(I disagree, but I understand, given their vantage points.)
(David Graeber had recommended this piece by Frankie Boyle highly: ‘The Tory leadership election is a sort of X Factor for choosing the antichrist;The main post-Brexit worry of Labour MPs seems to be that their vote will crumble to Ukip under Corbyn, who won’t produce enough racist mugs and mouse mats to reassure everyone ;-)
Now on July 3, in anticipation of today’s report, ‘Chilcot inquiry must restore trust in government, says top lawyer’, the Guardian:
“Before the report’s release, Philippe Sands QC, author of Lawless World, a book about the Iraq war, said: “Of singular importance is the need for Chilcot to restore trust in the process of decision-making in government.”
Note: the Guardian reported last night that all of Sands’ questions were in the report, including the messages and Lord Goldsmith ‘changing his mind’ after a trip to DeeCee. Carrots, sticks, whatever. I don’t know about the rest of this:
“In 1995 Hussein Kamel, an Iraqi official who defected, told CIA and British intelligence officers and UN inspectors that, after the 1990-91 Gulf war, Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks.
But in the build-up to the invasion, key figures in the Bush administration repeatedly cited Kamel’s testimony as evidence that Iraq possessed WMD. Blair included it in his speech to parliament ahead of the invasion. When pressed in parliament to make Kamel’s testimony public, Blair said the UK did not possess a transcript.
Hans Blix, the UN’s former chief weapons inspector whose team was charged with finding evidence of WMD, has also claimed that the Blair government “misrepresented what we did … in order to get the authorisation [for war] that they shouldn’t have had”.
Blair is expected to challenge claims that experts warned him about the conflict between Sunni and Shia followers following Saddam’s removal.
“The thing I found really shocking when I was researching this was the absence of a plan and a complete failure to make any kind of preparation for the postwar aftermath or even consider what the aftermath might be,” said Steven Kettell, associate professor in politics and international studies at the University of Warwick. “It was criminal negligence on an industrial scale.”
Kettell said the inquiry’s report needed to be explicit in its criticisms. “Otherwise, a significant number of people will say it’s a cover-up by the establishment.”
Now the report did indeed show the correspondence between Bush and Blair, but as to addressing the fact that Blair failed to ask parliament for a second resolution as peer Lord Goldsmith, I can’t say. Below are some of the letters, nauseating as they are.
‘With you, whatever‘: Tony Blair’s letters to George W Bush’; Twenty-nine messages to then US president, released as part of Chilcot report, give insight into buildup towards invasion.
Here’s the Guardian’s coverage of Chilcot’s summary of the report from their live blog this a.m.:
Chilcot’s statement – Summary
Here are the main points from Sir John Chilcot’s statement.
- Chilcot said the invasion was “not a last resort.”
We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.
- He said the intelligence was presented with a certainty that was not justified.
The judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – WMDs – were presented with a certainty that was not justified.
- He said planning for post-invastion Iraq was “wholly inadequate”.
Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.
- He said the war was a failure.
The government failed to achieve its stated objectives.
- He accused the UK of undermining the authority of the UN security council.
Mr Blair and Mr Straw blamed France for the “impasse” in the UN and claimed that the UK government was acting on behalf of the international community “to uphold the authority of the security council”.
In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was, in fact, undermining the security council’s authority.
- He said the process of deciding the war was legal was unsatisfactory.
The inquiry has not expressed a view on whether military action was legal. That could, of course, only be resolved by a properly constituted and internationally recognised court.
We have, however, concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were far from satisfactory.
- He said the joint intelligence committee should have told Blair to accept the limitations of the intelligence about Iraq’s WMD.
The joint intelligence committee should have made clear to Mr Blair that the assessed intelligence had not established “beyond doubt” either that Iraq had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons or that efforts to develop nuclear weapons continued.
- He said Blair overlooked the threat the invasion would pose to the UK.
In the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, Mr Blair stated that he judged the possibility of terrorist groups in possession of WMD was “a real and present danger to Britain and its national security” – and that the threat from Saddam Hussein’s arsenal could not be contained and posed a clear danger to British citizens.
