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    Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

    Blair: 'I would still have thought it right to remove him, Saddam Hussein'

    In other words, any lie would have sufficed, as long as Blair and his master could invade a country that posed no immediate threat. Well, none of us saw that one coming, not even before the invasion of Iraq.

    Pity that disgusting war criminal won't stand trial in The Hague.

    #2
    Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

    I have to say that I bloody well hope so.

    Because if Blair thought we shouldn't invade if Saddam didn't have WMDs, and then was complicit in the invention of false evidence that there were WMDs, you'd have to wonder what the fuck was going on.

    Comment


      #3
      Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

      An incredible piece of slime, really, isn't he?

      Comment


        #4
        Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

        I'm really not convinced this was ever about Iraq, its WMDs, the oil, or the Kurds, or anything. This increasingly seems to have been about George W Bush saying to other western leaders "Saddam's said he's going to try and kill my Daddy if he ever gets the chance, so can we convince people of some reason to kill him first instead?".

        I'm not saying Saddam wasn't evil, but it maybe shows that even modern, democratically-elected leaders could behave like medieval kings when they're given the chance and the power to do so.

        Comment


          #5
          Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

          Nah, it had nothing to do with Saddam blowing raspberries at Bush Sr, I don't think. It was mainly driven by the assorted millennialist Christian maniacs and their different agendas, and partly by rank corruption favouring pals in the military and instruction industries (Halliburton anyone?) especially. I suppose all kinds of people had all kinds of different reasons to agitate for an elective war, buttressed by an unbelievably arrogant and even more unbelievably ignorant expectation that the war would be over in a matter of a few weeks.

          I can't quite figure out Blair's motivation. Not Crazy Christian endgame notions. I don't suppose large-scale corruption. I'm sure there was a bit of seeing himself as Thatcher to Bush's Reagan (that special relationship). Perhaps even a bit of that occasional self-serving idealism which would want Blair to topple the evil Saddam. Perhaps it was the hubristic idea of writing history, which certainly gave Bush a hard-on.

          Whatever the case, Blair cannot reasonably blame faulty intelligence on WMDs, because even amateur observers on football message boards knew — not suspected, but knew — that there were no WMDs. Because experts on Iraq and WMDs said so. We knew it was a lie then.

          But Blair is now essentially saying that WMDs were just a ruse, that he'd have entered into an elective war anyway, giving as a reason his personal dislike for a foreign leader who posed no threat to Britain. The obvious question is why he did not agitate for way against even worse tyrants (Omar al-Bashir in Sudan for a fucking start). I hope the BBC asked him that question.

          His admission, if what has been reported constitutes the essence of Blair's statements, would be utterly astonishing. "I've led my nation into a war even though no threat existed." Well, we knew, but Blair has never admitted that.

          But then Blair knows that many people think entering an elective war for regime change was OK, as though Bush 'n' Blair were avenging angels.

          Comment


            #6
            Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

            I think that's very fair, G-Man. There were lots of motivations from lots of people.

            If I were to try and ascribe them to individuals, I'd suggest:

            Cheney was largely motivated by oil contracts, military contracts, and there was a degree of pragmatism in the sense that he probably thought the majority of voters for his party wanted to see some vengeance against ragheaded terrorists, so it was political expediency.

            Rumsfeld, and his cadre of people like Wolfowitz and Perle, genuinely believed in American Exceptionalism, but more than that, they desperately wanted to prove that America could go in and sort out bad guys with a relatively small military force (compared to Powell/Schwarzkopf doctrine), and get out quickly. This rapid, and relatively cheap, projection of US power would then be able to be used in all kinds of ways and places, not least as political leverage against their perceived enemies.

            Bush, I suspect, was partly about Bush Sr, partly talked into it by his VP and defense chiefs, a bit instinctively inclined because of all his oil buddies talking it up, and partly a bit millenialist.

            Blair, though, is a weird one - he's a lying warmongering cunt, alright. But I don't suspect the degree of cynicism here. I think his unpleasant messianic tendencies were wedded to all the talk of being welcomed as liberators with flowers given to soldiers. I think he genuinely thought he was going to save the world and be loved for it. I think that was a large part of the motivation - along with a Thatcher to Bush's Reagan thing. And, I suspect, he also thought our presence might temper the worst excesses of the likes of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, which is why he was always trying to push the UN line which the Bush admin, Powell possibly excepted, never gave a flying fuck about.

