o/t tonights live debate

[Posh]

ERR yes but for the first time in history a British Prime Minister lied to the House of Commons.
Blair made the case for a war on the basis of Sadam having weapons of mass destruction that could strike the UK in 45 minutes. David Cameron and William Haigh have said that the Labour Government would not have had Conservative support for the war if they had been given the truth by Blair.

At that time Blair had his head so far up George Dubbya Bush's arse that it would have needed surgically removing !

Firstly that assumes Blair lied to the House of Commons. He's always maintained he didn't and the independent Butler Report agreed with him. The penalties for lying are immense but no smoking gun has been found. The most agressive stance is that of Andrew Gilligan and his 'sexed up' line, i.e. Exaggeration of claims and not outright lying.

Secondly you're trying to paint a pretty picture of the Tories. The reality is that more Labour MPs opposed the war than Tory ones. And both Labour and Tories would have opposed the war if it was proved there were no WMDs.

Finally hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq didn't because of the invasion but instead of the management of it's aftermath. The Americans, who were responsible for post-invasion strategy had no real plans other than to remove Saddam and his government. This left a void which largely a civil war of Iraqi Muslim on Iraqi Muslim filled.

No one knows the situation Iraq would be in if Saddam had remained in power. In the years before millions had died either in conflict with Iran or the suppression of the Kurds and the Shi'ites in the South of Iraq. The likelihood is that would have continued and if then civil war could have filled the void. It was because of this politicians like US neo-cons, Blair AND many in the Tory backed regime change - some Tories openly, as they've suggested with Zimbabwe and Iran. To blame Blair is a fallacy based on hindsight. And this from someone opposed to the war.

[George Dawes]

i remember even Torie Ian Duncan Smith speaking up for Blair about this years ago on a live TV debate basically saying even if the conservatives where in power they'd have backed America up and done the same





but seriously for the sake of one man it would have been a lot cheaper to hire some local arab hitman

[Keith]

Firstly that assumes Blair lied to the House of Commons. He's always maintained he didn't and the independent Butler Report agreed with him. The penalties for lying are immense but no smoking gun has been found.

Finally hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq didn't because of the invasion but instead of the management of it's aftermath. The Americans, who were responsible for post-invasion strategy had no real plans other than to remove Saddam and his government. This left a void which largely a civil war of Iraqi Muslim on Iraqi Muslim filled.

No one knows the situation Iraq would be in if Saddam had remained in power. In the years before millions had died either in conflict with Iran or the suppression of the Kurds and the Shi'ites in the South of Iraq. The likelihood is that would have continued and if then civil war could have filled the void. It was because of this politicians like US neo-cons, Blair AND many in the Tory backed regime change - some Tories openly, as they've suggested with Zimbabwe and Iran. To blame Blair is a fallacy based on hindsight. And this from someone opposed to the war.

Hundreds of thousands of children (let alone adults too) died in Iraq due to sanctions which Blair argued were needed, despite the fact the sanctions included medication for diseases such as leukaemia which clearly had no military use. They also included pencils on the basis that the 'lead', theoretically could be used in the development of WMD's! Blair then said that sanctions weren't working (but failed to accept that this meant he was wrong to support them in the first place). Then insisted that Saddam 'prove' something that didn't exist- didn't exist, before using this 'lack of proof' and a 45 minutes before the non-existent weapons could be used as a reason to attack.

He lied, and if you watched his performance at the Chilcot inquiry you'd have concluded so too. More to the point, if they'd had the bottle to question him further about some of his contradictory evidence, they'd have concluded it too.

Read Robert Fisks fantastic first hand book, The Great War for Civilisation and see if you think he believes Blair lied...
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=mX46 ... +fisk&cd=1

[marky]

The Iraq war is a strong indication as to the 'trustworthiness' in general of the current administration. They lied and sent people to die based upon that lie. For oil. That tarnishes them beyond reproach apart from a few who were prepared to stand up.