Mr Blair had been warned, however, that military action would increase the threat from al-Qaida to the UK and to UK interests. He had also been warned that an invasion might lead to Iraq’s weapons and capabilities being transferred into the hands of terrorists.
- He said Blair should have anticipated the post-invastion problems.
Mr Blair told the inquiry that the difficulties encountered in Iraq after the invasion could not have been known in advance. We do not agree that hindsight is required. The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaida activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion.
- He said Blair overestimate his ability to influence America.
Some are the management of relations with allies, especially the US. Mr Blair overestimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq. The UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests or judgments differ.
On the other hand…
Tony Blair says reports clears him of ‘bad faith’
Tony Blair has responded to the Chilcot report. This is his full statement:
“The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit. Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country.
I note that the report finds clearly:
– That there was no falsification or improper use of Intelligence (para 876 vol 4)
– No deception of Cabinet (para 953 vol 5)
– No secret commitment to war whether at Crawford Texas in April 2002 or elsewhere (para 572 onwards vol 1)
The inquiry does not make a finding on the legal basis for military action but finds that the Attorney General had concluded there was such a lawful basis by 13th March 2003 (para 933 vol 5)
However the report does make real and material criticisms of preparation, planning, process and of the relationship with the United States.
These are serious criticisms and they require serious answers.
I will respond in detail to them later this afternoon.
I will take full responsibility for any mistakes without exception or excuse.
I will at the same time say why, nonetheless, I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein and why I do not believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.
Above all I will pay tribute to our Armed Forces. I will express my profound regret at the loss of life and the grief it has caused the families, and I will set out the lessons I believe future leaders can learn from my experience.”
Pffffft to Bush’s Poodle.
‘The Iraq war inquiry has left the door open for Tony Blair to be prosecuted’; The Chilcot report did not look at the legality of the war itself. But the former prime minister comes in for heavy criticism for his conduct, Joshua Rozenberg
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Colin “sugar=anthrax” Powell got up & made a speech during D.C. 4th of July festivities about how much he lurvs our veterans. lots of vet hooplah, incl. w/those who’d been de-limbed. “blood will have blood.” i find it hard to believe that they, the war planners, were unaware of the chaos that would be unleashed. not even when it’s obvious that, to a certain extent, some people blatantly used the war to enrich themselves & their corporate patrons (obvs cheney & kbr/haliburton), which may have been their 1st & perhaps only concern. there are tons of people in the pentagon, rand, etc., paid to study these things. that this country raped by sanctions & desert storm & the daily bombings of desert fox would just collapse w/a “little” military push was absolutely one of rumsfeld’s “known knowns.” not even possible that was not the case.
it would be funny to see blair forced to live in the US & travel only here & to israel b/c of an international arrest warrant, but that ain’t gonna happen cuz they’d have to do the same to the top dogs in the US gov’t. not gonna happen. it’d be even funnier to see him before a firing squad. j/k. his few remaining miserable years can be better spent tending the wounds of DU-deformed babies in iraq & cleaning the DU out of the sand in 120 F iraqi heat.
ah, yes, jason. those masters of war,
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul…
i totally subscribe to your version of ‘some justice’, and is the reason i included the final doam video, not wanting to include babbies’ DU photos. bless your heart.
just after i posted this, i hear from the (unindicted) war criminal still in the white house, an excerpt:
“Instead of drawing down to 5,500 troops by the end of this year, the United States will maintain approximately 8,400 troops in Afghanistan into next year, through the end of my administration. The narrow missions assigned to our forces will not change — they’ll remain focused on supporting Afghan forces and going after terrorists. However, maintaining our forces at this specific level will allow us to continue providing tailored support to help Afghan forces continue to improve. And we will continue supporting critical counterterrorism operations.
I know that when we first sent our forces into Afghanistan 14 years ago, few Americans imagined we’d be there — in any capacity — this long. As President, I’ve focused our strategy on training and building up Afghan forces. And because we have, we were able to end our major ground war there and bring home 90 percent of our troops.
