Here is a picture from earlier today of what the Coalition 'victory' looks like in the 'New Iraq.' 121 dead by latest count. Link
Tony Blair has been appalled by the high-profile evidence given by mandarins who have appeared before the Chilcot inquiry since the first round of public hearings began last Tuesday, close friends have revealed. His image has taken a battering over the past six days, as a series of current and former public servants have given evidence that conflicts with the Government's account of the intelligence assessment of Iraq's weapons capability before the invasion in March 2003.
Among the devastating details presented to the inquiry was the revelation that British spies reported 10 days before the invasion that Iraq had "disassembled" what chemical weapons it had – but Mr Blair went ahead and sent troops into battle. Britain's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, claimed Mr Blair and Mr Bush had signed a secret deal "in blood" to remove Saddam almost a year before the invasion. He said the agreement in effect left officials scrabbling to find "a smoking gun" to justify going to war.
Mr Blair's friends claimed last week that he has found some of the evidence given so far "distasteful", and potentially damaging to his reputation. "It is clear that the headlines so far have not been helpful to him," a former minister said.
This picture was taken by a British soldier after a firefight near Al Majaar Al Kabir in southern Iraq on 14 May 2004. The Iraqis were interrogated at a British military facility known as Camp Abu Naji. It is claimed that hours after the picture was taken, the four men were transferred to a UK-run detention camp where they were badly beaten and where 20 other civilians were murdered by British soldiers. A Public Inquiry is now underway after years of pressure by lawyers acting for the Iraqi families.
Blair surveys the troops he sent in under-equipped, untrained and unprepared. Is it any wonder that a bloodstained debacle resulted. Link
The Baha Mousa Inquiry 9.11.2009
Garry Reader told the Baha Mousa Public inquiry how, then a private, he had tried in vain to resuscitate Baha Mousa in 2003.
He said he had not told the truth previously, but did believe Cpl Donald Payne and Pte Aaron Cooper had caused Mr Mousa's death that September.
Mr Reader said he had been afraid speaking out would damage his career.
"I feel the behaviour of the army in Iraq was not acceptable," Reader said. "My feeling of the treatment of the detainees ... is that it was all wrong, it should not have been allowed to go on."
Blair's bid seems to be going down the plug-hole. Pity, really - look at the great job of statesmanship he has done as US Middle East Stooge'Peace' Envoy. And David Milliband's cameo as Hilary Clinton's student researcher has pushed him forward for a post, it seems .
BP have been accused of cashing in on the Iraq war by striking a massive deal to search for oil there. The UK firm and a Chinese partner won Iraq's first international oil auction in 30 years. Commentators have claimed the contract was proof of Britain's real reasons for joining the invasion six years ago. War on Want's executive director John Hilary said: "This is why the Iraq war was fought.It was fought so companies like BP and Shell could go into Iraq and get hold of these contracts.
Our concern all along has been that Iraqi oil and Iraqi oil wealth should be there for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
BP and Chinese firm CNPC were the only winners in the auction for development rights to the 17.8billion barrel Rumaila field.BP will hold a 38 per cent stake and CNPC 37 per cent, with Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization controlling the rest.
Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said: "We always said this war was at least in part to grab the resources of Iraq, despite the wishes of the vast majority of the Iraqi people and the oil workers' union. The oil companies and governments backing them have decided to privatise the oil industry. It confirms exactly why we went to war in the first place.
A BP spokesman said:"We were awarded the contract in June and we have initialled it and passed it to the Iraqi government for their approval."
Thanks to Paul Likoudis for this story on deformed babies in Fallujah, the sort of story the neocon 'pro-life' organisations ignore. But it should never be forgotten by the rest of us that the US destroyed this ancient city and killed many civilians because four of their illegal contractors—soldiers in civilian clothes—were killed while invading and occupying someone else’s country. This WWII-style reprisal is itself a war crime, of course, not to speak of the WMD the US used on the people, which are still poisoning children in the womb.