The decision to send troops to Ira has to be viewed in isolation. You obviously feel strongly about it but I'm afraid I don't. I prefer to base my opinions on political parties based on what they have done or plan to do domestically.

Which is in whose manifesto? First past the post and an elected second chamber are not pledges of either main party are they? So you are saying something that isn't government policy is more important than foreign wars?

I suggest you read the manifestos of the main 3 parties. Labour have a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on scrapping First past the Post and replacing it with Alternative Vote. They also want to introduce an at least partially elected second chamber. Even the Tories have policies on the latter! The Lib Dems continue to want full proportional representation and also have clear policies regarding the Lords.

I was just more stunned that you thought 179 dead British service men & women were less important than constitutional reform, which isn't Labour or Conservative policy anyway

See above.

I could just as easily shown disdain for the fact that you think "regional development agencies" or a "fairer local tax system" are more important than illegal wars.

Why? They affect me, the Iraq War doesn't. I make no apology for basing my own opinions on policy areas that directly affect my own life.

As for NHS, do you think it will fair any better or worse under the Tories than Labour?

I believe it to be much healthier in 2010 than it was in 1997. There are, of course, serious issues that need to be dealt with but if Labour do vacate power, they definitely leave the NHS in a better state than they found it.

The rest of your 'more important than war' issues are all similar, either not a major manifesto issue or both parties are so close together that they are one and the same. Classic case of 'it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always wins

I seriously suggest you read the manifestos because I'm starting to believe you're forming your opinions based a total lack of research!

[Posh]

Hundreds of thousands of children (let alone adults too) died in Iraq due to sanctions which Blair argued were needed... Blair then said that sanctions weren't working (but failed to accept that this meant he was wrong to support them in the first place).

Then insisted that Saddam 'prove' something that didn't exist- didn't exist, before using this 'lack of proof' and a 45 minutes before the non-existent weapons could be used as a reason to attack.

Your first point implies that Blair was responsible for sanctions against Iraq. Of course that's not true. Sanctions were imposed in 1990 a full seven years before Blair came to power. Sanctions were the result of a UN-backed resolution where all were in favour bar Cuba and Yemen who abstained. Then you implied that those sanctions were directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Yet in The Nation, 2001, "David Cortright argued that Iraqi government policy, rather than the UN Sanctions, should be held responsible. He wrote:

The differential between child mortality rates in northern Iraq, where the UN manages the relief program, and in the south-center, where Saddam Hussein is in charge, says a great deal about relative responsibility for the continued crisis. As noted, child mortality rates have declined in the north but have more than doubled in the south-center. ... The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort.

In The New Republic, 2001, Michael Rubin argued that

The difference there is that local Kurdish authorities, in conjunction with the United Nations, spend the money they get from the sale of oil. Everywhere else in Iraq, Saddam does. And when local authorities are determined to get food and medicine to their people--instead of, say, reselling these supplies to finance military spending and palace construction--the current sanctions regime works just fine. Or, to put it more bluntly, the United Nations isn't starving Saddam's people. Saddam is."

Whether you blame Saddam or the sanctions ultimately it isn’t Blair where you should point the finger but the international community that backed sanctions and supported them for 13 years. So why did they do it?

The UN did everything it could to end sanctions by getting Saddam to tackle the issues raised – one of which was WMDs. They appointed Hans Blix to head inspections. Blix was despised by the neo-cons in the USA yet, “In his report to the UN Security Council on 14 February 2003, Blix claimed that "If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament - under resolution 687 - could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided."”

So Saddam stole money that was intended for medicines to build armaments and palaces. Saddam, who invaded Kuwait and Iran and gassed and poisoned his OWN people, deliberately obstructed the work of the UN and prolonged the impact of sanctions. This was why Blair said sanctions, the means to bring Saddam to face up to his responsibilities, were failing.

