Ex-spy chief Sir John Scarlett has told the Iraq war inquiry there was "no conscious intention" to manipulate information about Iraq's weapons.

He denied being under pressure to "firm up" the September 2002 dossier which contained the claim Iraq could use WMD within 45 minutes of Saddam's order.

But he said it would have been "better" to have made clear it referred to battlefield munitions not missiles.

He was not asked about an MP's claim a taxi driver was the claim's source.

Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.

The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." He continued: "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathise with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision."

-----------------------

..."use and deploy different arguments"? Isn't this a euphemism for lying? If one lie does not work, let's concoct another one and another and another till we don't really need a lie to go and wage stupid war...

The sad part is that Tony Blair does not see how delusional he was and is, having given himself the right to go to war, kill and dispose of the rule of law to satisfy his own views... and go along with the delusions of George W Bush and that of our own John Howard.

All liars — all liars and possibly psychopaths of the first order. The Europeans did not have any choice but to turf him out of the race for the European presidency... Anyone with a conscience, including businesses should cease any contact with him — otherwise they become associated with promoting Tony's porkies... Same with John Howard and George Bush...

Key parts of Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War will be held in secret, sources close to the hearings revealed last night.

His conversations with President George Bush when he was prime minister, and crucial details of the decision-making process that led Britain into war, will fall under the scope of national security and the protection of Britain's relations with the US.

But there are also suggestions by well-placed sources that anything "interesting" will also be shrouded in secrecy, leaving his public appearance containing little more than is already known.

------------------

People like Tony Blair believe in their own self-importance — that of being a bullshitter with a conscience... It does not wash. So the justification for the lies that he has spread over the populace with the help of his parners in crime to go to war in Iraq, will be heard in secret so it all can be swept under the carpet of "national interest"  and of maintaining friendship with the other bullshitter-with-no-idea, George W Bush, and our own bullshiter-with-coincidences, John Howard...

They will bullshit till they die...

Before they went to war, I established (and latter wrote on this site) why they had to know there were no weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam, despite all the noise these three clowns were making...

Imagine going to war against an enemy you know has weapons of mass destruction and that your armies do not know were these weapons are... Your commanders would think you're nuts to launch an attack. End of story.

TO LAUNCH THE ATTACK ON IRAQ, THE US, THE UK AND AUSTRALIAN ARMIES HAD TO KNOW THERE WAS NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION... Despite the bullshit preparation such as gas mask and other gear as theater for a guilable public, the armies knew there was no WMDs.

LONDON: Hans Blix, who led the UN team of inspectors looking into the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has strongly criticised Tony Blair after the former British leader's comment that he would have found other arguments to invade Iraq in the absence of such weapons.

The weapons claim was the primary justification for invading Iraq in 2003, and was subsequently proved to be untrue.

Mr Blix told the BBC he believed Mr Blair used the excuse as a ''convenient justification'' for the war and said the remarks gave ''the strong impression of a lack of sincerity''.

''The war was sold on the weapons of mass destruction [claim], and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of 'deployment of arguments', as he said. It sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up, and if the fig leaf had not been there, then they would have tried to put another fig leaf there,'' Mr Blix said.

---------------------

see toon at top and read comment above

From Unleashed

Tony Blair's latest admission on Iraq raises, yet again, the need for a genuine inquiry here in Australia about that misbegotten war.

Even before Britain's Chilcot inquiry has concluded, it has spurred a fresh round of revelations. Britain, we now know, had decided upon war long before all the shenanigans with UN weapons' inspectors. Now Blair has acknowledged that, for him, the war was always about regime change, despite everything he said at the time.

What about the Australian government? Did Howard and Downer know that the date for the invasion had already been fixed way back in 2002, and that the arguments about WMDs were never more than a pretext?

If so, they lied to the Australian people and to the parliament. If not - if they were kept in the dark about the plans of their supposed allies - well, what does that say about Australia's military alliances, the cornerstone of bipartisan defence policy?

Either way, don't we deserve to know?

----------------

Gus repeat: Before they went to war, I established (and latter wrote on this site) why they had to know there were no weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam, despite all the noise these three clowns were making...

Imagine going to war against an enemy you know has weapons of mass destruction and that your armies do not know were these weapons are... Your commanders would think you're nuts to launch an attack. End of story.

TO LAUNCH THE ATTACK ON IRAQ, THE US, THE UK AND AUSTRALIAN ARMIES HAD TO KNOW THERE WAS NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION... Despite the bullshit preparation such as gas mask and other gear as theater for a guilable public, the armies knew there was no WMDs.

see toon at top...

G'day Gus,

 Repeating the old saying that “truth will out” – just what do we do about governments which have unnecessarily caused the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq and – are even now planning an attack on Iran? It is the criminal unholy alliance of the US/Zionists that is currently causing people to realise that these wars are planned just as would be any business.

The crime of the Taliban, the government of the sovereign state of Afghanistan,was that they said they knew where Osama bin Laden was and would only turn him over to an independent Court.  That is not US control and such a reasonable attitude caused an illegal war (including Howard’s Australia) which, in my opinion, will only fill the pockets of the US weapon dealers. 

