Okay technically this is a picture from yesterday, but we had such a good time eating in the city (and just hanging out) that this picture had to make the blog. This is a picture of Blair exploring the wonder that is the unlimited vegetarian hare krishna buffet at Govinda’s in the city. She was pleasantly surprised with the yumminess of the food and the date dessert was so good it was silly.

The Iraq war inquiry began last week in a strange atmosphere of high civility, verbal trickery and obfuscation yet already its revelations are damning

What have we learnt so far, then, locked inside a small room in the blandly hideous Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in London, where the chairman of the Iraq inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, has, with exquisite politeness and even deference, been interviewing the highborn civil service mandarins who assisted the government in its decision to invade Iraq?

They wander inside each morning at about 10 o’clock and sit themselves down facing the panel. In his short opening address, Chilcot expresses a wish that they will be open and candid, and sign a transcript at the end to this effect.

They are not always open and candid, though; some of them, so far, have been closed and downright obfuscatory on certain matters, employing all those linguistic tricks and sleights of semantics that made Yes Minister such a pleasure to watch. But we have still learnt plenty, along the way, since the inquiry opened on Tuesday.

First, the government knew all along that there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest Saddam Hussein had any links with Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden or international Islamic terrorism in general, contrary to what was said in America — particularly by Dick Cheney, the vice-president — at the time.

Second, as a perceived threat to the West, Iraq came a long way behind Libya, Iran and North Korea, according to intelligence reports. The government knew in 2002 from these reports that Saddam’s nuclear programme had been destroyed a decade previously and that Iraq had been “effectively disarmed” by sanctions and the threat of military pressure.

Third, while the US and Britain insisted that Iraq posed a “clear and present” threat to its neighbours, none of those neighbours was audibly desirous of an invasion of the country, and most were audibly opposed.

Fourth, the government included details in its infamous “dodgy dossier” of September 2002 that implied Iraq might be pursuing a nuclear programme when it had not the slightest evidence for this, simply an absence of evidence to the contrary. Which is not quite the same thing, is it?

Fifth, the foreword to the dodgy dossier, written by the prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, was an exercise in hyperbole and scaremongering from which the mandarins arraigned in the QE2 centre could not distance themselves more quickly if they tried. In particular, Blair’s assertion that Saddam had “beyond doubt” continued to manufacture chemical and biological weapons was a statement that was “impossible to make”, according to not only Chilcot but two of his interviewees. In other words — to use an appropriate iconic phrase — the document had been sexed up.

Sixth, an intelligence report in March 2003, shortly before the invasion, suggested Saddam had no chemical weapons whatsoever; they were all long since disassembled and useless. This report was taken by the government to imply confirmation that Iraq actually had chemical weapons, even if they were unusable, and the invasion proceeded.

Seventh, Britain was set on course for an illegal war against Iraq when the prime minister signed up to the notion of “regime change” after an agreeable private meeting with George W Bush in the middle of 2002, despite insisting all along to the public and the House of Commons that war could be averted. It is clear from the evidence so far that Britain was signed up to war at an early stage and (unlike America) merely wished for the military action to be sanctioned by the United Nations.

Eighth, Saddam’s perceived threat to the West was predicated entirely upon his behaviour towards neighbouring countries a decade or so earlier, and ignored the extent to which he was constrained by both sanctions and a no-fly zone.

Now, I think that’s not a bad haul of newish information from less than a week of gentle and almost genteel crossexamination. It may merely confirm what we already knew or suspected, but it is nice to have it on the record.

There’s other stuff too, of course, to pique the interest; the inquiry panel also wished to know if Jack Straw was too thick to understand the intelligence reports he was receiving, and two former mandarins — Sir William Ehrman and Tim Dowse — believed he did understand them, and later signed their names at the bottom of a transcript of their testimonies to this effect.

In a way, it is remarkable that so much has quietly emerged, given the tenor and tone of the inquiry and the sorts of people being interviewed and, indeed, doing the interviewing. This whole procedure is a little like a very upper-class version of the Channel 4 series Come Dine with Me, with charming, learned and polite knighted people asking the gentlest of questions of charming, learned and polite knighted people, before breaking for lunch.

Ehrman, for example, is our current ambassador to China and back in 2002 was the director of international security at the Foreign Office. He makes Sir Humphrey from Yes Minister appear a model of candour and directness.

Here he is talking about the “threat” from Saddam: “There was also the fact that he was supporting terrorist groups, Palestinian terror groups, and although we never found any evidence linking him closely to Al-Qaeda and we did not believe he was behind, in any way, the 9/11 bombings, he had given support to Palestinian terrorist groups . . .”

Translation: “Yes, it’s a thin straw I’m clutching at here.”

And: “We never assessed it [Iraq] as an imminent threat and that was never stated. What we said was that there was a clear and present threat. But we never said there is an imminent threat.”

Translation: it is untranslatable. How can something be any more “imminent” than “present”?

Then there’s Dowse, who was formerly the head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office, talking about the dodgy dossier: “It is good that when one puts one’s assessment in the public domain, it is always preferable for them to be based on accurate information.”

