Mr Blair's lies finally exposed

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Wed, 2005-04-27 21:40

OK Channel 4 News has just unveiled the smoking gun that destroys P.M. Tony Blair's credibility for once and for all.

The programme has at last obtained an authentic copy of the Attorney General's 7 March 2003 advice to Mr Blair about the legality of any war with Iraq.

The key point here is not whether legality of war is an issue or not, even though Blair defenders will try to divert us onto that.

No, this document raises two far more serious points that blast Blair and the Attorney General clean out of the water.

Firstly, the document reveals that Tony Blair lied to us and indeed to many of his cabinet colleagues about the unequivocal nature of the Attorney's original advice.

We now know that the original advice given on 7 March 2003 is hedged with strong qualifications and caveats that show the government's top legal adviser had grave doubts about the legality of the war.

This hedging does not in any way square with what Blair and Straw have been trying to suggest ever since. Alas for them, they can no longer bend the words, or spin the facts, because the Attorney's advice is out in the public domain for all to read.

Secondly, this revelation shows that in the 10 days between the original advice from the Attorney (7 March 2003) and his substantially revised advice to the cabinet (17 March 2003) he must have been leant on by Blair or Blair henchmen to change his mind.

There can be no other explanation.

Nothing else happened during those 10 days that could possibly have brought about such an astonishing change of mind. We know there were no changes at the UN, there were no new developments from the UN Weapons Inspectors under Hans Blix, and there was no new information from our intelligence services about what was happening in Iraq.

And yet the Attorney General went from a highly qualified and caveated piece of advice to one that was totally unequivocal.

To sum it up, we now know for sure that Blair was so keen to push the case for war that he forced his legal adviser to make a huge and highly unethical change in his advice, and he tried to hide this change from the British public and indeed his own cabinet.

Remember we are not talking about some obscure policy decision on weights and measures or fishing rights, we are talking about a policy that has led to the death of 100,000 Iraqi people and 87 of our soldiers.

Blair apologists can play with words but they cannot deny that in order to bounce us into this unnecessary war the lying liar Blair lied and lied and lied.

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:24

Bob Roberts

"BBC political editor Andrew Marr said he did not think the leaked advice from the attorney general was proof that anybody had lied." ...from today's BBC news. Chin up Andrew Marr, respected political commentator.

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:36

mississippi

Fateful has elicited the bits of information from the 'leaked' document that he believes reinforces his argument, and makes him feel good about his stance on this issue. I have read in MY paper that nothing in the report indicates that Blair lied, and it also says that the Attorney General was actually in accord with Blair. Perhaps I should start a 'Howard's Lies Exposed' thread. There would be far more content I can assure you.

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:39

MykEl

I think you will find that Saddam was forced to decomission some missiles just before the invasion, George, because they went a few miles further than they were supposed to. However the point i was making is that it was a bit like a team of glaziers going through a town smashing all the glass to preserve the inhabitants from dirty windows - nothing to do with charging them for fitting new windows, of course. Keep pumping that black gold, boy.

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:40

mississippi

Thar she blows.

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:49

MykEl

:o)

Thu, 2005-04-28 11:50

MykEl

Well, I'm going out to look around my local Interflora to see if i can find any flowers in Arsenal's colours... catch you later, georgie ;o)

Thu, 2005-04-28 12:41

mississippi

Save your money johnnie boy, they lady has taste.

Thu, 2005-04-28 13:24

Rachel

Lies, illegality or not, I don't see how proof of either is going to persuade those, like me, who thought that the war was wrong any differently. What I do object to, and what isn't in dispute, is that when Blair says, "It's over, move on, I can only apologise blardiblar" he is showing his full arrogance and contempt for the rule of law, for the UN and for democracy.

Thu, 2005-04-28 14:45

#10

Radiodenver

The only refrigerator magnets on my fridge have pictures of the USS Missouri and the USS Arizona memorial. Picked those up at Pearl Harbor in March. I must have missed the ones with good little catch phrases about mans kind nature when I was looking at the oil slick from the memorial. Oh, Hitler!

Thu, 2005-04-28 14:57

#11

MykEl

They lady, they, they on your... rings a bell, Georgie :)

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:00

#12

mississippi

Mykle, why exactly ARE you such a wan.ker?

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:02

#13

MykEl

I'm celibate Georgie, I think you're thinking of... well, you.

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:05

#14

mississippi

You wouldn't know what I think, you don't have the machinery. And now I'm going to ostracise you again. Until I feel the need to torment you again. I'll go back to the sensible people here, you go back to pestering women.