Yet even as we work for peace, we must deal with the realities of the world as it is.”
(as You and Bush helped make it, do you mean, you fucking war criminal?)
you make no mention of the cia/special ops/mercenaries (XE,, whatever) forces left afoot, either, you conman’s conman..
Put me on the Truth & Punishment Commission, coach! I’m ready!
you’re IN, #9! love the sports analogy, what a hoot. but related, and it’s long, and i haven’t finished it, but the author (sweeney?) doesn’t exactly go where one might think it’s about to go given the title: ‘Chilcot offers truth without reconciliation or justice’
but he does allude to this starling failure of the report:
https://twitter.com/ZalmayX/status/750911447400669184
Classic evidence of the truth of Rove’s strategic assertion and Mark Twain’s about a lie travelling around the world while the truth is struggling to get its boots on.
Hard to think what would be poetic justice in this case, or even restorative justice. Jason is onto something about having to face the consequences of your action every single day for the rest of your life. And caring for DU-deformed babies only begins to confront them with the misery they blithely caused.
yes. yes. yes. who would decide any ‘restorative justice’ (fania davis-esque?) but i was glad to be able to include the billy bragg rove tweet. he may be the first anarcho-syndicalist i’d met musically/poetically, although i hadn’t known it at the time. but oh, so good on the twain; thank you.
i’m pinging michael franti (back when), too. more later.
Haven’t read much on what’s in the report. Did they mention PNAC and the Zionists? Did they mention the Which Path to Persia and the Oded Yinon plan. Kidding, I’ll read up, no need to answer. I’m sure that kind of stuff isn’t in there, it being “flawed intelligence” and all. But it is kind of weird the person this cretin followed doesn’t have his own “report”. What’s up with that? Monkey Boy gets to skate? Oh ya, the emails, focus people.
England had a little lamb
a lamb that had to go…
at least no fleece white as snow.
they’ll throw somebody under the bus if necessary. no problem. but yeah, once again, what’s not in the report is more important.
the report’s 2.6 million words in 12 volumes, so folks are just beginning to dig into it. whassup with dubya not having a report is that amerikans don’t really care, or enough of them. in the UK folks seriously wanted to know how it all went down because they knew blair and bush had lied. the first several ‘reports’ had been deemed whitewashes by the public, so in 2009 gordon brown formed this iraq inquiry commission, to be headed by sir john chilcot.
it was of course to have been published in 2013, but the US ‘negotiated’ against its release even in 2013, so yeah, pnac and the neo-cons are implicated. this is fine, though, as to some of whats not in the report, or minimized and not followed.
‘Chilcot’s blind spot: Iraq War report buries oil evidence, fails to address motive; When the UK invaded, Iraq had nearly a tenth of the world’s oil reserves — and government documents “explicitly state” oil was a consideration before the war. Why didn’t Chilcot explore it further?’
”To many people around the world, it was obvious that oil was a central issue, as Iraq itself had nearly a tenth of the world’s oil reserves, and together with its neighbouring countries nearly two thirds. There was a clear public interest in understanding how that affected UK decisions. Chilcot failed to explore it.
Section 10.3 of the report, in volume 9, records that senior government officials met secretly with BP and Shell on at several occasions (denied at the time) to discuss their commercial interests in obtaining contracts. Chilcot did not release the minutes, but we had obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act: they are posted here. In unusually expressive terms for a civil service write-up, one of the meeting’s minutes began, “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there” (emphasis in original).” (the rest)
exquisitely related from the wayback machine, and tweeted by my amigo in spirit @cordeliers:
February 8, 2003 ‘Yes, Tony, There is a Conspiracy, by Jacob Levic
this is good, hard to see the photo:
but ha; i don’t even recognize a couple things you’ve asked about.
the guardian included yesterday evening included these paragraphs, and since all of the answers to philippe sands, qc’s questions were addressed in the report, i’ll edited out most of it.
“Lord Goldsmith told Blair that war without a second UN resolution would be illegal, only to change his mind after a trip to Washington in March 2003 and meetings with Bush administration legal officials.”
