THINGS AREN'T LOOKING TOO GOOD FOR BLAIR

It's not often, indeed very rarely, that I can say that I agree with George, but this time... well, what can I say? He's right.

And Alex is on this big time. Of course I more often agree with him.

As Mr Salmond says, it's not just Blair; it's members of his cabinet, MoD, Civil Servants, Number 10 staff, and probably most of all, Jack Straw.

LIAR, BLIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!

I’ve always been more than a little dubious at Blair’s insistence that toppling Saddam Hussein made Britain, or London, a safer place.

I can only imagine that the illegal (in that it didn’t have the backing of the UN) invasion of a sovereign state; the killing of tens of thousands of its totally innocent citizens, including children, in night after night of utter terror in the ‘Shock and Awe’ campaign conducted jointly by the US and its poodle, would have made the likelihood of a revenge attack on these countries more likely...

Especially as the reason given for this horrific invasion was to rid the country of WMDs, which were there for absolute certain, but in fact haven’t been found in the 7 years since.

The fact that the invading powers were pathetic enough to go in without the semblance of a plan for what would happen after Saddam was toppled, and that the resultant mess makes people’s lives intolerable even now, may have an added effect of disgruntlement in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

But hey, what do I know?

Well, nothing of course. For me it was a simple application of common sense. Bush and Blair together with two other nut job right wingers in the form of Silvio Berlusconi and José María Aznar López acting, as Lord Bingham described it, like ‘world vigilantes’, seemed to me to be an open invitation for revenge. As indeed it has been.

However, I feel somewhat vindicated because yesterday came (for Blair) the damning evidence of Eliza Manningham-Buller at the Chilcot Inquiry. She told the inquiry that, contrary to what Blair had said, the surge of warnings about home-grown terrorist threats after the Iraq invasion led to a 100% in MI5's budget. A fact presumably hidden from FoI requests on the grounds of national security.

Mrs Manningham-Buller said that the UK’s involvement in Iraq had radicalized a whole generation of young people who saw it, and our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam. She added that arguably it had given Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before.

I wonder why Mr Blair neglected to mention this information when he was giving his evidence to Chilcot. Did he not know, was he not briefed, did he just forget with all his money making activities to worry about....or did he just plain, old fashioned lie?

To be honest there is little satisfaction in the knowledge that I was right all the time. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, millions more rendered homeless or injured, some horribly and irrevocably. Freedoms, including women’s rights which were widespread and liberal in Saddam’s Iraq have been rolled back and there is still no effective government.

Unlikeable though he was, Saddam was the kind of man who could keep this concoction of a country together and the blockheads got rid of him.

When will the “stupid white men” learn to keep their stupid ignorant paws off other people’s countries? Eliza Manningham-Buller for Defence Secretary!!

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!

Even when he’s caught out lying through his newly whitened and straightened teeth, the prime minister just can’t own up and say something like, “Sorry, I was totally wrong”, or, “Fair cop, Gov, you got me bang to rights”. Oh no, not the UK prime minister.

What does the estimable Gordon Brown do? He lies again, that’s what.

When it was pointed out to him that he had misled the Chilcot Inquiry, and on several occasions to the House of Commons (something I thought they weren’t supposed to do), the slimy little toad replied: “I do accept that in one or two years defence expenditure did not rise in real terms.”

LIAR:

In fact it did not just “not rise”; it “fell”. For the mathematically challenged, as Gordon Brown appears to be (remember the economic growth forecast of 0%), “fell” means “went down”. Additionally it wasn’t “one or two years” it was “three years”, which again I will explain for Mr Brown's benefit, is larger than two.

Throughout his testimony before Chilcot, Brown insisted again and again that military spending had increased in every year since 1997.

The Times points out that his claims were greeted with incredulity by retired military big wigs including General Guthrie, the former Chief of Defence Staff and Admiral Boyce, the former defence chief both of whom accused him of deliberately misleading the inquiry.

It seems that they were right. But there can’t be the slightest doubt in anyone's mind that when he gave that evidence he must have known that it was a lie.

So we have a prime minister who gives false evidence to an inquiry into a war and the next day flies out to be photographed with the very troops that he has starved of money and equipment, which as we know has caused deaths?

