Topic: Chilcot Report (*) - Grijhva Cncivtion

[gqP6w]

Yorkie and I have our disagreements but there is no need for this reply in my opinion!

Missed the smiley showing I wasn't exactly being serious I take it. I offense was taken then I unreservedly apologise as it wasn't my intent.

[Mutton Geoff]

As for the report i will comment after i have read it all, (so i will be a while)

Some of us feared Blair was Bush's poodle at the time and he lapped up the adulation the Congress or was it House of Representatives gave him.

Had he been honest and said it was mainly a regime change i think a lot might have backed him knowing what a despot Saddam was but that is hindsight and as a am totally anti-war it still would not have been enough for me.

[Mutton Geoff]

Missed the smiley showing I wasn't exactly being serious I take it. I offense was taken then I unreservedly apologise as it wasn't my intent.

your smiley didn't appear as a smiley on my laptop so call it quits .

[Millie]

Missed the smiley showing I wasn't exactly being serious I take it. I offense was taken then I unreservedly apologise as it wasn't my intent.

What smiley?

[The North Bank]

For those who can't be bothered to read the entire report, here's a short summary:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/I0f8NBlmwwE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/I0f8NBlmwwE</a>

Thanks for that, covers everything, 13 years before any report was published.

[gqP6w]

What smiley?

The one that doesn't seem to have appeared properly, either tapatalk error or user error (my guess the latter)

[TepidT2O]

As for the report i will comment after i have read it all, (so i will be a while)

Some of us feared Blair was Bush's poodle at the time and he lapped up the adulation the Congress or was it House of Representatives gave him.

Had he been honest and said it was mainly a regime change i think a lot might have backed him knowing what a despot Saddam was but that is hindsight and as a am totally anti-war it still would not have been enough for me.

I think you're totally right there Geoff...

You could have made a decent case for regime change.  This was a man who used Sarin and Mustard gas on people.  Awful man.

Still, it wouldn't have changed the complete lack of a plan for what to do after deposing him.  This lack of a plan was highlighted at the time too, so it should have come as a surprise to no one.

[Mutton Geoff]

I think you're totally right there Geoff...

You could have made a decent case for regime change.  This was a man who used Sarin and Mustard gas on people.  Awful man.

Still, it wouldn't have changed the complete lack of a plan for what to do after deposing him.  This lack of a plan was highlighted at the time too, so it should have come as a surprise to no one.

Problem is an apologies to our cousins over the pond when have the US ever had a plan for peace after their wars?

For example I know they are heading into some sort of autonomy now but they had an excellent chance to create a free Kurdistan nation after the invasion might have had to get the Turkish government on board but it was possible.

[PluckyUnderdog]

I'm not condoning Blair or feeling sorry for him in any way here, but he does have the air of a man who's past decisions have now caught up with him and he does seem genuinely remorseful. Maybe I'm not a very good reader of people, haha.

Slightly off topic (I apologise - not trying to derail the thread here, just a small point) but I bet you anything that Bush doesn't care one iota about the ramifications of invading Iraq. I don't think he knew what day of the week it was half the time, to be fair. Probably still doesn't. 

[TepidT2O]

Problem is an apologies to our cousins over the pond when have the US ever had a plan for peace after their wars?

For example I know they are heading into some sort of autonomy now but they had an excellent chance to create a free Kurdistan nation after the invasion might have had to get the Turkish government on board but it was possible.

True...

Of course we can't rerun history.  If we'd left sadam in place things might have got worse again.  But we will never know.

[stevedo]

True...

Of course we can't rerun history.  If we'd left sadam in place things might have got worse again.  But we will never know.

As Chilcot intimated, it wasn't a binary choice at that moment in March. Containment was still an option. Blair acknowledged that in the evidence. The US moved the goalposts and Blair with Straw acquiesced. See 508 in the summary.

[TepidT2O]

As Chilcot intimated, it wasn't a binary choice at that moment in March. Containment was still an option. Blair acknowledged that in the evidence. The US moved the goalposts and Blair with Straw acquiesced. See 508 in the summary.

Of course.

I think the motivation for this comes back to 9/11.  I guess it's impossible to actually know, but I suspect that the slaughter there changed the perspective of the British government (on both sides of the house) to one which was much more likely to support their allies (the US) at all costs. Much more likely to blindly support them after the attack on them.

