Tony Blair | ukwatch.net

PR push for Iraq war preceeded intelligence

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:59:32 +0000

Washington D.C., August 22, 2008 – The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq, according to a documents posting on the Web today by National Security Archive senior fellow John Prados.

The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the “White Paper” ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002.

A similar comparison between a declassified draft and the final version of the British government’s “White Paper” on Iraq weapons of mass destruction adds to evidence that the two nations colluded in the effort to build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Dr. Prados concludes that the new evidence tends to support charges raised by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan and by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in its long-delayed June 2008 “Phase II” report on politicization of intelligence.

Blair has no right to lecture on the rule of law

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:17:16 +0000

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been lecturing Russia on the need to respect Ukrainian and Georgian sovereignty. He doesn’t seem to realise how incongruous this sounds to much of the world, given Britain’s own disregard of international law.

In a similar vein, our former prime minister, Tony Blair, also caused wry smiles earlier this month when he visited Malaysia to give the Universiti Malaya’s 22nd Sultan Azlan Shah lecture on Upholding the Rule of Law: A Reflection.

Blair argued that this means “rules and procedures that are transparent, and rules of evidence that make sense and are fair. These basic principles apply universally and without them, the rule of law means little or nothing.”

As you can imagine, the topic Blair sought to address was a source of both amusement and disbelief among the Malaysians.

This is what the vice-chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia, Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, had to say: “It is quite obvious from casual observation that someone who has been known to have misled others, including the country’s parliament, has lost the moral authority to preach about the rule of law and good governance … One wonders then what ‘basic principles’ Blair had in mind when he gave an almost unconditional support for the unilateral decision to invade Iraq against the wishes of the international community and without the approval of the UN … Indeed, as late as April 2006, when an eminent British former law lord attacked Guantanamo Bay as ‘a stain on American justice’, Blair reportedly refused to follow suit. According to Lord Steyn, who just retired from Britain’s highest court: ‘While our government condones Guantanamo Bay, the world is perplexed about our approach to the rule of law. You may ask: how will it help in regard to the continuing outrage at Guantanamo Bay for our government now to condemn it. The answer is that it would at last be a powerful signal to the world that Britain supports the international rule of law.’”

The former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, was characteristically blunt: “It is disgusting to see this criminal of the highest order being welcomed in Malaysia and worse still to talk on the rule of law when he broke all international laws and the laws of his own country by deliberately lying and sending young British soldiers to die in a war of aggression.”

Mahathir added that: “Saddam has been hanged, Karadzic was recently arrested, but this man goes around the world, lecturing on the rule of law.”

Roger Tan, a member of the Malaysian Bar Council, asked if, “by supporting and participating in the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, I wonder whether Britain, being the world’s oldest democracy, still possesses moral authority in a comity of nations to lecture on the principle of rule of law.”

I visited the official Tony Blair website to read his own account of what had transpired in Malaysia. Unfortunately, I could find no mention made of the trip.

A surprise to no-one

tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:40:15 +0000

What a surprise it was to all concerned for a memo drawn up by Tony Blair last September to suddenly see the light of day during David Miliband’s leadership campaign that dares not speak its name, wasn’t it?

Only to those who still believe in fairies living in their back garden is the answer.

It surely beggars belief that many people prominent in the Labour Party, including a number dumped from office earlier for not being up to scratch, are engaged in a media-encouraged game to mount a palace coup.

And on what basis? Nothing but image. A smiling, youthful, confident new Labourite rather than a brooding, stale, indecisive new Labourite.

The major problem with this unimaginative formulation is that it ignores the real basis for the government’s inexorable electoral decline, which is the label that both men hold in common – new Labour.

The label’s promise of novelty, honesty and modernisation took the day in 1997, but it is now tainted and despised.

Labour jettisoned 2 million votes in 2001 and 2 million more in 2005. It lost ground in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, English local and London mayor elections and its by-election record is dismal.

