(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
And more continuing reporting on the British Iraq War Inquiry in the lead up to Tony Blairs testimony, as well as many others.
Blair ‘should face war charges’
16 Jan 2010 Almost a quarter of voters (23%) believe Tony Blair deliberately misled MPs over the Iraq war and should face war crimes charges, an opinion poll has found.
Snip
The YouGov survey for the Sunday Times found less than a third (32%) accepted that Mr Blair “genuinely believed in the threat” which he used to publicly justify sending UK troops, while 52% thought he had “deliberately misled” the country.
And by a similar margin (49% to 31%), they also said they believed his former communications director Alastair Campbell was not truthful when he gave evidence to Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry this week….>>>>>
Shades of the reporting we were getting on the equipment, and seemingly picking certain manufacturers over others, as the occupation progressed after the invasion.
Geoff Hoon ‘denied Iraq soldiers equipment that could have saved lives’
17 January 2010 Tories demand that Chilcot inquiry establishes whether then defence secretary delayed ordering body armour
The government was accused last night of denying British soldiers vital equipment that could have saved their lives in Iraq as a bitter party political row threatened to engulf the Chilcot inquiry into the war.
Two days before Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary, prepares to give evidence to the inquiry, the Conservatives are demanding that it establish the truth behind claims that Hoon delayed ordering enhanced body armour shortly before the invasion because ministers did not want to alert the public to their preparations and stoke opposition to war.
Snip
Note: • Two more British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, the MoD confirmed yesterday. The soldiers, from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, died in an explosion near Sangin in Helmand province on Friday. It brings the number of British service personnel who have died since the start of operations in Afghanistan in 2001 to 249….>>>>>
Poor Tony, NOT!
You can’t hide the truth any more, Tony
Rees-Mogg cartoon
16th January 2010 Last week we were snowed in. It was the sort of weather in which one could have been excused for watching an old film on television. On Tuesday, the television was running something better than that, an alpha performance that generated more tension than any Hitchcock film. Alastair Campbell was giving his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War.
Campbell has a dominant personality, which is reinforced by his sense of self-righteousness. He was a vital member of Tony Blair’s team, probably the most important after Blair himself. The inquiry is expected to hear Blair’s evidence on January 29. Campbell’s evidence did, therefore, provide an indication of the questions that Blair was likely to be asked.
Snip
Towards the end of the afternoon, Campbell lost his composure and seemed to exaggerate his case. He made the mistake of saying: ‘I defend every single word of the dossier. I defend every single part of the process.’….>>>>>
Iraq inquiry hears evidence behind closed doors
15 January 2010 The Iraq Inquiry met behind closed doors to hear evidence from the general who ran the British operations in the conflict, it has emerged.
Gen Sir John Reith said he should be allowed to appear without the press and public present “for personal reasons”.
A full transcript of his evidence was published with five words blanked out, which the inquiry said was on “national security” grounds….>>>>>
Boy, reading this short report one hopes the letters are made public in the final writeup to the Inquiry. Maybe then we’ll get a clearer window into why they felt destroying the National Security, by raising the hatreds thus the number of potential criminal terrorist, was in their own personal interests!
Blair’s lewd love letters inspired Bush to invade Iraq
15 Jan 2010 Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War that the US invasion of the Gulf State was inspired by a series of passionate love letters sent from the former British Prime Minister to George Bush.
Campbell revealed that Blair sent secret letters to Bush, in which he declared his admiration, loyalty and undying love for the so-called leader of the free world.
Asked if any of Blair’s cabinet Ministers had seen the letters, Campbell said they had not. “It would have been far too embarrassing for Tony,” said Campbell, “He really spilled his guts.”
Snip
A spokesperson for the Inquiry confirmed that copies of the letters were in their possession, but added that they would probably not be made public due to their lewd, sycophantic and nauseating content…..>>>>>
Here’s hopin there’s a change of heart and the world doesn’t need to wait twenty or thirty or more years to find the yearning for each other over the pond!
And the dreams of “the willing” live on:
Geoff Hoon’s fantasy in the Iraq desert
16 Jan 2010 ‘In my wildest dreams I imagine that in 100 years there is a desert storm in Iraq and the WMDs emerge from the sand like Tutankhamun,’ he mused. Dream on, Geoff….>>>>>
Without thinking, seems there was an awful lot of that going around, that if there were any the after Invasion would have even been more deadly, any insurgent force within their own country use any and all to rid their country of occupying powerful military forces!!
Alastair Campbell issues garbled retraction over his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry
Clearing up the spin from the spin meister, the Brits name not mine.
17 Jan 2010 Alastair Campbell has been forced to “clarify” his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on Iraq after denying that Tony Blair misled Parliament.
During his testimony, Mr Campbell answered questions regarding a now notorious claim in the dossier that made the case for war, by the then prime minister, that the “assessed intelligence” had established the existence of an active Iraqi WMD programme “beyond doubt”.
Members of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) have told the inquiry that the intelligence on Iraq was in fact “sporadic, limited and patchy”.
Mr Campbell was asked: “If the JIC assessments, when we … reread them, were not to correspond to the phrase ‘beyond doubt’ … would you at that stage say that Parliament had been misled by the prime minister?” He replied: “No, I wouldn’t.”
The next day, however, he wrote to the inquiry saying: “I would like to clarify the following. The reason I said ‘No, it wouldn’t’ [sic] is because … the PM would be entitled to make the judgment he did … and those words [“beyond doubt”] did not have to be in the assessments for him to make that statement….>>>>>
The tides are turning, the spin has been unleashed, the propaganda machines tune up to reap the power and wealth, in the name of false political ideologies or none at all, they so desire! Forget their country, forget their people, forget security and real peace use the double speak to control the fear and act like you’re going to play nice with everyone else!
Leading article: Less war, more peace
16 Jan 2010 It is hard to escape the impression that Britain’s major political parties are coming over all pacifist – or at least are going into the election rather less enthusiastic about military intervention than they once were.
Snip
More surprising, however, and more indicative perhaps of the general political mood, was the Conservatives’ policy document on national security, A Resilient Nation, launched yesterday.
Snip
It also argues for more realism in committing our armed forces and for greater emphasis on conflict prevention and diplomacy. Thus would seem to be ending a decade of active interventionism…..>>>>>
Want to download the Brit Conservative’s “New Direction”, well click this: Conservative approach to National Security, it’s a sixteen page pdf with a great first page of the globe and fetching title.
You can also download their “Green Paper” on same, it’s a thirty page pdf.
Funny how revisionist history follows such similar paths on both sides of the great Atlantic pond, I don’t remember those who call themselves conservatives over there crying out against any invasions nor the damage one would do as to anyones “National Security”!
Take away the aura of menace – and he’s just a glorified PR man
15 Jan 2010 HOW amazing that Alastair Campbell should still have the power to intimidate grown men. Campbell, once Tony Blair’s attack dog, gave evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war this week.
Slated to talk for three hours, he stretched it to six. Crikey, did no-one have the guts to just tell him to put a sock in it?….>>>>>
Watch the Inquiry Live when in Session