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?

I know that the stance was not regime change.
It bloody well should have been. It is arguably implicit that when a nations dictator refuses to allow necessary inspections and force has to be used, that regime change is a necessary and attractive by product.
Alan

I think we should have an inspection of the WMD, Chemical warfare and Biowarfare that America and Britain and America are holding and developing. I think both countries should have inspections carried out by the United Nations and the amount of money declared.

This could then be ballanced against aid and healthcare to underdeveloped countries.

Point 1)
The Uk and US are inspected.
Point 2) What a country spends its money on is no business whatsoever of those in the UN, providing it is not used for for breaking UN regulations. It is the business only of the electorate, and no-one else.

"Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell" was one of the first headlines from "The Onion" about September 11. "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule," was another. Which illustrates another important aspect of humor, the best and most effective kind tells the truth. Oh, I don't necessarily mean capital "T" Truth or immutable truth, nor objective, time-transcending, universal truth either. (Neither the Ten Commandments nor the square root of pi are the punch-line to a joke.) I just mean jokes can be more honest than speeches or dirges, because we tend to avoid telling the truth when we can't sugarcoat it with humor.

Consider Mohammed Atta who had the intestinal fortitude to carve up innocent men and women in order to crash a plane into more innocent men and women, but who went to his grave shaking with terror that a woman might touch his man-panties, even after he died.

If "The Onion" is right, Atta and his evil troupe are in Hell right now. But the really funny thing is their Hell might also be his Heaven. A German scholar made a fairly startling discovery this year. It turns out the 72 virgins these guys expect upon arrival in Paradise might not be virgins at all. Oh, I don't mean that they might have played the field in college (or burka-knitting school) or anything like that. I mean, they might be raisins. It turns out that the passage which so many of these psychopaths considered their eternal nookie ticket was mistranslated over the centuries.

Because of a grammatical glitch, it's quite possible that the Koranic passage which promises that salvation is an eternal Fleet Week for young men who massacre innocents more likely promises that you get a nice bowl of juicy white raisins when you go to Heaven. Not only is that great news for twitchy evil pervs like Atta because it means his tighty-whiteys will remain unsullied by female hands for all eternity, it opens huge new possibilities for "Fruit of the Loom" underwear. One can only imagine the reactions of these young men, all torqued-up from endless assurances that their afterlife will be one endless booty-call, only to be greeted with a great big bowl of white raisins.

Of course, I should be careful, the German scholar who made this discovery has to use a pseudonym because he's legitimately worried that he will be murdered by people who insist Islam means peace.

Okay, that's a bit unfair. The Muslims who go around saying "Islam means peace" aren't the ones who want to kill religious dissenters, infidels, etc. Islam is a big religion and there are surely good folks in it. But the thing to understand is that there are a great number of Muslims who aren't going around saying "Islam means peace." One small example: At the University of Nablus, Professor Suliman Bashear suggested that Islam, like all other religions, evolved over time rather than having been simply delivered, perfectly formed, from Mohammed's mouth. His students responded by throwing him out the second-floor window.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY 'BOUT PEACE, LOVE & UNDERSTANDING
For a long time, I couldn't figure out why I thought that was so funny. Sick and twisted too, of course. But there's a punch-line in there somewhere. And I think I've got it.

In the aftermath of 9/11, a lot of people, myself included, wrote a lot about the death of irony and cynicism. Everywhere you looked, there was Yeats and T. S. Eliot and various psalms. But in a sense, 9/11 didn't expunge cynicism (as we use the word today), it redirected it to where it belongs.

Every single day since those planes crashed, there has been a parade of experts, authors, intellectuals, self-righteous C-SPAN callers, and weepy NPR hosts informing us that what Americans need most is more "understanding." We need to understand what Islam means, we need to learn our own "violent history," we need to comprehend where Arabs, Europeans, Muslims, rebels, freedom fighters, Palestinians, and anybody else who criticizes America are "coming from." Sanctimonious editors would tell us that the well-informed and well-traveled understand that "one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist." American parochialism, in effect, was the source of all the world's problems because if we would just read a book we'd understand that the bad guys really aren't so bad.