“Other allies also came to Blair’s defence. Alastair Campbell, his former press secretary, said Blair had not given Bush a blank cheque. There were no easy decisions, Campbell added. In a statement on Wednesday Bush acknowledged mistakes but said he continued to believe “the world is better off without Saddam in power”.
we’ll never know how many iraqis were killed outright, sent into diaspora to die later, how many generations of children will be maimed and killed w/ immense suffering by way of DU, but we know that mme. albright said that it was worth it, and dubya says the world is better off without his daddy’s arch-enemy: saddam. dunno about the timeline of this, but damning but unsurprising nonetheless:
john stauber’s asking what big al had: ‘Where’s the US Chilcot Report? Blame Obama, Hillary, Biden and Kerry’
yeah, ‘look forward, not backward’, even peggy noonan parroted it for the rube ‘librul intelligentsia’. but i blame the amerikan public and the consolidated media stenographers, as well. the advent of social media is a double-edged sword, but at least (in the main, for now) citizen journalism can show evidence of protests. the #iraq hashtage features film footage of the 1.5 million protestors who knew the UK was being lied into war, and oil was central to it.
“we need to look forward & not backward.” so obama is a brain scientist rocket surgeon compared to ditch digger trump b/c of what again? oh right, trump’s BS is somewhat unscripted, unlike obama’s “i’m really good at killing people!” and his daddy’s shotgun moment “watch out if you date my daughters cuz i’ll drone your ass!” (har har, hee hee). but i guarantee you trump would (and will) make the same guarded, calculated statements about the chilcot report as any of ’em, after kind of agreeing w/the report, saying something like obomba said in 2007/8: “we need to wage SMART wars.” not so totally unguarded after all. yeah, yeah, he’s a moron, but lots of stylistic, surface issues there, not substantive.
what better way to try to ensure that he’d never be prosecuted for war crimes, as he essentially kept bush’s nat sec team, didn’t he? and bush’s fed chair, and yada, yada…
ya rat, i checked on trump: saddam good cuz he killed terr’ists, chilcot good, war was fucked up. might equate to: need moar smart wars, but it was a caption under a video, so i backed right out.
guardian says that chilcot report says iraq war created isis, which of course it did. and this from the home secretary speaking of pointing fingers:
““The UK has stepped up its criticism of US conduct of the Iraq war, with the foreign secretary saying the single most disastrous mistake was the mass removal of supporters of the Ba’ath party from the Iraqi army, which he claimed led directly to the formation of Islamic State.
Philip Hammond said the move by Paul Bremer, an American diplomat in charge of running Iraq in 2003, to dismantle the country’s army had proved a disastrous mistake, as it had sent 400,000 unemployed soldiers on to the streets.”
was it bremer or tenet who claimed that they weren’t given enough GIs to prevent the looting of the libraries and art museums? never mind, bush gave franks, bremer and (brrrrr) tenet medals of freedom.
but ye gods and little fishes, look at this horror: ‘Chelsea Manning Suicide Attempt Reported, Lawyers Kept in Dark; “We’re shocked and outraged that … no one at the Army has given a shred of information to her legal team,” said one of Manning’s lawyers Wednesday.
“One of Manning’s attorneys, Nancy Hollander, said in a statement on Wednesday that she was outraged over the release of her client’s confidential medical information to the news media. Hollander also said the Army failed to connect Manning with her lawyers for a planned phone call on Tuesday, and the earliest Army officials could accommodate a call was Friday morning.” (telesur)
added on edit: this wasn’t the franti tune i’d been trying to remember, but mr. wd said was close. he’d gone to palestine, israel and iraq, then made his ‘on fire’ (mebbe) album. this is from that time.
(the lyrics)
Thank you for including the David Graeber recommend, wendye:
“. . .To reach other people with honesty involves risk, and in our media we seem to be risking communication a lot less and watching each other bake a lot more. . . ”
All the hoopla about Hillary’s e-mails may be to obscure the fact that the First-Gentleman-in-Waiting has plenty of warcrime fatalities to atone for as well, needing to be documented in a US pre-Chilcot report reaching back to Papa Bush (Is he still with us?). I well remember some excellent Amy Goodman back in the day revealing that Iraq hospitals were already the places of terrible miscarriages and infant deformities due to the ongoing bombings occurring as a result of the no fly zone situation – and of course the junk left behind after the first Iraq/US encounter.