I attended a very good talk given by Tony Blair to the Faith Foundation in Tel Aviv last week. An audience including Rupert Murdoch and Sarah Palin heard Mr. Blair deliver a lecture entitled 'The role of White Phosphorus in the Teachings of Jesus'
Muntazer Al Zaidi - Tortured by American puppets - Iraqi hero. Welcome home.
A human rights group says more than half of the Palestinians killed during Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year were civilians, contradicting an Israeli military claim. Israel had said that more than 60 percent of those killed in the military campaign were "terror operatives."
The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem released figures Wednesday, saying that, of the 1387 killed, 773 "did not take part in the hostilities" and, that of those, 320 minors were killed. The accounting, which B'tselem says was based on "months of meticulous investigation and cross checks with numerous sources," is at odds with official numbers released by Israel.
In March, the Israeli military spokesman's office said that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza operation, also known as Operation Cast Lead, and that 709 of them were "identified as Hamas terror operatives, amongst them several from various other 'terror' organizations." The rest included 162 names that had "not yet been attributed to any organization," according to the military. Israel said 295 Palestinians who were uninvolved in the fighting were killed, among them 89 children younger than 16.
B'tselem said it was it was unable to compare its list of names with that compiled by the Israeli military, which has declined to release the list of those Palestinians its says were killed in the fighting or the methodology used to compile the names.
The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) published a study that put the total death toll at 1,419, including 1,167 "non-combatants," of which 255 were uninvolved police officers and 318 minors. The center said 252 took active part in hostilities.
Earlier this year, Jaber Wishah, a deputy director for PCHR, told CNN that Israel's decision to classify police officers as combatants is illegal. "Such classification constitutes a willful violation of the principle of 'distinction,' which is a key component of customary international law. This raises serious doubts about the accuracy of the figures published by the Israelis," he said.B'tselem said the death toll numbers raised "grave concerns that Israel breached fundamental principle of international humanitarian law" and the group urged the Jewish state to conduct "independent and credible investigation."
Today is the feast day of St.Anthony of the Dead Babies. Say a prayer for the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not the first example of the haemorraging of money (second to the wastage of human lives) in relation to the Iraq Occupation debacle
The wording of the denials is interesting - 'We have no policy of aiding or abetting torture'. This stops short of saying they haven't done it which we all know they have. Even this bunch of incompetent Nulabour boneheads is unlikely to draft a policy, however clandestine, for doing it or enabling it.
Xe-Blackwater is accused of committing war crimes, assault and battery, wrongful death, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent hiring, training and supervision, and tortious spoliation of evidence.
A spate of unprovoked civilian shootings by Xe-Blackwater personnel in Iraq between 2005 and 2008 are detailed in an amended lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Virginia federal court, according to the Washington, D.C. law firm that represents the families of those killed and wounded in the incidents.
The new allegations against several Blackwater-related defendants - now operating as Xe and other names under the control of chairman Erik Prince - include:
- the shooting of three Iraqi families in a mini-van that killed nine-year-old Akram Khalid Sa'ed Jasim and wounded his three-month-old sister, who was shot in the face, his mother, his father, and uncle in July 2007;
- the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Suhad Shakir Fadhil as she was driving home from work in the so-called Green Zone in February 2007;
- the shooting of Maulood Mohammed Shathir Husein, a 31-year-old married professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Baghdad in August 2005;
- the fatal shooting of 65-year-old Khalis Kareem Ali Al Qaysi, who was killed while he was being driven in Baghdad in March 2005;
- the severe beating of 35-year-old Iraqi photographer Safeen Hameed Ahmed Qadir in April 2008 as he took photographs at a Ford automobile branch in the Arbil province that was visited by a U.S. diplomat, and;
- the shooting of Husam Hasan Jaber, who was driving three passengers in Baghdad in a taxi cab he owns and operates.
What is the point of a secret inquiry? Does Brown understand anything at all about how he makes himself and his bankrupt, moribund party look?
