Tebbit-Blair to blame

Norman Tebbit,yes remember him sets out his stall on the Iraq wall in the Telegraph's Three Line Whip Column.

Commenting on the Chilcott inquiry he writes

What we do know is that Mr Blair carries responsibility for those needless casualties just as surely as, in America, he claims credit for having taken us to war and just as surely collects dollars by the million for having done so.

Well that says it all

Straw lands Blair in it

I am just catching up with Jack Straw's testimony at the Chilcott inquiry.

As they say,hindsight is a wonderful thing but it is clear that the former foreign secretary is carefully distancing himself from the former Prime Minister.

It is also clear that it was far from certain that there was a basis to go to war on the back of weapons of mass destruction and that Straw himself had a real moral dilemma over going to war.

Straw it seems worked hard to go down the UN route closely it seems with Colin Powell whilst it appears that his boss and George Bush were intent on overriding international law.

Where his testimony goes wrong is that he continued to vote for the war after the failure to get a second UN resolution.

Hoon tows the line

Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon has been giving evidence to the Chilcoot inquiry today as has told the panel that British involvement in the invasion of Iraq was not decided until it was approved by MPs.

The first cabinet member at the time to give evidence said

“I don’t believe he was ever unconditionally committing us to anything

he says of Tony Blair and reinforces that fact by telling the inquiry that in October 2002 the Americans were planning on the assumption that UK wouldn't give ground troops.

What he has also told the inquiry is that it was clear to him that Lord Goldsmith's conclusion was that there was a legal justification for military action based on 14.41.

“(There was) no doubt had Peter Goldsmith said this was illegal, there would have been no military action."

Bush-My one regret

According to John Rentoul,George Bush jnr has finally admitted that standing in front of that sign "Mission accomplished in 2003 was not a good idea.

In a speech in Montreal last week George W Bush, in moderately humble mood, said that he stood by most of the decisions he took as President, but that he regretted appearing in front of a "Mission Impossible" sign during a televised address on 1 May 2003.

For those who had forgotten this glorious gaffe,the American President landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln Thursday, arriving in the co-pilot's seat of a Navy S-3B Viking after making two fly-bys of the carrier.

Moments after the landing, the president, wearing a green flight suit and holding a white helmet, got off the plane, saluted those on the flight deck and shook hands with them. Above him, the tower was adorned with a big sign that read, "Mission Accomplished."

Snows sums up 6 years in Iraq

a military adventure which displaced some 4 million Iraqis, killed and wounded as many as a million (we shall never know the true figure), and reduced the country’s precious oil output to the point where, even today, it remains below that of Saddam’s final year in power, is coming to an end.

writes Jon Snow and asks what the invasion achieved?

Perhaps Iraq enjoys a greater collective spirit of hope than at any recent time. But that hope has come expensively, and there is still a ways to go.
It is hard to imagine that history will smile on the two men, Bush and Blair, who decided to take the world in to this war

The price of loyalty

So according to John Kamphner in the Spectator,

Tony Blair is in debt to his New Labour friends for their efforts to get him off the hook

The main news is that Peter Mandelson's support was bought in return for protecting his old ally Tony Blair

Mandelson — on Blair’s behalf — set down specific conditions for the Iraq war inquiry. The deal, I am told, was explicit. Not only would the hearings be fully in private, but the committee would, as with Hutton, be manageable. Brown was instructed to ensure that the members of the inquiry would, in the words of one official, ‘not stir the horses’. Brown readily acquiesced. He was not in a position to do anything else. It was a done deal, even before James Purnell sent alarm bells through Downing Street with his resignation on the night of 4 June.

One rule for one............

Following President Obama's announcement yesterday,Sam Coates makes this observation

A city friend with one eye on his bonus asks:

Should all the MPs who voted for the Iraq war give up their lavish pension pot because they failed to do a good enough job scrutinising the WMD claims before voting in its favour?

Iraq the beginning of the end.