What a crock. First of all, it is a myth of staggering endurance that "understanding" leads to peace. Israelis and Palestinians, for example, understand each other far better than any American understands either, and it has not brought them one inch closer to peace. Indians and Pakistanis understand each other perfectly, and yet, after several wars, they remain not very far from the brink of nuclear annihilation. Throughout history, whether you are talking about Greeks and Turks, Poles and Russians, English and Irish, or Haitians and Dominicans, it is the peoples and nations who understand each other best who are most likely to hate each other most. It's not that understanding necessarily fosters conflict, it's just that understanding doesn't do much to stop conflict. Agreement prevents wars, understanding without agreement tends to make wars more intense because both sides more fully comprehend the intentions of their opponents.

The "understanding" myth endures because it serves as a podium of arrogance for the ignorant to stand on. European sophisticates and Left-wing peace marchers believe as an article of faith, not intellect, that America is wrong and therefore if we simplistic Americans educate ourselves we will agree with them. It doesn't occur to them that we could possibly hold our views and know what we're talking about at the same time.

Well, on September 11, after several years of al Qaeda's declared war on us (You do know we didn't start this war? Right?), we decided to declare war back. Ambrose Bierce once quipped that "War is God's way of teaching Americans about geography" and so, not surprisingly, Americans have learned vastly more about Saudi Arabia, Islam, Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, and the like than they ever knew before. And, lo and behold, the understanding we've gained only makes us understand more than ever that we're right, they're wrong, and we're the good guys in this global conflict. We've turned our skepticism and cynicism, albeit briefly, away from institutions which make our nation great and pointed it at the false pieties and hateful-yet-fashionable propaganda which says America is somehow inferior to every crapulent backwater and European debating society alike.

Americans question themselves all of the time. We ask hard and, often, stupid questions about our religions, our laws, and our politicians every single day. We study Islam in our universities (while Saudis confiscate Bibles and jail people who carry them) and our leaders, from the president on down, talk themselves blue in the face about the need for tolerance and understanding.

And I guess that's what's so funny about the defenestrated professor. Eugene Volokh once pointed out that "every age seems to warn itself most sternly about the risks that are least likely to do it harm." If you asked Queen Victoria what the biggest threat to Britain was, she'd say it was the decline in sexual probity. But, today, if you ask a bed-hopping Hollywood producer, Volokh noted, he'd rant about the threat from sex-hating moralists. Well, if you ask an American college professor or journalist the same question, they'd first probably whine about the nonexistent threat to our ever-freer free speech. But coming in at a close second would be their belief that America needs to understand its own history and the world more.

But, despite the best efforts of our public schools, Americans actually understand their history. We just don't wallow in it. Because one of the great things about America is that it was designed to be a life raft to escape the sinking ship of history. If Arabs and their American apologists want to bitch and moan about the crusades, if they can't get over the fact that a few hundred years ago their societies imploded like a bad soufflin a clay oven, that's their problem. We're not mad at the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor anymore, but we're supposed to keep apologizing for a defensive war launched by popes nearly a millennium before the Boston Tea Party? Get over yourselves, you're not that important.

Meanwhile, if you asked a college professor in, say, Saudi Arabia what the biggest threat to his society is, you'd probably get an earful about the decline in respect for religious authority in a country that makes Vatican City look like Vegas. Of course, you might find a more clear-eyed observer, who might list the bigotry, backwardness, and oppression of his own society. But if he said any of that out loud, his students would probably throw him out the window, too.

Food for thought.

The recent homegrown plot in Britain to blow up transatlantic flights will intensify the fear that the country's 1.6 million Muslims are rejecting political tolerance and free speech for a violent, radicalized version of Islam. There is a real concern that British Muslims do pose a threat to that country and its traditional values. So how prevalent are such radical views among British Muslims?

Some answers are provided by the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. The results from NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, are startling.

Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror.

When asked, "Is Britain my country or their country?" only one in four say it is. Thirty percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia (Islamic religious) law than under British law. According to the report, "Half of those who express a preference for living under Sharia law say that, given the choice, they would move to a country governed by those laws."

Twenty-eight percent hope for the U.K. one day to become a fundamentalist Islamic state. This comports with last year's Daily Telegraph newspaper survey that found one-third of British Muslims believe that Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to end it.

The news is no less alarming on the question of freedom of speech. Seventy-eight percent support punishment for the people who earlier this year published cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed. Sixty-eight percent support the arrest and prosecution of those British people who "insult Islam." When asked if free speech should be protected, even if it offends religious groups, 62 percent of British Muslims say No, it should not.

