Obviously Blair's son would never be in the army, and certainly not in Iraq, but you can be sure tht if he were - THEN Blair would know exactly how many people had been killed there!
Haystack,
As you trudge to the polls to vote for your (no doubt) Blairite candidate and loudly extoll the virtues of firm action, listen to the sound of your Hush Puppies crunching over the corpses of 100,000 Iraqi, 1,500 American and 88 British victims.
That tally is nowhere near worth regime change, if that were even the pretext that the Simpleton and our War Criminal used in their unseenly haste to bust a few (rag)heads in the interests of common sense, capitalism and the American way.
Make war, not reasoned argument, for heaven's sake.
listen to the sound of your extreme overkill (in hush puppies) trampling on the faces of new-born kittens as your words torture the grannies knitting jumpers for hairless fox cubs. a warbling nightingale is slowly eviscerated using a rusty bicycle spoke because you chose to type your message in this forum rather than rush outside and save it.
and yes. if my son or daughter joined the army, i'd shit myself at the thought of them dying or being seriously injured, it's certainly something that i'd make the effort to talk about with them. and if they joined knowing that the king's shilling involved engaging in warfare under orders which are not negotiable or conditional, that's the deal.
and with the "ragheads" comment it's clearly proven yet again, that your propaganda is just as ugly, ignorant and clumsy as their propaganda. it's just that yours is couched in lib-dem-wish-wash-brite.
When I was shipped off to Gulf War 1 (affectionately known to all concerned as the Sand-in-my-Pants tour, 1991) I certainly didn't think I'd be lounging around choosing silks in the local bazzar. If you sign up for the army you expect to see action...in fact, you positively yearn to see action. That's the attraction of joining up. Blair isn't responsible for that soldier's death...the fanatics who laid the roadside bomb are responsible.
Having had my breakfast I have time to respond to Lofty properly.
Firstly, I live in a tory safe seat (much to my disgust), so who I vote for is, in practice irrelevant, but unlike some I will vote according to my political beliefs rather than either abstain or spoil my vote (which incidentally counts whether the abstainers or spoilers think otherwise).
You seem to think that wars are all about balance sheets. The casualty rates are always very sad, for all sides, but wars are fought in the main on points of principle not as business deals. (waits expectantly for the usual 'it was all about oil' bollocks, mostly emanating from the lecher in Scarborough).
To put it as simply as 'the tally is nowhere near worth regime change' is a weak argument that isn't even really relevant to the original problem. Hussein needed to be (and was) removed for several reasons, though the pacifists refused to see any of them as acceptable. Your position, and that of your accolytes, who insist that 'reasoned argument' was the way to resolve the problem is not even an option when dealing with the likes of Hussein. He refused to accept UN rulings, took the piss at every opportunity, and continued with his evil genocide of his own people. The UN postured and winced, terrified as usual fo having to say enough is enough (even when it's blatantly obvious to anyone with a braincell that it's MORE than enough).
I don't blame Bush or Blair or the Spanish, Italians and all the others that supported the war for it's inevitability.
The blame lies firmly and squarely in the lap of the UN.
Christ, they even said themselves that he'd disobeyed practically every ruling. They were NEVER going to grasp the nettle!
As it happens the Iraqis now have a freely elected government of sorts, that will no doubt eeither go from strength to strength or slide back into dictatorship. it's up to them and the free world to they stay free. (personally, I doubt the 'ragtops' as you call them, will ever embrace democracy or western style freedom, they are too entrenched in their medieval system and disgusting version of religion to ever change voluntarily) The genocide has stopped. International aid is open to them (yes, I know that the victors will make profits from it, but that will never change either) and sanctions have been lifted. Life for Iraqis is improving slowly and they don't live in fear of their loved ones being snatched off the street by their own government and tortured and incarcerated whilst wives and daughters are raped and mutilated.
Was the 'tally' worth the regime change?
I believe most Iraqis would say yes.
My only point in mentioning regime change is that it was not even the reason for making this war.
If you accept for a moment that in the 21st Century, the more evolved countries of the world tend to try to justify starting a war through the support of the UN (yes, toothless and inconsistent at the best of times) or reasoned argument backed by verifiable facts, the Simpleton and his perfoming dog went to the UN with their particular reason for war. Only subsequently, when that justification was shown to be the pile of bollocks that many people closer to the facts than you or me said at the time, did the intellectually and ethically challenged pair use the line, "Oh well, there were no WMD, but hey, we showed that tyrant".
