This board has been a little to quiet for while.

Is it time that Bush and Blair who is a close friend and confidant of Bush were tried for War Crimes?

Do you think the use by the American Administrations of renditions are War Crimes and committed with full knowledge of American and British leaders ie. Blair and Bush and they are ultimately responsible?

Also in the aftermath of the illegal invasion of Iraq are should their action seen to be as the provocation for the rising toll of British, American and Iraqi deaths.

As a result of the military intervention in Iraq do you think you are safer in Britain to-day?

Do you think one should expect government leaders and ministers who have been responsible for massive foreseeable casualties should visit the hospitals to meet the casualties they have produced directly or indirectly by their actions?

THAT WHAT I CALLED A BALANCE VIEW AS ABOVE I DON,T THINK///BUT IT WOULD BE //IT IS TOO EASLY TOBRUSH OVER ALL THE FACTS WHAT IS DONE IS DONE IN BITH CASES//

Broadly agree Fred..apart from you going easy on cock-up Cameron -):

Can we have that again in English BL -):

yes you can for the last 100 years this nation has been run by fools/

Self seeking yes, fools no..they know exactly what there up to.

Bristle, What does that make of the public who elected them?

How would you improve the system?


If it is not an elected "democratic" body, who would govern?

Todays No Brainer.

Condom is pleased with herself, signing a treaty or contract with Poland to allow emplacement of missiles in Poland as protection for America from (Iran) Russia.

Condoms latest brilliant international American policy should help to calm down the present international hostilities and make friends.

Mind I expect America will object most strongly when Russia moves missiles into Cuba or helps Iran to develop its nuclear facillities.

Mind it is nice to know that the major next war may be in central Europe rather than America.

I wonder what Russia will charge for gaz and oil this coming winter.

A period when international cooperation is most needed America parades around showing its muscle.

From Private Eye.
Photograph of Bush and Condom speaking to one another.
Condom says "How dare the Russians invade a sovereign state..."

Bushy's reply "That is what we do."

(That must in itself be a tremendous feat for Bush to speak without a prompter.)

Blair lied and lied again: Mandarins reveal that 10 days before Iraq invasion PM knew Saddam couldn't use WMDs
By TIM SHIPMAN
Last updated at 8:00 AM on 26th November 2009
Comments (174)
Add to My Stories

No chemical weapons: Tony Blair speaks to British soldiers
The full extent of how Tony Blair misled the public about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction before and after the Iraq War was laid bare yesterday.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230824/Iraq-fourth-WMD-risk-list-inquiry-hears.html#ixzz0XxWqVsN3

What is so sad is that large numbers of the electorate will not listen or vote in the election so people are getting elected who are not fit to be in government. A few like Estelle Morrish are honourable enough to admit they are not up to the job but most blunder on like arrogant fools and about 50% of our citizens don't care as long as they keep collecting their handouts!

It transpires that last autumn to the complete ignorance of us all. the Bank of England lent a staggering amount of cash62 billion to Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOScausing extreme risk to the British taxpayer.our money!
But with the exception of Darling and Brownand a few buddies hardly anyone in Government Parliament the City or the general public had a clue... As this can be seen as a deliberate act of betrayalplease can they be tried for treason first?

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

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6936078.ece

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 Saddams 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, Blairs 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, Saddams 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.

Tony Blair is a War Criminal...


The Iraq war and its aftermath have seen the most contentious decisions taken by any British Government since 1945. Tony Blair stands accused of leading the country into war on a false prospectus, subordinating British interests to George W Bush and showing gross negligence in failing to plan for postwar Iraq.

The only other event that comes close to earning a prime minister such ignominy is the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Anthony Eden lied to the House of Commons. In that short-lived conflict, 21 British servicemen were killed. By contrast, 179 British soldiers died in Iraq, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians lost their lives as a result of the hostilities and the instability that followed.

Blair's place in history will forever be coloured by the war. The Channel 4 drama, The Trial of Tony Blair, struck many as far-fetched when first aired in early 2007. Now a full public inquiry, so long in the offing, is upon us. Technically, Blair will not be on trial, but he will be forced to defend his actions in the full glare of the public arena.

Sir John Chilcot and his team are examining thousands of pages of secret government documents, while witnesses from the highest echelons unburden themselves daily to the inquiry. The hope is that, at last, the public may find out the truth from this fifth inquiry into the Iraq war.

Major conflicts in recent British history have usually yielded the truth in real time. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, details of the collusion between Britain, France and Israel, before the latter's invasion of Egypt, began to leak within days of the plan being hatched.

Following the 1982 Falklands War, a public inquiry was established, chaired by Lord Franks, but it produced few revelations. Most significantly, it found no support for the charge that Margaret Thatcher deliberately ordered the sinking of the Argentine vessel, the Belgrano, to scupper peace talks.

Those hoping that the Chilcot inquiry might break with historical precedent and expose major new insights about the war in Iraq are likely to be disappointed. We will know more detail, but the key facts are already in the public domain.

So was Blair a "criminal" for taking Britain to war? The motivation for his action is entirely transparent. Far from being the poodle, overawed and compliant, signing onto George W Bush's vendetta, Blair had long been ahead in being determined to take on Saddam Hussein.