Also concerning freedom of speech, as the NOP Research survey reports, "hardcore Islamists" constitute nine percent of the British Muslim population. A slightly more moderate group is composed of "staunch defenders of Islam." This second group comprises 29 percent of the British Muslim population. Individuals in this group aggressively defend their religion from internal and external threats, real or imagined.

The scary reality is that only three percent of British Muslims "took a consistently pro-freedom of speech line on these questions." The Muslim threat to British security is so severe that the assistant London police commissioner, Tarique Ghaffur, has called for an inquiry into the radicalization of young Muslims. Ghaffur sadly describes "a generation of angry young people vulnerable to exploitation."

Before the London bombings, British intelligence services estimated that one percent of British Muslims either support or are involved in terrorism. While this is mainly a peaceful and productive immigrant population, a significant number are prepared to act against their own country.

The British government believes that, in recent years, 3,000 British Muslims have returned home from al Qaeda training camps. Intelligence experts estimate that 1,200 Muslim radicals (80 percent of Pakistani origin) are currently pursuing a terrorist rather than a democratic option to vent their disgust at Tony Blair's support for America's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and opposition to Hezbollah.

This terrorist weed that is choking the U.K. is especially hard to eradicate because it is growing in British soil. America's fastest-growing religion is Islam, but here in the States the numbers are not a security concern, as a commitment to Islam has not overwhelmed a strong attachment to America itself another victory for the cultural melting pot.

By contrast, the U.K. embraced taxpayer-subsidized multiculturalism and has paid a very dear price, indeed. The result cultural apartheid has encouraged a significant number of Muslims to exhibit more loyalty to fellow Muslims outside of the U.K. than to their fellow Britons.

"What a country spends its money on is no business whatsoever of those in the UN" except if it is an "Arab State" or under developed state in which America has financial interest or reserves it would like to plunder.

And of course the apologists would have us believe that these angry young men are made that way by our society not understanding and embracing them. The truth is that they are that way due to internal influences from their own family, friends and religious groups. The oppression they feel to not be able to live the life of their non muslim friends at school, and their jealousy of western freedoms, denied them by their parents.

What crap, Fred.
Many Arab countries are as rich as creosote and have no issues like that.
The UN is not a world governement and if it was then how on earth would any agreement ever be reached?
An under developed state does have the way its money is spent watched, because it aint their money. It has been given to them for humanitarian purposes and I can just imagine the outcry if we gave 'em a few million and never checked if it went on food and drugs or on palaces for the leader (a la Iraq).

Nice sale of Armanents to Saudi by the announcec today by the peace makers.

I suppose Russia had better get involved again and increase it arms sales.

You desire a world without armaments???
How odd.

H6. Yes desirable but unrealistic.

However, there would be a few I might keep a bullet or two around, just in order to to deal with them. 8-)

That was the reason for a resolution, carried unanimously, to use force.
Unanimous? Which resolution was that then?

The very simplest fact yet to be answered by the apologists is why the inspectors were not allowed full and free access.

Yet more half truths swallowed by the gullible.

Iraq cooperated with the inspectors
In the months prior to war Iraqi officials provided substantial cooperation to
renewed UN inspections. The monitors had unfettered access to all sites and
complete freedom of movement. Even Saddam Hussein's palaces, previously off
limits to UN officials, were opened to inspection.
According to Blix, "the most important point to make is that access has been
provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect."9 Blix reported that "prompt
access . . . has been given to inspection teams." This "open doors policy," as
Blix described it, was "an indispensable element of transparency and a
process that aims at securing disarmament by peaceful means."10
IAEA director ElBaradei reported that "Iraqi authorities have consistently
provided access without conditions and without delay."11 ElBaradei reported
on 27 January that "all inspection activities have been carried out without prior
notification to Iraq, except where notification was needed to ensure the
availability of required support."12


9 United Nations, The Security Council, 27 January 2003: An Update on Inspection.
10 Blix, Notes for Briefing, 1-2.
11 International Atomic Energy Agency, Status of the Agencys Verification Activities, para. 5.
12 International Atomic Energy Agency, The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq.


I provide evidence. You provide statements which presumably are second hand from media/press of the time which in turn get their stuff from politicians. I have already posited that the democratic process was distorted by Bush and Blair, available intelligence manipulated for public consumption so that war seemed the only option.

And finally: This time he tried to play the world for mugs for just too long, and was left unable to talk his way out of it again.