Meanwhile, the technology that the US uses to convince their gullible people that it will quickly get rid of these patriots who oppose US dominance in this dying world of ours - continues to be given credibility. 

The crime of Saddam Hussein was that, as a US puppet, he tried to free his administration from the choking grip of the US oil pirates and even had the audacity to suggest a deal with Russia!  With his nations’ own oil – how dare he?  Free trade?  Democracy?

The irony could be that the Bush administration of illegal war; illegal redemption; illegal torture and acts of their government which, in its very nature, intends to remove from any independent nation the right to decide their own issues – is even now considered by the capitalist media to be a demonstration of democracy.  And we support them? Fair dinkum?

The little-known behavior of the Americans during Gough Whitlam’s efforts to “buy back the farm” were never given the truthful exposure that they deserved.  Only the orchestrated media fear campaign was, and will be recorded in the future, as an  independence lost.

I believe that Kevin Rudd’s appearance and visits to various countries of the world is not an indication of his arrogance, but an attempt to mitigate the damage that the Howard "New Order" did to our  He must be trying to deny the servile attitude of the Howard years.  

During the US and media’s campaign to keep their Howard puppet in power, our national identity and credibility degenerated as did that of his mentor GW Bush.

Like the famous American elder statesman said “I weep for my country”. When the Howard "New Order" took over, our foreign debt was about $190 billion and when they left it was $700 billion.  Why is that not mentioned even by the Rudd Labor governnent?

Will I see our country free of foreign control in my life-time? I doubt it.

God Bless Australia.  N E OUBLIE.

One of Tony Blair's most senior civil servants has launched a savage attack on the former Prime Minister over the Iraq war.

Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions for much of Mr Blair's premiership, accused him of "sycophancy" towards Washington and using "alarming subterfuge" to mislead the British people into the conflict.

Referring to Mr Blair's weekend interview with former This Morning host Fern Britton in which he defended his role, the former prosecution chief 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."

Sir Ken said the US seat of power "turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him".

He 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."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5gE_Nywv-o4hR4B1y6XpKWJmrpNyw

Has anyone seen rattus or bushit?

 '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 '

Gus: YES!!! Yes... and it has been my beef since 2002, when one could smell the inevitable artificial odor of war from the three stooges, no matter what... See a potted history... see Babylon and the other Babylon. Buying the war in Iraq part one two and three got wiped out from this site by whatever... One day I will reinstate the comments...

See the lying Blair at top...

However, Bushit is nowhere to be seen while the stink of his Presidency still grips the entire world.

We know that he and his family stole the Presidency and it was only the gesture by Al Gore in not forcing his claims to that position which allowed Bushit and Cheney to use the resources of the US to wage never-ending war against the innocent and unprepared.

Tony Blair was part of the “axis of evil” as indeed was Rattus.  The latter was known for his belly-up attitude to bullies right from his school days at Canterbury High.  His history as a selfish and opinionated moron was always skewed to the rich and famous that could assist his lust for power. And they did.

That was evident even during his treacherous behavior to undermine several of his Party’s leaders.  There was no limit to this person’s bastardry including his inability to tell the truth.  Core and non-core was his answer even if he gave one, which was rare and mostly a lie anyway.

If I remember correctly, Bomber Beazley would have unseated him in 1998 except for the Nationals gaining 15 seats.  During his next tour, he set about getting rid of the Nationals and so began the rot of that group. 

And now the Nationals have their own liar – Barnaby Joyce.  This person was elected in Queensland on the ticket of refusing to sell Telstra.  He voted for its sale.  Recently we have been sickened by his red-neck bleating in which he claimed he was worried about the “working families”.  He voted for “WorkChoices”.  He also voted against Labor’s attempt to make politicians responsible for their actions – that would certainly have hurt him and Rattus.

The only good thing to come out of the Bushit/Cheney regime is the clear indication that America’s financial empire is crumbling and any feeling of loss by any true democratic citizen of that nation should be a sufficient wake-up call.

The problem John is that all nations involved in WW II allowed the profits of the US from that war to be used to maintain their Military/Corporate and the results of that ignorance, and the emasculated United Nations, has put this entire world in dire straits.

I support the attacks on that lying hypocrite Tony Blair and continue to hope that Rattus is also investigated – but not by Howard’s stooges. Or his media bullies.

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

From the Guardian

The former foreign secretary Jack Straw is to face potentially explosive questioning at the Iraq inquiry next month over a private letter he sent to Tony Blair on the eve of the invasion, urging the prime minister to look at options apart from pressing ahead with British military involvement in the attack.

It is understood that the inquiry is to receive a copy of the personal letter sent by Straw, written after discussions with Sir Michael (now Lord) Jay, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, on 16 March 2003, two days before the Commons voted to back the war.

Straw was yesterday named by the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war as one of its star witnesses next month. Ten serving or former cabinet ministers have been called, including Tony Blair, the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and the former defence secretary Geoff Hoon.

While before that...

Tony Blair and George Bush are "clinging to straws" to justify the war in Iraq, Hans Blix has said.

The former UN chief arms inspector was writing in the Independent on Sunday following the release of the Iraq Survey Group's report on Wednesday.

The report found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but Mr Blair said it made clear Saddam Hussein had "every intention" of developing them.