Success? The Brits have been sitting with their tails between their legs in Basra Airport for a year while the US/Iraqi surrogates fought and failed against the militias. Is there nothing Brown won't spin about? They were about as effective as Brown's tennis technique in the pic.
Tony Blair was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning. I listened in bed and, although there were no facts in anything he said, a couple of real facts woke me up and depressed me for the day. Here they are:
- He said the increase in terrorism in recent times is not down to either the creation of the Israeli state or 'British colonialism from years ago'. Very few, if any, people are saying it is.
- Many worldwide are saying it is down to Zionism and the neo-colonialism of the Bushblair years. If you are in any doubt about the neocolonialist mentality, check out Blair's remarks on what 'we' need from the Pakistani education system(I'm not exaggerating) and what 'we' need from the 'Islamic World' here at 1:16:45 on the iPlayer.
A recent Study shows Iraqi women and children account for most victims of US air strikes. The study, published 16th April, says the vast majority of identifiable Iraqi victims of US-led air strikes have been women and children.According to the group, Iraq Body Count, Iraqi women and children amounted to 85 percent of victims of known gender or age.
The study covered a sample of more than 60,000 deaths over a five-year period since the 2003 invasion.
"When air-launched bombs or combined air and ground attacks caused civilian deaths, the average number killed was 17, similar to the average number in events where civilians were killed by suicide bombers travelling on foot (16 deaths per event)," the IBC website wrote.
Analysis carried out for the IBC found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women.
“It seems clear from these findings that to protect civilians from indiscriminate harm, as required by international humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions), military and civilian policies should prohibit aerial bombing in civilian areas unless it can be demonstrated — by monitoring of civilian casualties, for example — that civilians are being protected,” wrote the report's authors. Link to study here
"Down, down USA," the demonstrators chanted as a Ali al-Marwani, a Sadrist official, denounced the US occupation of Iraq that began with the fall of Baghdad on April 9th, 2003, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square. The crowds of Sadr supporters stretched from the giant Sadr City slum in northeast Baghdad to the square around 5 km away. Protesters burned an effigy featuring the face of former US president George W. Bush, who ordered the invasion of Iraq, and also the face of Saddam. "God, unite us, return our riches, free the prisoners from the prisons, return sovereignty to our country ... make our country free from the occupier, and prevent the occupier from stealing our oil," Sadr said in a message read by an aide.
"God, make us the liberators of our land," the message said, drawing roars of approval from the crowd, many clutching or wearing Iraqi flags, and some wearing Iraqi national team tracksuits in a show of nationalist sentiment.
Hammering home the nationalist message, Sadr exhorted the demonstrators to shake hands with each other and Iraqi police and soldiers overseeing the march. Long queues formed to kiss the police and troops on the cheeks and shake their hands.One of many worldwide declamations here
From The Guardian.
If we are to believe Peter Wright, the former MI5 officer and author of Spycatcher, new recruits to the security service are quickly expected to take to heart its 11th commandment: "Thou shalt not get caught." Today, however, as the result of the work of a small group of lawyers, journalists and parliamentarians, it is beginning to look as though MI5 has been found guilty of breaking its own rule: its involvement in torture is becoming clear.
While the prime minister declared his complete faith in the security service in the Commons yesterday, his decision to ask the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to look again at the policy governing the interrogation of detainees will be seized upon by campaigners as an acknowledgement that something has gone disastrously, dangerously wrong.
It emerged on Tuesday evening that the ISC had already bowed to pressure to examine the policy while sitting in secret. In a statement, it said: "We have taken further, in-depth evidence from the intelligence and security agencies, and the foreign and commonwealth office. We have today reported our findings on a number of aspects - including the issues raised about the policies that the UK security and intelligence agencies have followed and should follow - and made recommendations to the prime minister."
The ISC did not say what those recommendations are, and it is unclear how far its chair, Kim Howells, felt able to offer overt criticism of what has happened in the past, as he was foreign office minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism during much of the time that the alleged abuses took place.
