So after six hours of giving testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, Tony Blair’s testimony can be summed up as he still has no regrets for participating in an unjust war and committing mass murder.
Blair repeatedly stated that he did the right thing in ordering British troops to participate in the invasion of Iraq. Basically he had ‘no regrets’ over participating in an unjust war and committing mass murder because in his opinion it was the right thing to do.
Oh, I’m sure there have been many despots and sociopaths throughout history who thought committing mass murder was ‘the right thing to do’.
Blair believed invading Iraq was the right thing to do because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and an active nuclear weapons program. Hmm… then why is it that since the invasion of Iraq no evidence of such weapons has been unearthed? One of the Chilcot committee in fact asked an interesting question in regards to why countries geographically closer than Britain to Iraq believed that Saddam Hussein’s regime was less of a threat then Britain and the United States. Blair put it down to the governments of those countries having reached a different conclusion to that reached by himself and the US government. Yeah, maybe those governments were honest enough to reach the conclusion that Saddam Hussein had fuck all weapons of destruction.
Blair believed invading Iraq was the right thing to do because if he and Bush hadn’t ordered the invasion, Iraq would have become a bastion of terrorism, leading to attacks against the west. Blair stated that 9/11 had changed his perception of the threat to the west and heralded a far more dangerous form of terrorism which threatened Britain. Funny that until the removal of Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq as Saddam saw Al Qaeda as a threat to his regime.
Blair basically made out that Iraq was actively developing weapons of mass destruction and that terrorist groups would have obtained those weapons to perpetrate attacks against the west, and that therefore it was right for Blair to order the troops in to prevent that. Err, as I say, Al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to the removal of Saddam and there’s no evidence that Saddam’s regime ever sponsored any mass terrorist attacks against the west. But never mind terrorism or weapons of mass destruction, the US Congress had made the removal of Saddam and his regime a federal law back in 1998. Blair had said in an interview last year that even if Saddam’s regime had no WMDs (and evidence says they didn’t) he would still have been up for the removal of Saddam and his regime.
Blair has this notion that military force can be used to effect positive change. Thing is, the only changes his actions have brought about is to make the British people far less safe. Jeez, there’s an irony in the fact that the British people are far less safe due to government policies which the British people have not consented to and are paying for financially. It’s a bit like a wife who’s the bread winner for her family, only to get home at the end of the day to find her husband has pissed her wages away and then physically beats her.
Blair denied that there was any secret deal with Bush concerning the participation of the British military whether or not the United Nations sanctioned the invasion. Bullshit! History has proven that whether or not the UN had sanctioned the invasion, the troops were going in. Pretty obvious Bush was going to send the troops in as payback for Saddam humiliating his Daddy, and to pay off his buddies in the Military Industrial Complex. Blair, as was witnessed several times today whilst he gave testimony, passionately believes that if needed he thinks its right and just to use military force to effect change which in his opinion is positive. Blair first put his doctrine into action when he petitioned NATO to take action in Kosovo, and he was the first NATO leader to talk of invading Afghanistan (before Bush!). He obviously wanted to join the bandwagon to Iraq.
If you don’t think Iraq was about oil and serving the profits of the Military Industrial Complex, you’re a fucking moron because primarily that was what Iraq was about for Bush and his buddies. They were no doubt wearing the trousers, but for Blair Iraq was about imposing the virtues of westernized democracy and the foolish assumption that the Iraqis were going to love him for it.
Some of the families of British troops were upset that Blair didn’t even say he regretted the deaths of British troops. Hey, he wouldn’t even say that he had regrets about orchestrating an illegal war and asking British troops to fight it and commit mass murder. What’s more, there is nothing anybody can do about it. I know some might find it sick but maybe somebody should ask the families of those dead troops why they were prepared to follow Blair’s unjust orders?
There’s been some criticism that there are no lawyers or military experts sitting on the Chilcot inquiry. What does anybody expect? This was an inquiry set up by the same government that participated in the unjust war. The outcome will not produce any kind of justice, because the likes of Blair will never have to answer for their crimes until the system of governance we live under is completely deconstructed.