Translation: “I suppose, looking back, it would have been better if that dossier we released to the world had contained even the slenderest element of truth.”

And: “We had not concluded that the aluminium tubes were definitely not for a nuclear purpose.”

Translation: “We knew Iraq’s nuclear programme had been utterly destroyed years ago, and we knew there was not the slightest evidence that the aluminium tubes we found lying around in the desert had any nuclear-related purpose. But hell, who cares, the public don’t know that, so we put it in the dossier anyway.”

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our former man at the United Nations, suggested that he had threatened to resign if Britain succumbed to American pressure to attack Iraq without a UN resolution. But did anyone back home understand him?

He recalled: “I decided to say that if it happened to become UK policy to go along with abandoning the UN route and go to the use of force without a further resolution, that I would have personal difficulties about that. Maybe I thought that I should be clear about that. Maybe I thought that that was a stiffener for London on what I thought should happen. But I thought it was a clarifying thing to say that there were limits in what I as a permanent representative could do in New York in terms of what was going on.”

Maybe he should stop saying maybe.

The mandarins’ interrogators are themselves mandarins par excellence. Sitting alongside Chilcot are a former ambassador to Russia called Sir Roderic Lyne, the eminent historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman, and a lady called Baroness Prashar, who does not say very much but just sits there looking sage and concerned and sometimes bored.

It will give you a flavour of the whole thing if I tell you that the sharpest questions from the panel last week, those with the vague and distant whiff of controversy, came from Freedman — who was a policy adviser to Blair, which makes you wonder if he is an entirely disinterested party.

Chilcot, who also served on the previous Butler inquiry into Iraq, has already decreed that this inquiry will not be a court of law and that its job is not to apportion blame, nor does blame seem to be implied in any of the questions. Chilcot even prefaced one question to Ehrman with the observation that it was a “parenthetical question” that he really didn’t need to answer if he was not of the mind to do so. This is an unusual tactic for someone whose job it is to elicit straight answers, I reckon.

On Thursday morning, Sir Christopher Meyer, the former ambassador to Washington, grew so bored of the delicacy of the questioning that he began, instead, to ask questions of himself, having first cleared with Chilcot that it was constitutionally right and proper of him to do such a thing. Meyer’s questions to himself were more penetrating than any of the questions asked by the panel, which sat there nodding appreciatively.

Meyer — a classy, colourful and candid act among the monochrome and weaselly mandarins — identified the early date at which Blair first started to talk about regime change for Iraq. This apparently followed a convivial supper discussion with Bush, to which Meyer was not privy.It is difficult to believe that from this moment henceforth, Britain was not committed to an invasion of Iraq, no matter how often Straw told the parliamentary Labour party — and, of course, the general public — that war could be averted. The only question that remained was whether or not the United Nations would sanction an invasion; and in the end, even that did not matter to Britain. You wonder how much any of this matters any more. By the second day of evidence at the QE2 centre, the members of the public wishing to observe the inquiry had dwindled to precisely six, and the media room was looking a bit thinner too.

Even back in 2005, when it became patently clear that the government had misled parliament and the public over Iraq, and soldiers and civilians were dying by the hour in Basra, only the chattering class and a few of the broadsheet newspapers cared terribly much, to judge from both the opinion polls and Labour’s general election triumph.

Now, it would seem, even the chattering classes have grown a little bored of it all, given that there are MPs’ expenses to rail about, and the banks, and of course Afghanistan. But you would hope the distance of time might loosen tongues a little and that the full extent of the government’s chicanery, long assumed but unproven, might be quietly revealed over the next couple of months, half by accident, through these polite interlocutors.

Distorted truths

The Iraq inquiry seems to be an exercise in exquisite emollience and obfuscation, while the manifest contradictions in the various testimonies are never touched upon.

For example, both Sir William Ehrman and Tim Dowse addressed the question of Saddam Hussein’s missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as stockpiles of chemical warheads.

WMD, if you exclude nuclear weapons, has long been a most misleading term. Chemical and biological weapons, terrifying and vile though they are, tend to kill far fewer people than the expensive conventional weapons deployed by the rich western states.

It is simply a term used to punish countries we do not like and in Iraq’s case it was broadened to encompass your humdrum, everyday ballistic missiles — a redefinition that renders the term effectively meaningless but was crucial in linking Saddam to WMD, as Ehrman and Dowse made clear.

They argued that a country such as Iraq, with a well developed petrochemical industry, was easily able to create chemical weapons in a very short space of time and had little need to stockpile them.

So Saddam had no chemical stockpiles. But he did have plenty of ballistic missiles which would be needed to deliver the chemical devices (that he didn’t have).

Iraq had ballistic missiles and the means to create chemical weapons. Ergo, Iraq had WMD: fabulous reasoning.

Ehrman and Dowse admitted that Iraq was not in the first league of states to be terribly worried about, because it was not developing a mature nuclear programme, nor did it have close links with international Islamic terrorism.