One area of the whole debacle is getting over simplified for me.  The whole question of the "evidence" of WMDs was not a binary issue either.  Intelligence like this is never a binary issue, and from what I've read, if it's 70/30 then you are doing extraordinarily well.  The problem was (it seems) that he intelligence was more 51/49, and rather than present that clearly, it was made to seem much more certain.
Again though, I think we can see the shadow of 9/11 in the background.  Intelligence there said there might be an attack, but it wasn't seen as terribly credible.  They made the wrong judgement call then, and I wonder if this made the US/UK governments much more wary about ignoring threats which were much more of a 50:50 call.

[redmark]

Of course.

I think the motivation for this comes back to 9/11.  I guess it's impossible to actually know, but I suspect that the slaughter there changed the perspective of the British government (on both sides of the house) to one which was much more likely to support their allies (the US) at all costs. Much more likely to blindly support them after the attack on them.

One area of the whole debacle is getting over simplified for me.  The whole question of the "evidence" of WMDs was not a binary issue either.  Intelligence like this is never a binary issue, and from what I've read, if it's 70/30 then you are doing extraordinarily well.  The problem was (it seems) that he intelligence was more 51/49, and rather than present that clearly, it was made to seem much more certain.
Again though, I think we can see the shadow of 9/11 in the background.  Intelligence there said there might be an attack, but it wasn't seen as terribly credible.  They made the wrong judgement call then, and I wonder if this made the US/UK governments much more wary about ignoring threats which were much more of a 50:50 call.

The claims on WMD were never strong. Iraq was known to have had historic WMD capabilities - the west had been involved in developing them, and there was plenty of evidence of the use of chemical weapons, and some of biolgical weapons, in the Iran-Iraq war. But there was plenty of doubt that there remained any active programme, and the weapons inspectors were doing a job - and not finding active capabilities.

A post-invasion US-led inspectorate and support found that there had been no active programme, but that Iraq had retained the knowledge and capacity to restart WMD programmes in the future.

[CHOPPER]

C- an middlin' for the perceived DAWK intellect.

2.5 millions words?...... 'appen I dare say one will dissect and decant for all us pram pushers? Due to thine experience in past military debacles in us with b'aht nowt knowledge. An expert in failure some might say.


All aboard the pram ride dour one     *harumph*

[TepidT2O]

The claims on WMD were never strong. Iraq was known to have had historic WMD capabilities - the west had been involved in developing them, and there was plenty of evidence of the use of chemical weapons, and some of biolgical weapons, in the Iran-Iraq war. But there was plenty of doubt that there remained any active programme, and the weapons inspectors were doing a job - and not finding active capabilities.

A post-invasion US-led inspectorate and support found that there had been no active programme, but that Iraq had retained the knowledge and capacity to restart WMD programmes in the future.

Difficult to be certain if intelligence suggests otherwise though.

Chemical weapons can remain active for many decades, and are easily hidden from sight.  There was a fantastic documentary on them on BBC 4 last week which is well worth watching....

Whilst the Chilcot reports questions the use of intelligence, the very nature of it being so uncertain and so difficult to read, makes it likely that the scenario will arise again

Of course, that's assuming that there wasn't already an agreement to invade Iraq and the WMD was just a convenient tool to trigger an invasion.  And of course most of us assume that there was..

[dirkster]

You don't fool me with your false emotional address Mr Blair. You're a good actor and a terrible liar. Utterly unconvincing display for me that speech.
You will forever have blood on your hands. I hope you're haunted by your folly to your grave.

[B0151?]

I'm not condoning Blair or feeling sorry for him in any way here, but he does have the air of a man who's past decisions have now caught up with him and he does seem genuinely remorseful. Maybe I'm not a very good reader of people, haha.

Thought he spoke well and convincingly (although I think he's always been good at that?). I'm inclined to believe what he said mostly about his motivations - which is the key thing for me when you are throwing around things like evil and war criminal, murderer etc. I just can't make sense of the idea that Blair is this monster.

Bare in mind I was only 9 in 2003 so don't have that same level of strong opinion that a lot of people understandably have from being involved in the argument and following it as it happened.

Lessons being learnt are most definitely more important than Blair being hung, drawn and quartered, when you consider that if it wasn't Blair in the seat it would have been someone else making this huge decision, very possibly going the same way. The only thing is, as much as there are lessons from Iraq, there are different lessons that should be learnt from the past few years also. Retreating from the questions altogether certainly isn't an answer.

[CHOPPER]

You don't fool me with your false emotional address Mr Blair. You're a good actor and a terrible liar. Utterly unconvincing display for me that speech.
You will forever have blood on your hands. I hope you're haunted by your folly to your grave.

