Blair's 'anxiety' over US post-war plans
I'm going to be out of the country when Blair goes - that's timing for you. At least I'll miss the tearful eulogies and dimwitted Labour activists saying 'never mind the thousands of dead, at least we got the minimum wage' as if there was any serious Labour leader in 1994 who wouldn't have brought it in. I consider myself well out of it.
Today there's a fine example of the 'if it wasn't for Iraq, he'd have been perfect' school of post-Blair commentary, from Andrew Rawnsley The essence is that Blair signed up for Iraq a year ahead (yes, anything new?), gave Chirac the finger when he (correctly) warned what happens if you try any of that post-imperialist shit in the Arab world (again, nothing new there) and then found that his best friend George was listening fine, but the levers were being pulled by Cheney and Rumsfeld (ya don't say?). Result: incompetence, corruption, loss of control and the inevitable slide into chaos in Iraq and, worst of all (if you're a Grauniad journo) Blair's halo slips permanently out of sight.
This sequence of events does raise the interesting question of what Blair's relationship with the two main war criminals was - we know that the catastrophic error was made of assuming that Prescott should talk to Cheney and Buff Hoon to Rumsfeld, the inevitable result being that those two bumpkins were treated with the contempt they deserve. Did they come back and warn Blair that they and he were being ignored by the brains behind Bush? Was Blair listening? Was he too busy pretending to Parliament and the country that everything was going swimmingly, even when the defence that he needed to keep loyal to Dubya in public to have any hope of influencing him in private was untenable even in his own mind?
Anyway, Rawnsley's teasers for his C4 TV extravaganza are an interesting collection of rats swimming back to the sinking ship to bite the Captain in the leg while he lies ranting on the poop. Lest us forget, the people he's interviewed are among the worst of the loyal Blairites, so what the hell were they doing back then when they now assure us that it was obvious that poor Tony had been led astray by his trusting instincts. Ah, yes - September 2004, Peter Mandelson addresses the Progress group:
He said people around the country were seeing the issue this way.
And he added: "This government can and must and will hold up under this pressure" because that was what "Britain expected us to do". source
Why should we listen to a word he says?
'Mr Mandelson said: "The
'Mr Mandelson said: "The battle against international terrorism in Iraq has become a metaphor for this government's strength and will and its staying power."'
Right, so any number of dead/maimed/bereaved Iraqis is a small price to pay if Nu Labour can scrape together a little credibility. Fortunately, leaving aside the utter moral bankruptcy of that attitude, the mechanism actually works the other way round. The longer they hang on in Iraq, the less credibility they have.
Ah that old chestnut, the
Ah that old chestnut, the terrorists in Iraq. Except like the WMD's there weren't any before the war. Oh except one that Saddam was trying to capture and kill. Its a shame this Government's determination doesn't extend to upholding international law, or even properly equiping the poor bastards it sends to fight on behalf of corporate America.
Do these nob heads really think anyone believes a word they say anymore ? Now we have half the middle East hating our guts, thousands dead and injured and billions of pounds wasted. Well done Tony, now piss off and don't come back. I sincerely hope you and all the other NuLab Neocon scum end up behind bars.
What shite is this? Andrew
What shite is this? Andrew Rawnsley (and many of the sychophantic Blairites) say that if it wasn't for Iraq, Bliar would have been the "most succesful British Prime Minister of all time".
This seems to me like saying if if Ken Lay of Enron had not been caught, he would have been the most succesful self-made businessman of all time. If the Yorkshire Ripper not had killed all those women, he would have been the most successful serial killer of all time.
Rawnsley does not comment on the fact that Bliar was preparing for war at least a year before it was decided. And as for the rats leaving the sinking ship, I say leave all the bastards on it and let it go down; slowly.
I recall Blair being
I recall Blair being challenged pre or during the invasion on the apparent absence of any plans for the post invasion reconstruction and explicitly stating that yes "of course" there was a plan but they were necessarily keeping it confidential. We now know this assurance to have been yet another bare-faced lie in that he knew it was false
when he said it. Can anybody document this particular porker?
Some of the questions I
Some of the questions I would like to ask Blair and his conspiritors before they go!
Question1. Mr Blair you say that ID cards are to prevent terrorism and if we have nothing to hide we will have no problems with them?
Blair - Yes (blah blah blah)
Question 2. Good because you and I have nothing to hide so we will have no problems?
Blair - Yes (blah blah blah)
Question 3. I saw a programme on TV the other evening where a lady submitted herself to a new type of lie detector test developed by a university which accesses the brain activity and is said to 99% accurate. Would you consider using this type of test on terror suspects to see if they were lying?
Blair - Yes (blah blah blah)
Question 4 Mr Blair You say that you told us the complete truth over the way you handled all the evidence and in your negotiations with Bush over Iraq and most of all you have never knowingly lied to parliament?
Blair - Yes (blah blah blah)
Question 5. Would you be prepared to take this new lie detector test?
Blair - (Silence)
Question 6. Would you be prepared to take this new lie detector test?
Blair - (Silence)
Question 7. Would you be prepared to take this new lie detector test?
Blair - (Silence)
How many times would I have to ask the same questin to beaat Paxo's record?
"..found that his best
"..found that his best friend George was listening fine, but the levers were being pulled by Cheney and Rumsfeld"
So he was talking to the monkey and not the organ grinder(s). Steve Bell was right all along!