Libertarian, atheist, punk rocker, 
Excellent work. Blair is one sick individual.
It is an interesting and, I think, compelling non-existence proof that if Saddam had a nuclear bomb he would have put it on a truck and sent it to blow up a target in Israel or a target in Iran. Since he had some missiles at the very beginning of the war that were taken out by USA military aircraft, as I recall, he would have used one of them to deliver any chemical or biological weapon. I’m supposing the truck for sake of completeness, in the event his nuke was too big for his rockets.
I think the conclusion that Saddam had fuck all for nukes and other mass destruction weapons is fully justified, yes.
I think Iraq was about making the price of oil very high for many years to get a huge subsidy to the big oil companies. As governor of Texas, Bush proved that he doesn’t give a shit for the tiny oil companies and independent producers. But he loves them big oil cos.
I think it is far more compelling to conclude that both Afghanistan and Iraq were about maximising profits for the death merchant defense contractors. That’s why these wars never end even though obvious objectives like: conquer the Iraqi army, capture Saddam, convict and execute Saddam – are all accomplished and yet the war and the occupation doesn’t end.
Talk about irony, one of the great ironies is that Osama bin Laden set about in the 1990s to achieve the goal of getting the USA and NATO involved in fighting his jihadists in a long war for the objective of bankrupting the USA and NATO allies. Golly, that seems to be working.
It is kind of like being handed a tar baby. The only way not to get stuck is to not accept it in the first place.
Meanwhile I can still here Osama shouting “Don’t throw me in the briar patch.” chortle chortle
As to Tony Blair, there are two outfits that could do something about it. One is the British government which could try him for treason. I believe his actions constitute treason. For special cases of his sort, one rather wishes the queen would bring back drawing and quartering.
Another group which has jurisdiction but probably won’t ever lift a finger, either, is the world court. Arguably, Blair and Bush are guilty of war crimes. One could list out a long litany of these, including wanton slaughter of women and children, indefinite detentions without trial or recourse of any sort, and, of course, torture. The torture thing is especially egregious given the long history of conventions on warfare to which both Britain and the USA are a party.
No, actually, I don’t think the British gov’t or the world court are ever going to bring these mass murderers to justice. On the contrary, I think the policy of tyranny, mass murder, indefinite detention, and outrage against any who dissent is going to be broadened in scope in both the USA and Britain, and the death camps are going to be expanded a great deal. Hier ist kine warum.
There may soon be a 3rd “outfit” that could do something about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bell
Ed, I’m as opposed to assassination politics as I am to every other form of externally imposed coercion.
Where are the rights of the accused? Where is the public and speedy trial? Where is the opportunity for the accused person to present a defense, to confront the witnesses against him, to bring forth the testimony of witnesses in his favor?
Look, dude, if I wanted a world run by having the gang with the most “will” and the necessary guns and poisons to go around killing people who disagree with them, then I would have the world in which we live, where the assassins work for outfits like the CIA, Mossad, and various other Gestapo outfits. (Heavy irony that the Israelis have a nationalist socialist state with its own Geheimstadt polizei. I guess they didn’t get enough of that shit from Hitler.)
The fact that there are people who can bring someone like Blair to something like justice doesn’t mean they would. The queen won’t, because she likes to see the peons suffer. The world court won’t, because they like to see the military industrial contractors (aka death merchants) get lots of money. Who do you think finances the UN and the world court and wants a world government? And Jim Bell won’t, because he’s been in prison, is watched all the time, and doesn’t have the private payment methodology for exchanging value without being detected.
I favor the path of agorism, and of Taoism. Withdraw. Remove the support for the systems of oppression. Take the tools which have been developed for private value exchange and get them into widespread use through marketing and commission structures.
When most people are able to exchange value without detection, the system won’t be able to recover.
I guess I should have mentioned that the evidence for Obama implementing a presidential assassin squad, Jim Bell’s idea writ large for the wrong team, is covered in some detail by Glenn Greenwald. He isn’t libertarian in all things, but Greenwald has the story, here:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/27/yemen/index.html