However, they later argued that Iraq was “unique” because Saddam was a nutter and had previously behaved aggressively towards neighbouring states.

The fact that his aggression had occurred more than 10 years beforehand, when he had invaded Kuwait, and had subsequently been easily contained through sanctions, no-fly zones and suchlike, was not dwelt upon for too long.

__________

Full article and photo: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6936078.ece

To all appearances, the recently convened Iraq Inquiry into British involvement in the war which destroyed Iraq will reiterate information that is already known, and will be used by participants to absolve themselves of any personal responsibility for the crimes perpetrated against Iraq.

Baghdad burning

Gordon Brown, the UK’s unelected premier and chief accomplice to George Bush’s chief accomplice, Tony Blair, personally selected Sir John Chilcot to head the committee of inquiry. Chilcot had previously served on the flawed Butler Review into the reliability of the intelligence claims made to justify the war. Brown also hand picked the other four members of the committee – all government insiders of the revolving door variety, including Sir Martin Gilbert, who in addition to openly supporting the march to war, predicted that Bush and Blair would be remembered alongside Roosevelt and Churchill for their deeds in Iraq.

Brown originally ordered the hearings to be held in secret, but rescinded this order under pressure from various sources, including Chilcot himself. In the end, Brown was evidently convinced that public airing of the proceedings would present little challenge to his own sanctimonious posturing on the war and would be preferable to the public outcry that would accompany attempts to keep the hearings secret.

The first week of the Chilcot Inquiry has certainly not been a disappointment for fans of cringing dissimulation. So far, the hearing room drama has focussed on the revelation of a profound secret that everyone already knew: Washington was pushing for a military assault on Iraq even before 9/11, and pushed harder for one after that event. None of the witnesses believed at the time that Saddam had the military capabilities that the US accused him of possessing. But the broad picture that emerges  from their testimony is that, somehow, the Americans managed to get control over the Prime Minister’s brain, and the UK policy establishment then had no choice but to fall in line behind their leader and see events through to their cataclysmic conclusion.

Another deep dark non-secret to emerge is that high level functionaries in the British government doubted US assertions of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Of course, in reality, no one in the US government believed this either, and it strains credibility to think that any of the witnesses believed that their US counterparts believed this. But none of the inquiry witnesses so far has had the courage to suggest  that the alleged connection between bin Laden and Saddam was a calculated lie intended to channel public sentiment from outrage at the terrorist events into support for the invasion of a sovereign nation that happens to have huge oil reserves. Instead, they allow the obfuscation a modicum of legitimacy by suggesting that US officials may have been genuinely worried. Thus Sir Peter Ricketts, former chairman of the joint intelligence committee, states:

“Certainly, at that early stage, they didn’t produce evidence, but the tone of voice was more, ‘If there turns out to be a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, then you know, that’s going to have major implications for Iraq and Saddam Hussein’.” (transcript of the Iraq Inquiry hearing, 24 November 2009)

The truth of the matter – that everyone, including the Americans, knew that there was no link between Al Qaeda and Iraq – is left entirely to surmise. Perhaps this can be put down to the British penchant for understatement. It will be a welcome surprise if this inquiry produces anything more than understatement and opportunities for surmise.

In a similar vein, Sir William Patey, British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, makes the shocking revelation that that 9/11 changed things “a bit”. As with the bogus Al Qaeda link, he, Ricketts and other hearings participants can acknowledge that before 9/11 the US had already embraced regime change as policy. It goes without saying, however, that neither he nor anyone else in the room will admit that the US took 9/11 as a pretext for full scale roll-out of the neo-conservative’s international policy agenda – the “new Pearl Harbor” that Condoleeza Rice and her co-conspirators were looking for, and that by participating in the military assault the UK became an accessory in the attempt to realize that agenda.

In fact, Ricketts indicates his (understated) acceptance that 9/11 actually was connected with Iraq, if only by analogy:

“Not to say that we had any evidence that Iraq was  directly linked in any way to the 9/11 attack, we didn’t have any such evidence, but it did throw into greater relief the threat from Iraqi WMD without any inspector control over it, and I think that’s probably the way in which 9/11 impacted Iraq policy in the first place.” (transcript of the Iraq Inquiry hearing, 24 November 2009)

Bush & Blair

Ricketts seems to be saying that despite there being no evidence of a direct link between Iraq and 9/11, the events of 9/11 suddenly woke everyone up to the deadly potential of  Iraq’s conjectural weapons of mass destruction. The implication is that one could almost understand where the Yanks were coming from. One could understand this if someone in Rickett’s position could somehow be ignorant of the fact that Iraq’s infrastructure had been destroyed in the Gulf War and by a decade of sanctions; that the country was under constant aerial surveillance and periodic air attack; that it had had a series of international weapons inspections; and that even if it had WMDs, it didn’t possess the means to deliver these to targets in the UK or the US – factors that together rendered Iraq an unlikely source of anxiety. No doubt, the entire UK policy establishment did know this, yet apparently 9/11 could still “throw into greater relief the threat from Iraqi WMD”.