Intellectually, he was convinced that Saddam was determined to develop a WMD arsenal, and had keenly backed President Clinton's decision to launch airstrikes against Iraq in late 1998, even as Clinton wavered. He supported President Bush's early efforts to tighten sanctions on Iraq and then, after 9/11, became convinced that Iraq had to be disarmed, through military means if necessary.

Blair, for whom morality was always a key touchstone, was repulsed by Saddam and his "cruel" regime. Ahead of both Clinton and Bush in advocating regime change on humanitarian grounds, he gave a speech in Chicago in April 1999 urging military intervention overseas to achieve humanitarian ends. He was determined to end Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and urged Clinton to send ground troops even without a UN mandate. "I have been involved as British Prime Minister in three conflicts involving regime change," Blair said as conflict with Iraq loomed. "Milosevic. The Taliban. And Sierra Leone I can honestly say the people most pleased have been the people living under the regime in question."

Blair was sincere about trying to find a solution to Iraq through the UN but, as his efforts to secure a second UN resolution faltered in early 2003, he had to decide whether to oppose military action or push ahead regardless. The choice was a deadly serious one, but, to him, not tortuous. But Blair's decision-making style proved dangerously informal, to the point of being careless. Rather than drawing on a range of diverse voices, Blair worked out the details with a very close group of friends and advisors in his "den" in Number 10, with the War Cabinet little more than a rubber stamp for precooked decisions. It was "denocracy" not democracy.

Like Blair, his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, was a hawk who "helped create a culture that Number 10 should support and back Blair's instincts", in the words of one close insider. His Foreign Affairs Adviser, David Manning was instinctively cautious, but elected to support Blair, while Alastair Campbell was a forceful advocate of getting the deed done. Of all the insiders, Sally Morgan, his Political Secretary, was the most dovish for pragmatic political reasons. They all took their cue from Blair: they were all the Prime Minister's men.

The moral case now came to the fore. "Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity," Blair insisted publicly. "It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane." Just days before military action began, Bush called Blair in great secrecy and suggested that British troops could drop out of the coalition to ease Blair's position at home. Blair would have none of it. Military action, he insisted, was the right thing to do.

Scr, and Hye.

I think your summation of recent information is well presented and accurate.

I also doubt that Blair will ever be in the Hague.

It would be satisfying to me to see him publicly disgraced.

However, there are two points which are not mentioned are, firstly the number of civilian deaths and causalities. Secondly the number of exiles who fled Iraq and have not been able to return to their country.

Also, the recent behaviour of America and Britain I think indicates the need to modify the rules of the United Nation and increase its authority and power.

These changes will be difficult to obtain.

I am not certain what the enquiry will produce, but I think there are a number of "gentlemen" who are now off the leash and may have debts to settle.

Let us hope they will be honest and "open".

Berlasconi punched in face by protester why couldnt it be Blair.

This is a form of a punch.

=====================

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8411326.stm

Sir Ken MacDonald

"
Ex-DPP: Tony Blair's attitude to Iraq war 'a disgrace'
Tony Blair
Mr Blair said the Iraq invasion would have been justified even without WMDs

The ex-director of public prosecutions has accused Tony Blair of "sycophancy" towards President Bush.

Sir Ken MacDonald called the 2003 Iraq war a "foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions".

He said the former prime minister had used "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people into the conflict.

Mr Blair told the BBC at the weekend that it would have been right to invade even if it had not been thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

Referring to Mr Blair's interview with Fern Britton, Sir Ken wrote in The Times: "This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage."

He said Washington had "turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him".

'Narcissist's defence'

Sir Ken added: "It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible."

Sir Ken, who works at the same barristers' chambers as Mr Blair's wife Cherie, said: "Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'.

"But this is a narcissist's defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgement: it is certainly no answer to death."

The belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was the key justification for the UK joining the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

No such weapons were found after the invasion and key bits of intelligence put forward by then Joint Intelligence Committee head Sir John Scarlett in the infamous 2002 weapons dossier later discredited.

'Different arguments'

Speaking on Fern Meets... on BBC One on Sunday, Mr Blair was asked whether the idea of Saddam having WMDs had "tilted" him in favour of war.

He replied that it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region of which the development of WMDs was obviously one" aspect.

Asked whether he would have invaded Iraq without the WMDs dossier, he said: "I would still have thought it right to remove him.

"I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat."

Mr Blair is due to give evidence in the New Year to the Chilcot inquiry into the war.

Sir Ken said the questioning so far by the panel had been "unchallenging", adding: "If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt."

Berlasconi,

I don't think the "guy" who threw the statue is "mentally ill".

I think the Italians who voted for the "Mafioso" are!

Et tu Brutus Blair will be next for the same treatment unless of course he develops Alzaemers.

He is already suffering from "delusions of Grandeur".

Can't remember what they are symptoms of!

FredI agree there is nothing wrong with the guy that threw the statue at Berlusconithe shot was superb.two teeth and a broken nose.I think he should have got bullies special prize.