THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

depending on a person looks at it, the senate may have lost or recovered their courage. (referring to the conversation of the other day) My links are not working today, but I am talking about the passsing of the 81 billion dollar war spending bill. Personally I think they lost it.

Ican, I personally give you brownie points in repeated persistency; though I disagree with the repeated material.

Please repeat what it is with which you disagree, and why you disagree with it.

No way, Ican, am I going down that well used road again.

You have been refuted, rebutted and disproved on that material so many times, yet you keep trotting it out as though it is brand spanking new every time.

I don't hold it against you and I was serious for giving you points on persistency, but I don't want to keep going over it again. Also for having a sense of humor about it.

Well, I just thought I would ask.

Yes, I "have been refuted and rebutted ... on that material so many times, yet keep trotting it out as though it is brand spanking new every time." That's because I have not been "disproved on that material" at any time. Nor can I be "disproved on that material." Also I have refuted and rebutted "so many times" all those refutations and rebuttals that have been trotted "out as though they were brand spanking new every time."

But yes, let's you and I avoid "going down that well used road again."

Now, I'd like to learn what are your present positions on the following:
1. How well are US efforts going in securing a democracy of the Iraqis own design;
2. How critical to the future security of Americans is the success of US efforts to secure a democracy of the Iraqis own design.

My current answer to 1 is those efforts are going badly.

My current answer to 2 is that success is necessary for our future security.

Plenty of good letters (from the public) in The Independent yesterday and today about the fact that Tony Blair is an untrustworthy lying git.

quote

Blair is a long way from vindication

Sir: The announcement by Mr Blair that he will not take his re-election as vindication of his decision to invade Iraq suggests that there is a possibility that he could be vindicated (interview, 21 April). No doubt that vindication would rest upon the establishment of democracy in Iraq and the advancement of democracy in the Middle East. If this is the case we need to ask a few questions.

How is an invasion of a sovereign country in contravention of international law democratic? How can killing between 10,000 and 100,000 people be taken as democratic? How does marketising an economy, deregulating and privatising it, and only then setting up formal procedures for voting qualify as democratic? How is deceiving Parliament and people over the case for war democratic? How is the politicisation of the intelligence services democratic?

Amid the climate of fear Blair cultivates, how might the rolling back of civil and human rights be deemed to be democratic? How might the broader desire to increase the power of the executive be understood as democratic? These are only some of the issues that require us to think how it might be possible for a firmly anti-democratic process to produce democratic institutions.

It does feel that we are at a watershed with this election and that Blair's return to No 10 will finally establish the separation of those in power from the responsibilities of representative and parliamentary government, and the setting up of a corporate oligarchy, free of any real accountability and able to mould the world to its will.

NEAL CURTIS

NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY

Sir: The "intelligence" was no more than a justification for reporting and inspections, not a justification for war. The intelligence was shown to be sufficiently wrong by the inspectors to throw the issue of WMD in doubt for anyone other than those who were only using it as an excuse. Those people, Blair, Bush and and the rest were determined to execute regime change, whatever the excuse, and they made invasion inevitable by the logistics of their operation, planned long before UN 1441.

It is clear that the decision to prepare for war was made a year before the event. Blair gave himself no options, refused to accept the judgement of the Security Council majority and committed a war crime.

DAVID CUTTS

LONDON N5

Sir: As ever, the Prime Minister avoids the central issue. It is not the desirable consequences of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that are objectionable, it is the killing of a lot of people to achieve that end.

Whilst the aims of his action are more laudable than the aims of, for example, Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, he shares with such people a willingness to kill to to achieve his aims. The purpose of a legal system is to protect society from such people; I trust they will all meet with justice in a court of law.

PETER GAWTHROP

GLASGOW

Sir: The Independent has no need to be ashamed of its failure to condemn those who killed Maria Ruzicka (letter, 21 April). Her death was merely collateral damage, as has been experienced by many thousands of Iraqis in the recent past. She was killed in a resistance operation by the freedom fighters of Iraq against the invaders of their country and the invaders' collaborators.

We should all note the difference in the value of an American life vis-à-vis an Iraqi life in this conflict. Collateral damage to Iraqis is dismissed without even a second thought, officially without even being recorded. Yet when a single American is killed, merely because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, it merits comment and correspondence in your paper.