This kind of narrative plays well in The Daily Mail, Hollywood blockbuster or the heartlands of America but when you start to think and analyse real facts rather than secondhand soundbites, such a story seems limited in international politics and when war is concerned.

Second hand? You quote Hans Blix, not yourself. I forgot. hans Blix is a God who never twisted anything or changed a single line anywhere. Shame to call him a politician really.
The access only improved when troops massed and it was too late. Had we changed our mind at that point the silly games would start again. Swift decisive action was required.
We shall never agree, but I was in the majority then, and I still am now. Your minority viewpoint is just that. A minority.
Wanting to rid the world of an evil dicatator, whom we cannot predict is no great shame. It is a morally right viewpoint. Wanting to leave an evil man murdering his own citizens and threatening the world around him is morally very suspect.
You can try to be condescending about Hollywood blockbusters, but your world viewpoint is becoming more like a Disney flick, full of lovely misunderstood people and fluffy bunnies. The world don't work like that.
finally, any who know me or have read previous posts know that my greatest pet hate is for all things American, so there is no middle American viewpoint here. Trouble is it comes a very poor second to a hatred of evil dictators, with a record of slaughtering 10s of thousnads at home and abroad, who is leading an unstable country, where we have good reason to believe he is trying to develop WMD, has a history of supporting terrorists and says things along the lines of yes we have WMD and if you come anywhere near us we will use them.
If history has taught us one thing, it is that weakness in the face of dictatorial regime and terrorism only encourages it and spreads it.

apologists are missing the point I would say, the people running the governments in the West not the figureheads Tony/George, took the fight to the enemy starting place Afgan/Iraq but with an eye on Iran/Syria. Whether or not Saddam had wmd or not, does not matter a jot.

I believe that uk/usa forces are a pemanent fixture in the M/E and that it is all a long term plan that the strategists are working on to irradicate/lessen the Islamic terrorist threat and going by the statistics it is working.

Once again the usual mish mash of illogic, unsubstantiated claims and black and white thinking.

I was in the majority then and I still am now. You would have been at the front of the lynching parties because everybody agreed that blacks were subhuman.

And is my viewpoint a minority? For that to occur, people in a democracy need to be presented with facts. And even US public opinion has become more reticent.

Wanting to leave an evil man murdering his own citizens and threatening the world around him is morally very suspect.
LOL Well, the west has never done that have they? Another attempt at a cheap shot to suggest people who advocated other means than war are 'morally suspect'

It won't be long before we get a rant against the PC brigade who are making the country soft. And that's the issue here really - thinking things through is more difficult than kicking ass - it's easier to sell to an electorate and it doesn't tax the brain.

I think what I dislike more than a Sun reader or a poor young squaddie who does as he's told (and like many times before in history gets killed or shot for desertion) are the politicians and editors of certain newspapers who talk of democracy and majority rule but in reality, cynically exploit situations for their own gain, political or financial.

If we always followed majority views then we would have hanging.

We elect governments to govern and not follow public opinion. Governments are privy to information that we do not have.

In the end we have to trust them to make the right decision or elect a new bunch . Blair did manage to get re-elected despite the supposed anti-war views of the majority.

H. What's happening? I agree with that.LOL

That is the key issue - they have info we don't and we trust them to make right decisions. That democratic process went badly wrong here. If you are kind, you could argue that they genuinely believed in the threat; or like me, that they wilfully made the facts fit a preconceived strategy for war.

Ah. So now I am a racist???
Pathetic.
For anyone who truly believes that a government can or does present all facts. HELLO. Earth calling.
I thought through very deeply, my convictions and I stand by them. Of course that makes me uneducated, but I think I read a post by someone else regarding the sort of debater who throws that one out. I believe, absolutely, that without intervention, the WORLD (not just the little England inhabited by some) would be a much more dangerous place.
Just to make it even better it has upset a load of amatuer social workers.

Haystack,

Blair did get elected for his own constituency. I would be surprised if the percentage who voted for him hadn't fallen.

The British electorate voted less than enthusiastically for Labour the last time round. I think the Tory opposition was seen as appalling and a obnoxious reminder of previous Tory governments. The "Liberal" following did have some gains and may in the next election may hold the balance of power in government.

Whether that is beneficial or not remains to be seen. But it may be better than what we have now.

Alan. For the record, I do not suggest you are racist or uneducated.