----------------

Meanwhile the third turd in this trio is keeping mum... He should be judged for having told fibs to the Australian public... There is no two ways about it: Bush, Blair and Howard knew that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction but they went along with concocting a clever double cross... see toon at top.

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major has criticised Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq war and his presentation of the case for invasion in March 2003.

Sir John said he had reluctantly backed the war because he believed what Mr Blair had said as prime minister.

But now, he said, big questions had been raised by the unfolding evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry into the war.

He told the BBC the argument that Saddam Hussein was a bad man and must be removed was an "inadequate" one.

Sir John said it now seemed there were doubts before the invasion about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

see toon at top...

If British Prime Minister Gordon Brown were genuinely interested in finding out why his predecessor followed George Bush into the Iraq quagmire, his appointment of Sir Lawrence Freedman to the five-member Chilcot Inquiry was an odd choice. As the political editor of the BBC's Newsnight programme, Michael Crick, pointed out, "Critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!"

Crick was referring to a Freedman memo which formed the basis of Tony Blair's 1999 Chicago speech, "The Doctrine of the International Community." In what became known as the "Blair Doctrine," Freedman had offered an answer to the specious question: "When was military action justified for liberal, humanitarian reasons?"

In addition to the Freedman Doctrine's justification of military intervention in "rogue states" such as Iraq, Freedman has admitted that he "instigated" a pre-war seminar for the British Prime Minister, because he was "aware of misgivings among some specialists in Iraq about the direction of policy." Clearly, Freedman has no such "misgivings" himself about the illegal invasion of Iraq. It was, he claims, motivated by "rather noble criteria."

In his recent book, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East, Freedman is dismissive of those who suspect less "noble" motives for the war.

"Another popular theory," he writes, "is that U.S. foreign policy was effectively hijacked by a group of neoconservatives with a grand design to reshape the Middle East. A conspiratorial version of this theory argues that the aim was to help Israel, by removing a leading rejectionist state from the scene."

http://www.countercurrents.org/ocathail040110.htm

Jack Straw privately warned Tony Blair that an invasion of Iraq was legally dubious, questioned what such action would achieve, and challenged US claims about the threat from Saddam Hussein, it was revealed today .

Straw, foreign secretary at the time, gave what now seems prophetic advice in a letter marked "secret and personal", 10 days before Blair met George Bush at the US president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. That was nearly a year before the invasion.

In his letter, about which he is expected to be questioned when he testifies at the Chilcot inquiry this week, Straw warned Blair, then prime minister: "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few … there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq."

Straw warned of two legal "elephant traps". He said, "regime change per se is no justification for military action", and "the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh [UN] mandate may well be required".

Despite the warnings, a previously leaked briefing paper for a meeting of the war cabinet in July 2002 states: "When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change."

--------------

Impeach Bush, prosecute Blair and shoo Howard into oblivion... They lied through their teeth. see toon at top.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal, a former senior legal adviser to Britain's foreign ministry at the time of the conflict has told a public inquiry.

-------------------

Jack Straw rejected advice in the run up to war

that invading Iraq without UN backing would break international law, the Iraq inquiry heard.

Mr Straw's chief legal adviser at the time, Sir Michael Wood, told the then foreign secretary it would "amount to the crime of aggression".

But Mr Straw told him he was being "dogmatic" and that "international law was pretty vague", Sir Michael said.

Ministers used the attorney general's advice on the war's legality instead.

-----------------

Remember the pommy attorney general advice was iffy at best... Here our Rattus did not concerm himself with whatever legality. He lied like Blair and Bush on the subject of WMDs.

Two days from now, the spirit of the newly deceased Erich Segal will hover over the Queen Elizabeth Centre when Mr Tony Blair makes his feverishly awaited appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. A love story between a cocky, preppy Frat Boy with Roman numerals after his name and his feisty yet adoring social climbing inamorata will again be dissected. And for the latter, self-love will still mean never having to say you're sorry.

What fresh revelatory nuggets Sir John and the gang tease from Mr Blair will be conflated into front-page headlines, but expect no serious blunders from him. As adept at legalistic flim-flam as his great mate Bill Clinton, he has been staying up until 3am to prepare for this ordeal, we're assured, anticipating every imaginable line of enquiry and rehearsing every possible reply in finest detail.

Recalling that he had to be woken soon after midnight to be told that the invasion of Iraq had begun, you may detect a vicious little irony here. That he could sleep peacefully as his troops went into harm's way then, but dare not sleep when poised to explain why now, is an indecently cute vignette of a warped morality.

------------------------

Blair will tell crafted porkies, coated with sweet talk and idiotic brilliant belief... as if believing in something is good enough for war... Remember, no decent army chief would have gone to war unless they knew there was no WMDs in Iraq... see toon at top...

from the BBC — comments

------

Imagine if China with the backing of Russia invaded Spain because E.T.A launched an attack in Beijing? That would be the equivalent of Afghanistan.

Then imagine if Russia and China invaded France as well, saying there are links to E.T.A. That would be the equivalent of Iraq.

And even if USA and Britain condemned it, Russia and China still went ahead.

Would we be understandable about it because E.T.A attacked Beijing?