Thank you, wendye. The rot runs deep . . . and it doesn’t go away, not here in this world at least. Remembering these things is as hard now as it was then.
And who can forget Shock and Awe? Not me.
shoot, i lost my comment. recreating if i can: yes, frankie boyle done good, didn’t he? dunno that bubba c. even considers his being questioned abut his war crimes, given: a teflon ‘good guy’, but it’s worth a thought.
herbert walker had to have died years ago, and with “don’t cry for me, argentina” alz, to boot. and dubya marched into baghdad for him to soothe his regrets. not oedipal; what’s the ‘pleasing father who was never pleased’ complex?
yep, fallujah, especially, or at least it was in april, 2012. ‘The Children of Fallujah: The Nightmares Never End’, wd, my.firedoglake
the ‘War Crimes in Fallujah’ in bold link has one set of photos; there may be others. i simply can’t afford to look just now.
on second edit: and you’re so welcome, juliania. chronicling so many atrocities performed by those who rule us…is the least we can do in their memories, yes? thanks for reading, and contributing. shock and awe, indeed. for oil and hegemony. in libya: the gold, water, and oil.
p.s. i watched kelsey, at all at waateat-something. left a comment, clipped the end of the video.
whoa, nellie: robert parry’s 2014 ‘How ‘Looking Forward’ Tripped Up Obama’; it’s a keeper, it looks like, and ballasts a few things thd has said about kennedy and the dulles bros., and parry equates to O’s ‘situation’ as a novice, not so much a ‘team of rivals’ thing. the kagan/gates info is new to me, as some other history is as well.
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/12/how-looking-forward-tripped-up-obama/
The oil motive is a kind of ouroboros. If your military depends heavily on oil and your strategic play is encirclement of “Eurasia”, oil becomes the critical resource and the oil rich region in your hands becomes a tactical necessity. Imperial economic policy is split between military necessity and subsidizing consumers and commercial transport.
Plus the Cheney Energy Task Force divvied up the oil resources among the oil companies of the countries in the alliance. Too bad that when the Iraq government chose oil contracts after the US troops left according the the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), it chose oil companies from countries that had not attacked Iraq. Only later did US and UK companies in particular get a contract to drill in Iraqi fields.
An amazing amount of destroyed economic infrastructure and deaths of Iraqi citizens and even the primary motivation was bollixed (does that word occur anywhere in the Chilcot Report’s 6000 pages?)
the mad max “road warrior” movie (2nd of now 4 movies)? armies (in hockey masks & crap, flexing their muscles, i know i know) tear-assin’ around the desert, wastin’ oil/gas to get oil/gas? i’m sure that’s the intent of the movie, at least partly: this is stupid!
was the loss of the victors’ privileged access to iraq’s oil part of the reason for the chaos now?
thd made a funny. ;) thanks, i needed that. my guess is that with lord chilcot at the helm we won’t see either bollix or pillock/s, and least likely of all: FUBAR.
thanks for the first paragraph; i hadn’t thought of subsidizing transportation, really. but yes, didn’t china get the first contracts?
not that it’s in any way likely, so please only respond if it appeals to you, but i watched a bit of a food fight over where, if anywhere, blair could be tried: the ICC or the ECC, but i dunno if the latter even exists.
much as syria, now yemen, it’s almost impossible to think of iraq ever being made viable again. and yes, there’s an aspirational hashtag that claims/hopes otherwise.
fetched this for ya wonder how it will go? especially given the police killed by snipers at the protests in LA. the nypd is monitoring, but protests there only yielded loads of arrests, violence all on the po-po’s side.
