Off Topic Chilcot Report on the Iraq War

The CIA Chief who played a key role in overseeing the "intelligence" behind the Iraq War was George Tenet. I recall GWB quizzed him on whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMD and asked for CIA's confirmation on this, to which Tenet replied "...Mr. President, it's a slam dunk".

An irresponsible and ghastly error, but like most of his ilk Tenet did alright, for, In February 2008, he became a managing director at investment bank Allen & Company.

 

You are correct, it is the last sentence that upsets me greatly. This was a gigantic task, and it was one that was absolutely necessary. Blair is the one that concerns us, of course, but the report also gives a damning verdict on G.W,Bush, Cheney, Tenet, and others in the U.S. administration at that time, not just Blair who, for an intelligent man, lost his head completely. All of the people mentioned are war criminals, and should be brought to The Hague to face justice, along with Kissinger for his conduct regarding Chile in 1973. I said before, there is not a snowball's chance in hell of this ever happening, but, for me, the Chilcot Report is very much worthwhile, is most certainly not a whitewash, and is public money well spent. Even though these politicians cannot be punished, it is only right and proper that they be identified for what they are to the rest of the world, even though the investigation took a long time and was very costly. They must not completely get away with it, and they haven't.

 

I take you back to 17 March 2003, The House of Commons, resignation speech by Robin Cook:

Why did we have to wait 13 years and over 2 million words later for Chilcot to tell us what Robin Cook had already told us before his untimely death?

 

How's about the fig leaf?

 

Fantastic speech from Robin Cook- had never seen that before. Notice Mr Corbyn in the background there? A man who agreed with Mr Cook. Ironic is it not that, at a time when the Chilcot Report was due, the centre-right Blairites kicked up a fuss and decided, with zero credible evidence other than a piss-weak link to the 'unwanted' referendum result, that Mr Corbyn is not fit to lead the party and not capable of winning a snap election if called by Teresa May when she wins the Conservative Leader contest?

Suddenly Angela Eagle, who today said she thought Blair had already been through the mill, is launching a leadership bid. Are you telling me that anyone thinks Angela Eagle is anything like the necessary leader to win an election convincingly? It is utterly laughable.

What are the facts? Labour has had unseen rises in party membership. Untold support amongst British youth. I've seen an engagement in politics amongst my peers that I have never seen before. Corbyn has switched on young people with a heart. Local elections saw a swing back towards Labour after the disastrous Miliband General Election result. Two thirds of Labour voters were Remain voters- Scotland was 62%. Nicola Sturgeon was celebrated for her results- Corbyn was vilified!!

Corbyns VOTERS are united in their support. It is the centre right and centre left Labour establishment- the champagne socialists- who are letting him down and trying to bring him down.

They can see a breakaway in support- the kind of true socialism and lefty movement that could change the face of British politics. That is what they are afraid of. That is what would rock the boat and the career politician staus quo that we have had for so long.

The Conservatives are in tatters because of their referendum promise and shock result, all Labour have to do is unite behind Corbyn and they win by default.

But that's not enough for them. They instead try to claim their leader is not fit to lead. Why? Because Corbyn will switch on a generation of youth that moves away from Blair and back to Labour roots. One that demands honesty and accountability- things that don't sit well with the establishment right now.

I've never been more disappointed in British politics than I have these past two weeks. The motives behind the EU Referendum have started to reveal their ugly heads, there has been treachery and deceit, and the people of this country have never been less of a priority.

 

I have to confess that I was going to post the words of his speech but I happened to come across the video clip on You Tube by doing a Google search for the words. Granted the video quality is not great but that is Jezza sat behind him in the green number.

The Corbynites are Revolutionary Socialists. They are not interested in democracy, just the delusion of power. Half a million party members will not win an election. They want to go back to the militancy of the 1970s but most of the country does not, so whilst Jezza might be a nice guy he is not a leader – as Hilary Benn stated when he quit.