Of course we wouldn't because only we(USA/UK) can police the world!

Paul Smith, Leamington Spa, United Kingdom

------------------

from the Guardian

This morning's failures have turned to fiasco. Over one issue after another, the members of the Chilcot inquiry proved entirely unwilling or unable to challenge – or apparently even recognise – Tony Blair's most damaging admissions, obfuscations and falsehoods on the Iraq war.

How come none of them pressed the former prime minister over the fact that most Iraqis opposed the occupation and supported the inevitable and predicted armed resistance? Instead, they allowed him to claim the opposite and insist it was all a problem of "outside elements, al-Qaida and Iran". Nor did they seem to remember that it was the invasion that brought both into Iraq.

When Blair claimed it was terrorists who were responsible for Iraq's bloodbath, no one thought to mention that for the first couple of years at least the majority of civilians were killed by the occupation forces, as Jonathan Steele pointed out.

What about the impact of the aggression against Iraq in fuelling terror attacks in Britain and elsewhere? Not a word. And when Blair claimed "we didn't end up with a humanitarian disaster" in Iraq and cited a string of misleading statistics on Iraq's "remarkable" progress, the inquiry members seemed happy to accept that too, whatever the UN might say.

There were startling admissions: "unfortunately, what we thought would be the problem wasn't the problem" after the occupation began, Blair said. Al-Qaida and Iran had "nearly caused the mission to fail" – but, in the end, he declared, "it didn't". The US troops had gone in "too hard, too heavy" in Falluja. If anything, his Atlantic love affair has deepened since he left power.

Britain's inquiry into the Iraq war has been dealt a severe blow by a pro-Israel activist on the inquiry committee who has given an interview to a Jewish settlers' radio accusing his critics of "anti-Semitism".

The Iraq Inquiry, led by former civil servant John Chilcot, was set up by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in June 2009 in order to "identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict". It began its deliberations in November.

On 22 November 2009, as the inquiry, was preparing to convene, a former British ambassador, Oliver Miles, wrote an article in the Independent on Sunday newspaper expressing concern at the fact that two out of the five members of the inquiry's committee, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman, were "strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war". He also pointed out that both Gilbert and Freedman were Jewish, and that "Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism".

Writing in the Independent newspaper a week later, Richard Ingrams wondered whether the Zionists' links to the Iraq invasion would be brushed aside.

http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20100129

from the American Conservative...

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken to a new defense of the Iraq war, "what if." He argues that that the world would be worse off today if Saddam Hussein were still alive. Yet, the "What if" defense does not hold water when you really consider all the possibilities of "what if", argues Gwynne Dyer.

Blair's Poor Iraq Defense

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON — At the Iraq inquiry in London on Jan. 29, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair found a new way to defend his decision to join George W. Bush in invading Iraq in 2003: the what-if defense. What if they hadn't invaded Iraq, and Saddam Hussein had remained in power there?

see toon at top...

The more I learn about the filth of politics is universal and only the honest people cannot succeed.

It is surely a condemnation of us all if we even give a modicum of credibility to the Blair "excuse".

Where are we - what are we - when we allow people like Blair, Bush, Howard and Netanyahu to strut this earth with the proud boast of being responsible for the murder and massacre of tens of thousands of people?

Let me say that it is not of great concern to me to put my faith in Rudd and his new government - the alternative is really scarry.

However, the spectre of the Bush America is still resonent in my mind and I resent the suggestion that we are dependant on their patronige to survive a "world at war" which they have created and will continue as long as the rest of the world allows it.

What if?  America closed down all of its Military/Corporate - even slowly - and replaced it with infra structure projects to maintain the "leader of the world" in peaceful technology?

Oil? OK they seem to have that locked in - what is their excuse now?

How well I remember the retirement speech of the old warrior Ike Iesenhower and I quote some of this man's wisdom"

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

from the Independent

Gordon Brown was urged to step in over Tony Blair's business interests today following the latest disclosure of the former prime minister's links with a multinational oil giant.

It finally emerged this week that Mr Blair had been paid for advising the UI Energy Corporation, a South Korean oil company with extensive interests in the US and Iraq.

The details were released by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which vets jobs taken by ministers and senior officials within two years of leaving office, 20 months after he took on the work.

The committee - chaired by former Conservative Cabinet minister Ian Lang - said it had not previously published the information due to "market sensitivities".

It also disclosed Mr Blair had been acting as a "governance adviser" to the Kuwaiti government since June 2008 in a deal reportedly worth £1 million.

The committee said that publication had been delayed at the request of the Kuwaitis.

A spokesman for Mr Blair was quoted as saying that the agreement with UI Energy related to a "one-off piece of advice" and was not related to Iraq.

Although the committee cleared both appointments, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker expressed concern that Mr Blair was in breach of the Ministerial Code of Conduct in relation to the extensive business interests he has taken on since leaving office in 2007.

He said that since last November he had written three times to Mr Brown asking him to investigate - as well as raising the issue on the floor of the Commons - but so far had not received any substantive reply.

"Mr Brown appears to be desperately trying to avoid giving an answer before the general election. He is playing for time," he said.

He said Mr Blair's business activities reflected badly on both Britain and the wider international community which now employed him as an international envoy on the Middle East.

