Chilcot inquiry and the Iraq war

Gassage

I played against Chilcott three times and I wasn't aware he could actually write.

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:Not having a plan for what to do when the fighting stopped was the biggest mistake. 

For a moment, I thought you wre talking about the Leave campaign

Ro_S said:

Blair and others were allowed to get their replies in after the draft report so they could be incorporated into the final report.

Yes and that process is called Maxwellisation after the late fat crook and was also used in the report into the Guinness share-trading fraud. Blair's in good company there. 

Sadly I can't link you to Chilcot''s letter to Cameron detailing this process as the Iraq Inquiry website is suspended as they expect a few more visitors than normal today...

 

boogieman

Blair knew there was dodgy intelligence involved in the case for war before he committed to the invasion, but he still went ahead. Colin Powell used the so called "Wood Green ricin plot" as part of his evidence to the UN Security Council, stating that Al Qaeda had an Iraq-linked cell operative in the UK. Unfortunately for him it's now public knowledge that the British and US governments knew that the plot was nonsense and this argument was full of holes weeks before Powell's presentation to the UN. OK Powell may well have been kept in the dark and set up as a patsy by Bush, but there can't be any doubt that the major players knew.

IMO Blair was pressurised into committing to war by Bush, for whatever reason, but he must have been aware it was a seriously dangerous move as the intelligence was so sketchy.

Fretwired

Heartfeltdawn said:

Fretwired said:Not having a plan for what to do when the fighting stopped was the biggest mistake. 

For a moment, I thought you wre talking about the Leave campaign

In fairness to Blair the Iraq war was better organised than the Remain campaign. The dodgy dossier was far more compelling than anything put out by the Remainers, and when Blair stood up in parliament his WMD attack in 45 minutes was more believable than Cameron's comments - Armageddon, world war 3, recession, everyone out of work, alien abductions .. the list is endless.

ICBM

Fretwired said:

Not having a plan for what to do when the fighting stopped was the biggest mistake.

I would say the biggest and overriding mistake was to think that a military intervention in the Middle East would do anything other than make existing problems worse and create new ones. The track record of Western intervention going all the way back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, if not further, is evidence enough to indicate this.

The only military intervention that could even be considered a partial success was the liberation of Kuwait, and although that didn't directly create new problems it still made existing ones worse - in particular Saddam's treatment of the Iraqi Shia population. Even that was the result of the West having supported him in the Iran-Iraq War (AKA the First Gulf War) so he thought we wouldn't stop him.

It's long past time that the UK stopped trying to pretend to be a world power and interfere in other countries where we are not wanted or helpful.

JezWynd said:

While Blair undoubtedly has to shoulder a lot of the responsibility, the image that sums up the war for me is -

Neil Young - Shock And Awe. Like a lot of Neil's protest songs it isn't his most subtle or complex work, but it's still powerful.

You can hear the anger even in the guitar sound.

digitalscream

ICBM said:

Fretwired said:

Not having a plan for what to do when the fighting stopped was the biggest mistake.

I would say the biggest and overriding mistake was to think that a military intervention in the Middle East would do anything other than make existing problems worse and create new ones. The track record of Western intervention going all the way back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, if not further, is evidence enough to indicate this.

The problem is that - in Blair's words - we were following America "whatever", but Bush's reasons for invading Iraq were entirely different to ours. He was under pressure to produce results in the War on Terror (which was going nowhere), so creating a fictional link in the media between Iraq and Al Qaeda and then invading Iraq essentially fixed his problem. I suspect that the US weren't especially bothered about fixing the problems in the area - it was unstable before and it would be unstable after, so the net result is no change in the Middle East but all his terrorist problems are fixed in terms of public image.

slacker

Gassage said:

I played against Chilcott three times and I wasn't aware he could actually write.

The time he took to produce the report probably included learning to write.

Ro_S

Blair has an evil eye.  Look at him on videos.  His eyes also change colours.  And they even sometimes look reptilian.

Gassage

It's one of those irregular verbs isn't it?

Blair exaggerates, PR people spin, normal folk are charged under Chapter 35 of the 2006 Fraud Act.

Gassage

Oh for heaven's sake, don't hide behind people fighting for you you arsehole.

Snap

Ro_S said:

Blair has an evil eye.  Look at him on videos.  His eyes also change colours.  And they even sometimes look reptilian.

That David Icke was right all along. Them reptiles.......

octatonic

ICBM

ICBM said:

The only military intervention that could even be considered a partial success was the liberation of Kuwait, and although that didn't directly create new problems

Ah. Come to think of it, I'm wrong - the presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm was a key factor in Osama Bin Laden's determination to attack America, if I remember rightly. Which was a new problem, at the time.

JamesAshworth

So Blair said he'll take responsibility for his actions...

How about putting some of his millions towards the children who've grown up without parents, those who've had to adapt to life with less limbs, relatives of homosexuals thrown off roofs in Iraq, Muslim's beheaded...  

scrumhalf

When do we get the enquiry into Chilcot?