I personally think there are better ways to change a regime that launching a war. But more importantly, would that reason, if used in the first place, have got UN support or the support of parliament here?
The balance sheet effect is relevant in this day an age, or we have learned nothing from the Boer War, The Somme, Gallipoli or the Russian front in WWII. In the 21st Century governments should be expected not only to start wars with some decent case, but also to wage their war in the least wasteful manner.
Bodybags count!
So Bob, the soldiers who have been killed in Iraq were only there because they love action and their deaths had nothing to do with Blair for sending them there: it was the fault of the bullets and bombs. Come to Iraq the latest venue for extreme sports and you can legally kill people too... ecstacy, eh?
As for George's "I never heard so much crap in my life. This piece sadly enthused over by the press. The relatives of the dead are so many whinging wankers. Their sons and daughters took the Kings shilling for fuck's sake. What did they expect? A 4yr holiday in the pacific?"
Well, I feel that had these people's loved ones died for something that they believed was worthwhile it might have helped ease the pain. If any one of them believed that Blair cared a damn for the consequences of his lies and actually ever thought about what it must be like to lose a son in to a war most people here do not support - then I'm sure it would help. Still, I expect that at least Blair knows how many have died NOW!
As for George's "Was the 'tally' worth the regime change?"
I don't think so, and I'm sure the Iraqi's don't - all they want is for the killing to stop: Iraq is a far more dangerous place now than it was under Saddam!
There is a slogan on the wall by the South beach "Poor men's blood for rich men's profit." What ever really changes?
By the way George I see I've been promoted from pestering women to 'lecher'... if you keep losing arguements at this rate I'll, no doubt, be a baby eater by the end of the week!
Ok Steve, if your 'Bodybags count!' is a key plank in your argument I ask you to consider the final tally resulting from the last great tyrant appeasers efforts.
If Neville Chamberlain had found the guts to take Hitler on instead of licking his arse and waving his 'peace in our time' paper from the steps of a plane, maybe the 'bodybag count wouldn't have reached the 55,000,000 it did by 1945.
The removal of Hussein was a bargain by comparison. I would also point out that a percentage (?) of the Iraqi casualty figure were certainly not innocent either.
As Bob points out, most military volunteers do so because they WANT the action. They've played the computer game, read the book and seen the movie, now they want to take part. It's the stupidity of youth.
An insult to whom?
His victims?
Hitler was hell bent on the genocide of jews.
Hussein was hell bent on the genocide of kurds.
What's the difference apart from the 'body count'
All tyrants start off small, Hussein was stopped before he hit the big time, that's the only difference.
Ohhhh.....I see.... So yours and Israels present forms of Ethnic Cleansing ain't genocide, Sludgie poo?
Israel's got WMDs and won't sign the Anti-Nuclear Poliferation Treaty either, you disconnected twat!
Now go back to playing Lawn Bowls and eating cucumber sangies with you head stuck up your bum......it's the only thing you seem to be any good at!
I'm always appalled at the ability of mediocre writers to imagine themselves in the situation of shell shocked people - lashing out in their anguish and pain - and sincerely suggest that in the same situation THEY would say "Oh, well, just one of those things... c'est la guerre, c'est la vie."
"Young Tommy always wanted to get blown up somewhere exotic though, not a place that's mostly sand and oil pipelines. Still he died with his boots on. Makes you wander what the average age of the dead and wounded is... still he got his shilling and he paid the price. Can't expect Mr Blair to know every, small, unimportant, fact to do with the liberation of Baghdad."
>Iraq is a far more dangerous place now than it was under Saddam<
Tell that to the Kurds and god only knows how many innocent people that murdering k slaughtered.
I'm all for avoiding military action, but not at 'all cost'.
In this case 'I believe' the cost were to great to not take action.
'Liberation of Baghdad.'
Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the war, just for a moment: Am I the only one who finds the idea of declaring war and killing God-knows-how-many innocents under the banner of 'Liberation' and 'Freedom' a bit chilling?
The whole Anglo-US propaganda machine sounded like something out of the darkest dystopian fiction.
Ben
Stephen - "I personally think there are better ways to change a regime than launching a war."
Like, er, asking him politely ? Well, as I recall, the gibbon in the White House tried that. Saddam could have avoided bloodshed by taking up the rather generous offer of exile. Today he could be sunning himself in his Joranian villa watching Sky 1 with his two thug kids. Short of sucking his dick I don't really know what else the West could have done. And tell me, how many Iraqis died as a result of UN sanctions ? 100,000 ? 200,000 ? I don't recall any million-marches on London condemning the lack of medicine to Iraqi children. To repeat: the conflict in Iraq began in 1991. Gulf War 2 was part of a historical process that, had it not come to its conclusion in 2003, would have done so three or four years down the line.