            Maybe that gives him more credit than he deserves, but it's roughly where I assumed he was coming from, all the way through.

            Comment


              #7
              Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

              I think Blair's motivation was to bask in power's reflected glow. His instinct has always been to side with, to butter up, to be mates with, the powerful and the rich. It's a common thread through everything he's done in politics.

              But it's not just him who should be under scrutiny here. Several hundred British MPs voted for this madness, despite - as G-Man says - the fact that even amateurs on a football messageboard could see right through the case. If more people in parliament had shown backbone and basic intelligence in 2003 we wouldn't be having this now.

              Comment


                #8
                Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                As LLR (implicitly) suggests, it's hard to see what role the Crazy Christians had in the Iraq war. There was a little bit of cheerleading, sure, but I don't think they had much to do with the impetus. That's not to say they weren't very much at the centre of much else that was wrong witht he Bush administration, but I don't think they had a lot to do with Iraq.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                  The first term was pretty disappointing in Blairite terms. Some left over old Labour commitments got done, but the so-called public sector reform didn't. He was stuck with people like Frank Dobson at Health and Ken Livingstone as London mayor. I think he just got fed up with dealing with health service managers and the like, and thought the military were his kind of people. And of course power worship.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                    You're digging too deep, what motivated Blair was simply that it was "the right thing to do" according to his beliefs. No need to look for militaro-industrial vested interests, it is actually much more scary as it points out, yet again, how utterly irrationnal people can be...

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                      I think you give him far too much credit there.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                        Not that it justifies the invasion or anything, but I believe that almost everyone in the Anglo-American coalition believed that Saddam did indeed have a chemical weapons program. They may have differed in their views about how close it was to being weaponized, or what kinds of stockpiles they had, but I think that not finding *anything* was a major surprise to everybody.

                        Including the Iraqis. I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that debriefings of Iraqi military officers indicated that they were all convinced that Saddam had hidden chemical weapons and was waiting for the right time to use them.

                        I mean, the thing about the run-up to the war is that though there was a total absence of evidence being turned up by Hans Blix and the like, Saddam didn't fall over himself to co-operate and show that he had no weapons. He acted shifty. It was an interesting balancing act - he had to act innocent enough to give the UN pause before agreeing to invade, while acting guilty enough that people would believe that he had a deterrent in his back pocket.

                        My guess on Blair is that he bought into the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz thing to the extent that he thought the Americans were capable of winning any war, any time (and, face it, the initial march into Kabul was pretty spectacular as a demonstration of the ability to project power across the globe in a heartbeat). I think Blair thought that both war and victory was inevitable and that it was better to have some chits in with the winners than not.

                        (Possibly this is just a complicated way of echoing E10).

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                          Antonio Gramsci wrote:

                          Saddam didn't fall over himself to co-operate and show that he had no weapons.
                          That stance was also influenced, surely, by the 'sovereign power' factor ... an indignant Saddam wondering "How dare they rummage around in my back yard!"

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                            I agree with AG. I think Rumsfeld, among others, really believed Saddam had dangerous weapons pointed at us. That's no defense of him, of course. It suggests a degree of paranoia, willful ignorance and perhaps plain old stupidity. Who knows. I don't care why he continues to push a position based on obvious lies. There's nothing that could be revealed about his psychology that could possibly redeem him.

                            With the American Right, and even some of the Left, there's a lot of "when all you have is a hammer, everything you see are nails" with respect to the US military. There seems to be a belief - more of a faith, really - that the most powerful military in the world ought to be able to sort out any problem. The logic is "we won two world wars and the Cold War, surely we can sort out (name a country)."

                            Of course, if they just read Art of War, they'd see that Sun Tzu understood a long time ago that winning battles is not what wins wars. To win a war you have to snuff out the enemy's willingness to fight and/or make them realize that it's simply not worth it to continue. But that's a subject for another day. It was true thousands of years ago and it's true now.

                            But in general, I don't think it's especially smart or useful to spend too much effort wondering about a politician's motivations. It's sufficient to just evaluate their policy proposals and judge them on their face. And when they lie, it's enough to just call them out on that. Who cares really why they're lying? Is there a defensible motivation for a lie that causes thousands of deaths? No, so why bother parsing it.