Did the fool think that no one would ever find out? No wonder he looks like he never sleeps. Neither would I if I had these lads' blood on my hands.

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INADEQUATE TRAINING AND INAPPROPRIATE VEHICLES: THAT'S WHAT WE GIVE OUR TROOPS

Four soldiers were unlawfully killed after troops were given inadequate training.

So ruled Wiltshire Coroner David Masters who, at the conclusion of a six-day inquest into the soldiers’ deaths, went on to say that he would write to the Ministry of Defence to raise concerns about equipment shortages and gaps in training which led to the deaths.

The four soldiers died when their Snatch Land Rover detonated a roadside bomb at Lashkar Gah, Helmand in June 2008.

The use of the Snatch Land Rover is controversial, given the high number of soldiers that have died in them. The vehicle is unsuitable for the terrain in Afghanistan; it cannot be driven over soft ground and gets stuck in small amounts of water, meaning that troops using it must use roads and tracks where the enemy can anticipate them, and plant roadside bombs. So many deaths have been attributed to the use of this inappropriate and dangerous piece of kit that the lads refer to it as a mobile coffin.

The troops’ commanding officer, a colonel whose name was withheld, told the court that he had raised concerns about the lack of safe vehicles and was told that as no others were available they would simply have to make do.

Mr Masters noted that there was a limited pool of vehicles available and that there was a general shortage of vehicles available.

Major Sebastian Morley, one of the soldiers’ commander in Helmand, has resigned since the deaths accusing the government of being criminal for ill-equipping troops.

The court heard too that there were shortages of metal detectors, essential kit, which meant that soldiers had not been trained in their use before they were sent to Afghanistan. They had been forced to seek guidance once they were already in the theatre of war. One of the witnesses said that they had had to work it out themselves with the use of the manual.

Mr Masters concluded that there was a theatre-wide shortage of that piece of vital equipment. He said that the lack of the metal detectors slowed the convoys thus increasing the risk of attack.

"In my judgment there was an inadequacy in training for this unit and its members," he said.

Well of course I realise that this is (yet) another, different war from the one that the Chilcot inquiry is investigating at the moment, but, if all we hear is true, Iraq was funded properly, everything that the commanders wanted they got, the troops were well fed and well trained and equipment was plentiful.....whereas in Afghanistan the troops are ill-equipped, badly trained and under-funded with sub standard kit and rations.

Right! A word to the wise, Mr Brown....... OUR HEADS DO NOT ZIP UP THE BACK!

Picture: A Snatch Land Rover

IT WISNAE ME: A BIG BOY DONE IT AN' RAN AWA

In what was, I imagine, a carefully rehearsed performance Brown took over the Chilcot Inquiry as if he were chairing it and laid the blame for equipment shortages on generals who should have predicted the operational needs of their troops. Brown told the inquiry. "At every point we were asked to provide money and the resources for new equipment or for improving equipment, we made that money available." So none of it was his fault. It was anyone but Brown who was to blame....

But he has been accused by retired generals and families of servicemen killed in Iraq of having starved the Armed Forces of funding. General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former chief of the Defence Staff, has said that the lack of funds had "undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers".

Brown said that as prime minister he had always asked the military when they were undertaking any new operation to assure him that they had the equipment they needed. Always they had said that they did.

I think that, as a matter of great urgency, it needs to be decided who is lying through their teeth. Is it all these generals and the ex-ministers and the families of the dead soldiers, or is it Brown and Blair? I’m not a great fan of the MoD or of senior officers who fight from behind their desks with their minds on pensions, knighthoods and a seat on a red bench, but surely they aren’t ALL out and out liars?

Brown babbled about the international community’s duty to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, seeming to forget that the international community, in the form of the United Nations Security Council, had made it perfectly clear that it would not sanction military intervention; that Hans Blix had said that he doubted that there were weapons of mass destruction but begged to be given a couple of weeks more to be sure (a request denied); that there were, in fact, only a few countries led by right wing puppets who were prepared to join with the biggest joke of them all, George W Bush.