Labour Party membership, which stood at over 400,000 in 1997, is now just over 150,000, with many local organisations utterly moribund.

Neither electoral decline nor popular discontent set in with the coronation of Gordon Brown last summer. They were in full swing already, which is why voters and party members wanted Tony Blair out.

Mr Blair’s suddenly revealed memo rewrites history by claiming that his once loved but now despised new Labour twin had “dissed our own record” – how so very roots – and “junked” the Blair government policy agenda.

In reality, the new leader’s failure was to have suggested criticism and hinted at change before falling back in line and carrying out the same old tired and unpopular war and privatisation policies.

The initial suggestion of an expansion of council housebuilding was dumped. The hint of withdrawal from Iraq likewise.

And, in the absence of any positive policies to put before the people, the Prime Minister lost his nerve over calling the election that he had already told the trade union movement to prepare for and has since evoked the image of a dead man walking.

And what is the political answer of the Miliband camp to this spectacle? Shoe-horn in Tony Blair Mark 2 and give long-time council tenants a lump sum to use as a deposit to buy private accommodation.

Such poverty of imagination belittles the severity of Britain’s housing shortage and confirms new Labour’s inability to think outside the straitjacket of private-sector solutions.

New Labour’s dead-end private-is-best policies ought to have been debated last year against the labour movement priorities offered by John McDonnell, whose campaign was stifled by trade union concerns to avoid a leadership contest.

The fruits of that conservative approach are readily apparent now – a government that remains unpopular and refuses to consider another political direction.

That remains the key. Without a new direction, Labour is sunk and deserves to be. The question is, are the unions prepared to take remedial action?

Tony Blair accused of War Crimes

Ellie Keen — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:33:14 +0000

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair on Trial in The Hague

On the same day the BBC reported that former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was to go on trial after five years in prison over the deaths of a group of Baghdad merchants in 1992, it was rumoured the former prime minister of Britain will be indicted for crimes against humanity. The list of charges is long and not confined to the many alleged crimes in Iraq. Mr Blair’s whereabouts are uncertain; he has been sighted occasionally in occupied East Jerusalem where he is acting as “peace” envoy for the “Quartet”. Most recently, he has been facilitating industrial zones for the employment of Palestinians and for the removal of a few of the over 500 Israeli Occupation Force roadblocks.

The charge list includes:

Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention from the time he became prime minister in 1997 until March 2003 during whichtime draconian sanctions were being applied to the civilian population of Iraq. These sanctions prompted the resignation of Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck who served as assistant secretaries-general of the UN. The former stated that the effect of those sanctions was genocidal. It was established that there was an excess mortality of babies and children of at least 500,000 between 1992 and 2003. This had to do with foul water, poor nutrition and deteriorating medical services, all of which were satisfactory before the sanctions took hold.

Conspiracy to join with another power in aggressive war, the supreme international war crime, contrary to the Nuremberg Rules and the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. This was first made public when he joined Mr George Bush, President of the United States of America, and Britain for bloodied steaks over a barbecue at Crawford Ranch in April 2002.

High treason (betrayal of one’s country, sovereign or government) in manufacturing a case for war, the central one of which was the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq. This in itself gave no grounds because the possession of such was no basis for a military assault on a sovereign country. Three aggressive nations, the US, UK and Israel, have held weapons of mass destruction for decades; no attempt has been made to disarm them. The grounds for UK military action against Iraq changed as the unlawful operation proceeded under the guise of liberation of the people and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The part played by the “sofa cabinet”, three of whom were unelected, in promulgating a war fought on behalf of Her Majesty is being minutely examined by law officers. One such cabinet member, Mr Charles Powell, recently stated on BBC TV that the aim of the war was the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. He would know that was an illegal aim. Ann Clywd MP was appointed Mr Blair’s human rights envoy in Iraq. She has continuously claimed a virtuous aim … [but the fact is that] at least a million Iraqis have been killed, about 40 per cent of whom will have been children. Using a conservative ratio, at least two million will have been maimed.

