The danger of being too close to Blair

"... as MPs frantically try to distance themselves from Blair's disastrous policies."

On the global scale, the front page of today's 'Independent' is of particular relevance .....

rats ... sinking ships ... etc

I love the empty boxes for Tony Blair and George Bush. Says it all really.

Ann Clwyd's defeat, which apparently has left her feeling "extremely upset"...
I better she would have been even more upset if she had been a passenger on one of the "see no evil/hear no evil..." special rendition flights that never passed thru this country according to NuLabor spin.
Although i suppose if you look at it this way, better a humble MP is carted off to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes, than the chairman of the governing party.
Now what stunt is Gordimmo going to pull to distance himself from the poodle's mess?

Also of interest in the Independent is the stuff about Blair's new trip to the USA. The spin-doctors told the Independent that Blair is hoping to get the White House to take more interest in the Middle East peace road-map and get various other parts of the US Government to take climate change more seriously. This is all, no doubt, very worthy but Blair told us in 2002 that by supporting the USA it would listen to the UK on these issues. If that had really been the case, surely he wouldn't have to be going off again to the USA to say it all again.

Clwyd shredded, at last.

Anyone else remember the mincing-machine / people-shredder stuff retailed by her ? A piece in the guardian here

On a par with the "kuweiti babies thrown from incubators" story produced by PR Consultants, this one apparently was provided by an un-named source.... from Fox News !

Maybe she was just a well-intentioned idiot rather than a knowing propagandist, what do you think ?

Ann Clwyd was campaigning against Saddam Hussein's regime for many years before the invasion (long before Bush and Blair). I think on the whole she was well-intentioned but rather gullible and with no idea of the consequences of an invasion. Once those consequences became blatantly apparent, she stuck to her position, refusing to acknowledge that the invasion had made the human rights situation she is so passionate about far worse. I would say that she was/is a well-intentioned idiot rather than a propagandist but then she seems to be quite willing to use propaganda to support her position, so perhaps it's a bit of both.

I've just been watching her on PMQs and she still doesn't get it. She was asking Tony Blair to encourage Bush to carry on with the same failed policies despite the failures.

Have you ever seen dear Anne and "Mad" Melanie Phillips in the same room?
Cheers
t

Perhaps she was a well-intentioned idiot. Unfortunately she is incapable of understanding that 'the West' is capable of the very crimes that she sees in 'lesser' regimes. I hope her upset leads her to consider her world view, but I doubt it. She is morally and politically defective and deserves no sympathy at all.

How on earth do fools like her ever get to be MPs?

It's the curse of Tone. Anything associated with him, or any of the Nulayber team, is doomed. If Mad Tony and his mates want to convince us to agree to anything, from ID cards to road pricing, his best bet is to come out strongly against it. If he wants an initiative to fail spectacularly and ingloriously, he only needs to express his full support. That is what makes him unfit to remain in post a minute longer.

A bit of a pity about Anne maybe - a lightweight MP who probably had her heart somewhere in the right general area, but unwisely felt she had to be Mad Tony's mate well after the first signs of hubris appeared.

How easy it is to sneer, but are all you "commenters" interested in serious and accurate criticism of the Blair regime or just indulging in yet another bile-filled rant ?

I was heartened by what seemed a more reasoned approach from Davide Simonetti, but then I checked out the "quite willing to use propaganda" link and actually bothered to read the comments below the article. What do you know.... even that article turns out to be a baseless assertion. Does anyone here even attempt critical analysis of all the accusations so easily made ?

Come on chaps, raise your game !

Anon, I read the 'comments' too, but did not have time to write everything I could have.

I heard Clwyd a few times on R4, being shrill, and noticed how one-eyed she was. The search for mass-graves in Kosovo did not produce much, I believe ? We know there were massacres, including those in 1991 carried out under our supervision.

There was obviously a job to do on Human Rights after the Invasion, concentrating on the activities of the Occupying Powers. From very early on it became obvious that they were not properly carrying out their duty of care to the population.

One early but significant example was the VERY swift withdrawal of the UK Hospital Ship. Not needed, because there were few brit casualties, but there were still large numbers of civilians in need .

As far as I know, she was embedded onside with the Occupiers, and I am not aware of any criticism of them by her ?

It seems to me that her job was to stir up public opinion as much as possible to justify the Invasion . I cannot remember where the funds for her INDICT organisation came from, ideas ?

It is now all quite a long time ago, but Ann Clwyd was certainly not reporting objectively about the gassing of the Kurds. Although this was death on a shocking scale it was still wildly exaggerated by Clwyd. She made no mention of the fact that the attack was directed on the retreating Iranian army, that chemical weapons were used on both sides in the Gulf war, and that Saddam's chemical weapons were supplied by Western governments. Anyone who went along with Blair and Bush's lies so completely EVEN AFTER FALLUJAH! cannot possibly "have their heart in the right place".

Anon, small niggle, you can easily make yourself an 'anon number 'or specific name ! I reckon you're the same one, but 'could' be diffrent.

Agreed. A small google leads mostly to "way-out" sites and posts which make your point. This WAS an active war-zone,a battlefield, and there are stories about that the cyanide poisons apparently used came from the iranians. The stories say that Saddam was only using mustard-gas.

I have no idea if this is true, but what we all know is that European and American arms -suppliers and chemical-industry suppliers were making a killing out of this war.

Unfortunately, I lent my book detailing all this. It was by a belgian called Timmermans, and I'm still looking for a replacement.

In 1988 - while Saddam was gassing Kurds in Halabja - Bush senior provided him with $500 million in US government subsidies to buy 'American Farm Products.' A euphemism for pesticide/chemical spraying equipment and other 'dual use' technology.

The following year this subsidy was doubled to $1 billion, and Bush provided Saddam with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters fitted with high tech chemical spraying systems, and 'dual use' material that could be used to manufacture chemical weapons.

In 1981 the Tory foreign office minister, Douglas Hurd, flew to Bagdhad to 'celebrate' with Saddam the coming to power of the Iraqi Ba'athists in 1968. He was also acting as a salesman for British Aerospace, who were trying to sell Saddam a huge air defence system (Guardian, July 17, 1981). Remember, this is after Halabja.

Within one month of the gassing of the Kurds, Tony Newton, at the DTI, flew to Baghdad and offered Saddam £340 million in export credit. By now Iraq was now Britians third biggest market for 'dual use' machine tools.