligence agenda, selected the results they liked and packaged them in the most persuasive way they could to support their pre-conceived plans.

Chilcot doesn't directly accuse Blair of lying, but he does criticise him for presenting questionable intelligence to parliament as totally reliable, and from restricting other intelligence even from members of his own cabinet (most senior ministers and heads of department) so no-one else knew the full picture.

And even then some members of the cabinet remained so unconvinced that they resigned in protest. Robin Cook's resignation speech is worth revisiting for it's evisceration of the case for war, for the rush to war, and for pointing out that no major nation whose leaders weren't already pre-committed to removing Saddam were convinced of the need to invade, despite our best diplomatic efforts.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[gowlerk 2,283]

The fact is both Bush and Blair first decided on making war in Iraq, then went about finding a way to justify it. It was easy for Bush to convince America because 9/11 was still very fresh and Americans wanted to kick some Islamic butt, especially Arab Islamic butt. All he had to do was hint that Saddam was a "terrorist". Facts mattered not one whit. Blair's motivation I don't know, but he was definitely dishonest.

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[turtlespeed 226]

gowlerk

The fact is both Bush and Blair first decided on making war in Iraq, then went about finding a way to justify it. It was easy for Bush to convince America because 9/11 was still very fresh and Americans wanted to kick some Islamic butt, especially Arab Islamic butt. All he had to do was hint that Saddam was a "terrorist". Facts mattered not one whit. Blair's motivation I don't know, but he was definitely dishonest.

Mostly agree.

Saddam was an evil person.

The more I educate myself on the ins and outs of the war, it is embarrassing, but I can't deny that I was on the band wagon and shouldn't have been.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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The more I educate myself on the ins and outs of the war, it is embarrassing, but I can't deny that I was on the band wagon and shouldn't have been.

That's a big thing to say!

[jakee 1,609]

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Blair's motivation I don't know, but he was definitely dishonest.

Blair believed that it was important for the UK to be internationally important, and he thought that the best way to cement the UKs status as a major global player was to be a facilitator for the USA. To be the voice of reason that could sell the invasion the way that cowboy Bush couldn't. I think he even believed that he could steer Bush's policy and shape the world order post-Iraq, and he was willing to give away our integrity, a fair chunk of our financial stability and hundreds of servicemen's lives and limbs to try and achieve that.

Of course it was a naive and foolish hope at the best of times (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al were never going to be influenced by this brown-nosing outsider) but when he never came close to delivering the second resolution he didn't even come away from it being owed a favour. No transatlantic political credit in the bank whatsoever.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Coreeece 2]

jakee

No transatlantic political credit in the bank whatsoever.

Suck it.

Never was there an answer....not without listening, without seeing - Gilmour

[kallend 2,175]

Parliament may pass a motion which says that Tony Blair has held the House in contempt.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36756878

'Bout time we got some action against the organ grinder and not his monkey.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.