"Mr Blair's pursuit of money appears too prominent and wholly compromises his position as a Middle East peace envoy. He is embarrassing the country and this Government by the way he behaves," he said.

-----------------

see toon at top...

Tony Blair is to play a key role in the Labour Party's election campaign, with a brief to target the ''failure'' of the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, to modernise the Tories.

The former prime minister will make a series of carefully timed interventions in the run-up to polling day, expected on May 6.

Senior Labour sources confirmed that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had sealed a pact with his predecessor to bring him on board. ''Tony's absolutely up for it,'' a friend of Mr Blair said.

As the Conservatives prepare a poster campaign warning of the danger of another five years of Mr Brown, Labour is turning to the man who led the party to three election victories.

It is thought Mr Blair will make at least one important speech and give at least one interview in the run-up to polling day in which he will attack Mr Cameron.

A friend said: ''Tony knows what it means to change a party and he will say that the Conservatives have not changed. He will say that David Cameron might have done a superficial PR job but there is no real change. The policies are the same.''

http://www.smh.com.au/world/blair-to-return-in-labour-campaign-20100321-qo4c.html

A study by a senior Army officer into the lessons of the invasion of Iraq has been suppressed because its comments were too critical even for a restricted Ministry of Defence readership, it was reported last night.

The paper by Lieutenant General Chris Brown looked at the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq and the criticisms were said to be so embarrassing that defence chiefs want it kept secret. They are concerned that the members of the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 invasion, who are aware of the report's existence, will demand to see the report and that full secrecy will be lost.

So sensitive are the contents of the study that, according to one report, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, intervened personally to prevent it being more widely circulated within the MoD. It has so far been seen only by a handful of senior MoD officers and officials.

A source at the MoD claimed last night that the report had been "sent back for redrafting" after a series of "factual errors" were spotted.

The war in Iraq led to a huge increase in the terrorist threat to the UK, the former head of MI5 has told the Iraq Inquiry.

Baroness Manningham-Buller added that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein had caused a "long-term major and strategic problem" for Britain by allowing al-Qaeda time to build a stronghold in Afghanistan unopposed.

She told the inquiry: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam.

"Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before."

The inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, released a memo written by Baroness Manningham-Buller in March 2002, in which she warned the Government that declaring war on Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK.

The note made clear that MI5 did not regard Iraq as a significant terrorist threat to British interests before the war, and had discounted any link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks on the US.

Baroness Manningham-Buller, then deputy director-general of the Security Service, also revealed that MI5 refused to provide evidence for the Government's now-infamous dossier on Saddam's military capability because it doubted the credibility of the information.

Iraq War Increased Terrorist Threat to the UK, Former MI5 Chief tells Chilcot Inquiry

Britain's 'deep state' of secretive bureaucrats is denying witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry crucial files

...

When invasion was promoted by Washington, the available alternative – to squeeze Saddam financially by stopping oil exports or seizing the regime's assets, which I and some colleagues had repeatedlyadvocated, was ignored. Here the documents tell a different but equally clear and appalling story: there is not a single mention of any formal discussion, by ministers or officials, of alternatives to military action. It is hard to pinpoint a graver indictment of the government's failure.

The oral testimonies delivered to the inquiry have not given an accurate picture of what the government really thought. Unfortunately, the panel is neither equipped, nor apparently inclined, to challenge witnesses on the contradictions of their testimonies with this documentary record. This may not be the panel's fault: how can they know which pertinent documents exist?

In these circumstances, it is very worrying that the government machine is still trying to withhold key documents, and silence those of us with detailed knowledge of the policy history – and documents. I have been told too, from secondary sources, that members of the panel have been refused documents they have specifically requested.

There is a clear solution to these problems: break down the continued obstruction by the bureaucracy by releasing the documents – all of them. Only the most secret documents deserve continued protection, and there are very few of these. The vast majority of relevant documents relate to policy discussion inside the government before the war. Though profoundly embarrassing, there is little here that damages national security, except in the hysterical assessment of officials protecting their own reputation. Nick Clegg said a few weeks ago that almost all documents must now be released. He is right.

Carne Ross was the UK's Iraq expert at the UN from 1997 to 2002. He now heads Independent Diplomat, a non-profit diplomatic advisory group.

'No smoking gun'
Asked about the inspections he oversaw between November 2002 and 18 March 2003 - when his team was forced to pull out of Iraq on the eve of the war - he said he was "looking for smoking guns" but did not find any.

While his team discovered prohibited items such as missiles beyond the permitted range [Gus' note: these missile could have gone 156 kms downwind while the UN had only allowed 150km range] , missile engines and a stash of undeclared documents, he said these were "fragments" and not "very important" in the bigger picture.

"We carried out about six inspections per day over a long period of time.

"All in all, we carried out about 700 inspections at different 500 sites and, in no case, did we find any weapons of mass destruction."

Although Iraq failed to comply with some of its disarmament obligations, he added it "was very hard for them to declare any weapons when they did not have any".

Legal explanation
He criticised decisions that led to the war, saying existing UN resolutions on Iraq did not contain the authority needed, contrary to the case put by the UK government.