                            I bring it up because there's a tendency in our country, at least, for public "debate" to devolve into discussions about what the other side's "real objectives" are. Becuase it's a discussion that is, by its nature, largely based on speculation, and that then opens up the floor for arguments without enough actual facts to back them up, and then it's a short step from there to intellectually dihonest bullshit like Obama is a socialist (he's not even a liberal, really) or 9/11 was an inside job or whatever.

                            I'm not saying that any discussion on this thread is intellectual dishonesty, but by focusing too much on motivations and psychoanalyzing, we crack open a window where that sort of nonsense can begin to seep in.

                            Maybe I'm not expressing that well.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                              But in general, I don't think it's especially smart or useful to spend too much effort wondering about a politician's motivations. It's sufficient to just evaluate their policy proposals and judge them on their face. And when they lie, it's enough to just call them out on that. Who cares really why they're lying? Is there a defensible motivation for a lie that causes thousands of deaths? No, so why bother parsing it.
                              I don't think I agree, Reed. In a court of law, the inquest of the motivation of a crime — the motive — is an important part of a trial. We know the accused is guilty, but we need to know the whole story to know exactly how guilty he is.

                              In my opinion, Dick, Don, Dubya and the rest should be jailed as war criminals (I can dream, can't I?), but I'd argue there are different degrees of culpabilities. If Cheney was motivated by corruption and Bush by a mixture of wide-eyed adventurism and confused revenge for 9/11, then surely Cheney is more culpable than Bush.

                              It's not enough to know they lied. That can be explained away. It is necessary to know if Cheney sent US troops to die in Iraq so that he and his buddies can get richer or Blair whether put the lives of British soldiers at risk because of personal vanity, so that their apologists may have no defence for these guys' unforgivable warmongering.

                              History needs to record not just the what and how but also the why.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                I don't think I agree, Reed. In a court of law, the inquest of the motivation of a crime — the motive — is an important part of a trial. We know the accused is guilty, but we need to know the whole story to know exactly how guilty he is.
                                The main point of understanding a suspect's motivation is to lend credence to the assertion that he/she did it. Not so much why.

                                And in any event, I'm not saying motivation isn't important at all - I don't mean to anyway - but that speculation on motivation absent smoking-gun/hard evidence to prove them, is not useful.

                                Maybe Cheney was trying to enrich his buddies at Halliburton. Or maybe he joined Halliburton's board and hangs out with guys like that because they share a similar pre-formed ideology about American power. Not all correlations are cause and effect. Sometimes two things that come together may be the effect of some other cause. Or maybe it's just a coincidence - unlikely, but possible.

                                I'm not aware of any solid evidence on this point and I don't think we're going to get any. So it's better to focus on what we do know.

                                I don't deny the value of international laws on war crimes, but the whole point of rule of law - or one of the points - is that the law can spell out, in advance, which actions are crimes and what the sanctions for those crimes. It should be clear cut such that a trial can just look at the evidence of what happened and not get into the murky waters of psychology. And, importantly, the law will have established the steps a country has to go through to prospectively justify military action. That way, if the war crimes law works the way it should, political leaders won't be able to get away with it by claiming post hoc that their motivations were good.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                  G.Man wants a hyphen wrote:
                                  It's not enough to know they lied.
                                  I'm still not convinced they lied.

                                  I'm with you that removal of WMDs was probably not the real motivation for getting rid of Saddam Hussein - I tend, like Reed, to think that there was a Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheney line of thinking that said: "hey, we need to overthrow some nasty governments in far off places so we can project American power violently and scare people into behaving the way we want". And I think there was a debate in the spring of 2002 about how they were going to do that, post-Afghanistan (ha!), and given Saddam's history, they decided that WMDs were the most plausible casus bellus they could come up with - the one they thought they could most convincingly sell to the world (and possibly to the President as well).

                                  For that to work, though, there had to be *some* evidence of WMDs. - which, helpfully, Saddam kept providing by his shifty actions vis a vis inspectors, boats he made to his military commanders, etc. They took this evidence, like a barrister and marshalled it into a case that said "Saddam definitely has WMDs". In doing so, did they overinterpret the bits of evidence that they had? Sure. Ignore evidence that was contrary to their thesis? Yes, absolutely. But what politician doesn't when setting policy? That's standard in the policy-making process of virtually every country I know of - the difference here is just that the stakes were much, much higher.