Mr Blair is charged with a litany of war crimes that followed the invasion, one of which is the failure of the “coalition of the willing” to halt the further deterioration in the quality and quantity of medical services in Iraq which had already worsened during the 12 years of sanctions. Another obligation of an occupier is to maintain security for the populace. The very opposite happened. Disbanding the Iraqi army and other Baathist structures was central to the violent chaos which followed the invasion. Protecting the heritage of a country is another obligation of an occupier in international law. Mr Blair failed as leader to meet these and he is so charged.

The general charges in this indictment are followed by an annex which details names in which there has been death or extreme injury.

The charges also include collusion in a military and political coalition which has used banned weapons. The use of white phosphorus at Fallujah by the US was admitted. Armour-penetrating tank and cannon shells, as well as “bunker busting” bombs and missiles, have used depleted uranium. Uranium U238 is dispersed widely as a very fine dust; it has been detected as far away as the UK. Iraqi doctors claim that there have been dramatic rises in grotesque deformities in babies born prematurely, in leukaemia and in other malignancies.

The list of charges includes the case of Ali Abbas, then 12 years of age and formerly of the village of Zafaraniya, which is 30 miles from Baghdad, and his deceased family: his mother who was six months pregnant, his father, brother and at least 10 other relatives. It has been reported that, just after midnight on 30 March 2003 and 10 days into “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, a weapon or two weapons exploded.

We had all gone to bed and there was this loud noise and smoke. I felt very scared and I was in much pain. I kept shouting for my mother. I did not know at the time what had happened to her.

A photograph taken in hospital in Baghdad shows that Ali was burned across his trunk and that his hands and forearms were incinerated. His head, neck, abdomen and legs were unblemished. Examination of this photograph shows this boy was subjected to the most intense radiated heat – not contact heat.

It seems likely that his head and lower half were screened from the source of this radiation by a window aperture or similar, given the rectangular pattern of the thermal injuries. The weapon that caused such rapid incineration is unknown. It certainly was not a thermobaric weapon as used currently in Iraq and Gaza. Uranium weapons give rise to a fireball as the dust ignites. This can melt steel but there are no photographs of human victims of such attacks which match the incineration of the arms of Ali Abbas, although these weapons have been used frequently – both in the Gulf War and in the ongoing Iraq War. The clandestine use of a small tactical nuclear weapon cannot not be ruled out.

The authorities will require that Ali Abbas comes to the Hague to give evidence. However, he has not been able to leave Baghdad since last summer. He has of course required someone else to attend to his every toilet need and to his dressing. An uncle provided that for him whilst he grew from boy to man at the private boys school in London and where he excelled scholastically. Another uncle took over last summer but a visa has not been forthcoming from the UK.

The US named Tariq Aziz the Eight of Spades, thus coming 43rd in the United States’ set of 55 playing cards. His trial for involvement in the hanging of 40 alleged racketeers started on 29 April under a Kurdish judge and a military occupation.

The central charge against Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is that he has caused the death of thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians, the maiming of many more and the displacement of over four million people. Unlike the treatment of those humans, his hearing will be fair.

It is understood that he will be able to receive a Catholic priest in the cell which was formerly occupied by Slobodan Milosevic. The prison chaplain will encourage further study of “faith”, which with globalization were the topics of Mr Blair’s address in Westminster Cathedral. The commander-in-chief of the USA spoke of the “sanctity of life” when he was receiving the Pontiff in Washington recently. This principle will be applied to Anthony Charles Lynton Blair but probably not to the deputy prime minister of Iraq.

David Halpin FRCS is a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon. He founded the Dove and the Dolphin charity, one of whose aims is to promote the health and welfare of Palestinian children.