One of the supposedly major revelations of the inquiry so far is the observation by Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the US, that Tony Blair first used the term “regime change” the day after a private meeting with Bush at the latter’s Texas ranch in April 2002. It would appear that Bush sprinkled Blair with fairy dust which made him change his stance on the issue. Apparently, Bush must also have given Blair some of the fairy dust to take away and use on his cabinet and advisers.

Apparently as a result of being so dusted, according to Meyer:

“We found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun, which was another way of saying ‘it’s not that Saddam has to prove that he’s innocent, we’ve now bloody well got to try and prove that he’s guilty.’” (Reuters, 26 November 2009)

This is an interesting turn of  phrase, by the way. Normally in British and American jurisprudence there is a presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. This is why the IAEA’s inspectors were involved in trying to establish whether in fact there was a WMD program in Saddam’s Iraq. Meyer however, like the Americans, seems to have regarded this supposed approach as a “bloody” inconvenience.

However, the more orthodox line, that the UK only sought compliance with UN resolutions, is espoused by Ricketts:

“We quite clearly distanced ourselves in Whitehall from talk about regime change… there was no increased appetite among UK ministers for military action in Iraq [up until March 2002].” (The Guardian, 24 November 2009 )

…and by Ambassador Patey:

“I mean, my sense was that the Americans didn’t hold great store by the inspection regime and, therefore, there was always a debate as to just how much effort were they prepared to put into getting [UN Resolution] 1284 implemented. I think we were almost more enthusiastic about getting inspectors, had greater faith that the inspection regime would ultimately deliver the answers on WMD and lead to a different situation in Iraq.” (transcript of the Iraq Inquiry hearing, 24 November 2009)

“Almost” more enthusiastic?

In any case, up to March 2002 there was supposedly “no increased appetite” for war in the UK policy establishment. So what happened to change that? Perhaps for some there really wasn’t a change, for as Meyer said:

“We could have achieved more by playing a tougher role … if, for example, at [Bush's ranch in] Crawford Tony Blair had said: “I want to help you, George, on this but I have to say, in all honesty, that I will not be able to take part in any military operation unless we have palpable progress on the [Arab-Israeli] peace process and we have absolute clarity on what happens in Iraq if it comes up.” (The Guardian, 26 November 2009)

In other words, according to Meyer the illegal attack on Iraq might have been okay except that it was done in the wrong way, without adequate preparatory horse-trading.

Finger-pointing and backside-covering seems to be the general theme so far. Everyone had their doubts and reservations about the slide into war, but no one will admit their failure to try to halt this march towards massacre. There is still hope that future sessions will bring some truly new information to the surface. At the very least, there is the prospect of Tony Blair squirming to answer an uncomfortable question or two when his turn comes. But despite his tendency to spout embarrassing platitudes as if they were profound truths, it is likely that the Teflon Prime Minister will get away with it again.

Wistfully, Meyer intoned: “I think what would Margaret Thatcher have done.”

Indeed, what would Maggie have done? One shudders to imagine!

Jeg merker at vi ikke er verdens flinkeste bloggere i helgene! Forståelig, ettersom vi for det meste blogger mens vi kjeder oss i hjel i timene. I helgene har hvertfall alltid jeg bedre ting å gjøre enn å blogge, til og med når jeg ikke har en dritt å gjøre. Tilgi oss, vi får vel prøve å bli flinkere.

Siden sist har jeg tatt en tur å sett på gamleskolen min, plukket opp kattungen min (Ingen Humlesnurr, beklager å måtte skuffe. Hun er verdens fineste pus og heter Luna, ser dere harrypotterreferansen?) og overnattet hos Chuck. Jeg merker at forkjølelsen min er på vei tilbake, så jeg droppa pepperkakebaking hos J i dag. Jeg er litt trist for det, men jeg hadde rett og slett ikke ork.

Planen er å bruke resten av kvelden på å kose med katten, se tv og spise sjokolade. Jeg gruer meg betydelig mindre til i morgen enn jeg pleier, ettersom oppgaven vi har i foto nå er ganske morsom! Vi prates i morgen guttær og jentær.

xoxo Blair

(**** CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!  ****)

First off, this is not the “scariest film of all time.” Let’s nip that pre-amble overhyped nonsense in the bud. It’s not even the 47th “scariest film of all time.” But what it is however, is a nice little horror film with three or four genuinely scary set pieces. And having been made on a budget of $11,000, a triumph of a little film that could. (Insert your own Blair Witch Project reference here if you so wish).

The film opens with the lines “The producers would like to thank Mica and Katie, and the San Fransisco Police Department for their help.” (insert second Blair Witch reference).  And there is a clever insert at the end, **** “Katie’s whereabouts remain unkown” ****. The story centres on English Lit student, Katie (and I apologise, this woman has a fantastic cleavage… sorry), and her day trader, annoyingly bearable boyfriend, Mica. They move into a massive house in the suburbs, but Katie brings with her a demon that has followed her around from early childhood. You’d think she’d mention it, it’s not like having a flatulence problem or picking your toenails.