Brown would do well too, to reflect on all the other countries that have dangerous and fearful regimes, in which the populations have very limited freedom, and deaths of dissenters are normal. He might ask himself what he intends to do about them, or if it would be a good idea to remember that we are a broke little country in which thousands of pensioners die of the cold every winter and clearly we can’t afford to right all the wrongs of the world.

We are appallingly managed perhaps because our idiot “leaders” spend their time effort and what very little intellect they have, planning how people on the other side of the world should live. Of course it would be dull for such minds to concern themselves with the mundane issues of domestic matters, and there would be no opportunity to stride around like they belonged in the White House. But it might make our lives a bit better.

Nothing will bring back the people who were killed in George W Bush’s ILLEGAL war in Iraq. The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the troops from the US’s allies, but we owe it to them to find out the truth, and frankly I don’t much care if they bring back the rack so that we can do that! Torture? How ironic would that be?

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WHY DO THE ENGLISH HAVE AN ATTORNEY GENERAL?

Tony Blair got the OK to invade Iraq after the Attorney General was told by US lawyers that he was wrong to oppose the war.

Peter Goldsmith told the Chilcott Inquiry that he changed his advice a few weeks before war broke out after meetings with American legal advisors. He had previously warned that UN resolution 1441 did not provide a legal basis for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

He changed his mind in February 2003 after evidence from American officials including Condoleezza Rice. Goldsmith said their description of the negotiations that lead to the Security Council resolution helped convince him that a second resolution was not required.

In his initial draft opinion, which he gave to Blair on January 14, Goldsmith warned that he thought a further resolution authorising the use of force was necessary. He said the change of decision rested on the interpretation of “two or three” words in resolution 1441.

Goldsmith gave his “provisional advice” to Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, on February 27 which said there was a “reasonable case that a second resolution was not necessary.”

So says The Times in its coverage of the Chilcot inquiry.

It occurs to me that the reason that there is an Attorney General is that he is available to give legal advice on matters pertaining to English legal matters to the cabinet. My question would be, why it was necessary for him to be told that he was wrong by the Americans, and if we are going to listen to American interpretation of law, why do the English/Welsh/Northern Irish pay for their own Attorney General? In these hard times would it not be a good idea to ditch the post, save the millions that running his department costs and let the Americans tell them what to do?

The next point is that Mr Goldsmith was Attorney General for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As Scottish soldiers were involved in going to war and Scottish people in funding it, would it not have been good to have some advice from a Scottish equivalent (Advocate General for Scotland)? Or were we not important enough?

But my real conculsion is that old Peter is telling porkies here, and that the truth is that, after having given advice that Tony Blair did not want to hear, Mr Goldsmith was ambushed in the corridor by Alistair Campbell and that big fat bruiser Charlie Falconer, and told that it would be in his best interests (wink wink) if he rethought his advice.... After all, reading the stuff in the picture above, he doesn't sound like a very honourable sort of bloke does he?

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HOON THE (EXPENSIVE) DOORMAT GIVES EVIDENCE TO CHILCOT INQUIRY

Today’s appearance of Geoff Hoon before the Chilcot Inquiry was always going to attract much interest after the release of his letters a week or so ago. From the report in The Times, it seemed that the star turn did not disappoint.

In his evidence Hoon admitted he worried Britain would struggle to take part in a full-scale land invasion and admitted delays in ordering equipment led to shortages of armoured vests, desert boots and clothing. Emergency Treasury funding was used to prepare soldiers in the months before the invasion because the Ministry of Defence had been told to reply on efficiency savings to buy new equipment, he told the inquiry. Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, only approved the additional money five months before the start of the war.

Mr Hoon reported a further delay in ordering equipment because Tony Blair refused to allow active war preparations as they might have harmed diplomatic efforts to secure the United Nation’s resolution used to justify the invasion. Hoon admitted he considered that the Army was stretched to deploy a division to Iraq when they were already committed in Afghanistan. He proposed more limited involvement by way of air and naval support for a US invasion but he was overruled.

Mr Hoon said had been unaware of a series of private notes sent by Blair to Bush in which, according to earlier evidence by Alastair Campbell, he assured him of Britain’s support if it came to war.

Because of the delay in preparing for the invasion some kit failed to reach the front line in time for the start of the war in March 2003. Mr Hoon said. “There were complaints about desert combats. Quite a lot of soldiers went into action in green combats and they didn’t like it. Some soldiers did not have the right boots.” A shortage of enhanced combat body armour had been the cause of deaths.