"Eventually they had to come with, I think, a very constrained legal explanation," he said. "You see how Lord Goldsmith wriggled about and how he, himself, very much doubted it was adequate."

--------------------

Blair, Bush and Howard (and Tony Abbott) are war criminals under the charters of the United Nations...

The intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was not "very substantial", former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott has said.

He told the Iraq inquiry he was "nervous" about the intelligence being presented in 2002 - some of which he said was based on "tittle-tattle".

However, he said he did not have the knowledge to challenge the assessments.

Nevertheless, he defended the military action taken as "legal" and said he would take the same decision again.

Lord Prescott, deputy prime minister between 1997 and 2007, is the last senior former Labour minister to be giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the war.

'Sympathies'

The inquiry is looking at the UK's role in the build-up to the war and the handling of its aftermath, and is expected to publish its report around the end of the year.

....

"When I kept reading them, I kept thinking to myself, 'is this intelligence?", he said.

Describing it as "basically what you have heard somewhere and what somebody else has told somebody", he suggested the conclusions drawn on the back of it "were a little ahead" of the evidence.

"So I got the feeling it wasn't very substantial," he said.

With hindsight, he said recommendations made by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) "were frankly wrong and built too much on a little information".

"That was my impression at the time but, you know, I just thought 'well this is the intelligence document, this is what you have'.

"It seems robust but not enough to justify to that. Certainly what they do in intelligence is a bit of tittle-tattle here and a bit more information there."

However, he said he was certain that Saddam Hussein presented a real threat to regional security as he had attacked both Kuwait and Iran in recent years.

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Idiot!!!

Saddam had attacked Iran on behalf of the West. For this war, in which more than a million people died on both sides, Saddam was supplied with WMDs by the US, the UK, the Germans, the French... and intelligence on Iran by the US.

His attack on Kuwait had been "greenlighted" by the US... until people realised he was doing it.

Saddam was left IN CHARGE of Iraq after he had been defeated by the US alliance. Saddam destroyed all his WMDs soon after, as revealed in the 10,000 pages documents he submitted to the UN before the invasion by the US, the UK and Australia...

In Australia, Tony Abbott was complicit with the attack on Iraq under false pretences. It's time to call him by his nickname: Tony the Turd...

The administration of US President Barack Obama has decided to throw its crucial support behind moves to establish a special UN commission to investigate alleged war crimes perpetrated by the military rulers of Burma.

In what represents a marked rollback of one of President Obama's most controversial foreign policy initiatives, US officials said Washington would now back the war crimes investigation, as urged earlier this year by the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Burma. Washington is also said to be considering tightening sanctions against the junta.

The decision represents a reversal of an initiative announced last year to try to develop closer diplomatic ties with Burma by establishing regular meetings involving a senior US official.

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Gus: of course we could agree with all this rigmarole as long as Tony Blair, George W Bush and John Howard are also charged for war crimes. These monkeys went to war against Iraq under false pretences and without the approval of the UN...  One can live in hope this day would come — and of course Tony Abbott, loyal kickshit of John Howard should also be charged for accessory during the porkies...

But then the world is full of inconsistencies...

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Meanwhile at the Guano front:

Barack Obama's pledge to shut down Guantanamo Bay will not be honoured until at least a year after the President's self-imposed deadline – and may not be completed in his first administration.

The man in charge of the seven prison camps at the US naval base in Cuba is yet to receive direct orders to begin the transfer of prisoners so he can close the detention facilities.

In his first media interview since taking up the post three months ago, Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson said that even if President Obama implemented his order today it would take him six months to complete the job, a year after the January 2010 deadline imposed by the President when he signed the executive order in 2009.

America's most senior general flew into Britain for top secret talks on the invasion of Iraq 11 months before the attack on Saddam Hussein's regime.

Details of the classified meeting, held at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, suggest Tony Blair's Government was involved in detailed discussions about toppling the Iraqi dictator earlier than previously disclosed.

American General Tommy Franks flew in to the base in April 2002 to attend a summit meeting called by the then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon.

It followed similar meetings Gen Franks had in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Secret Pentagon documents reveal Mr Hoon asked about 'US plans for Iraq'.

Exactly what was said has been censored, but declassified sections of the documents show Gen Franks had a separate meeting with Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, then Britain's chief of defence staff, and senior officers.

At that meeting, 'regional issues' including Iraq were discussed, and Gen Franks was told the Ministry of Defence had 'put together a small cell' for 'thinking strategically about Iraq' and 'what courses of action are available to handle the regime'.

Mr Hoon did not mention the meeting when he gave evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq earlier this year. And Admiral Boyce, now Lord Boyce, told the Chilcot panel he had set up an Iraq planning group, but only in May 2002.

Last night Mr Hoon said: 'I do recall meeting [Gen Franks] at Brize Norton but I am pretty confident that the primary purpose was to discuss Afghanistan.

'Whether in the course of that meeting there were discussions about Iraq wouldn't entirely surprise me, but I am confident that there wasn't anything more specific other than questions ike,

"What's going on?"  

He added that he did not 'hide or disguise meetings' from Chilcot, saying he volunteered as much information as he could recall.