Reprieve, the legal charity, said asking the ISC to examine what has gone wrong was "a textbook case of the fox guarding the hen house". Nevertheless, whatever the ISC said to Brown appears to have prompted him to ask the committee to look again at the interrogation policy, "to reassure ourselves that everything has been done to ensure that our practices are in line with UK and international law".
It is now apparent that a policy governing the interrogation of the enormous number of people rounded up in the early days of the so-called war on terror was drawn up by lawyers, intelligence officers and figures in government, and that it has been gradually developed over time. This policy, while not "encouraging or condoning torture", to use the government's words, resulted in British citizens and residents, and others, being tortured. Some human rights campaigners say the policy has been used to facilitate torture.
An MI5 officer who interrogated the British resident Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002 referred to this policy during a case brought to the high court on Mohamed's behalf last year. The officer, identified only as Witness B, said: "I was aware that the general question of interviewing detainees had been discussed at length by security service management legal advisers and government, and I acted in this case, as in others, under the strong impression that it was considered to be proper and lawful." Mohamed was tortured both before and after the MI5 officer interrogated him.
There had been signs as early as 2005 that MI5 had become involved in torture, when a man from Luton, Salahuddin Amin, was deported to the UK from Pakistan, where he had been held illegally for 10 months by the country's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI). Amin, now 34, had been repeatedly questioned by two MI5 officers while in ISI detention, and said he was beaten, whipped and threatened by the ISI before most of these sessions. A judge later ruled his treatment had been "physically oppressive" but that it fell short of torture.
There were others who spoke of their torture in Pakistan and Egypt. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, said that its researchers have spoken to the Pakistani intelligence officers responsible for the torture of Zeeshan Siddiqui, 28, from Hillingdon, west London, and reported that those men said British intelligence officers in Pakistan were fully aware of what was happening to Siddiqui.
Many of these matters will be the subject of litigation that is expected to keep Britain's civil courts and the European courts busy for many years. And some lawyers are predicting that the public will learn just how closely MI5 had become to overseas intelligence agencies whose use of torture has been well documented.
Cocks has done a good reporting job here. The rag tag Iraqi Army, American trained, are to be left to clean up the mess and destruction their trainers are going to leave behind. But the invisible mess - millions displaced, mental illness, depleted uranium(du) induced cancers, that sort of thing - might never be recorded. After the 1991 bloodbath, courtesy of the same bonehead invaders, the illnesses caused by US DU shells included leukaemia, bowel cancer, throat cancer,
The brochure the US Military issued to its soldiers exposed to DU is here
As Blair's US mentors would say - he's a dollar short and day late with that conclusion. You would have thought he might have seen something about it on the news a few weeks ago. But then he's only supposed to be an (American) envoy to the Middle East.
So Britain assisted in rendition all along, as if we didn't know. John Hutton's statement to the House of Commons today raised more questions than it answered and was of course timed to get buried in the publicity surrounding the sad death of David Cameron's son and the ongoing banking debacle. Past lies will come back to haunt the New Labour cynics again and again before they are destroyed at the next election.
Link to full online copy of Craig Murray's excellent book here:
http://www.tomgriffin.org/mainpeterborough.pdf
This is the standard response from the BBC to complainants like myself about the Gaza Appeal cop out. I was going to comment but it's speciousness speaks for itself:
Thank you for your e-mail.
We note your disappointment at our decision not to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee to raise funds for Gaza.
We decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal because we wished to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of covering a continuing news story where issues of responsibility for civilian suffering and distress are intrinsic to the story and remain highly contentious. We also could not be confident that the aid resulting from audience donations could reach those it was intended for at a time of a fragile ceasefire and sporadic border access. We will of course continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza.
The BBC's director-general Mark Thompson has therefore explained the decision in more detail in a number of television and radio broadcasts and online at our Editors' blog. Please follow the link to read his explanation in full:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/01/bbc_and_the_gaza_appeal.html
Please be assured that we have registered your comments on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Regards - BBC Complaints
____________________________
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
From The Independent : The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until the supply is cut there's every chance it'll start up again.