Anyway, the whole film is viewed through the lens of Mica’s camera. Which he has bought in the hope of catching “paranormal activity” in the house. And the film follows their time in the house. The story that unfolds around the camera caught, bedroom scares is poor. The characters don’t make an emotional attachment to you, and you don’t feel for them personally when the scares come. It’s more a feeling of general fright and shock.

I have a feeling that most of the budget was spent on the special effects and the “demonic happenings.” The scares, which all occur in the bedroom are fantastic. And although not partcularly gory or big, they revolve around a spirit that enters the house and eventually enters Katie. **** My favourite set piece was the third to last scare, in which Katie is dragged from the bed by the spirit, the door slams violently and she is dragged down the hall. Genuinely scary and excellently executed. **** The scares get better (or worse, depending on your nervous disposotion), from here on in. And the final ten minutes were my favourite ten minutes of the whole movie, and possibly the scariest aswell. This is a good and bad thing, as the film doesn’t do enough in the build up to drag you in and feel the unease the makers hoped you would. Any time a feeling of dread or unsurity occurs, the director decides to fade out and the story and action lose the pace.

Overall, this film won’t change your life, but it will kill an hour and 40 minutes. And it stays in your head after you see the film. You won’t have trouble sleeping, but you will be scared, genuinely, at least three to four times. Which doesn’t warrant the “scariest film of all time” tagline. However, there were three young ladies behind us, who laughed at the genuinely not very good first hour. But as we exited the cinema, I saw them linking arms and crying on the phone to mammy. Now I can’t guarantee this will happen at every showing. But I found it amusing, and it reminded me why I love the cinema. Bless.

(Note: In The Thing, the whole thing could have been avoided if they had just shot the dog at the start. Mica and Katie did not have a dog. But they did have two options. Fr. Merrin from The Exorcist. Or The Ghostubusters… I’m just saying…)

The decision was not legal………..or it was!

The possibility of Tony Bliar being thoroughly grilled by Chilcott seems like good entertainment and The Mail will love it surely, but somehow one gets the distinct feeling that not an awful lot will come of it.

All rather ironic on this day when I will be standing outside of the Town Hall in South Shields to pay homage to those brave men and women who have served in various campaigns on our behalf. If you are joining us, remember to get there for 12:00 noon.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Check them out at Barneys:

Blair’s theory jacket – $359 here.

Jenny’s Alexander Wang jacket – $769 here.

I spotted it today in sizes 2, 4, 6 and 14 I believe at Nordstrom Rack in White Plains New York. They tend to get a lot of the same things at chain discount stores so if you live far from NY check your local Nordstrom Rack store – the coat was only $199 and originally around $600!

Baixei essa música, ouvi e gostei muito… E só agora descobri que quem canta é justamente a mulher mais linda do momento (na minha opinião), Leighton Meester, a Blair de gossip girl. Espero que vocês gostem da música.

You’ve got to hand it to the British. Unlike their cowed counterparts across the Atlantic, they refuse to forget the Iraq War, and demand – gasp! – answers as to why their government was led into such a brutal, misbegotten, and ultimately futile endeavor, one for which there has been almost no positive outcome. The official inquiry began last Thursday, and not only will it decisively conclude who was for the war when, it will also be free to apportion blame where it sees fit.

Given our American squeamishness for “political” proceedings, it is difficult to foresee any analogous proceedings over here. After all, we can’t even find the stomach to investigate the 100 deaths by torture that apparently occurred at our secret detention centers. These were outright murders no matter how one looks at it; most of those held illegally by the US turned out to be totally innocent, which, of course, is the inevitable outcome when one offers large sums of cash in exchange for turning in your neighbors. The Obama Administration as well as the American Bar Association have made it abundantly clear that no prosecutions for these murders will be forthcoming, and, in essence, “we must look forward, not back” (whatever that means).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, our island fore-bearers have apparently retained some semblance of governmental accountability. Thus far the proceedings have confirmed what we already knew: that the US was “hell bent” on invading Iraq, that we didn’t care about getting UN support, and that we “actively undermined” British efforts to gain international authorization for the war.

According to British UN Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock,

Grumbling from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway — and deal with this with the use of force,’”

“This”, of course, means proof of Saddam’s connection to Al-Qaeda, UN authorization of the war (without which the war would be illegal), international support; you know, wastes of time like that.

Also from The Guardian:

Tony Blair’s government knew that prominent members of the Bush administration wanted to topple Saddam Hussein years before the invasion but initially distanced itself from the prospect knowing it would be unlawful, it was disclosed at the Iraq inquiry today.

And:

The government had intelligence days before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Saddam Hussein might not be able to use chemical weapons, the inquiry into the war was told today.

So that’s interesting. The British government knew both that the Bush Administration was “hell bent” on invading Iraq before 9/11, and that allegations of “chemical weapons” were, to say it charitably, overblown. Then why would they agree, in spite of that, to this lunatic war? For those answers we must wait for Tony Blair’s testimony, which is scheduled for early next year.

