Chilcot Report

[maqroll]

10 hours ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

That's an interesting standpoint and not one that's shared in the report. It states that the existence of WMD was exaggerated and based upon intelligence sources that were given more credibility than they turned out to  deserve. 

It was willful fabrication from the start, let's not fall for their bullshit. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

4 hours ago, snowychap said:

Why do you believe this?*

In believing this, do you think that the best people to be removing him from power were the same countries' governments that were quite happy to be dealing with him previously?

*This may have been answered later in the same post, in which case it makes my second question even more pertinent.

I did answer the first question bud. 

I'm not defending either administration, or at least I'm not intending to. I'm defending the decision to remove Saddam Hussein. Though I guess yes, having an intimate knowledge of Saddam's Iraq meant that they were as well placed as anyone. 

[chappy]

**** you, Bush

It's time to get out of Iraq, Bush

What were you even doing there in the first place? Bush

You didn't even get properly elected, Bush

Are you happy now? Bush

**** you, Bush

[maqroll]

Bush was just a dumb flunky, the architects of the whole thing were the insane Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney, all three of whom should be perishing behind bars, if The Hague had any legitimate mandate.

The whole **** thing is the biggest black mark on America and Britain since the slave trade.

[maqroll]

2 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I'm defending the decision to remove Saddam Hussein.

Based on what? In retrospect, it was just about the worst possible thing to do in a country like that. Our governments act as if "democracy" is the end all be all, while mocking it every day through their own diabolical control methodology, and how it's applied on a local, national and global level.

Hussein was a psychotic asshole, but he served an important function which has become all too clear now. If they wanted regime change without a massive military expenditure (and all the juicy profits to be made from it), they could have done it through the tried and tested CIA way. 

But there was bloodlust, and a cabal of people who were drunk on power, mentally unsound, and wanted to destroy a country. 

 

Edited July 7, 2016 by maqroll

[Mark Albrighton]

1 hour ago, chappy said:

**** you, Bush

It's time to get out of Iraq, Bush

What were you even doing there in the first place? Bush

You didn't even get properly elected, Bush

Are you happy now? Bush

**** you, Bush

Wow, I love the way the last line is the same as the first line.

[TrentVilla]

3 hours ago, maqroll said:

It was willful fabrication from the start, let's not fall for their bullshit. 

Yet there is no actual evidence to support this accusation.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Let me flip the question because I've already answered as deeply as I care to at this stage as to why I think Saddam needed to be removed, do others think he should have been left in power? If so, what do you think the consequences would have been? What would have happened had he continued to ignore UN sanctions? Should they have gone "ok Saddam, you crack on son"?

Do I think in retrospect that alternative action should have been taken, with the full backing of the UN, or at the very least a proper reconstruction plan laid out in advance for post Saddam Iraq? Yes, obviously. They had time. Blair lacked the balls to tell America to hold off for ten, for **** sake. However I'm not going to let hindsight, as bloody and vicious as it has been, cloud my opinion that he needed to go. As quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Edited July 7, 2016 by dont_do_it_doug.

[PaulC]

Its far easier to make judgements on a forum than it is in real life. Blair has to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life but I would not have wanted to be in his position to make that decision to invade Iraq. i don't know whether the middle east is better or worse off without Saddam. But I also know that Labour have been dead in the water without a charismatic leader like Blair. 

[chrisp65]

20 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Let me flip the question because I've already answered as deeply as I care to at this stage as to why I think Saddam needed to be removed, do others think he should have been left in power? If so, what do you think the consequences would have been? What would have happened had he continued to ignore UN sanctions? Should they have gone "ok Saddam, you crack on son"?

... However I'm not going to let hindsight, as bloody and vicious as it has been, cloud my opinion that he needed to go. As quickly and as efficiently as possible.

He, Saddam, was clearly a spectacularly evil force in the region. A manipulator and somebody that had the potential to spread his murder out beyond his borders. Either with more direct war on neighbours, or by selling weapons and know how to terrorists. Then within his own country he had a proven track record of murdering tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

But there is an obvious middle ground between war with no plan for the day after, and 'ok crack on son'.

There is time. There is protection of geographical regions that are being persecuted. There is a basic level of common sense that tells you taking out the entire infrastructure of a nation already at war with itself and others is going to lead to absolute year zero meltdown. I feel sure that every happy amateur on VT could forecast the result of taking out all management of everything in Iraq. 

To go in with half a plan and hope that somewhere in Iraq there was a silent and secret million people ready to organise themselves peacefully, keep the lights on and the water running, staff the schools and the hospitals and the police stations on a voluntary basis and hopefully bid for some fast food franchises.....well that was either absolute insane incompetence or deliberate revenge and criminal negligence.

I'm fairly easy on whether people want to label Bush and Blair either insanely incompetent or criminally negligent.

 

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, PaulC said:

Its far easier to make judgements on a forum than it is in real life. Blair has to live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life but I would not have wanted to be in his position to make that decision to invade Iraq. i don't know whether the middle east is better or worse off without Saddam. But I also know that Labour have been dead in the water without a charismatic leader like Blair. 

*scoffs*

It was his job and he wanted it mate. 

[choffer]

3 hours ago, maqroll said:

But there was bloodlust, and a cabal of people who were drunk on power, mentally unsound, and wanted make themselves very rich off the back of destroying a country (Halliburton).

FTFY

[snowychap]

Blair's response to Chilcot's report seems to be a day (so far) of going, "Me, me, me, me, me."

He doesn't disappoint with his predictability.

[Seat68]

Once asked that Chilcot for a lift, still waiting.

[snowychap]

As for Blair's comment that they should have challenged the intelligence reports more clearly, perhaps they ought to have listened more carefully to a certain resignation speech:

Quote

Robin Cook:

Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion. Some advocates of conflict claim that Saddam's forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days.

We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.

Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.

It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories.

Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?

Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?

 

[Demitri_C]

11 hours ago, snowychap said:

Why do you believe this?*

In believing this, do you think that the best people to be removing him from power were the same countries' governments that were quite happy to be dealing with him previously?

*This may have been answered later in the same post, in which case it makes my second question even more pertinent.

Snowy we dont agree often but I agree with you on this! 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

Snowy we dont agree often but I agree with you on this! 

Why?

[dont_do_it_doug.]

@chrisp65 I liked your post because rather than just sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting "war criminal" you've actually thought about the issue.

Tell me, what was the middle ground? Saddam point blank refused to play ball. He would never have let the inspectors have the free reign they needed, certainly not without railroading them which would have completely nullified their purpose. 

Should we have held off until he started gassing Kurds again? I'm asking from a point of ignorance but with a genuine desire to know. It's the one thing nobody seems to be talking about, then or now. 

[Demitri_C]

17 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Why?

I think that it wasn't any of our business to get involved, I had my concerns that there was not enough evidence of WMD like bliar and that idiot bush were trying to enforce on us.

Furthermore I think there was hidden agendas why we were going there. Bush and Bliar were not interested in getting involved in other countries who had tyrants running it as didn't benefit them. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

I think that it wasn't any of our business to get involved, I had my concerns that there was not enough evidence of WMD like bliar and that idiot bush were trying to enforce on us.

Furthermore I think there was hidden agendas why we were going there. Bush and Bliar were not interested in getting involved in other countries who had tyrants running it as didn't benefit them. 

None of that was in the post you quoted. In fact the post didn't express an opinion. That's all.