Nearly six years since the allies invaded,a new President went some way to forfilling his election pledge to bring the troops home.

Today Barack Obama announced that comabat missions will end in August 2010 and the rest of the troops will be home by the end of 2011.

4,200 US troops have died in the combat so far and putting a figure on the Iraqi casualties will probably never accurately happen.

The statement follows a review of the operations in Iraq which began the day that Obama entered the White House.

There are 107,000 troops in Iraq and 67,000 will have gone by nect summer leaving the balance in non combative duties.

Of course the success of the withdrawal will depend on the Iraqi people.Since George Bush's surge in 2007 there has been a fall in the violence allied to the switch of the Sunni tribal leaders to the American side.

However there are still issues to be resolved.Relations with the Kurds in the north as well as a lasting peace between Sunni and Shia in the south.

But for now let's rejoice that this foolish venture now seems to be coming to an end

Dangers of not learning the lessons from Iraq

It is well worth reading Simon Jenkin's piece in this morning's Guardian in which he claims that "The errors of Iraq are being repeated - and magnified."

Jenkins argues that

Britain and now the US are both led by men whose heart was never in this war, and want only to get out with some dignity intact. The much oversold "surge" has offered such a screen. War fever has given way to war weariness. Nobody has a clue what will happen next in Iraq, and ever fewer care

and reminds us that

After five years of occupation and £7bn of public money, London's finest minds joined with those of Washington to reduce what should be one of the world's richest countries to shambles. Iraq is still an economic and social basket case compared with its neighbours, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan.

So what will the next 2 years bring? Well if nothing else

It should teach a lesson that foreign expeditions undertaken in a spirit of jingoist revenge, with a crazed optimism and no strategic plan, are usually a bad idea.

And the danger for Jenkins is that Afghanistan will slip into the same routine but

The awful prospect is that Obama and Brown may feel too weak to learn from Iraq and pull back. They will blunder on, not to a clean defeat but to something far worse, a war of attrition whose poison will spread across a subcontinent

Syria attack-the last rites of Bush-Cheney?

What was the United States up to when it attacked Syria.The last gasp of the Bush Cheney administration perhaps?

The American's claim that they were attacking a network of al-Qa'ida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq.The Syrian's claim tyhat it was a farm and that amongst the dead were four children.

The US has claimed for some time that the Syrian border is a porous affair that lets insurgents into Iraq to reek havoc.

The timing seems strange as Syria was looking forward to better relations with America after Presidental elections.with Syria accusing The US of war crimes that seems well off the agenda

The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

according to Joshua Landis Co-director, Center for Middle East Studies
University of Oklahoma

Could the recession end the Iraqi war?

Among claims that the so called surge has not been as effective as some might think,Tony Karon over at Time magazine thinks that the American's policy may be hit by something rather larger

America's military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost close to $200 billion for 2008 alone, and maintaining that commitment will become considerably more burdensome as Washington is forced to funnel many hundreds of billions of dollars into simply averting financial collapse. The looming global economic recession will further slash tax revenues available to the U.S. government.

Karon writes that Congressional estimates of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be $2 trillion up to 2017 and

The current credit crisis and economic slowdown will considerably raise the pressure on the U.S. national debt, which had already grown from around $6 trillion in 2001 to near $10 trillion today.

Obama the ditherer?

Barack Obama may well have slipped up over his remarks about withdrawing troops from Iraq.
The Democratic candidate who stood on the platform of instant withdrawal said that the policy may well be refined after meeting military leaders but within hours held a news conference to say that he would keep to the 16 month timetable.

"Let me be as clear as I can be: I intend to end this war "My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission. That is to end this war, responsibly, deliberately but decisively."

According to this morning's New York Times,

His two statements in Fargo, N.D., reflected how the changing dynamics in Iraq have posed a challenge for Mr. Obama, who is trying to retain flexibility as violence declines there without abandoning a central promise of his campaign: that if elected, he would end the war

Its leader goes rather further reminding us that

He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

however

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election

It was all about oil

Staying on the subject of American policy in the Middle East,remember the arguments at the time of the lead up of the Iraq war.It was all about oil.