But I think we should take it as a sign of our democracy’s health that any proceedings even remotely similar to Britain’s Iraq War inquiry would be all but unthinkable.

I know this was already IDed but it was under a coat Buy it here.

Glamour, estilo, riqueza, poder, trapaças e amor. Esses são todos os elementos que fazem de Gossip girl a melhor série do momento (pra mim). Amo ver todas as aventuras dos riquinhos de Upper East Side, eles podem ser falsos e superficiais, mas pra mim são o retrato perfeito de uma parte da sociedade. Olhando na net encontrei algumas fotos que gostaria de compartilhar com vocês. Espero que vocês gostem.

Conte até 10 antes de ver esse vídeo.

Leighton Meester, na vida real, não tem nada haver com Blair, a fofoqueira mais lindinha e perigosa do seriado Gossip Girl.

Ela tentou, mas não, não e não… ela não tem tino para cantora. Além de parecer estar falando ao invez de cantar até a coreografia dá raiva.

Fico me perguntando se isso não passa de uma jogada de marketing do diretor da série (pois tem até o vídeo no site oficial) pra chamar mais atenção, pois a mesma está correndo sérios riscos de ser cancelada.

Então se tiver paciência (e só contar até 10), veja uma apresentação de Leighton Meester na TV americana.

Só mais uma coisa, será que ela não tem vergonha de fazer uma palhaçada dessa?

Gilvan Oliveira
XX

There is a strange disconnect between the polite and relaxed dinner table style of the Iraq War Inquiry and the explosive evidence emerging from key players in the international diplomacy world. The chatty, informal conversations between the panel and the witnesses and the orderly breaks hardly resemble the noise of war. The disconnect, however, lies only in appearance for the substance of the evidence is potentially enough to incriminate those at the very top. Jeremy Greenstock is about to give evidence, and Tony Blair is still weeks away. Still, this week’s revelations already raise serious doubt about Blair’s motives for war, and the truth of his claims pre March 2003, that war was not inevitable.

Our Man in Washington

Christopher Meyer’s evidence yesterday may just prove to be the smoking gun which war critics believed existed; only time will tell whether that gun fires into legal action or simply smoulders away. Tony Blair must be praying hard for the latter because Meyer’s evidence portrayed him fundamentally as a man who chose to follow the Americans without objective regard for either British or Iraqi interests. Confirming what had been said by senior Whitehall bureaucrats on Day One of the Inquiry, the British foreign policy position pre 9/11 was that Iraq did not feature prominently– in itself rather curious, since Britain was administering a No-Fly Zone over parts of Iraq and therefore already involved in bombing operations with the US throughout the 1990s – and the concern with the Foreign Office lay more on the “narrowing and tightening” of an effective sanctions regime.

“We were with you at first, we will stay with you til the last”

Few have forgotten Blair’s purported words of commiseration with the Americans at the Labour Party conference in October 2001. The promise that “We were with you at first; we will stay with you til the last” begins to take on sinister connotations when viewed in the context of Meyer’s evidence about how heavily Iraq featured in American brains years before the war actually began. Whilst reminding us that the Iraq Liberation Act had been signed off in 1998 by Bill Clinton, the former Ambassador described how Bush openly admitted to him early on in his Presidency that he knew nothing about foreign policy and that he would be learning from his group of “Vulcans”, led by Condoleeza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, the man who later went on to become Deputy Defence Secretary.

Who first mentioned Iraq?

Condoleeza Rice told Meyer on the day of 9/11 itself that the Americans were investigating a link with Saddam Hussein. The seeds to this embittered war, it seems, sowed themselves whilst the rest of the world was commiserating with the American tragedy. Meyer states that “it was almost as if the people who really wanted to deal with Iraq and deal with it soon, burst out of the closet, the closet door having been blown open by the shock of 9/11. Everything changed after 9/11.”

Crucially, when did Blair decide to go to war?

Meyer believes that it was at that well-photographed meeting between Blair and Bush at the Crawford Ranch in April 2002 that the deal for the Iraq war was sealed, despite the fact that British policy at the time was one of “profound legal objection” to regime change. In his own words:-

“Now, let me be quite frank about this. Crawford was a meeting at the President’s ranch. I took no part in any of the discussions, and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there, I think I don’t know whether David Manning has been before you yet, but when he comes before you, he will tell you, I think, that he went there with Jonathan Powell for a discussion of Arab/Israel and the Intifada. I think it was at that meeting that there was a kind of joint decision between Bush and Blair that Colin Powell should go to the region and get it sorted. I believe that, after that, the two men were alone in the ranch until dinner on Saturday night where all the advisers, including myself, turned up. So I’m not entirely clear to this day I know what the Cabinet Office says were the results of the meeting, but, to this day, I’m not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood, at the Crawford ranch. There are clues in the speech which Tony Blair gave the next day at College Station, which is one of his best foreign policy speeches, a very fine piece of work.” He described that speech as being the first time Blair used the words “regime change” about Iraq and explicitly states that Blair deliberately, not inadvertently, tried to conflate the risk posed by Saddam and Al Qaeda.