Bestchum - Yes, I certainly think Hitler and Saddam are comparable. Both polled 99.9 per cent in elections; both were a menace to their neighbours; both were not very nice chappies who practiced genocide; both wore silly moustaches.
Smiley - The only constant in human history is that healthy young men and women have been prepared to fight one another in war. And until wars are fought using robots I don't see that changing any time soon. For a soldier, being in a war situation is a frightening and exhilirating experience. It's what you sign up for. It's what you train for. And if you don't want to fight in wars, take my advice and don't join the armed forces.
">Iraq is a far more dangerous place now than it was under Saddam<
Tell that to the Kurds and god only knows how many innocent people that murdering k slaughtered."
Depends what you mean by dangerous, doesn't it?
You're in more danger of being killed by fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq now than before the war but you're less likely to be banged up the secret police.
The problem is the human costs of not taking action in Iraq were similar to the costs of not removing 50+ other nasty governments the world.
Should we systematically remove all of them? If not, why was Iraq more deserve of this action that Saudi Arabia, Burma, North Korea (insert brutal dictatorship as appropriate).
Reasons why the West is prepared to put up with the following brutal dictatorships:
Saudi Arabia - they freely give us their oil
North Korea - they've developed the bomb
Burma - they've haven't got anything we need
I tend to think that if (as someone put it) you 'take the King's Shilling' you are placing yourself in a position where you are at the mercy of politicians. And the upshot is that you might fight in the Falklands - seen as a worthwhile, 'honorable' success (not by me but by society in general) or in other wars that are not so black and white.
When a life is lost, it is desperatly important for the family to feel that their loved one's sacrifice was 'worthwhile', or at least 'seen' to be worthwhile. In the case of Iraq, the opposite is true. Relatives cannot help but feel that the deaths of their loved ones was 'pointless'. And it is hard to disagree with this when we look at the political mess Blair has gotten himself into over Iraq.
Was the price worth paying? It doesn't seem like it, does it? And that is the crux. Loved ones can't turn grief into pride in this war, but they have to turn it into something else - anger and resentment. At who? Who else, Tony bloody Blair. It's very sad, and regrettable but - and this is where I agree with Mississippi, soldiers etc, know the risks when they sign up. Their job is not to ask why, it is to serve. It is a dangerous job, but one that many in the services adore.
We cannot feel too sorry for them, I know it's harsh, but they chose that life and they lived and died doing what they wanted to be doing. We cannot let a governmnet be 'sued' by relatives of the dead. This is another sign of the victim culture that infests these shores, which is an Americanism. Does there always have to be somebody to blame? What about culpability? Where does that figure? People and society must understand that people must start taking personal responsibility for their own choices in life.
What's the alternative - someone starts shooting at you, a paid up, trained soldier, you get wounded and then go and sue the labour Party or the cabinet for damages because it's their fault? Utter nonsense.
The media and society in general should be very worried about how the victim culture is infesting this country - they should be condemning it not perpetuating it.
[%sig%]
Sadly, the families who are now taking legal action against Tony Blair are becoming pawns in a wider political battle. I doubt whether the Daily Mail would be as supportive to service families who threatened to sue a Tory government.
As Bob says above, families who have been conned into suing the government/Blair are being used as pawns by the ethically bankrupt tories and their fawning press. The actions, if proceeded with, will fail, and after the tories have bled every drop of publicity from the relatives misery, will move on to the next emotive issue and forget everything about this one.
>> ...Was the price worth paying? It doesn't seem like it, does it?... <<
It might not to you kjh, but I ask, have you spoken to those who live in Iraq, or are you just deciding from a British standpoint?
The press campaign to destroy personal reputations will run on unabated until at least next Friday. The Daily Wail in particular is a festering package of crap that will stop at nothing to secure their aims, and as John says, the tories have shot themselves in the foot yet again.
back on the subject which isn't jasper's desperation and social inadequacy, i've just copped a look at the polls for the election.
and what do you know?
following the revolting mercenary exploitation of a soldier's death in all the newspapers, with the young man's ex-wife claiming that it's all tony blair's fault, the gap between labour and the tories has widened. it's almost as if people have taken completely the opposite line to the intention of this propaganda, which suggests that people may hate war and the politics of war with great intensity, but it's just possible that they hate emotional blackmail, hypocrisy and mock-piety even more.
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