Researcher Chris Ames, who helped secure the documents' release under Freedom of Information laws, said: 'The memo contradicts the evidence of other Chilcot witnesses, who said British collaboration with US war plans did not begin until the early summer of 2002.'

Britain held war talks with US general Tommy Franks before Iraq invasion

The British government promised to protect America's interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, according to a secret cable sent from the US embassy in London.

Jon Day, the Ministry of Defence's director general for security policy, told US under-secretary of state Ellen Tauscher that the UK had "put measures in place to protect your interests during the UK inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war".

The admission came in the cable sent on 22 September 2009, which recorded a series of high-level meetings between Tauscher and UK defence officials and diplomats, which involved the then foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Day was a senior adviser to the Labour government, and told the American delegation that "Iraq seems no longer to be a major issue in the US", but said it would become a big issue - a "feeding frenzy" - in the UK "when the inquiry takes off".

The revelation of the move to defend Washington threatens to undermine the inquiry, which was launched by Gordon Brown 'to identify lessons that can be learned from the Iraq conflict'. It is due to deliver its findings around the turn of the year.

The diplomats do not record which measures the British government took to protect US interests. No American officials were called to give evidence in public, and evidence from US officials was heard in private during visits by inquiry members to the US. The inquiry was also refused permission to publish letters between George Bush and Tony Blair written in 2002 in the run-up to the war, even though they were referred to in evidence. There were fears that the release of the details could harm both UK-US relations, and those with other countries. In January, a Blair ally told the Guardian: "They are full of scurrilous remarks about other people, including [Jacques] Chirac [the former French president]."

Tonight, Andrew Burgin, a spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition, was reported as saying: "This shows is the beginning of the cover-up".

"This really brings the whole inquiry into disrepute," he said. "Those involved in this cover-up must be held to account. The implications are so serious that there may need to be a new inquiry."

Wikileaks Cable reveals secret pleadge to protect US at Iraq Inquiry

If Sir John Chilcot has achieved nothing else, his inquiry has brought out of the woodwork a steady stream of officials anxious to distance themselves from the invasion of Iraq and in particular the intelligence assessments used to justify it.

There is no doubting the importance of the letter now released by Major-General Michael Laurie, a senior member of the Defence Intelligence Staff at the time.

Not only does it contradict Alastair Campbell's evidence that the dossier published in the run-up to war was not intended to "make the case for war", it also contradicts the evidence of the intelligence chiefs who helped write the document.

Both Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, and John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, insisted to Sir John that its claims about weapons of mass destruction were fully justified. Michael Laurie, however, declares that "we could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment related to WMD".

Adrian Hamilton: The Doubters Have Their Day

and so ......

Alastair Campbell misled the Iraq Inquiry, according to a senior intelligence officer who has claimed that intense political pressure was applied to turn a dossier reporting on Saddam Hussein's absent weapons of mass destruction arsenal into a justification for invading Iraq.

Tony Blair's communications director had repeatedly dismissed claims that the dossier of September 2002 was embellished to pave the way for military action. He told the inquiry: "It was not the case for war, it was the case why the Prime Minister has become more concerned."

But Mr Campbell's version is directly contradicted by the man who was Director General of Defence Intelligence Staff at the time the dossier was being drafted. In hitherto secret testimony, Major-General Michael Laurie has detailed how Downing Street suppressed versions of the document which did not fit with what it wanted.

General Laurie was so concerned by what he regarded as Mr Campbell's inaccurate testimony that he felt it imperative that what actually took place should be put on the record. He contacted the inquiry: "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you

"Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not 'to make a case for war'. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used. I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given. The previous paper... was rejected because it did not make a strong enough case. From then until September we were under pressure to find intelligence that could reinforce the case."

Campbell Mislead Chilcott Over Dossier

Yes John...

The three documents were written by a senior MI6 officer only referred to as "SIS4" in December 2001.

They were declassified and released yesterday by the Chilcot inquiry. Among the revelations are the following:

* Oil was a key motivating factor behind the efforts to remove Saddam. "The removal of Saddam remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies," the officer writes.

* MI6 did not believe that Saddam or Iraq were supporting al-Qa'ida. "There is no convincing intelligence (or common-sense) case that Iraq supports Sunni extremism," it says. But in January 2004, Mr Blair told the Commons: "We do know of links between al-Qa'ida and Iraq. We cannot be sure of the exact extent of those links."

* Britain believed America was planning military action to remove Saddam long before it was officially acknowledged. One document is dedicated to outlining the case for preventing America from taking direct action. They also refer to "US impatience".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mi6-made-secret-plan-for-antisaddam-coup-in-december-2001-2283432.html

see toon at top...

In previously confidential evidence released yesterday by Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry, a senior military spook directly contradicted Alastair Campbell's endlessly repeated mantra that he had not beefed up the "dodgy dossier" on Iraq "to make a case for war".

Major General Michael Laurie, who was director general of intelligence collection at the Defence Intelligence Staff in 2002-2003, emailed the inquiry in January 2010 in response to Campbell's evidence of two weeks earlier.

"He [Campbell] stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given.'

It gets worse: "... It was clear to me that there was direction and pressure being applied on the Joint Intelligence Committee and its drafters."