War and Lies

Ellie Keen — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:15:02 +0000

“We are going to war, the world be damned.” This was the clear message from the White House, backed strongly by 10 Downing Street. It was evident to the world that the war on Iraq was illegal and was not waged for a just cause. September 11 was the only reason Tony Blair would use to defend both his support for the war and the White House. In the unfolding of this catastrophic drama, the world saw no commitment to the United Nations charter. The international will to find a peaceful solution was ignored outright. Imperialist politics, hungry for oil and geared for political hegemony, was the chief concern of the Western alliance. Iraqi pride and right to self-determination were brushed ruthlessly under the carpet.

Imperial history is replete with revelations about the evil capabilities of the human race, as is evident in the genocide of the natives in Africa and America, the holocaust accompanied by unimaginable fascist brutalities, the two World Wars and now the violence unleashed in West Asia. This crisis in late capital society is stubbornly located in the structures of technological dominance, military violence and ideological legitimation.

European violence is evident in its political and economic adventures, in the very savagery that lies under the veneer of civilisation as is apparent in the art of Picasso and Gauguin, who reflect the dark side of the European man. The wars waged by the West are an example of this deep-seated aggressive behaviour in the Western psyche wherein lies the supremacist attitude of setting goals for the world. If not Pax Britannica, then it is Pax Americana.

In the last days of his tenure, Blair would look back and rationalise his alliance with Bush: “And then came the utterly unanticipated and dramatic September 11th, 2001, and the death of 3,000 or more on the streets of New York, and I decided we should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our oldest ally, and I did so out of belief. And so, Afghanistan and then Iraq, the latter bitterly controversial. And removing Saddam [Hussein] and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease. But the blowback since from global terrorism and those elements that support it has been fierce and unrelenting and costly. And for many, it simply isn’t and can’t be worth it. For me, I think we must see it through. They, the terrorists who threaten us here and around the world, will never give up, if we give up. It is a test of will and of belief, and we can’t fail it.”

This expression of Blair’s foreign policy has been critiqued by Tariq Ali in his book Rough Music. In the sustained opposition to the Western alliance by the Iraqis he sees heroism justified by Herman Melville’s statement about Lucifer: “Milton’s Satan is morally very superior to his God, as whoever perseveres despite adversity and torture is superior to whoever, in cold vengeance, takes the most horrible revenge on his enemies.”

Undoubtedly, the American giant stood injured after 9/11. If it was Pearl Harbour that awakened it in the Second World War, it is the attack on the twin towers that provoked it to take on the Muslim world. But this time, it was without some of its allies, except Britain, who were not in a mood to back its military ambitions. Whereas the United States regards the U.N. more of a constraint, the dissenting nations in Europe regard it as one chief controlling factor in international politics.

Though we witnessed demonstrations on both sides of the Atlantic against the war in Iraq, we cannot deny the wedge that slowly crept in down the Atlantic. However, the tremendous bonding between Blair and Bush, the two seemingly delinquent school buddies with their arms around each other, superseded the public wrath in both countries, while in Iraq it gave rise to deep public despair and an inspiration to die for one’s faith.

The situation was indeed alarming. Bush and Blair failed to build a broad international coalition against Saddam to bring about disarmament through peaceful means. The ensuing war only exacerbated tension, millions died and suffered, and future generations will question why we allowed it. The turbulent social, political and philosophical movements of our time will interrogate the ethical quandaries of our positions regarding peace and unjustified political interference in the sovereignty of other independent nations.

The preponderance of force over diplomacy; contemptuous double standards in foreign affairs; clandestine nuclear proliferation in nations such as Israel, which the U.S. totally ignores on the one hand and bludgeons Iraq on the other for possessing weapons of mass destruction: these are some of the issues that are passionately taken up in his honest and revelatory book. It is a fuming account of the devastation caused by the war and its aftermath that far exceeded the threat posed by Saddam.

As Tariq elaborates, his motives are to “lay bare the vengeful platitudes of Blair’s war on civil liberties, mount a scorching attack on the cozy falsehoods of the government’s consensus on what the threat amounts to, and how to respond, and denounces the corruption of the political-media bubble which allows it to go unchallenged”. For him, it is imperative that overseas interventions have to be governed by a new instrument of international law. Indeed, Tariq has the uncommon ability to evoke common yet very intense emotions of anger. The book is candid and precise, sure to speak to anyone who has passed through the anguish of this war-torn period.