Given that no evidence whatsoever ever has been produced to this effect, this amounts to a startling, though perhaps unsurprising, confirmation that Blair was ready to literally go with the Americans to the end, no matter what the consequences for either British or Iraqis. By March 2002, Meyer had been provided with a “chunky set of instructions” from Number 10 Downing Street on British foreign policy towards Iraq and Blair had taken the decision to support regime change, although he was discreet about mentioning that in public. Britain, he said, would talk the talk of regime change, but privately hoped that America would walk the walk of a UN Security Council Resolution permitting the use of force. It was, by then, he claims, a waste of time for Britain to continue to object to war, but Meyer was firm on Blair’s failure to ensure a good deal for Britain as a result of this unswerving support.

The emotional sides of Bush and Blair and the curious tale of Hans Blix

The Inquiry heard about the emotions running high in Bush and Blair’s resolve; that Bush “in his heart” wanted to kick Saddam out, and Blair, though not as “poodle-ish” as people have portrayed him, was a “great believer” in the evilness of Saddam. Hans Blix, the UN Weapons Inspector, in his autobiography describing events at the time, makes quite plain that the Inspections team were not permitted to complete their task by the American military timetabling. Meyer confirms that by Autumn 2002, when Blix’s team went into Iraq on the hunt for the non-existent WMD, the American military had already been given instructions to prepare for war and it was impossible for Blix’s team to properly conclude the inspections process.

In the mind of this writer, the evidence recalled another Blair quotation, albeit given in another context entirely, “There is no reverse gear”.

Meyer says that it was that pre-ordained military timetable that was the cause of the British and American scrambling for the smoking gun, which was never located. Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address, full of messianic praise for America’s chosen people, was the ultimate call for war, from which there was no return. One of the extraordinary revelations of this episode is that the US Department for Defence was so unhappy with the CIA’s production of intelligence which undermined their links between Saddam and Al Qaeda that they created their own in-house intelligence operation to counter and rival the CIA.

In this context, and with an appalling lack of consistent or strong evidence on the existence of WMD, Meyer’s own evidence can be fairly summarised as suggesting that Blair capitulated as a result of his own personal beliefs on Saddam.

A plan for garlands, or a country of wreaths?

Meyer himself also warned both Blair and the Americans that there would need to be a properly planned post-war strategy. This, it appears, simply fell onto deaf ears. It never happened.

Rumsfeld and his team hoped that simply getting rid of Saddam would lead to a better Iraq. Garlands would be thrown at them and the world a better place. Iraq Body Count documents currently between 94,000 and 102,000 dead from post-conflict violence in Iraq. Other estimates put this figure higher. The disconnect between the justification for the war, the arguments put up by Blair in his premiership and in Parliament and the bloody and violent aftermath of war could scarcely be greater.

The Chilcott Inquiry has been careful to remind us that it is not a court of law, that no one is being tried, and that no one is guilty or innocent. At best, therefore, we can only make strong suggestions about what the evidence implies. No matter what evidence comes next, Meyer’s uniquely privileged insight into the US-UK relationship in those crucial years leading up to the war suggest that there truly was no credible thought process inside Britain for either British or Iraqi interests. It also very strongly suggests Blair lied when he said that war was not inevitable on its eve. The lack of evidence that existed within the US, and the steps created by the US Defence Department to overrule their CIA intelligence colleagues and create a base for war, also suggests strongly that there was no basis for the war. That it was illegal.

Just a word of warning for our mild British public who cannot face the reality of blood and gore on their morning Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. The video evidence, which can be replayed on the internet at your convenience, contains mild swearing. (http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/transcripts/oralevidence-bydate/091126.aspx). 

London,  November 27th 2009

e pensare che qualcuno voleva farlo ministro esteri dell’UE. Memoria corta….

Cominciata a Londra l’inchiesta pubblica sulla guerra del 2003 Una foto conferma gli abusi commessi dai soldati britannici contro i civili
Il ruolo dell’ex premier Tony Blair e del suo governo nella guerra scatenata nel 2003 da George Bush contro l’Iraq di Saddam Hussein è al centro dell’inchiesta pubblica cominciata ieri in Gran Bretagna dopo anni di polemiche. A guidare l’indagine è Sir John Chilcot, ex consigliere ai servizi segreti ed ex membro della commissione d’inchiesta Butler del 2004 sull’Iraq (che indagò sull’intelligence relativa alle armi di distruzione di massa irachene, poi rivelatesi inesistenti), che conta di presentare il rapporto finale tra un anno. Chilcot proverà a stabilire se il paese scese in guerra con un’adeguata preparazione e, più di tutto, esaminerà le motivazioni di quel conflitto e la sua stessa legalità. Il momento clou è previsto a gennaio quando la commissione chiederà a Blair se diede il suo appoggio segreto ai piani statunitensi per defenestrare Saddam Hussein già nel 2002, cosa che l’ex premier ha sempre smentito.

