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Posted: 11-12-2012 01:31 Post subject:

Moved to Afghan thread.

Posted: 11-12-2012 07:52 Post subject:

Posted: 11-12-2012 18:34 Post subject:

Posted: 06-03-2013 23:29 Post subject:

No real surprise there - just confirmation of what everyone suspected anyway.

Posted: 10-03-2013 09:31 Post subject:

Iraq War: major new questions for Tony Blair
Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair and his government have come under withering attack from a senior former diplomat and British military chiefs for their handling of the war that defined his decade in power.
By Philip Sherwell, US Editor
10:00PM GMT 09 Mar 2013

Mr Blair is accused of being “evangelical” in his approach to the world and hence to toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime, of making mistakes which led to British forces being ill-prepared for the invasion and caught out by the violent aftermath, and of being so determined to support President George W Bush that he imposed no preconditions for Britain going to war alongside the United States.

Meanwhile, senior Bush White House staff confirmed for the first time to The Sunday Telegraph that they had viewed it as a certainty that Mr Blair would back any US-led invasion, long before he publicly committed Britain to taking part.
They say he made clear his unwavering support for US policy nearly a year before the invasion, after a visit to the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.

This appears to contradict Downing Street’s assertion at the time that Britain would intervene militarily against the Iraqi dictator only if all other avenues, including weapons inspections and United Nations sanctions, had been exhausted.
The revelations come in a series of exclusive interviews and articles for The Sunday Telegraph ahead of the 10th anniversary of the “shock and awe” bombing campaign that began on March 20, and the land invasion involving 45,000 British troops that followed a few hours later.

Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to Washington during the run-up to the war, writes in this newspaper today that Mr Blair’s mistakes on Iraq flowed from a “black and white” world view that was “more evangelical than the American Christian Right”.

He says that Mr Blair’s “unquestioning support” for the president “eliminated what should have been salutary British influence over American decision-making” after the prime minister became “an honorary member of this inner group” of neo-conservatives and military hawks who were setting the agenda in the United States.
He notes that a “failure to plan meticulously” for the aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow “led to almost a decade of violent chaos and the ultimate humiliation of British forces”.

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the Armed Forces at the time, describes how the government’s “political nervousness” delayed military preparations for the conflict.
Mr Blair’s government “wanted to avoid giving the impression that war with Iraq was inevitable”, he writes inside this newspaper; as a result, the formal decision was taken “somewhat late in the day, which inevitably foreshortened the Armed Forces’ preparation time”.

Another senior officer, Maj Gen Graham Binns, who commanded a front line brigade in Iraq, discloses that financial restraints left British forces undertrained and lacking key equipment. In addition, the British were “inadequately prepared, mentally and physically, for post-conflict stabilisation”, he writes.

Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said that at a private meeting between the prime minister and the US president almost a year before the invasion was launched, “Mr Blair said that if it came to it, then at the end of the day, he would be with us if we had to move militarily against Saddam Hussein”.
He said that during the meeting at Crawford in April 2002, the position spelt out by Mr Blair was, “I am with you to see this through to the end.”
Andrew Card, the president’s chief of staff, said: “I don’t recall that any conditions were discussed. What was clear was that we shared values and stood together.”

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/9919930/Iraq-War-major-new-questions-for-Tony-Blair.html

Many of us here spoke out at the time about the headlong rush to war.. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: 10-03-2013 09:50 Post subject:

Posted: 05-08-2013 03:27 Post subject:

If this is peace...