The disregard for life from these terrorists and their supporters is shocking. For example Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, wrote that the purpose of the Israeli attack must be to "inflict a heavy death toll .. on the Gaza population".
Replace "Gaza" with "western", and that could have been written by al-Qa'ida. Maybe this is the problem: the Israelis are writing their policies by downloading statements from an Islamic Jihad website and just changing the place names. Also, if the Israelis think the Hamas rockets are as lethal as they say, why don't they swap their F-16 fighters and helicopters for a few of them?
These things are capable of terrorising a whole nation for years apparently, yet the Israelis have neglected to buy any, wasting their money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2bn plus $2.2 bn in "aid", they'd save enough to buy a selection of banks in every country in the world.
Whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about legally – except for when it secretly built a nuclear arsenal against an array of international agreements. But they did it above ground and not in a tunnel that's the main thing.
Watching the reports from Gaza, another reason why the ceasefire may break down becomes apparent. The Israelis might claim that their satellite pictures now show Palestinians in possession of huge mounds of rubble – lethal if thrown over the border. Luckily these weapons are easy to spot. Most of them are next to women howling, "Look what they've done to my house," but perhaps the airforce should bomb them again – just in case. The Israelis say they fear Hamas will once again break the ceasefire by sending over those rockets. But the whole point of the operation was to make that impossible. Because they must have asked themselves the question, "If we slaughter 1,300 people, including 300 children, is that likely to make people: A. less cross or B. more cross?" And presumably they concluded it will make them much less likely to grow up full of hatred and determination to retaliate. Perhaps they saw medical research that shows when someone is suffering from anxiety and bouts of irascible ill-tempered behaviour, the best treatment is to pen them in with no food or medicine and then kill some of them, and that calms them down.
Another way to allay their worries about Hamas breaking the ceasefire is to read the report from their government's own Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre. This states that during the ceasefire "Hamas did not take part in any rocket fire and sometimes prevented other organisations from attacking." Still, with all that's been going on I suppose they haven't had time for reading.
Despite all this there might be one cheery sign, which is that never before have so many people seen through the Israeli government's excuses for handing out mass destruction. The demonstrations in support of Palestinians have been bigger than ever before, and even the United Nations and the Wall Street Journal have suggestedIsrael has committed war crimes. One poll in America suggested that 60 per cent of people opposed the bombardment, and the change of opinion reached the point that an Israeli diplomat has admitted that "The harm to civilians in Gaza is causing us huge damage."
Maybe, best of all, was genetics expert Steven Rose who appeared on Radio 4's Today programme to talk about a new study that's located "morality spots", the part of the brain that deals with our morality. Asked how we could know whether this was true, he said in a marvellously posh academic Radio 4 voice "Well we could test the brains of the Israeli cabinet and see if they've got no morality spots whatsoever."
And the most immoral part of all is the perfectly cynical timing, as if three weeks ago Bush shouted: "Last orders please. Any last bombing, before time's up? Come along now, haven't you got homes to demolish?"
Blair has committed the ultimate in obsequiousness. Accepting a decoration from George Bush. If the value of the medal for subservience is in direct proportion to the cravenness of the poodle, it will be made of pure diamond. You may recall that Bush anointed him as his stooge/Middle East Peace Envoy. I wonder how that's going. Time for another self-congratulatory medal? Bush could have one as well. 'For Services To Peace In The Middle East' would be a good inscription.
Rice's ludicrous statement which astonished UN Delgates: "The United States thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation efforts in order to see what this resolution might have been supporting."
Why does it take Annie Lennox, Mick Jagger and Alexei Sayle to condemn these Israeli atrocities? Where is Gordon Brown's voice? Tony Blair? As Robert Fisk has said, not a bloody word. Blair a Middle East Peace Envoy? Is there a bigger sham of a human being in world than him?
This link gives a pdf of the full report by the Norwegian Refugee Council - Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Horrifying figures.
