During the interview, she posed this question:
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?"Blair replied:
"I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO USE AND DEPLOY DIFFERENT ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE THREAT.”We know, Tony.
No matter what we wanted, you would have 'deployed' whatever argument you thought might get us into Iraq alongside you best buddy, George, wouldn't you? In the end, you and the smirking chimp knew so much better than the rest of us, that’s the real point, isn’t it? In a democracy, the elite just can’t afford to let the people decide. They might just do something that doesn’t suit the suits.
Blair continued:
“I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge.”Saddam may have been a monster but, if he had still been in charge, and Bush and Blair hadn‘t invaded, hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive today who are now dead.
I guess even a consummate liar like Tony B would have to admit the dead would have been 'better' off.
“That's why I sympathise with the people who were against it for perfectly good reasons and are against it now”.Pardon me?
I seem to remember you sneering at the peaceniks. Didn’t you say this the day after two million Brits marched in protest against the looming war in Iraq:
"I read the anti-war sites and listen to the protesters and I realise that they haven't a clue, or worse, they just don't give a damn."Blair continued:
“This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. THE THREAT TO THE REGION.”The region?
You mean Israel, don’t you, Tony?
“Also the fact of HOW THAT REGION WAS GOING TO CHANGE AND HOW IN THE END IT WAS GOING TO EVOLVE AS A REGION and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN VERY DIFFICULT TO HAVE CHANGED IT IN THE RIGHT WAY."The right way?
That would the way Israel and the US Neocons (most of whom were Jewish) wanted it, I suppose? If anyone out there is unaware of the real motivation of those who forced Gulf War II upon the rest of us, check out what the honest Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, said in the 5 April 2003, edition of the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz:
"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, MOST OF THE JEWISH, who are pushing President Bush TO CHANGE THE COURSE OF HISTORY."On 14 December 2009, in response to the self-justfications cited above, Ken Macdonald QC, who was Tony Blair’s Director of Public Prosecutions from 2003 to 2006 and Gordon Brown’s until 2008, presented the accusatory essay, INTOXICATED BY POWER, BLAIR TRICKED US INTO WAR, in The Times.
This is it:
“The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. THIS WAS A FOREIGN POLICY DISGRACE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that TONY BLAIR ENGAGED IN AN ALARMING SUBTERFUGE WITH HIS PARTNER GEORGE BUSH AND WENT ON TO MISLEAD AND CAJOLE THE BRITISH PEOPLE INTO A DEADLY WAR THEY HAD MADE PERFECTLY CLEAR THEY DIDN’T WANT, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.The rats are leaving the establishment ship at a wonderfully alarming rate, are they not?
Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?…
BLAIR’S FUNDAMENTAL FLAW WAS HIS SYCOPHANCY TOWARDS POWER… WASHINGTON TURNED HIS HEAD AND HE COULDN’T RESIST THE STAGE OR THE GLAMOUR THAT IT GAVE HIM. IN THIS SENSE HE WAS WEAK AND, AS WE CAN SEE, HE REMAINS SO. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating THE SELF-REGARDING MANTRA THAT ‘HAND ON HEART, I ONLY DID WHAT I THOUGHT WAS RIGHT‘. But THIS IS A NARCISSIST’S DEFENCE AND SELF-BELIEF IS NO ANSWER TO MISJUDGMENT: IT IS CERTAINLY NO ANSWER TO DEATH. ‘Yo, Blair‘, perhaps, was his truest measure…
Ominously for the former Prime Minister, his growing distance from power appears to be loosening some well-placed Whitehall tongues. It seems that the contempt felt by some mandarins for his fancier footwork around the weapons of mass destruction is finally showing in a belated settling of scores….
Yet the position of the inquiry panel is uncertain. So far, apart from some interventions by Sir Roderic Lyne, the former ambassador in Moscow, ITS QUESTIONING HAS BEEN UNCHALLENGING. If this is born of a belief that it creates an atmosphere more conducive to truth, it seems naive… A great and brave struggle against instinct will be necessary. IN BRITISH PUBLIC LIFE, LOYALTY AND SERVICE TO POWER CAN SOMETIMES COUNT FOR MORE TO INSIDERS than any tricky questions of wider reputation. IT’S THE REGARD YOU ARE HELD IN BY YOUR PEERS THAT REALLY COUNTS, SO THAT STEADFASTNESS IN THE FACE OF ATTACK AND THREATENED EXPOSURE BRINGS ITS OWN RICH HIERARCHY OF HONOUR AND REWARD. Disloyalty, on the other hand, means a terrible casting out, a rocky and barren Roman exile that few have the courage to endure…
IT IS PRECISELY THIS PRIVATELY ARRANGED NATURE OF BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT POWER, STUBBORN BEYOND SYMPATHY FOR YEARS IN THE FACE OF THE MODERN WORLD, THAT HAS BROUGHT OUR POLITICS SO LOW. If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt. This would be a serious blow to the integrity of the State. It would not restore trust…
THE TAX ON DISHONESTY IS RISING… CITIZENS BELIEVE DEEPLY IN A DEMOCRATIC RIGHT TO KNOW AND THEY NO LONGER ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR UNWORTHINESS TO ENJOY ITS NOURISHMENT. Naturally, THIS IS A LESS COMFORTABLE WORLD FOR PEOPLE IN POWER, BUT IT’S A MUCH BETTER WORLD FOR EVERYONE ELSE. The real tragedy of Iraq, beyond all the danger and the terrible loss, is that it rendered any affair of the heart between government and people no more than a wisp, like A LIE IN THE WIND. It broke faith…
We have seen enormous acts of courage on the part of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most heart-rending sacrifices have been made… But none of this sprinkles, as he might once have hoped it would, any starlight on Tony Blair. On the contrary, it is entirely the work of WARRIORS THRUST CARELESSLY INTO DEATH’S WAY BY A PRIME MINISTER LOST IN SELF-AGGRANDISEMENT and a governing class too closed to speak truth to power.”