L”indagine potrebbe mettere in difficoltà l’attuale governo laburista di Gordon Brown, a pochi mesi dalle elezioni politiche. E proprio ieri una foto pubblicata in prima pagina dal quotidiano Independent conferma che i soldati di Sua Maestà violarono la Convenzione di Ginevra in Iraq prendendo di mira i civili. Nell’immagine, scattata da un militare britannico, appaiono quattro iracheni ammanettati, faccia a terra, occhi bendati. Catturati dopo un violento scontro a fuoco avvenuto il 14 maggio 2004 a Majaar al Kabir, nel sud dell’Iraq, i quattro furono poi trasportati a un campo di prigionia britannico e brutalmente picchiati. Nello stesso luogo, ha aggiunto l’Independent, altri venti civili iracheni probabilmente vennero uccisi dai militari. Questo e altri casi di gravi abusi saranno oggetto di un’indagine che scatterà oggi, avviata dal ministro della difesa Bob Ainsworth incaricato di prendere in esame 33 gravi episodi occorsi in Iraq tra il 2003 e il 2008. Ammanettare un prigioniero con le mani sulla schiena, gettarlo a terra e incappucciarlo rappresenta una aperta violazione della Convenzione di Ginevra che vieta l’umiliazione e i trattamenti degradanti contro i prigionieri, ma anche la coercizione fisica durante gli interrogatori.
Ma i laburisti guardano con timore soprattutto all’inchiesta Chilcot. Se dovessero emergere bugie e omissioni di Tony Blair, il premier Gordon Brown con ogni probabilità vedrebbe svanire le residue possibilità di colmare il divario con i conservatori, dati in vantaggio da tutti i sondaggi. Ieri all’esterno del Queen Elizabeth Centre di Londra, dove si tenevano i lavori della commissione d’indagine, c’erano i parenti dei 179 militari morti in Iraq e alcuni pacifisti che agitavano cartelli e indossavano maschere di Bush, Blair e Brown chiedendo che venga fatta piena luce su una guerra sporca. La maggior parte delle deposizioni saranno pubbliche, ma il governo ha conferito a Chilcot il potere di chiudere le porte in caso di «rischi per la sicurezza nazionale». I testimoni inoltre non saranno sotto giuramento e ciò solleva seri dubbi sulla consistenza dell’inchiesta.
I lavori sono entrati subito nel vivo con l’audizione di alti funzionari pubblici e quella di Sir Peter Ricketts, presidente del Joint Intelligence Committee, l’organismo che sovrintende al lavoro dei servizi segreti e che preparò il documento sulle armi di distruzioni di massa che, invece, l’Iraq non possedeva. Ricketts ha raccontato che l’Amministrazione Bush parlava di rimuovere Saddam Hussein già all’inizio del 2001, prima degli attentati di al Qaeda e che Londra «prese le distanze» da questa posizione. Tale versione è smentita dai documenti pubblicati qualche giorno fa da un altro quotidiano britannico, il Sunday Telegraph, sull’esistenza di piani britannici di invasione dell’Iraq risalenti al 2002. Diverse fonti sostengono che Blair offrì pieno appoggio ai preparativi di guerra di Bush un anno prima dell’invasione dell’Iraq.

di Fausto Della Porta

Fonte

So, despite my suspicions about how the Iraq war inquiry will eventually end, I will admit watching the proceedings is fairly interesting, even if it mostly reaffirms what we have heard from other quarters.  There have been some surprises, but not many.  Anyway, an overview:

• The USA was making noises about invasion as far back as 2001, though it varied as to how seriously these claims were made and taken by various officials.

• 9/11 sounded a death knell for the policy of containment and the ascendency of Iraq war hawks in the Bush administration.

• The British foreign policy establishment were initially wary of such attitudes, because of the legal status of such a war (in the words of Sir William Patey “we dismissed it at the time because it had no basis in law”).

• Blair’s attitude began to shift in early 2002, though there is no agreement over whether this was due to the Crawford ranch meeting or not.  Sir Peter Ricketts, chairmain of JIC, claims that up until March 2002 there was “no increased appetite” among ministers for regime change via invasion.

• MI6 dismissed the claim of links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.  There was no evidence of any serious cooperation.

• Iran, Libya, North Korea and the continuing war in Afghanistan were considered to be more serious concerns to British security.

• Intelligence concerning WMD wasn’t as coherent on the likelihood of a threat as was claimed to be.  In the words of Sir William Ehrman, earlier intelligence about Hussein’s WMDs and missiles was “sporadic and patchy”.  This contrasts with Blair’s claims that intelligence assessments had established “beyond a doubt” that Saddam had such programs underway.

• Tim Dowse, head of counter-proliferation at the FCO was certain WMD would be found.

• The 45 minutes claim, as well as that of “mass evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories” were not supported by the evidence.

• UNSC Resolution 1441 was designed as a trip-wire to justify a war.

• Weapons inspections were not given time to work

There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss in detail, but that will have to wait for another post.  In the meantime, there is always the Iraq Inquiry Digest, if you want more.