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:06

#15

MykEl

You never torment me, georgie, but you do make me laugh - mostly when you don't mean too, mind :)

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:07

#16

MykEl

I didn't mean 'too' either :)

Thu, 2005-04-28 15:08

#17

Radiodenver

Blue Meanies....and snapping turtle turks!

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:42

#18

mississippi

Who gives a fuck, Hussein is gone and that's good enough.

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:43

#19

mississippi

*Waits expectantly for the Scarborough peni.. I mean member to start spouting about WMD for the 1000 time*

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:49

#20

archergirl

Is the economy in a shambles? Is 25% of the population unemployed? Have hospital and train services actually worsened? Are people striking left right and centre over crap work conditions? Or does the UK actually have a very healthy economy, healthy people (except for some exceptions here on ABCT), and high home ownership? Perhaps we should start looking at the -good- things Labour has accomplished over the last eight years or so. Sure, Blair lied. What politician doesn't, in order to get their agenda passed? He was in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position. And he's still being damned, and God, most likely, will damn him for his decision anyway. So if you don't like Tony Blair, vote for that chunky Scotsman instead. Or mingy little Howie. Sheesh. We get the idea, mate.

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:50

#21

MykEl

Anything for you George. Well, fateful is dead right but your attitude will win the day. Bush and Blair always new they could control enough of the sheep to stay in power - they knew they would not get any real competition...

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:52

#22

MykEl

Didn't think the moon would get to you Ag ;o)

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:54

#23

archergirl

Sadges are remarkably tolerant, usually, but even we get tired of being soapboxed all the time. Moon is just about conjuncting my 26-degree Sadge sun as we speak, Smilester. Everything's amplified. ;-)

Wed, 2005-04-27 21:58

#24

MykEl

Everything, ooooh ;o)

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:01

#25

archergirl

How'd you do with the Scorpio eclipse on the 24th?

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:02

#26

mississippi

All this current bollocks about Iraq is simply anti-Labour rehashes because there's an election next week. You poor deluded souls. If you REALLY want some statistics about Iraq try these on for size; Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979-2003): 300 000 Human Rights Watch: "twenty-five years of Ba`th Party rule ... murdered or 'disappeared' some quarter of a million Iraqis" [http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm] 8/9 Dec. 2003 AP: Total murders New survey estimates 61,000 residents of Baghdad executed by Saddam. US Government estimates a total of 300,000 murders 180,000 Kurds k. in Anfal 60,000 Shiites in 1991 50,000 misc. others executed "Human rights officials" est.: 500,000 Iraqi politicians: over a million [These don't include the million or so dead in the Iran-Iraq War.] If you bothered to read this far, check out the site that supplied them. You'll find the Iraq war about 25,000,000 deaths down the list. How come none of you demonstrated about the people of East Timor that were butchered in their hundreds of thousands? Could it be because Blair and British soldiers weren't involved? Sorry, but some of you are bloody hypocrites. Oh, and mykle, you still know nothing after all these years. Not about wars, not about email, not about flowers.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:04

#27

archergirl

Hmm. I think the eclipse must still be in effect... *slinks off to bed*

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:09

#28

MykEl

From your own link, Georgie: Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979-2003): 300 000.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:11

#29

smillieboy

Well worth pointing out. Clearly George's argument is now invalid.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:11

#30

MykEl

We managed almost a third of that in just one year.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:11

#31

mississippi

And for dessert check out entry 35 and you'll find that over a !,000,000 died as a result of the UN imposed embargo on Iraq following Husseins invasion of Kuwait. The arsehole kept building palaces whilst his people died rather than allow the UN to inspect his country for the phantom weapons.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:15

#32

archergirl

I have to agree with you there, Missi, and with East Timor. Everyone knew about it, too, is the shame.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:15

#33

mississippi

In which case we saved him the trouble then.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:17

#34

fateful

Archergirl I seem to remember people saying a similar thing about Hitler. He made the trains run on time, he eradicated unemployment, the German economy was doing very nicely, how churlish of people to complain about him. I cannot understand your acceptance of an error that has killed so many innocent people and cost us so much money, and left so much misery and carnage in its wake (only today an Iraqi female MP was blown up by insurgents). A few days ago you were advocating Buddhism to another poster, now you seem to be saying 100,000 deaths is less important than a healthy economy. What's this, the Genghis Khan branch of Buddhism?