Pram pusher!

[HarryLabrador]

For those who can't be bothered to read the entire report, here's a short summary:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/I0f8NBlmwwE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/I0f8NBlmwwE</a>

And I will add Tony Benn's speech.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/HfXmpJRZPYI" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/HfXmpJRZPYI</a>

[redmark]

Difficult to be certain if intelligence suggests otherwise though.

Chemical weapons can remain active for many decades, and are easily hidden from sight.  There was a fantastic documentary on them on BBC 4 last week which is well worth watching....

Whilst the Chilcot reports questions the use of intelligence, the very nature of it being so uncertain and so difficult to read, makes it likely that the scenario will arise again

Of course, that's assuming that there wasn't already an agreement to invade Iraq and the WMD was just a convenient tool to trigger an invasion.  And of course most of us assume that there was..

But there were weapons inspectors on the ground at the time, who on several occasions could not corroborate US intelligence, and occasionally flatly contradicted it.

Of course, the extremely influential PNAC group had long identified Iraq as being on the list for regime change. One of the least terrible outcomes of the Iraq war was that they could not move on to the next on the list, Iran.


* For me, this is also indicated in a couple of the most interesting lines in the memo - referring to the Iraqi situation as the most difficult "yet", "so far"; that there was a programme of action the US was following, that Iraq was neither first nor last.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

There's also an interesting bit on page 6: "The idea would be to catch the regime off balance, strike hard and quickly and get it to collapse. The obvious danger is it doesn't collapse. And there is a risk of CW being used."

That doesn't exsctly fit with someone who knows that the intelligence on Chemical Weapons is false.

I think that is pushing it a little far - Iraq had already used 'conventional' chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war and there was certainly the risk that they retained that capability in a combat environment. The remark comes in the section on the military operation and I think talks more of the risk that CW might be used on the troops.

That is very different to the question of whether they were able to carry out large-scale missile deployed chemical attacks on Western Europe, which was what was sold to the public with the 45 minute claim.

Elsewhere in the memo though he does refer to WMDs which follows the point you were making although it could easily be referring to the risk of attacks being made on Arab Neighbours/Israel/his own civilians which all were far more technologically achievable than firing long range intercontinental missiles.

[Alan_X]

I think that is pushing it a little far - Iraq had already used 'conventional' chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war and there was certainly the risk that they retained that capability in a combat environment. The remark comes in the section on the military operation and I think talks more of the risk that CW might be used on the troops.

That is very different to the question of whether they were able to carry out large-scale missile deployed chemical attacks on Western Europe, which was what was sold to the public with the 45 minute claim.

Elsewhere in the memo though he does refer to WMDs which follows the point you were making although it could easily be referring to the risk of attacks being made on Arab Neighbours/Israel/his own civilians which all were far more technologically achievable than firing long range intercontinental missiles.

That's fair comment.

[redmark]

That is very different to the question of whether they were able to carry out large-scale missile deployed chemical attacks on Western Europe, which was what was sold to the public with the 45 minute claim.

From what I recall, the 45 minute claim referenced British troops stationed in Cyprus, rather than suggesting that Iraq retained any mechanism for hitting mainland western Europe.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

From what I recall, the 45 minute claim referenced British troops stationed in Cyprus, rather than suggesting that Iraq retained any mechanism for hitting mainland western Europe.

I'm on my phone so hard to link but the wiki article has the references. 45 minutes was the time they would be able to deploy after an order. TB repeated this in an article in the guardian. The Star led with 45 minutes to chemical warfare. The S** led with Brits 45 minutes from doom and in only in the article states that they were referring to troops in Cyprus. As far as I can tell not a great deal was done to correct the generalisations

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

[Sammy5IsAlive]

I'm on my phone so hard to link but the wiki article has the references. 45 minutes was the time they would be able to deploy after an order. TB repeated this in an article in the guardian. The Star led with 45 minutes to chemical warfare. The S** led with Brits 45 minutes from doom and in only in the article states that they were referring to troops in Cyprus. As far as I can tell not a great deal was done to correct the generalisations

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

Still struggling to link but if you google 45 minute claim big issue independent there is an interesting article from 2004 about the issue

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[gqP6w]

Is it this one

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/confusion-grows-as-minister-insists-45-minute-claim-was-not-a-big-issue-67800.html

[outlaw_nas]

Does it mention anything about Doctor Kelly's death?