Today those may have been true all along.The New York Times is reporting that

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say

.adding

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism

And the article continues

The deals have been criticized by opponents of the Iraq war, who accuse the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to ensure Western access to Iraqi oil fields even as most other oil-exporting countries have been sharply limiting the roles of international oil companies in development.

Who will turn the tide of American foreign policy

According to ex President Jimmy Carter interviewed by Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian's Saturday magazine,the next President should take no longer than 10 minutes to change America's image in the world.

the time it would take to deliver an inaugural address that would promise that America "will never again torture a prisoner... never again attack another country unless our security is directly threatened", will honour its international agreements and do the right thing on climate change.

How do the two candidates compare and will they change America's image.

In some respects John McCain is more of a hawk in foriegn than George Bush ever was.The war in Iraq is going to be a major feature of the campaign and McCain has famously said that troops will stay in the country for as long as it takes.He voted in favour of the war,and has supported all of Bush's terror bills.In a recent speach he lookd forward to 4 years time where American troops are welcomed home as heroes,with Al Qaeda defeated in Iraq,the war won and Iraqi security forces maintaining control of the country.

By contrast Obama voted against the war,has had a consistent policy about the situation out there and has vowed to bring the troops back in a reasonable timeframe.Only last week he said that the war in Iraq has made Iran stronger and both Israel and the Uniited States more insecure.

However his willingness to talk to talk with leaders of hostile countries has unnerved an American public and his commitment to Israel has been questioned.This may well have a knock on effect in November when it comes to capturing the Jewish vote.Recently he has clarified his position

"We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements," There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations."

He has pledged to close Guantanamo bay and to restore the rule of Habeas corpus.He has also shown committment to the issues of the 21st century such as global warming and fighting poverty genocide and disease.

In many respects McCain is close to these issues when the spotlight is on him.said Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution said that

McCain is a ``maverick'' who often bucks Republican principles,.His emphasis on issues may change as he tries to appeal more to his party's conservative base and separate himself from Obama,

So whilst the fight for the Independent vote continues,McCain will stress his commitment to closing the detention camp and new policies to combat global warming.

Dannatt on soldier's pay

I am not sure whether using the Sun is the right platform for the head of the British army to air his concerns about the state of the forces,although General Sir Richard Dannatt has never been one to hold back.

In an exclusive interview with the paper,he claims that

pay for his men and women was the most important Army issue that needed to be tackled. and that

Troops were given a pay rise this year of just 2.6 per cent – widely derided as nowhere near enough to stop a mass exodus

Perhaps though the most damning comments and those getting the headlines were the comparison with the lowly traffic warden

If you compare a police constable on overtime, I think you will find that an individual serviceman gets quite a lot less.”
A soldier’s starting salary is £12,572 a year, rising to £15,677 as a Level 1 private. A traffic warden’s basic pay is £17,000.

This is a touchy subject for the government.It is not the first time tat tis has flaired up,there have been issues over accomodation,medical treatment,payments and compensation for injuries and recently over the suitablity of equipment.

It is not a good idea for the public to beleive that the services covemant has been broken and Brown and Co need to keep a watch on this.

Monbiot to attempt citizen arrest at Hay on Wye.

The target? John Bolton who according to Monbiot was a principle architect of the invasion of Iraq.

For him

the great crime of the Iraq war has been normalised and domesticated.
So successful has this process of normalisation been that in three days’ time one of its perpetrators will be coming here - to Hay-on-Wye, the epicentre of polite society - to promote his book and sell some copies. I do not regret the fact that he is coming here - far from it - but I see it as a sign of the extent to which the great crime he helped to commit is viewed as an ordinary part of the political process.

So if you attending the festival,perhaps you should offer to help George out

Via Westmonster