RFE is (ahem) live-blogging day one.
http://www.rferl.org/contentlive/nato-warsaw-summit-live-blog/27845738.html
it was dallas. where do snipers come from? if only being draped in the badges & uniforms of licensed-to-kill authority could make one immune from that violence one is an agent of. what’s the strategy called? “accelerating the tension”? w/all the renewed spotlight on police violence, now this. i’m sorry for those guys & their families. this cannot come to any good.
ach, yes: dallas; thank you. this is at RT, generally sensationalist, but still:
‘Now it’s war. Watch out Obama & BlackLivesMatter punks’ – ex-Congressman Joe Walsh’
this, of course, is the ‘Ferguson effect’ the po-po and their unions have long been anticipating, and which walsh gives voice to. and yes, the commentariat at RT is full of ‘false flag’ sort of stuff. but no, it won’t come to any good at all. one ‘suspect’ is dead, three are ‘in custody’. and you know where my mind goes in reference to that final reference.
again: wonder what will go down in NYC during the #NoNato protests tomorrow? oy. come to that, i haven’t checked into the protests against the EO for the ‘new labor law’ in france (hell wid parliament, anyway.)
just a quick gander at NYT just now, one shooter, and (oh my prophetic soul!) that a vet. that the perp would be a disciple of either the police or the military requires no prognostication at all. the strategy of tension requires ever further cycles of intervention. note how it was, supposedly, a *militarized robot* that took the shooter out. probably would have gotten the shooter quicker if the robot had been fully automated w/the “human” element removed. Skynet, here we come.
and ex-congressdungbeetle joe walsh? a cops life is not worth more than any one else’s on this planet. nor is any figure in officialdom. that’s the great unspeakable in our society: titles, badges, uniforms, don’t mean shit. but we are supposed to believe that people who have cops & security details & SS troopers around them have these *b/c of all the good they are doing.* i’m pretty sure the amount of evil one does in the world is directly proportional to the number of security personnel one requires to walk down the street. fuck all these people.
one gunman, and he’d said: ‘i’m not part of any group, and i just wanted to kill white police *(during ‘negotiations’?)
but of course, this nation on law and order, the police: runaway slaves and native american uprisings. so…of course the badge means everything. but what will get lost in all this (contra dave lindorff, sorry) isn’t that the killings of blacks would inevitably lead to this (if the truth is indeed out there, not gladio) but that two more unarmed black men were assassinated. once again.
but may i cajole you into reading the final two links on the Part II monsanto, gates, biopiracy thread? both are in the realm of ‘just kill me now’, or the reverse (obverse? never mind.) they’re killing us, and few even understand the hows of it. and now: congress, as well, perhaps in abject ignorance, perhaps by bribery; doesn’t really matter, duz it?
i did glance at them. will more so a bit later.
please don’t worry if you haven’t the time. but for anyone who might be interested, it’s: ‘Biodiversity , GMOs, & Gene Drives of the Militarised Mind’ by Dr Vandana Shiva
“A recent report from the National Academy of Science of The United States, titled Gene Drives on the Horizon : Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values”, warns:
“One possible goal of release of a gene-drive modified organism is to cause the extinction of the target species or a drastic reduction in its abundance.”
Gene Drives have been called “mutagenic chain reactions”, and are to the biological world what chain reactions are to the nuclear world. The Guardian describes Gene Drives as the “gene bomb”,… etc.
the last link is in a tweet by @cordeliers, leading to bill gates lauding the bill congress just passed re: food security. gaggable.
“Lord Goldsmith told Blair that war without a second UN resolution would be illegal, only to change his mind after a trip to Washington in March 2003 and meetings with Bush administration legal officials.”
Says the Gawdly Book “Get thee behind me, Satan”! The Lord was damned the moment he was missioned to the Capital of Meritrocity.
HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Draw and quarter Bush, Blair, Goldschmied, etc. Letteth their blood spill. Bury their carcasses with their gold, to be stolen by honest thieves and spent honestly. Ahhhh. But then sweet vengeance will rot. And would the truth survive this reproduction of Nuremburg?
