Apparently not, Andrew (see above)
Ok.. he is ahem.. labouring his point but as most come here to slag off Blair and New Labour I am glad for some support for once... and we are in the middle of an election campaign, so it is highly relevant.
To think that the majority of people killed by saddam were involved in an uprising that the Americans started and then ditched is nonsense Mykle.
the h8ndreds of thousands of people (womena nd children included) in the mass graves or just left dead/gassed/butchered where they fell were simply killed as a nuiscance like we might pour boiling water on an ant hill.
Yes many innocent people have died since the war but not as many as died before it and certainly nowhere near as many as would have continued to die had it not happened.
Now, on the road to democracy, if a section of the populace decide they're not happy they can say so and won't die, gasping in the street while Chemical Ali ticks another box and heads home for an early lunch. Now, if someone happens to make eye contact or vote for who they want or say the leader's name with less than a worshipfull cry, they won't be shot in the night or dragged from their beds to be tortured and dumped in a sandy ditch.
Blame Blair if you want, call him evil. Blame Bush, call HIM evil.
They might not be politicians you like, they might be dickheads, who cares, it's all within the bounds of democratically sanctioned debate, nobody's gonna kill you for saying it.
I stand corrected - George, I'm surprised. Heavy sarcasm like that doesn't normally pass you by. Bingo is agreeing with you about Iraq but pretending he doesn't for (hilarious if repetitive) comic effect.
"there it goes again. *sigh* the most powerful countries in the world decide which governments in the world they do or don't like then go in and remove them."
Yes, there it goes again because that's what happened.
"i should just keep schtum and let the great wash of revulsion for liberal interventionism carry me forward to a brave new future."
It's not revulsion, it's disagreement.
"but at least i'm not reduced intellectually to endlessly repeating rory bremner gags and calling it debate."
No, unfortunately your gags are nothing like as funny as Rory Bremner's but considerably more repetitive.
The reason some of us are angry emily is because we helped to pay for this bloody war through our taxes and it was fought in our name.
Some of you out there who are wisecracking or taking a jolly reasonable middle England view of it all would quickly change your song if it was YOUR kids who had been blown up or YOUR mum and dad who had got in the way of a cruise missile.
But because it is happening thousands of miles away in a land of foreign swarthy people it isn't quite so serious is it.
When the trouble was closer to home in Northern Ireland, remember how Blair preached endlessly about solving problems thorugh non-violence. What a hypocrite.
Life is cheap to Blair and his zombie followers. Other people's lives, that is.
Yes it's a shame about that Iraqi boy who lost his limbs and his parents, but at least my standard of living has gone up and I'll be able to afford that gas-guzzling SUV now, so everything's tickerty fucking dandy.
I'm voting labour.
Democracy is at best an inefficient mess, run more likely by an oligarchy that anything else, but I feel it's the best we've got. I just wish people would realise that this politics is not a black and white thing. It never will be, it can't be. There is no utopia where politics is concerned. It's messy, it's annoying, it favours personalities and sound bites
Why still Labour? The answer is simple: cut away everything and they stand for equality - they might not be able to give it to us, but they want it, they believe in it. They're not lying to us, they just believe in an equal chance for all. Tories don't. Just look to Boris Johnston. He represents the true Tory. A divisonist, an Us and Them attitude that puts tax breaks for the rich above Welfare for the poor. The shadow cabinet is just a veneer to a the real Tory party who Howard is pandering to with all his racist Immigration talk.
It's all a dreadful mess that drives me to distractionm but I prefer a labour mess to a Conservative mess anyday of the week.
[%sig%]
Apologies bingo and Andrew. I've been out all day and had just a few minutes to scan the forums. I didn't read any of the posts thoroughly and just grabbed that paragraph in passing.
That'll teach me to read properly before posting.
He wasn't lying when he said that they would not only never have top up fees, and furthermore they would put into place a law that ensured it would never happen? I realise that as a student, this annoys me more than it does most, but we should at least be angry on our childrens behalf. My kids wont have the benefit of a free education to Uni level.
If they had just said "We don't agree with top up fees, and we will try to avoid introducing them" I would have nothing to seethe about. But they didnt. They lied. How can it not be a lie?
Actually, Fateful, I was very opposed to the Iraq war and did the march on it, and I do feel that Parliament and the public were misled on the quality of the intelligence. And I've said so here a number of times.
Do I think Blair actually lied? No - I think he heard what he wanted to hear and people around him told him what they knew he wanted to hear. I don't think anyone ever said to him ," We don't need to invade Iraq, because they are no threat to us"
However, being realistic, the war would have happened with or without our involvement - I don't think a single life would have been saved if we hadn't gone (in terms of numbers, obviously no individual British soldiers would have been killed if they hadn't been out there).
If you feel that strongly about the war, then exercise your vote accordingly. It won't make any difference to the outcome, but that's all you get in a democracy, a vote every four years in a contest that's a sure thing.
Chin up Tony Blair! Another term in office and the country will be once again be on an even keel after the 12 or so years of misery inflicted by the Tories. And whatever you feel about the war in Iraq, there's no denying the fact that the Iraqis are better off without Saddam, who was, I gather, a VERY BAD CHAPPIE INDEED.
And don't forget: a vote for Howard is a vote for Lord Rothermere!
*pins Labour rosette on blazer and returns to cavassing duties on the mean streets of Come-to-Piddle*
Bingo,
"he must be either a complete moron, or a statesman of conviction."
He could be both. I don't think he's either.
While much of the anti-war stuff above is admittedly completely crazy and ridiculous, I think you might need to expand beyond your stock response to any anti-Blair comment.
Yes, if the choices on the centre-left were between the actions of the Blair government, the policy programme of Labour circa 1983 or the current manifesto of Respect, Blair's generally better.
This is not a particularly shocking or interesting point but the world's a far more complicated place that that.
On Iraq, for example, many of us opposed (and still oppose) the war without believing that Blair's either personally evil or being manipulated by mysterious dark forces in the background.
The Iraq war issue will fade; the Conservatives are in a corner because the economy's reasonably healthy, inflation hasn't run wild and unemployment's low so they're having to rustle up secondary issues - hospital matrons, school discipline, immigration - some of which will strike a chord with their natural supporters but which I hope the majority will see through as desperation sloganeering and outdated thinking.
I tend to hover in principle between Labour and Lib Dem, but I'd vote tactically for either to keep the blue oafs at bay.
Pages