tagged w/ Downing Street Memo
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Several victims of the shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in 2007 involving Blackwater security guards say they were coerced into reaching settlements and they are demanding that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified.Several victims of the shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in 2007 involving... more
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Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with... more
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Fresh evidence has emerged that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's discredited Iraqi arms dossier was "sexed up" on the instructions of Alastair Campbell, his communications chief, to fit with claims from the US administration that were known to be false.Fresh evidence has emerged that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's... more
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~y2009m12d13-Tony-Blair-the-Iraq-war-was-fought-to-get-rid-of-Saddam-Hussein
As if we didn't know.
Hans Blix summed it up quite well when he told the BBC: 'Blair's remarks gave the strong impression of a lack of sincerity; The war was sold on the weapons of mass destruction [argument], and now you . . . hear that it was only a question of a 'deployment of arguments'. He added: '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'.
Would George Bush have been able to sell the war at home based on a desire for regime change in Iraq? It's doubtful. So he and his team took America on the biggest ride, albeit illegal, of our history. Facts were fabricated, claims were exaggerated, mushroom clouds appeared, and the WMD story took a few months, but America plunged into an abyss of fear and bought it.~y2009m12d13-Tony-Blair-the-Iraq-war-was-fought-to-get-rid-of-Saddam-Hussein
As if... more
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I'm not going to say that In the Loop -- the new British political comedy directed by Armando Iannucci and based on his award-winning BBC sitcom The Thick of It -- is going help put the last eight years of U.S./Great Britain relations into context, but at the very least, I think it provides some bracing insights into how politicians on both sides of the Atlantic fulfill the pressing demands of their jobs. That is to say: Not all that well.
On the G.B. side, you've got, amongst others, a minister (Tom Hollander) whose every encounter with the press seems destined to provoke an 2009-07-15-Still3_1283_310.jpginternational incident, and a director of communications (the superb Peter Capaldi) who wields his power with such vitriolic zeal that sulfur trails linger when he leaves the room. Here in the good ol' U.S. of A, there's an assistant secretary for diplomacy (Mimi Kennedy) who bristles at her isolation from all the good committees -- you know, the ones that plan wars and stuff -- and a Pentagon General (James Gandolfini) whose instincts for survival are maybe too finely honed.
They all come together over an impending conflict in the Middle East (Iannucci is discreet about which country is actually getting invaded) and a document that, if it ever reached the public, could derail the entire enterprise (said document having been drafted in America, so it's not at all like the Downing Street Memo). In the course of the drum-up to war, there'll be furtive love affairs (between government assistants Chris Addison and Anna Chlumsky), much ego stroking and destruction (Capaldi's official flies all the way to Washington to discover that his exclusive, White House one-on-one is with a deputy assistant secretary who looks like an escapee from High School Musical), considerable jockeying for position, innumerable invocations of the f-word, and a stealth appearance by Steve Coogan (maybe you'll have better luck finding him than I did -- I had to check the production notes to be sure).
In sum, it's political vitriol in the grand, British tradition. Wouldn't have it any other way.
Click the link to hear my interview with Iannucci:I'm not going to say that In the Loop -- the new British political comedy... more
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There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public — lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.
A Monumental Lie
In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, six days after receiving the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified CIA report, President Bush told millions of Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA was telling him -a monumental lie to the nation and the world.
On the evening of October 7, 2002, the very latest CIA intelligence was that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the U.S. This same information was delivered to the Bush administration as early as October 1, 2002, in the NIE, including input from the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies. In addition, CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush in the Oval Office on the morning of October 7th.
According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.” The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.
Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.
In the original NIE report, members of the U.S. intelligence community vigorously disagreed with the CIA’s bloated and inaccurate conclusions. All such opposing commentary was eliminated from the declassified White Paper prepared for Congress and the American people.
The Manning Memo
On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to “provoke a confrontation” with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly “U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions and that would justify war. Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.
more at the link.There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this... more
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