If anyone out there thinks I’m being harsh, associating MacDonald with the bringers of the Black Death, answer this: why did he not speak out when it mattered? Was he really 'tricked into war?' Were the parliamentarians and the press who lusted for it at the time equally 'tricked?'
Ladies and gentlemen, many thousands of us knew the score. We knew why the war was being fought and in who’s behalf. But the mainstream media did not allow us a voice. The establishment, of which Ken MacDonald was an integral part, was banging the drum for war and it didn’t want those unworthy of the 'right to know' afforded the 'nourishment' of any truth contrary to the Blairite spin.
Many of the elite characters slavering for a great slaughter at the time will, indeed, have been 'tricked,' in so far as they chose not to question what they ought to have been questioning. In so far as they did not investigate in any depth what they should have.
MacDonald was one of those who went along with 'a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions.' He wasn’t interested in challenging and/or exposing Tony Blair’s 'sycophancy.' He, with many others, aided and abetted Bush and Blair as they 'went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want.'
The MacDonalds were much better placed to know what the reality was than the many, outside the loop, who protested. And, if they were not aware of the full facts, they would easily have been able to find out what they were if they had chosen to do so.
They didn’t. A great many concerned British citizens, who believed 'deeply in a democratic right to know,' did. That’s why I say Ken MacDonald is a bit of an old, murine ship-leaver.
Nevertheless, if his belated condemnation helps to nail Tony B Liar to the cross, I’d forgive him the long silence on these matters. Maybe.
What MacDonald was up in arms about here has all been known for a very long time, you know. Let me cite a few examples of things that were being said a few years back.
On 14 March 2003, 4 days before the invasion, John Pilger wrote this in The Daily Mirror:
"THE BLAIR GOVERNMENT HAS KNOWN, ALMOST FROM THE DAY IT CAME TO OFFICE IN 1997, THAT IRAQ'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WERE ALMOST CERTAINLY DESTROYED FOLLOWING THE GULF WAR. Of all the pro-war propaganda of Blair and Bush, and their current threats giving Saddam Hussein yet another deadline to disarm, what may be their biggest lie is exposed by this revelation.In May 2003, Tony Benn said this on LBC Radio:
Two weeks ago, a transcript of a United Nations debriefing of Iraqi general Hussein Kamel was obtained by the American magazine, Newsweek, and by Cambridge University analyst, Glen Rangwala (who last month revealed that Blair's 'intelligence Dossier' on Iraq was lifted, word for word, from an American student's thesis).
General Kamel was the West's 'star witness' in its case against Saddam Hussein. He was no ordinary defector. A son-in-law of the Iraqi dictator, he had immense power in Iraq; and when he defected, he took with him crates of secret documents on Iraq's weapons programme. These secrets have been repeatedly cited by George W Bush and his officials as 'evidence' that Iraq still has large quantities of deadly weapons of mass destruction, and that only war can disarm it. Bush, his officials and leading American commentators, have frequently lauded General Kamel as the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons. The Blair government has echoed this.
In 1995, General Kamel was debriefed by senior officials of the United Nations inspections team, then known as UNSCOM, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The complete transcript, now disclosed for the first time, contradicts almost everything Bush and Blair have said about the threat of Iraqi weapons. For example, General Kamel says categorically:
'I ORDERED DESTRUCTION OF ALL CHEMICAL WEAPONS. ALL WEAPONS - BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL, MISSILE, NUCLEAR - WERE DESTROYED.' All that remains, he says, are the blueprints, computer disks and microfiches.
NEWSWEEK SAYS THAT THE CIA AND BRITAIN'S MI6 WERE TOLD THIS; AND BLAIR AND BUSH MUST HAVE BEEN TOLD THE TRUTH. IN OTHER WORDS, IT IS LIKELY THAT IRAQ HAS BEEN SUBSTANTIALLY DISARMED FOR AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS."