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:19

#35

mississippi

Fateful, what the hell were YOU shouting about when Hussein was gassing Kurds? I tell you what! Most probably NOTHING. You're a bloody hypocrite.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:23

#36

MykEl

How many Tibetans have the Chinese murdered without anyone doing anything? How many people die from starvation every year? The thing most people object to was that so many Iraqi's died for their own good. Funny how the reasons keep changing but everybody forgets and it just becomes a war of statistics.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:23

#37

smillieboy

Well, I always wondered how long it would take for a Labour leader to be compared to Hitler. My money was on Josef Foot or Heinreich Kinnock. Oh well.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:23

#38

mississippi

Right, I'm off to bed before the thread gets out of hand and Tony deletes it.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:25

#39

MykEl

Sorry Georgie - did you want some flowers too?

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:35

#40

Radiodenver

George, I can't see how you can justify calling somebody a hypocrite for opposing the politics that brought your country into a war and for his taking issue with one of the wars main proponents, who is standing for re-election in a few days. A hypocrite by definition is a pretender...somebody that pretends one thing while believing another. I find it more likely that Blair is the hypocrite. It is quite feasable that Fateful can dislike paying the bill for a war his country is involved with, when there are rational opinions that the war wasn't necessary, in face of the fact the Sadam Hussein was a complete and total animal and deserves to be imprisoned forever.

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:50

#41

MykEl

It certainly helped that the UN made Saddam give up his longer range missiles - the only credible deterent amoung his few remaining weapons -before we blew up half of Bagdad (else we might have had to blow it all up - just to be on the safe side). Lucky they have enough oil to pay for the rebuilding eh?

Wed, 2005-04-27 22:55

#42

fateful

That is so funny Mississippi. You know nothing about me, yet you know that I stayed silent about the crimes of Hussein. I have been a vociferous opponent of human rights violations all my life, whether they have been committed by terrorist groups like the IRA, megalomaniac dictators like Saddam, or supposedly civilised nations like our own. I was outraged by the attacks on the Kurds and expressed my outrage for all to hear at the time. But two wrongs do not make a right. Are we really so lacking in imagination and ingenuity that the only way we can fix a problem like Saddam is to blast away at towns and cities and kill innocent kiddies? We have the ingenuity to dream up clever stuff like the internet, but apparently we still have to rely on good old-fashioned violence to make the world a safe place. Violence rarely solves anything. It just increases anger and bitterness. Since the invasion the death rate has gone up dramatically in the region, and new terrorists are joining up at alarming speed. What sort of triumph is that. You're a writer, with a great creative talent, but on matters of war and peace, it seems your creative instincts desert you.

Wed, 2005-04-27 23:01

#43

Radiodenver

Ya know, by US Government estimates, the terrorist acts in the world have tripled since 9/11. Is the world a safer place? Will the world be a safer place for the next 10 years? For every person killed, there are those whose hate will grow and they will pass that hate to their children and their children. A year of war causes an entire generation of hatred.

Wed, 2005-04-27 23:05

#44

MykEl

Good question, Denver. Once you have taken a course of action there is no real way of calculating what would have happened if you had taken a different path. It would be interesting to know if we would still have Global Warming if there had been no Industrial Revolution... maybe it just part of the life cycle of the planet.

Wed, 2005-04-27 23:16

#45

bingo the man said

" and there was no new information from our intelligence services about what was happening in Iraq. " really? were you and channel four news privy to the entire scope of intelligence at that time? or perhaps you just got carried away with your own phlegmy self-righteous priggy little ranty scaredy-cat hogwash. if blair lied to rid iraq of saddam, or to somehow stabilise middle east conflicts through deals with israel, iran and syria, then that's fine with me. i think his lying is FABULOUS and should be applauded. politics is the art of making the unpalatable desirable, and vice versa. it ain't a philosophy essay. when blair says that history will judge him right, i have no reason to doubt him and can only admire a politician who does what's right in the full knowledge that there is no reward in the near future. do you not think that blair's advisors would have mentioned the huge backlash and emotional betrayal? as if they didn't know what was going to happen? i don't think so, i think the reasons were so compelling that blair decided he could live with the unpopularity and loathing, in pursuit of some kind of big big picture. do you have a big picture? or just an email box full of hysterical anti-bush/blair propaganda and funny little cartoons?

Wed, 2005-04-27 23:25

#46

Radiodenver

Bingo, you are certainly passionate, if not naive. The cure IS the disease. All that is happening is that it's being spread. Killing is easy...it doesn't take great men to kill one another. It takes great men to stop the killing. Neither Bush nor Blair are great men. History will judge them accordingly, I doubt neither will able to write their own history as they envision it.

Wed, 2005-04-27 23:30

#47

MykEl

Good post, Denver!