It is clear that foreign policy, in essence, is all about protecting, sustaining and furthering national interests. And these can be broadly categorised as economic and security interests that could well present contradictory choices at times. The Iraqi threat had been simply exaggerated and Blair went headlong into the war. Tariq examines Blair’s folly as well as the mounting anger at hoodwinking the public into believing the seriousness of Saddam’s military might.

He is livid at the propaganda techniques and doctoring abilities that the government employs in its information war to be in command of information at home. The media controlled by Rupert Murdoch comes under furious criticism.

As he elaborated, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was apparently pulled up for its honest report of the massive February 15 demonstration by over a million people who stood up against the war on Iraq. Alistair Campbell, Blair’s public watchdog, would ring up Greg Dyke, the head of the BBC, for its “exaggerated” response to the demonstration. All those who stood up against the regime would have to quit or die. Notwithstanding it, the public outrage became so visible that Blair himself finally had to exit.

Tariq writes provocatively: “The fact that he’s leaving is because he’s so hated. And the reason he’s hated is because he joined the neocons in Washington and went to war against Iraq, which now 78 per cent of the population in this country opposes. And when people are being asked what will Blair’s legacy be, a large majority is saying Iraq. And I think that’s what he will be remembered for, as a Prime Minister who took a reluctant and sceptical country into a war designed by Washington and its neoconservative strategists, all of whom are in crisis.” However, until the end he refused to recognise public anger and asserted, “Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.”

After Tariq Ali’s two discerning books, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq, Rough Music shows his deep concern for democracy, preservation of civil society and the role of the media, which had gone blatantly silent at the hypocrisy of the government. He envisions an end to the war and a day when a united party to the left of New Labour could mark a return to the robust position of the traditional socialist world view.

In such a scenario there would be a more democratic parliament in Britain where the demise of leaders like Blair would be the logical corollary.

The title Rough Music is, therefore, apt. A term borrowed from E.P. Thompson’s book Customs in Common, “it has generally been used in England since the end of the seventeenth century to denote a rude cacophony, with or without more elaborate ritual, which usually directed mockery or hostility against individuals who offended against certain community norms.”

Implicit in it is the notion of dissent and true democracy which are the early casualties of such policies.

Seething public anger is another fallout of the July 7, 2007, suicide bombings in London and the police callousness towards people of Third World origin. The shooting of a Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, at the Stockwell Underground station on July 22, 2005, was the sad event behind Tariq’s provocation and response to the infringement of civil liberties and human rights. His rejoinder is intrinsic to his Left orientation and to his ideological motives to arouse dissent against the moral depravity of a regime that has pretensions of the rule of justice and egalitarianism. For him, security has to be preserved but not at the cost of legality.

Tariq’s plea is aimed at the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and with the claim that Britain “quit its role as automated adjutant to Washington’s neoimperialism and develop a rational, independent foreign policy”. War against Islamism has to discontinue and Britain must realise that Anglo-American experiments to forge expansionism in West Asia has been a downright failure.

The defence of civil liberties, opposition to the corporatisation of the state, doing away with religious bias in the British education system and the replacement of the House of Lords by an elected chamber are some of the other steps that he says will revolutionise Britain in the wake of Blair’s disastrous regime.

He succinctly and ironically concludes his book by castigating state authoritarianism: “This new authority is fundamentally opposed to mass-democratic political activity. To be a good and loyal citizen you should be an individualist to the core, motivated primarily by competitiveness and personal greed. You must learn calmly to accept the unjust structures that institutionalise inequality. And, yes, it would be helpful if you understood that all the wars fought by your state are designed to protect your interests.” In such a utilitarian state the loudest slogan could be ‘Long live Milton’s Satan!’