Must it be that the religion of psychopaths will only die with the whoman race?
well, who let the dogs out? woof, woof!
not even the good baron’s wiki says if he’d been sent to shrub’s house, or had volunteered. but he got a hella sinecure at a posh law firm once he’d quit when blair ‘stepped down’
yep, this is café babylon, ‘babylon’ being what the rastas call the Great Satan US Imperium (and puppets ‘n poodles)
nah, the masters of war are almost never prosecuted, save for a few blacks at the ICC. the only blood is from those who are murdered by war, and some of those who fight the wars for the masters. now, actual soldiers don’t even have to die, do they? so much less messy and personal. ka-boom!
(stay civil, and you may remain.)
Stay civil? You mean don’t call Owsley a bear-schtupper?
The master spychopaths of the whoman race use whoman tools to assassinate. Nuremburg never went high enough.
Crazy anarchists would be spychopaths’ fools.
– Comrade Sourpuss
Feared Brexit? Nope. Feints to disunion/anarchy they can deal with. On the other side, is it possible to reform a crapitalist EU?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
You see, crapitalist Mutually Assured Destruction-ness is the logical outcome of the economic religion of greed-cultivation. When crapitalist fraud is at last admitted the spychopaths resort to terror.
HA HA HA HA HA. It’s remarkable! It’s ironic!
Of course the conmen don’t really believe in risk. Of course you’re all frozen in the terrorists’ spotlight!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Where could Blair be tried for war crimes? The UK has ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) unless they recently have withdrawn. So the court has jurisdiction. It is the referral to the court that problematic because of the power politics and diplomacy involved. Who would refer him? Likely not NATO countries. Likely not countries who practice worse than he did with regard to “genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, crime of aggression” or those who would like to. In principle, the UK Parliament could, within the limits of UK law, refer him; that’s where most of the post-Chilcot analysis has been. That is also where Chilcot has been parsed for language making it easy for Blair to slip through.
And speaking of slipping through, the Zintan government in Libya has just released from prison Saif al-Islam Gadhafi. Daesh, as you are aware, is holed up in the Gadhafi family town of Sirte. Saif never seemed to be a Daesh kind of guy, and the allies of the Zintan crew in the current chaos are former pro-Gadhafi tribes from places like Beni Walid and Warshefani, who have come up against Libya Dawn.
Richard Galustian of Moon of Alabama has more.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/07/libya-part-iii-the-return-of-the-king-saif-gaddafi.html#comments
thank you kindly for the explanation. i’d tried reading galustian’s new piece, got distracted, and backed out. so thank you for that capsule as well, amigo
i’ve been working on a nato summit warsaw piece, and it’s so predictable that it’s boring, even the New Promises to ward off Revanchist Putin’s Evil Deeds! and save the world from…extremists in afghanistan!!!
in the meantime, @cordeliers had provide this ink, but oh, my far 2 much 4 me.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289537216_The_World%27s_Court_of_Justice_A_Historiography_of_War_Crimes_Prosecutions
a little late, but better than never, in response to some NYT Rosenthal jerk’s snide dismissal of everything in the C. report:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/08/medi-j08.html
“Is he even aware that it includes an entire volume on the intensely controversial—and in human terms the most significant—subject of Iraqi casualties resulting from the war?
The material deals at length with a story that the Times itself systematically suppressed: the 2006 study published in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet concluding that the war cost the lives of at least 665,000 Iraqis in less than its first three years.
The inquiry reveals that this study, which established the near genocidal criminality of the US-British aggression, was the subject of intense discussion within the Blair cabinet.
It establishes that…Blair and his top aides were desperate to discredit the Lancet findings…”
——————————–
665k is minimum of “excess deaths” caused by the iraq invasion in the 1st 3 years. the maximum is twice that. i’ll take a mean of those two for simplicity’s sake and in 12 years of war i come up w/approx. 4 million excess deaths. B/n the total casualties (wounded & dead), those in internal or external exile (refugees), the unrelenting psychological trauma of life in iraq, and the US-sponsored terrorism of ISIS, the sick joke of any & all “reconstruction” efforts, the environmental destruction, the unrelenting degradation of industry & agriculture…an almost completely destroyed country in every way.