Thu, 2005-04-28 00:59

#48

bingo the man said

so it doesn't take killing great men to make great men kill, it takes great men making killings to greet men cakes kill, i see...that's perfectly clear. of course i should acknowledge that next to ghandi, saddam hussein was a political saint and he would have appreciated and respected your opinion wholeheartedly. oh how about we just steal our political philosophy from " the little book of neat little sayings you can find on fridge magnets "? they don't write their own history, politicians, nixon tried that and look how that turned out. even churchill's massive massive tomes were subject to the most stringent criticism. the point is that the people who sit around passing judgement on our times, do so almost entirely based on remotely published third-rate "information" which has been carefully sifted for any sign of dangerous "real thought", leaving just a doughy vanilla-scented mush of innuendo and conspiracy theory, served up with the occasional article from " new scientist" to convey some kind of factual basis, when in fact, as has been proven, these criticisms are trite and irrelevant when set against what's at stake. do you know what's at stake? or in your mind is all this all just about bush and blair being nasty men you don't like? never mind, there'll be some new leaders soon, people who are lovely and honest and just like you, and they'll never go to war and they'll never upset anybody, and they will be great men. great men. with cakes.

Thu, 2005-04-28 08:53

#49

mississippi

Fateful (and I answer Denvers query about the use of 'hypocrite here too), I used the word originally to describe ALL those that have jumped on the Iraq bandwagon, at the time of the war, but most recently as an election weapon. I've no doubt that you were a part of the anti-war lobby but did you protest about the previous outrages listed on the site I quoted? Perhaps I WAS a little harsh using the word to describe you personally, but to say nothing about the many atrocities perpetrated in our lives and then pick on one that is fashionable DOES smack a little of hypocrasy. I mean no disrespect here, but your emotive language, quite possibly assimilated from the monotonous media outbursts and regurgitated ad lib by the pacifists at large, betrays you. I'm sorry to disagree, but violence very often solves all sorts of things. Face it, violence is a crucial part of human nature. Neither you or anyone else will ever change that, so the best thing to do is use it when necessary to control those that insist on using it as a dictatorial tool. Mykle's comment about the UN forced Hussein to give up LR weapons is stupid on two counts. Firstly he never had any REAL LR weapons in the first place that we know of, and secondly he suggests that the UN had some sway over Hussein, which is preposterous. The UN is a laughing stock amomng the worlds despots. Mykle is naive in the extreme. You may gather from this that I am a warmonger, but in fact I am the opposite, I just recognise that sometimes one gun says more than a million empty words.

Thu, 2005-04-28 09:36

#50

bingo the man said

there was a man on the telly the other night, furiously berating tony blair because the man's son had been posted to iraq. what? your son joins the army and they have to go and engage in warfare? what kind of sick joke is this? you don't join the army to go off around the world fighting people, that's just another example of tony blair's complete evilness. the UN. is a political body. not an apolitical gathering of the pure and the neutral, there are members in positions of significant power within the UN that had a vested interest in maintaining the feudal despot saddam hussein, so of course they can make any action against their "investments" harder to prove, and harder to act against. the result = wmd/reports/actions unlicensed by the UN. it's not hard to work it all out. you just have to accept that not everything you read in the newspapers is true, or even credible. you just have to accept that you can't know everything about everything all the time, and on that basis it's best not to hang the monkey for being a spy.

Thu, 2005-04-28 10:01

#51

Archergirl

Fateful, Buddhism promotes taking the middle path between the two extremes. I _don't_ agree with the war in Iraq, not for one minute, not for the reasons that were given. If they had said, 'we're gonna take out Saddam because he's a ****** and needs to go' I would have been more supportive, perhaps. I don't believe the lies perpetuated by either Bushie or Blair. BUT the fact of the matter is that Saddam is gone; Iraq has had free elections; the newly elected PMs are not being blown up by British or American troops, but by people who felt they had more power under Hussein. I'm simply taking a pragmatic view of the world, which is quite an achievement for an idealist. Blair is NOT comparable to Hitler; to even suggest so is outrageous. Even Bush, who as far as I'm concerned is a Class A fuckwit, doesn't come close to Hitler. This war was not a systematic eradication of an entire ethnic/religious group. But I do get tired of people always looking at what's wrong in life, rather than the positive things. You have the luxury of protesting what you feel is an unjust war. The Iraqis were tortured or 'disappeared' for holding dissenting opinions. So would you rather that Hussein was still in power, gassing Kurds? Having a black or white worldview is sometimes not productive. Life is full of grey areas, and this unfortunate war is one of them. I hope that clarifies my position a bit.

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