Muntazir - Iraqi Hero
Muntazir Al-Zaidi,according to family members, has been tortured. His guards forced him to watch a television channel run by Sunni extremists loyal to Saddam Hussein. They told him it was the only outlet in the world applauding his act, the journalist's brother, Oday Al-Zaidi, said after being allowed to visit him on Sunday. "They told him that his tribe and his family reject him," Oday Al-Zaidi said. "This is the only channel that supports you," the guards told him referring to the Iraqi satellite television Al-Raee.
"I met my brother for around an hour. He has been tortured while in detention for 36 hours continuously. He has been hit with iron rods and cables."
"There is very severe bleeding in his eye, and he has bruises on his feet and nose, and he was tortured with electric shocks." According to his brother, Al-Zaidi was stripped to his underwear before being placed in a cell.
"He told me he was sleeping on the floor of the cell when a very large man came in and dumped cold water on him and began hitting him with a thick cable," Oday Al-Zaidi said in a television interview.
His jailers had periodically demanded that he state in a videotaped confession that he had been ordered to commit the act by enemies of Iraq. "After the torture and the cold-water shower, I told them to bring me a blank sheet of paper and I would sign it, and they could write whatever they wanted. I am ready to say I am a terrorist or whatever you want," Oday was reported as saying what he was told by his imprisoned brother. "Muntadhar said I will not apologise for what I did -- not now, not ever."
The fact that he allegedly "confessed" to such nonsense adds considerable weight to his brother's allegations.
Bush is unlikely ever to escape the image of him ducking Al-Zaidi's shoes while standing side by side with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. The humiliating scene will doubtless be replayed whenever his Iraq record is reviewed.
A heartwarming message from the White House. Most Economic Depressions make people sad but these people seem to be very happy. It's nice to note that acting can be added to Dubya's list of accomplishments. It occurs to me that Barney the dog would have been a better president than Bush. By the way, have a paper bag handy to watch this.
Blair would have it that he brings to the table 'conflict resolution' from Northern Ireland. It was more to do with his predecessor, John Major but so what.
A new Obama era in the Middle East may or may not be imminent but it has a better chance of success without Blair in the key role as envoy for the Quartet comprising America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
In Arab eyes, Blair is associated with a series of disastrous policy decisions. He will forever be remembered as the junior partner in the US-led invasion of Iraq. While America has managed to salvage something from the war, with their propaganda about the surge and change in tactics, Britain's reputation as a military power and experienced player in the region will never recover.
Then there was Lebanon in 2006. Blair backed the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, even after it was clear that the campaign was misdirected, that innocent Lebanese were caught up in the attack, that huge damage was being done to the country's infrastructure and that one of the few democratically elected Western-leaning governments in the Arab world was being undermined.'I won't indulge in the politics of condemnation' he said. What twaddle.
Partly as a result of his support for Bush, Blair had to resign last year but what is the sum total of his contribution as a US/Israeli stooge Peace Envoy. Little success has been made in persuading Israel to dismantle its checkpoints in the West Bank, a key factor in reviving the Palestinian economy. Also,the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has continued uninterrupted. The situation in Gaza has steadily deteriorated. The coastal strip remains under Hamas control and now threatens to become a humanitarian emergency. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli right-wing opposition leader, is tipped to win elections scheduled for February with a far less compromising stand on talks with the Arabs. The joke in the region is that the only real beneficiary of Mr Blair's recent engagement with the Middle East is the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, where he has established his offices.
In spite of all the setbacks, Blair until very recently kept up the Bush Administration's mantra that a final peace deal is possible by the end of 2008, when we were told a Palestinian state would be in place - a grotesque delusion/outright falsehood. There was never any chance of this happening, despite the grand declarations at the peace conference in Annapolis more than a year ago. Similarly, the timetable for peace set out under the “road map” was nonsense. Mr Bush was never prepared to do the heavy lifting required to make peace in the region, or to engage key states such as Syria and Iran. Blair shares huge responsibility for this failure. His reputation in the Arab world is permanently tarnished.