PETER JANIKOUN

MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE

Sir: What was the response of Blair to the plan to annihilate Falluja? Deploy British troops to help the American forces. In the coverage of the election and electioneering, not a single newspaper, not a lone commentator mentioned Falluja. The amorality of Blair is matched by the psychopathy of the press.

YOUSEF ABDULLA

ORPINGTON, KENT

Sir: Blair says: "I will not take election victory as vindication for the war." Translation: "Please vote for me and forget the lies I told about the war."

STEPHEN WYATT

LONDON SE17

First question: I think it fairly obvious with deaths that keep occurring regardless of having a newly elected government that the efforts are not going well.

Second question: I hope that I have never pretended to know everything but I don't see how securing Iraq is going to affect us over here. In fact it seems to have gotten all the terrorist over there into Iraq where Iraqi's can die instead of us. If that was our aim, I guess we succeeded.

It certainly increased the determination and the recruiting base for people who might wish to do the USA and its allies harm.

Does someone have any news about the "Sgrena case"?

Did I miss the results of the investigation?
(The investigations was said to be lasting over three weeks ..... that was 6 weeks ago.)

This is a brilliant and most interesting article from yesterday's paper. I whish I could bring it to you all, especially to George, but it's archived.

It's asking whether the UN would have performed as well and to better ultimate effect than the US-led action in Iraq.

"I may not be sure about God or the Devil, but I still believe in the United Nations
What if Indian and Nepalese troops rather than Americans had been moving up the Tigris?
Robert Fisk
23 April 2005
There were bagpipers in Scottish tartan, hundreds of soldiers coming to attention with all the snap of Sandhurst and a banner proclaiming "Duty Unto Death", which could have been a chapter title in the dreadful old G A Henty novels of empire that my parents once forced me to read. I had to pinch myself to remember yesterday that this corner of the British Empire was actually southern Lebanon. But there was nothing un-British about the Assam Regiment, whose battle honours go back to 1842 and whose regimental silver still bears the names of Victorian colonels of the Raj. It was Malcolm Muggeridge who once observed that the only Englishmen left were Indians ....."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=632192

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1469235,00.html

Blair blow as secret war doubts revealed

· Attorney General's advice on Iraq is leaked
· He cast doubts on legality of invasion

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer

The Iraq war was thrust dramatically into the election spotlight last night after long-sought government legal advice, cautioning that the invasion could be illegal, was leaked.
The document appears to confirm for the first time that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, had serious reservations about the legality of the conflict, only to change his mind as British and US troops massed on the border of Iraq ready to invade.
The government has steadfastly refused all calls to publish the document, and its sudden disclosure is bound to have an explosive effect on the election campaign, reawakening the prickly issue of voters' trust in Tony Blair, to the dismay of Labour MPs struggling to overcome anger over the war.
The 13 pages of legal advice that Goldsmith drew up on 7 March, according to a report in today's Mail on Sunday, warned that Blair could be in breach of international law for six reasons ranging from the lack of a second United Nations resolution to UN inspector Hans Blix's continuing search for weapons.
Ten days later, he apparently changed his mind, delivering a summary to Blair declaring the war was legal - the cue for the invasion.
The timing of the leak - just 11 days before polling day, with both the Liberal Democrats and the Tories planning to highlight Iraq over the next few days - is bound to trigger a major Whitehall mole hunt.
Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary who resigned over the war, said he had warned former colleagues of the risk that the advice would eventually surface.
'I urged the government to publish the full Attorney General's advice, and warned that so much had become known about it that it was inevitable that it would come out,' he said.
'I regret the government did not publish the advice on their own terms and in their own time, with the result that it has now come out at the worst possible time,' he added. Cook said he had resigned because he considered it wrong to go to war without a second UN resolution. 'What we know now is that the Attorney General appears to have agreed with me,' he said.
According to the report, the 7 March document cites, among potential risks, a strong argument that it was for the UN, not Blair, to decide whether Iraq had defied orders to disarm. While, in theory, the Prime Minister was entitled to take this decision, a court could rule otherwise.
It also questioned whether Britain could rely on UN resolution 1441 - warning of 'serious consequences' if Sad dam Hussein flouted the UN ruling - as grounds for invasion, and said it would be safer to proceed with a second UN resolution, which Blair could not obtain.
According to the newspaper report, the advice also warned it could be difficult to revive UN resolution 678, passed in 1990 when Saddam invaded Kuwait, as justification for the war. Goldsmith highlighted a report by Blix that Iraq was being more compliant.
None of these caveats appeared in the statement Goldsmith published in the House of Lords, on 17 March after giving a summary of his advice to the Cabinet.
The full legal document, apparently disclosed to the newspaper, is understood not to have been seen by the Cabinet.
Although Goldsmith's office stressed last night that he had ultimately concluded the war was legal, and this was his own 'genuinely-held independent view', opposition parties demanded full disclosure of the advice to restore public trust.
'If this government is scared to tell us the truth about something as fundamental as the legal basis for war, what else is being kept from us?' said Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader.
Shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram said it raised 'the most serious questions' not only about the legality of the war but Blair's honesty, adding: 'The Attorney General must now come clean on the advice he originally gave and the Prime Minister must explain the caveats which were excluded from the summary.'
There will be intense speculation over how such a sensitive document could have leaked. It would have circulated within a restricted Whitehall circle, but is understood to have been seen by the Butler inquiry, examining the process by which Britain went to war.
Both Kennedy and Tory leader Michael Howard were already planning to campaign on Iraq, seen as crucial to loss of faith in Labour, with Kennedy also planning to raise the spectre of a future American-led attack on Iran. Writing in The Observer today, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Men zies Campbell stops short of accusing Blair of lying but says he 'misrepresented' the intelligence. He warns that Iraq 'cannot be airbrushed out of the election'.
Howard, meanwhile, accused Blair before the leak emerged of having lied to win re-election. 'He's only taken a stand on one thing in the last eight years - taking Britain to war. And he couldn't even tell the truth about that,' the Tory leader added.
An ICM poll carried out for Vote for Peace, which campaigns for anti-war MPs in marginal constituencies, found this weekend that only seven per cent of Britons would support a US-led war on Iran without UN agreement. More than a third would not support it in any circumstances.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1469235,00.html