[So… Howard Philips]

Problem is an apologies to our cousins over the pond when have the US ever had a plan for peace after their wars?

For example I know they are heading into some sort of autonomy now but they had an excellent chance to create a free Kurdistan nation after the invasion might have had to get the Turkish government on board but it was possible.

The Americans did a pretty good job with the Marshall plan in Germany and McArthur running a devestated Japan.

Where it went wrong in Iraq was that there was no plan, Jay Garner was doing a decent job but was replaced by another neo con ideologue, Paul Bremer, who sacked off the Iraqi army and any Baathist government officials. In Germany the allies worked the less reprehensible ex Nazis to rebuild the country but the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld didn't have the sense, intellect or historical knowledge to put a sensible alternative to Saddam's regime together. Rumsfeld, the Def Sec who was crowing about "invasion lite", as if it was some form of marketing ploy.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Is it this one

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/confusion-grows-as-minister-insists-45-minute-claim-was-not-a-big-issue-67800.html

Yeah that's the one cheers mate.

The Campbell email in there - I've never subscribed to the idea that the government outright lied to the country but they were certainly keen to manage the media to get the public onside for what they wanted to do - there was a real lack of tranparency

 

[Twelfth Man]

Jeremy Corbyn should be hanged at the Hague. As a progressive club and City I hope RAWK (Hillary fans) put this on a banner or some shit.

[TepidT2O]

Not sure....

Eh?

[Circa1892]

Blair must think about this every single hour of every day. Just watching him (especially seeing how much he's aged in 13 years), absolutely haunted. (and rightly so to be fair)

[Rob Dylan]

I still can't get my head round why Blair was apparently so determined to go to war. I get that after 9/11, there was a desire to be more proactive in dealing with potential threats, and also that Blair felt we had a duty to stand alongside the US in what he saw almost as a fight to defend civilization - but those are vague, idealistic notions, and Blair had always been a pragmatist, not an idealist. Why did he choose this isue to stop being pragmatic? I just don't get why he was so determined to take all the risks involved with going to war when Iraq were not a threat to us, especially as we were already involved in Afghanistan.

[Skeeve]

The Americans did a pretty good job with the Marshall plan in Germany and McArthur running a devestated Japan.

Even those plans are not perfect when the americans still have forces in those countries 70 years on though. 

[Circa1892]

Ignoring the Blair side of this and (horribly I'm sorry) ignoring temporarily the disaster it caused to the people of Iraq.

When you look at the whole lack of equipment, planning etc - Iraq was the final, final proof Britain is not a major power.

[So… Howard Philips]

Even those plans are not perfect when the americans still have forces in those countries 70 years on though. 

True and the Japanese regularly protest about their presence but they may need them if N Korea kicks off. Alternatively the American presence may cause N Korea to kick off!

Even though they may have forces there (where don't they have forces?) Germany and Japan are economically successful, functioning democracies whereas Iraq has been left in a sectarian mess where a proportion of the population yearn for Saddam's good old days.

[redmark]

Clare Short on Newsnight can piss off. Along with Ann Clwyd, one of the MPs who whipped most of the PLP into voting with Blair.

Good article from Keir Starmer.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/06/chilcot-lessons-war-enshrined-in-law

[Skeeve]

Clare Short on Newsnight can piss off. Along with Ann Clwyd, one of the MPs who whipped most of the PLP into voting with Blair.

Are you saying that she threatened to resign, changed her mind and got people into line and then resigned shortly afterwards anyway?

[redmark]

I still can't get my head round why Blair was apparently so determined to go to war. I get that after 9/11, there was a desire to be more proactive in dealing with potential threats, and also that Blair felt we had a duty to stand alongside the US in what he saw almost as a fight to defend civilization - but those are vague, idealistic notions, and Blair had always been a pragmatist, not an idealist. Why did he choose this isue to stop being pragmatic? I just don't get why he was so determined to take all the risks involved with going to war when Iraq were not a threat to us, especially as we were already involved in Afghanistan.

I think the US was going into Iraq, regardless. Blair perhaps came to the conclusion (with the sort of advice that isn't going to be broadcast to Chilcot) that the dangers arising from a unilateral US action which went badly outweighed the risks of us taking part, or even the risks of 'misleading' parliament to get there.

The US getting dragged into a regional conflict alone, may have been regarded as globally unstabilising.

[redmark]

Are you saying that she threatened to resign, changed her mind and got people into line and then resigned shortly afterwards anyway?

That's pretty much how I remember it, yes .