                                  So, stupid, reckless, incorrect, morally wrong - but liars? That would mean that they never believed WMDs existed, and I just don't think that's true.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                    They did lie. I'm pretty sure they really thought Iraq had chemical weapons (if they really thought there was nothing at all, they'd have been much more circumspect about the chances of actually finding concrete evidence after the invasion). However, they crafted evidence to talk this up. The policy drove the "evidence", rather than the other way round. The plan was always to invade, and the role of the "evidence" was simply to seek to convince a sceptical public and dithering legislators; the principals in the drama were already convinced.

                                    (Casus belli, incidentally. Genitive. Bellum, bellis, second declension neuter; "war".)

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                      Let's not forget the influence of the Israel lobbyists; this article from January 2003 is written by Per Ahlmark, Sweden's most ardent Israel supporter. Translated using Google translate, but quite intelligable, I would say. These people actually thought that democratization of Iraq, would lead to a kind of Domino effect, where the rest of the raba world would follow suit, thus removing the threat for Israel, for ever Amen.

                                      "This is probably the future of Iraq
                                      Published 2003-01-25 00:10

                                      Let us for a moment ignore the routine debate in Europe about Iraq. Serious things must be taken seriously. What will happen now - in fact, not in the EU countries illusions?

                                      The war, which is likely to begin in February or March, can only be avoided in two ways. Either Saddam Hussein will be devoted to its own, that is shot by a pair of Iraqi generals who eventually succeed in a coup. It is unlikely, the tyrant's many security agencies are too effective.

                                      Or get Saddam and his family asylum in a dictatorship, that makes an agreement with the United States to the former leader need not be extradited for trial. The solution is not likely. Saddam does not trust agreement but often in their own rhetoric about future victories. Perhaps he prefers to go into a final battle with his "faithful", that is the most hated in his Tikrit clan.

                                      Therefore, it will be enough of war before the desert heat makes it difficult for U.S. military operations. Inspectors from the UN plays a minor role. Either they'll find - by coincidence, by a defector or for tips from Washington - some stock weapons of mass destruction. It is demonstrably "material breach" of UN resolution's meaning and triggering an American invasion.

                                      Or the inspectors find nothing, as Saddam's arsenals are cleverly hidden in its vast territory (and possibly partially located on foreign territory). But Iraq has refused to include in its 12 000-page report, December 8 last year was telling a few thousand tonnes of chemical and biological weapons, as previously disclosed, there are today. USA and England will interpret the silence as sabotage, and launch the invasion to end the Baath Party's reign of terror.

                                      Will the war be conducted with or without UN support? If no major weapons caches dug up, it will be possible for Russia and France to obstructing and impose conditions. Their Iraq policy is quite pragmatic and often cynical, it has for years been based on favorable oil and trade agreements with the Baghdad government. France was Saddam's Osirak reactor for big money and have preliminary oil agreements with the regime will soon fall. Russia has a similar and very large financial interests.

                                      If the UN Security Council yet to agree, that is if Russia and France accepts the war to disarm Saddam, we know that the United States in some form is likely to have guaranteed to Paris and Moscow, a significant portion of future oil revenues. If the veto is in America have not been able or willing to buy their colleagues in the Security Council.

                                      In both cases, the U.S. troops to launch the war after inspectors quickly removed from the country. United States know they have to choose between a non-nuclear war now and a nuclear inferno of three four years.

                                      But if the UN refuses to endorse the action becomes political support for U.S. operations limited and criticism can be intense. Now that Saddam has fallen, and millions of Iraqis have begun to rejoice in their new freedom, however, the protests outside world to decay. Eager Russian and French oil traders are among the first to arrive at the new Baghdad.

                                      The United States is likely to play a powerful role also in the new Iraq's first year. The troops will protect the country from civil war, ensuring that the next government is emerging through the agreement (and subsequent free elections) and that Iraq becomes a kind of federation. Above all, America's Army to seek out the hitherto hidden, enormous quantities of weapons of mass destruction, including Saddam's projects for atomic bombs.

                                      For when the dictator is gone, the Iraqi technicians and military officers to tell the U.S. where the arsenals are hidden. We can count on for many weeks to see the TV news about Saddam's weapons caches and torture dungeons, and of course the luxury of several of his palaces.