The way our electoral system works, there is absolutely no chance of Jeremy Corbyn getting the keys to No. 10 in anything but a coalition. The Middle England grey vote outnumbers the youth protest vote in all the marginal seats that matter and the SNP has taken all their seats north of the border. Of the nine million that voted for Ed Miliband, how many do not live in safe Labour seats?

 

That's the assertion, anyway.

Who in the Labour Party actually stands a chance of being successful in Scotland right now?

Have a watch of Mhairi Blacks maiden speech again, because in that speech is a glimpse into the heart of the SNP- they are disillusioned, broken former labour supporters who want to see a shift back to the left. Labour no longer stood for them. I think Corbyn offers more hope than the champagne brigade like Benn and the utter no hopers like Eagle.

 

There never was an end game in the Iraq War- and that was always going to be the real tragedy.
It was nothing more than a coup d'état based on an opportunistic and brutal portrayal of Saddam Hussain. Like most coups, the incumbent victors were no better than the ousted dictator.
To digress, I've remembered a true story..
Fifty years ago, I met a man who emigrated to Bolivia and happened to associate with a coterie of Nazis who had fled Europe at the end of World War 2.
As a present, he was given 1000 acres of land, albeit all jungle!
After experiencing three coups d'état in a single day and deciding that the original ruler was much better than his three successors, he decided to give up his property
and catch a boat home. He was convinced that an long-established dictator usually offers more stability and less bloodshed than the rebels who replace him.
Ironically Bush and Blair can be compared to those Bolivian invaders, except they hid behind the guise and lies of political power.
In a sense, that makes them far more culpable and worthy of indictment for war crimes.
We all know that can never happen, but how on earth could someone pay Blair £182,000 for giving a talk in the Philippines entitled "The Leader as Nation Builder in a Time of Globalisation."
What a world we live in!

 

A fascinating story, Tamerlo. I just get annoyed with one comment that I have noticed on more than one occasion on this forum, in which Blair is described as a "war criminal". OK, this has substance, but for some reason the writer always fails to mention his partners in crime, GWB, Cheney, Tenet, et al. That is grossly unfair.

 

Quite right. I wonder if one day that will all come out. What are the US Laws on confidential memos/de-classifying documents?

 

Yes, you're quite right, Swannie! And I always laugh when the US portrays Russia as the untrusted and violent aggressor. The difference is that the US are just more subtle and covert about their actions and intentions. Do you remember how they carried on backing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, even after John Pilger of the Daily Mirror had exposed the slaughter of millions of men, women and children in Indo China. It was almost certainly the worst genocide in our lifetime.
Yet we and the US are the good guys, aren't we?
"What are the US Laws on confidential memos/de-classifying documents?" You tell me, Toppy.
Wasn't the documentation about the JFK assassination supposed to be released by now? Poor old Lee Harvey Oswald. The greatest patsy in history! The way things are going, the Labour Party is trying to do the same to Jeremy Corbyn!

 

What do you mean TC? The USA has total transparency on information. Didn't you know that?

 

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Tam, It's hard to find a truth path into the Lee Harvey Oswald story. Conspiracy theories abound in just about every facet of life, but most of them lack any real substance. It's all to easy to draw a fist full of ideas together and to try foisting them upon the public as proven facts. Was Oswald a stooge? Maybe. Was Oswald just a foolish man with a head full of twisted ideas? Maybe. The US and Russian power's that be, both have papers that they're holding close to their chests. But governments hold close, heaps of their covert information for a myriad of reasons that have next to nothing to do with what the conspiracy theorists propound. Was Oswald an innocent patsy who didn't actually kill JFK? Probably not. We have two choices when it comes to things like this. We can place our faith in what seems to be a credible framework, or go with a host of cobbled together theories that rely heavily on unproven assumptions. Oswald may indeed be the supreme patsy, but until absolute proof is supplied to back up that theory, I have to stick with what we have at the moment.