Mr Hoon revealed that he opposed Mr Blair’s decision in July 2004 to commit British forces to southern Afghanistan. The concerns were shared by the military chiefs who wanted to be clear that they weren’t going to be involved in two substantial operations simultaneously.

It also emerged that the Attorney General had warned Hoon during the run-up to the war that it would be difficult to justify military action. However, Mr Goldsmith eventually gave his legal backing just before the invasion.

Edward Davey, the Liberal’s Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, demanded that Mr Brown appear before the inquiry before instead of after the Election.
“Once again we can see Gordon Brown’s fingerprints all over this, but no sign of the man himself,” he said. “The Prime Minister should appear before the Iraq Inquiry before the election to give voters an informed choice. Instead we are being left with a huge Gordon Brown-shaped hole in the evidence.”

It seems to me that there was little point in us having a Secretary of State for Defence, and paying him a salary, when whatever he said was discarded and overruled. Some might say that a bigger man would have stood up to Blair and resigned if necessary. That said, the Military chiefs appear to have been utterly against a further involvement in Helmand, but when Blair walked all over them they too folded their tents.

Brown and Blair must be formidably frightening people if they can scare the life out of the Military chiefs and the Secretary of State for Defence en masse. Or is it just the threat of the withholding of honours that is frightening?

SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR BROWN AND CABINET

It has been announced that the Chilcot inquiry in to the invasion of Iraq will not now call Mr Brown or his ministers to give evidence until after the General Election.

The plan to summon Mr Brown to give evidence was revealed in a statement from the inquiry team working for Sir John Chilcot.

The statement listed witnesses who will be called to give evidence to the inquiry next year, who include Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and Alastair Campbell, his former spokesman.

Sir John’s committee will hold new evidence sessions in January and February, before pausing during the general election campaign that is expected to start in March.

The statement also explained that witnesses who are currently serving as ministers will not be called until after the election. It said the decision has been taken to ensure that the inquiry's work cannot be used for political purposes.

It seems to me that, before we make our choices about who should govern the country for the next up to 5 years, we should really be appraised of the part of these people in the war that killed and maimed so many of our soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens. There would be no reason not to call the members of the opposition parties who were also involved in decisions on a Privy Council basis, in order that no political advantage or disadvantage could be seen to fall to any party.

And there were we rather naively thinking that the Chilcot Inquiry was to be open, fair and independent of government.... silly old us.

“Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq, Prime Minister?” "NO"

Secret papers leaked to The Sunday Telegraph show that Tony Blair lied to parliament and the British people over the Iraq war.

He insisted throughout 2002 that no military action was being contemplated, whereas in fact the decision had been taken (probably by George W Bush) in February of that year for a full-scale invasion and for regime change. Needless to say, the need to conceal this information from parliament and from all but a tiny number of officials meant that the planning was, to put it mildly, constrained. As a result, the invasion was under-resourced and lacking in cohesion, which caused significant risk to troops and critical failure in the post war period.

According to the Telegraph, some troops went to war with as little as five bullets, some had to deploy on civilian aircraft carrying their kit as hand luggage. Needless to say some troops had their weapons confiscated by the airport security staff. No. I’m not making it up, and I doubt very much that The Sunday Telegraph is either. Noddy and Toytown are two words that come readily to mind. Shameful and diabolical are two others, perhaps more appropriate.

The operation was so badly planned that commanders noted that the communications system stopped working around midday, because of the heat, and somewhere in the desert was found a container load of skis... yes SKIS!

The papers leaked to The Sunday Telegraph include transcripts of interviews with Army Officers in which they vent their frustration with Ministers and Whitehall Officials. They are revealed on the eve of the Chilcot Inquiry into the war and its aftermath.

It seems to me that it will be rather difficult to whitewash this one as effectively as has been done with so many things in the past. I urge everyone to give the full article a read as there is a great deal more than I have mentioned above, particularly concerning the lack of planning for a post war strategy.

The disrespect that this government has shown to parliament, to the people, but worst of all to our troops is astounding. For that, if for nothing else, they must be removed at the next election.