"I believe THE PRIME MINISTER LIED TO US AND LIED TO US AND LIED TO US. THE WHOLE WAR WAS BUILT UPON FALSEHOOD AND I THINK THE LONG-TERM DAMAGE WILL BE TO DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN. If you can't believe what you are told by ministers, the whole democratic process is put at risk. YOU CAN'T BE ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH TELLING LIES FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES."On the Panorama programme of 20 March 2005, Robin Cook, the Former Foreign Secretary, said:
"He (Tony B) saw the evidence. He probably saw more of the intelligence than any other single person in government. Therefore HE WAS WELL PLACED TO JUDGE HOW THIN IT WAS… What surprised me, astonished me, about the September dossier was how one sided it was. IT WAS PROPAGANDA, IT WAS NOT AN HONEST PRESENTATION OF INTELLIGENCE".Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House of Commons (its longest-serving member) until he retired in 2005, had a habit of telling the truths the establishment didn't want told.
On 18 March 2003, the day of the great Iraq debate in parliament, I sent a couple of e-mails to some of the most anti-war MPs, which contained information that I thought might undermine the shiny-eyed zealot and those that were spoiling for a fight. I also tried to pass this stuff on to Mr Dalyell, to my mind the most honourable man in parliament, but, unfortunately, he had no e-mail facility. However, I got a surprise that night. The phone rang. It was Tam Dalyell.
As a consequence of our little chat, I promised to post a written copy of the information that I had at my disposal to his home address. I asked Mr. Dalyell a simple question before I hung up and he gave me a simple answer.
My question was:
"How many Kurds, do you believe were killed at Halabja?"He replied:
"About 400".Whenever Halabja was mentioned by the British and American warmongers, they always categorically pronounced that the number of people killed was 5,000. I knew this to be a lie and Mr. Dalyell confirmed it for me during our brief conversation.
A little while after that, I sent him a much larger document than the one I had sent to Glenda Jackson and George Galloway. In total, I provided him with 80 foolscap pages of damning information. However, I never heard from him again and the information that I sent to the other anti-war MPs was not used in that final debate.
I e-mailed the same information to a good many journalists, specifically, to those whose newspapers seemed to be making an effort to stop the war in Iraq before it began. None ever replied.
Interestingly, however, a few months later, Tam Dalyell suggested that several members of Chairman Blair’s entourage were a part of a 'Jewish cabal,' intent on stoking up the fires of war. He first made these opinions known in the US magazine, Vanity Fair. He echoed his accusations on Radio 4's World at One programme, saying that the government of the US was, '… being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers… There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.'
He went on to describe some of the 'neoconservatives' who comprise the enormously influential advisory body, JINSA.
"The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs - I was thinking of Wolfowitz, Deputy Defence Minister Perle, Bolton, Assistant Secretary of State, Feith, Adelman, Abrams and Fleischer. Those people drive this policy…Mr. Dalyell also said that he had 'picked out one person about whom I am extremely concerned, and I have to be blunt about it. That is Lord Levy… I believe his influence has been very important on the Prime Minister and has led to what I see as this awful war and the sack of Baghdad.'
I am worried about my country being led up the garden path on a Likudnik (Ariel) Sharon agenda... Straw, Mandelson and Co. are leading a tremendous drive to sort out the Middle East".
So, I guess it is possible that he didn’t just chuck my 80-page non-dodgy 'dossier' into the bin when he discovered its worryingly off-piste revelations.
The document that I e-mailed to various anti-war MPs on 18 March 2003 may be found here:
http://www.iamanenglishman.com/page.php?iCategoryId=88&iParentId=87
On 7 June 2002, 10 months before Gulf War II began, The Telegraph reported thus:
"Tam Dalyell, the veteran Labour MP, last night said Tony Blair was a worse leader than Margaret Thatcher and consigned him to last place when he ranked the eight Prime Ministers he had known in his parliamentary career… Even Michael Foot was rated a more effective leader by Mr Dalyell, despite presiding over Labour's disastrous election defeat in 1983.On 27 March 2003, The Guardian featured an interview with Tam, in which he said:
Mr Dalyell condemned Mr Blair's ‘presidential’ style… The MP for Linlithgow said Mr Wilson, Mr Callaghan, John Smith, Hugh Gaitskell, Mr Foot and Neil Kinnock were all better leaders."
"My constituency Labour party has just voted to recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as party leader… I agree with this motion. I also believe that… HE SHOULD BE BRANDED AS A WAR CRIMINAL and sent to The Hague."On 18 January 2004, The Sunday Telegraph told us this:
"Mr Dalyell confided to me that he had changed his opinion of Mr Blair. ‘He is not the worst,’ said Mr Dalyell last week. ‘HE IS BY FAR THE WORST.’Suffice it to say, when the time comes for the traitors to be called to account, there is one politician who will be allowed to stir the pot as opposed to occupying it.
Mr Dalyell, 71, announced last week that he would retire at the next election after more than 40 years at Westminster. Mr Blair, perhaps thankful that his adversary was quitting, led the tributes to him.
‘Fiercely independent, Tam's persistence in pursuing causes close to his heart is legendary,’ Mr Blair told the House. The kind remarks by the Prime Minister cut little ice with the member for Linlithgow who, as the longest-serving MP, is also Father of the House…
‘Tony should go,’ he declared."
It won't be Ken MacDonald.
No comments:
Post a Comment