                                      By contrast, the Bush administration after the war to ensure that the Iraqis (and world) also recognizes that America's presence is not about occupation, but about liberation. Washington encourages enough this year, a number of countries and international organizations to help Iraq build.

                                      Probably, it will follow several of the proposals that Kenneth Pollack presented in the chapter "Rebuilding Iraq" in his groundbreaking book "The Threatening Storm." I do not think it has happened in modern history that a large and complex military conflict has been explained, justified and analyzed in advance in such a masterly way that Pollack's work (see my DN-column 9 / 12 last year).

                                      A new reason to make swift U.S. action is necessary, of course, the crisis surrounding North Korea's nuclear bombs. These confirm the importance of preventing Iraq also becomes a nuclear power. In addition, Washington must soon undertake a far more active diplomacy to reduce the growing threats posed by Kim Jong Il's nuclear program.

                                      And a successful operation in Iraq is sending an important signal to U.S. friends and foes: now we travel opposition to weapons orgies of "rouge states" rogue states.

                                      Something like this, I believe that the conflict surrounding Iraq, developed in 2003. We can ignore the current EU Talks in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. For the most powerful democracy has finally decided: the mass murderer should not control the future of the world.
                                      Per Ahlmark are author, former Deputy Prime Minister and independent columnist in the Daily News

                                      "

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                        The lies I was referring to were the ones shortly after the the war began. Mission Accomplished and all of the talk about the insurgency being small groups of "no hopers" and all of that.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                          Ex-Director of Public Prosecutions hears that he won't be getting any extra gongs in the New Year's Honours List and throws toys out of pram.

                                          Shame the weasel waited until now to have an attack of righteousness.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                            Why on Earth... wrote:
                                            They did lie. I'm pretty sure they really thought Iraq had chemical weapons (if they really thought there was nothing at all, they'd have been much more circumspect about the chances of actually finding concrete evidence after the invasion). However, they crafted evidence to talk this up. The policy drove the "evidence", rather than the other way round. The plan was always to invade, and the role of the "evidence" was simply to seek to convince a sceptical public and dithering legislators; the principals in the drama were already convinced.

                                            (Casus belli, incidentally. Genitive. Bellum, bellis, second declension neuter; "war".)
                                            I completely agree that WMD wasn't the real casus belli (thank you). But we clearly have different definitions of what constitutes lying.

                                            It's not like policy driving evidence is completely unheard of in the world of government - in fact, I would argue that it is the norm in most circumstances. Does this mean most government policy-making is based on "lies"?

                                            The actual situation in Iraq was shrouded in uncertainty. They were guessing as to the real state, and trying to convince people that their guess was right. Again, I would go back to the legal metaphor: are barristers "lying" when they marshall specific facts and ignore others when making a case on behalf of a client?

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                              One small point then a big one.

                                              War Criminal? I think this phrase is in danger of being lost by overuse. Blair is not a war criminal, by any reasonable definition of a war crime. e.g.
                                              War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity".[1]
                                              - wiki, where else?

                                              The war may be illegal, it does not make the protagonist a war criminal.

                                              Blair's Motivation
                                              I think he had fallen into the madness that strikes all PMs after too many years in the job. He has a ridiculously overblown sense of his own responsibility and brought a messianic zeal to his job.

                                              He would never have done anything other than side with whoever was the US President. He sincerely believed that:

                                              (1) the Atlantic alliance was the cornerstone of democracy and needed to be protected at all costs;

                                              2)he could be a restraining influence and get the US to conduct the war in a better way and;

                                              (3) he was happy to go along with the removal of Saddam Hussein as a moral case in its own right (despite the pesky legal business), removing a murderous dictator who could no longer be relied upon was no great loss.

                                              He is, of course, completely nuts on these points.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                                Antonio Gramsci wrote:
                                                It's not like policy driving evidence is completely unheard of in the world of government - in fact, I would argue that it is the norm in most circumstances. Does this mean most government policy-making is based on "lies"?
                                                Not necessarily. But in this case, and in many cases, yes. In this case, the "45 minutes" claim springs to mind.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Warmonger: Any lie would have been good enough

                                                  According to the chief US prosecutor at Nuremburg, Robert H. Jackson:

                                                  To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

                                                  Comment

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