And there's a wow finish: "In summary, we knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care." What the rest of us would call "sexing up", I suppose.

Both men cannot be telling the truth.

The Iraq Inquiry has been the cause of much cynicism. Its five members, chosen by then prime minister Gordon Brown, are the usual establishment trusties.

Sir John Chilcot, its chairman, comes from a background in the Home Office with its knee-jerk belief in the probity of the intelligence services.

Shockingly, another panel member is Sir Lawrence Freedman. As Professor of War Studies at the prestigious King's College, London and official historian of the Falklands campaign, he is well qualified for the role. But as the author of Tony Blair's 1999 'Chicago speech' which set out the philosophical basis for Western humanitarian interventions abroad he has no business on the panel at all. Even a Banana Republic would baulk at such a conflict of interest.

From Chris Floyd

Why have a million innocent people been killed in Iraq by the cataclysm unleashed by the Anglo-American invasion and occupation? Here's why:

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq's weapons programme was drawn up "to make the case for war", flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular by Alastair Campbell, the former prime minister's chief spin doctor. In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care."

Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: "I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given." ...

Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was "frequently inquiring whether we were missing something" and was under pressure. "We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country." ...

The document is one of a number released by the Chilcot inquiry. They include top secret MI6 reports warning of the damage to British interests and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the UK if it joined the US-led invasion of Iraq. However, a newly declassified document reveals that Sir Kevin Tebbit, then a top official at the Ministry of Defence, warned the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, in January 2003 that the US would "feel betrayed by their partner of choice" if Britain did not go along with the invasion.

Despite its concerns, MI6 told ministers before the invasion that toppling Saddam Hussein "remains a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies".

That's why. They caused the deaths of a million innocent people to "give new security to oil supplies" -- and to gain the strategic dominance this "new security" would bring. They knew that all the rest -- WMD, threat of terrorism, etc. -- was absolute bullshit. They knew it from the start. They knew it all along.

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Yes... we knew it all along... See the far too many exposés about these lies on this site, including the trilogy... see toon at top.

The official inquiry into the UK's role in the build-up to the Iraq war might not issue its report until next summer at the earliest, more than a year after many expected it to be made public, the Observer has learned.

A source close to the inquiry, chaired by Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall mandarin who has advised both MI5 and MI6, suggested that its findings are unlikely to be disclosed until June. Intriguingly, Chilcot is known over the summer to have attended a performance of Loyalty, a play about the build-up to the Iraq war that was performed at the Hampstead Theatre. Written by journalist and author Sarah Helm, the wife of Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, the play provided a rare insight into the psychology of those involved.

Some scenes , including a phone call from Rupert Murdoch to Blair on the eve of the war and another suggesting British officials harboured doubts about the sources behind claims that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, are close to the truth, say Whitehall insiders.

Private Eye magazine reported that Chilcot had demanded to review some of the evidence presented to his inquiry after attending the play.

The inquiry was launched on 30 July 2009 and a final round of public hearings was conducted in February. The lengthy wait between their conclusion and the expected publication date will fuel speculation that Chilcot and his panel are re-examing evidence presented by the key decision-makers responsible for committing British troops to war in 2003.

The inquiry's findings are expected to be critical of a number of senior politicians within the Labour government, their aides, and intelligence chiefs. There is speculation that the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, will bear the brunt of the criticism.

While Blair is expected to be criticised, in particular for not consulting sufficiently with his cabinet, there is speculation that he won't be condemned as strongly as some had expected. But his relationship with his chief legal adviser faces acute scrutiny. The inquiry heard that eight months before the invasion, Lord Goldsmith told Blair an attempt to topple Saddam would be a serious breach of international law.

A spokesman for the Chilcot inquiry declined to comment on when it would publish its findings.

Iraq war inquiry report faces long delay as doubts on evidence persist

Walking Eagle

On a recent trip to the United States , Tony Blair, Ex. Prime Minister of the UK , addressed a major gathering of Native American Indians. He spoke for almost an hour on his plans for a CarbonTrading Tax for the UK and Europe. At the conclusion of his speech, the crowd presented him with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name - Walking Eagle. A very chuffed Tony then departed in his motorcade, waving to the crowds... A news reporter later asked one of the Indians how they came to select the new name given to Tony Blair. They explained that Walking Eagle is the name given to a bird so full of shit that it can no longer fly.

From an email doing the rounds...

Unemployment is rising and companies are going to the wall as the economic turmoil continues to inflict damage across the globe. But one organisation is thriving. Records recently filed at Companies House show Tony Blair Inc is going from strength to strength. They reveal that income channelled through a complex network of firms and partnerships controlled by Blair rose more than 40% last year to more than £12m. Of this, almost £10m was paid for "management services". The money was transferred via a network of firms and financial vehicles.

Accountancy experts are questioning the arcane nature of the network's finances, which makes it difficult to trace where its money is coming from, or where it is being spent.

Accounts for Windrush Ventures, an obscure company that operates under the trading name "the Office of Tony Blair", suggest 2011 has been a successful year for the former prime minister. Windrush saw its turnover rise to just over £12m, up from £8.5m in 2010. Pre-tax profits rose from £729,000 to £1.1m.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/07/blair-inc-rise-earnings