Finally, there are serious questions about how much time and effort Blair is prepared to devote to this issue. We are told that he has taken a job teaching at Yale University, is writing a book to be published next year, is a banking consultant and is actively promoting inter-faith dialogue, the environment, sports, and development in Africa. There are also strong hints that if a European presidency is ever created, Blair would sell what is left of his soul for the job.
The search for peace in the Middle East is not a part-time assignment and it needs someone who has the right connections in Washington and the capitals of the region, but can also approach the work with fresh thinking and a clean slate. It is the Holy Grail of international diplomacy. Blair may be a Crusader in the worst sense, but the Grail is well beyond his reach. He would fit better in the role of the Black Knight from the Monty Python Grail classic.
The five Blackwater Worldwide guards indicted for a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting are all decorated military veterans.The mercenaries are Donald Ball, Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nick Slatten and Paul Slough. They are charged following the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in a busy Baghdad intersection.
The six have been under investigation since a convoy of Blackwater contractors opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection on Sept. 16, 2007. Witnesses say the shooting was unprovoked, but Blackwater, hired by the US State Department to guard diplomats, says its guards were ambushed by 'insurgents' while responding to a car bombing.
Young children were among the victims, and the shooting case strained relations between the United States and Iraq. After the shooting, Blackwater became the subject of congressional hearings in Washington and insurgent propaganda videos in Iraq.
Prosecutors have also been considering bringing charges under American law, passed as part of a 1988 drug bill, that carries a mandatory 30-year prison sentence for using a machine gun in a crime of violence.
The whole grotesquerie says everything about the US Military and their mercenary cohorts. They will walk away, of course. As they all do.
''Ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities, amidst impunity of current and past human rights abuses, constitute severe breaches of human rights obligations.''- UN Report.
Packs of stray dogs are killing residents in the 'new' Baghdad that Brown, Milliband (and soon Obama) try to sell to the willing dupes in the tame media.
There were more than five deadly blunders/criminalities by him of course but the five worst were:
1 The war on Terror
He squandered an enormous opportunity to unify most of the world behind an international effort to stop terrorism. Bush took, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and threw it away by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone(with a few lapdogs)invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation.
2 'Pre-emptive war'
He promoted the concept of "pre-emptive war." Bush misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that plainly (and entirely predictably) made the United States less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, killed American military personnel needlessly, sucked up almost all the nation's available military forces and became a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers. And, through all of this, he set a terrible precedent for other nations to launch wars.
3 Disastrous Economic Policies
He pursued disastrous economic policies that have resulted in a concentration of wealth and income at the very top and thrust the United States and the world into the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Bush inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230-billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit. He sharply reduced taxes on the very wealthy, helping to return the income shares going to the hyper-rich to the levels they had last reached at the end of the 1920s. This, combined with his opposition to regulation, has led to a reprise of 1929, along with a massive debt to be passed on to future generations.
4 Subverted his own constitution
In the name of "security," Bush severely curtailed the very freedoms that the US military propagandists say they are fighting to defend. Proclaiming himself to be a conservative, he maintained that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. He played directly into the hands of Osama bin Laden by changing the United States in ways far beyond anything the terrorists could have accomplished directly on their own. He endorsed torture and holding people prisoner without charges. The list goes on.
5 Hurricane Katrina
Bush demonstrated the total incompetence of his administration through his and its utter failure to respond to one of the worst natural disasters in United States history, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He looked the other way while a great city, New Orleans, drowned and then praised the incompetent cronies he had appointed to deal with disasters, even as they utterly mismanaged the situation.
I thought this was a late report of the massacre of security guards 2 weeks ago. In fact (should have known) it was another incident of blood-spattered US incompetence followed by lies.
This is a disturbing report and entirely believable in the light of what has gone before.
So. Farewell then McCain and Palin. The notion that Palin will somehow be a runner for office, even in the US madhouse, in 2012 is a bad joke. Let's hope it is the beginning of the end for the politics of hate and a third class funeral for the 'war on terror' bigots. Somehow I doubt it, though. Remember how Tony Blair was the great new hope in the UK? How did that turn out again?
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