Bye-bye Tony. No-one should think they can lie to Parliament and the people and get away with it.

McTag

You beat me to the Guardian story.

Sorry, pal. I nearly dropped the paper when I saw that on the front page.
It's very strong.
And even Michael Howard, his rival here, has taken to calling him "a liar" on air.

In other times, that would be considered a slander, and the victim would sue. In this case, Blair and his handlers let it ride. I wonder why? Not really, I know why. The court case would be very interesting, wouldn't it.

For some time now, you have been able to buy T-shirts here with Tony's picture on, over the legend "BLIAR".

Do the views of those Britons who oppose the war in Iraq, and perhaps the alliance with the United States, also generally support the EU constitution? Any chance that Britons will reject both Blair AND the EU constitution? It can be a bit cold and lonely above the fray, and the air a bit thin in the lofty moral heights to which McTag apparently aspires.

Nah, lots of friendly folk up here, how's the weather down there?

Indeed, very interesting... Haven't heard anything! Maybe the thorough investigation takes a little bit longer than planned....

Realpolitik is all very well George, we all expect our politicians and our managers to be pragmatic men and women. However we are talking here about taking the nation to war. This transcends all. If it was done deliberately on the basis of a falsehood, if the leaders deliberately hoodwinked the people and then their armies went off to kill innocent foreigners, then this is the greatest betrayal and the highest crime. And that seems to me to be what has happened.

McTag,

If all you suggest is true (and I don't think it is), I doubt that these events would even make it to the second page in the list of betrayals and high crimes done by Britain, the British Empire, and England.

Well that may be so, we've been very bad boys through history no doubt. I feel however that nowadays we expect and demand a better standard from our leaders, less or no hypocrisy, fair dealing, reasonable behaviour, certainly acting within the law. Do you believe that is too much to ask, even from such deeply flawed people? I don't. They have people to help with that, lawyers, advisers, strategists, pastors, priests. Mothers who should tell them right from wrong. They should not have to stoop to crime in the course of their tenure.

On one simple matter; if a British cabinet minister is held to have deliberately misled Parliament, then he must resign. (Lord Carrington, while Foreign Secretary, even resigned when a mistake was made on his watch, before the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands, not so very long ago. A principled action which seems light years removed from Mr Blair's conduct.)
So out of this, I am expecting that Mr Blair will be forced to resign. He may bring down the house of cards with him too, which I am not too happy about, but I hope there is no chance that the Tories will get in.
Really though, I consider this a separate matter from the current election, and a more important one.