Given all this I can understand why people wanted rid of Saddam and the Iraqi leadership. The problem for Blair and the USA, who had decided earlier they wanted regime change, that they should have got a second resolution and backed Blix in his effort to discover the reality of Saddam’s WMDs. The difference of opinion between the UN and the Blair, US (and others including Australia) axis was the means and not the ends. The deceit was pushing the case too far.

[Posh]

Which is in whose manifesto? First past the post and an elected second chamber are not pledges of either main party are they? So you are saying something that isn't government policy is more important than foreign wars?

I suggest you read the manifestos of the main 3 parties. Labour have a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on scrapping First past the Post and replacing it with Alternative Vote. They also want to introduce an at least partially elected second chamber.

Labour actually announced plans for a FULLY elected second chamber in March http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... nd-chamber and is a manfiesto pledge.

[shrimper]

All war is wrong. People should be able to sort out their differences without recourse to killing people - we all agree on that.

Religious differences/extremism/ideologies and corrupt dictatorships often get in the way of what otherwise might evolve into arbitration, diplomatic pressure and compromise.

It was an invasion based on a few things. There was the perceived threat of WMD/ harbouring of terrorists. There was the treatment of his own populace by Saddam and, yes, there was the question of such an increasingly unstable leader controlling significant oil supplies and casting his eyes over other neighbouring states with other significant oil supplies.

We see evidence every day of the divisions in the world that come from the religious splits that exist.

USA sees itself as a leader of the largely 'Christian' western, democratic, world. It maybe envisages a future where these ideological divisions are even more entrenched and current agreements on oil supply are no longer honoured.


In that scenario - casting an eye maybe to a couple of hundred years in the future, perhaps no-one will talk about invasions like this in such dismissively negative terms as 'this invasion was all about oil'.

Just a thought.

[Keith]

Hundreds of thousands of children (let alone adults too) died in Iraq due to sanctions which Blair argued were needed... Blair then said that sanctions weren't working (but failed to accept that this meant he was wrong to support them in the first place).

Your first point implies that Blair was responsible for sanctions against Iraq. Of course that's not true. Sanctions were imposed in 1990 a full seven years before Blair came to power. Sanctions were the result of a UN-backed resolution where all were in favour bar Cuba and Yemen who abstained. Then you implied that those sanctions were directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. Yet in The Nation, 2001, "David Cortright argued that Iraqi government policy, rather than the UN Sanctions, should be held responsible. He wrote:

The differential between child mortality rates in northern Iraq, where the UN manages the relief program, and in the south-center, where Saddam Hussein is in charge, says a great deal about relative responsibility for the continued crisis. As noted, child mortality rates have declined in the north but have more than doubled in the south-center. ... The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort.

No, my first point implies that Blair was responsible (to a large extent) for maintaining and increasing sanctions. The list of items that were embargoed greatly increased during his time, including such items as were required to repair water and sewerage treatment plants that we and the US bombed. Secondly, the 'oil for food' programme was greatly reduced because of corruption among Saddam and his henchmen. However UN figures (although I don't have them to hand) meant that to stop the approx 5% of money being skimmed off, 80% of the cash was stopped. So the people lost out on more than 70% of the income they required for food, water & medicine. of course the UN administered Kurdish areas faired better, that is hardly a surprise.

Bush (and more to the point, Cheney) decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to get rid of Saddam and finish off Bush snr's work. Blair went along with this from day one, repeating the lie that connected Bin Laden and Saddam. Both Bush & Blair (tying in with Shrimper's point) have spoken of their religious beliefs 'guiding them'. It concerns me greatly that they both went on a holy war (and lied to get backing for it). Christian fundamentalists are equally as bad as Muslim fundamentalists and indeed, any other type of mentalists. By all means have a faith, but don't use it as an excuse to kill others.

Where I disagree with Shrimper is...

There was the treatment of his own populace by Saddam and, yes, there was the question of such an increasingly unstable leader controlling significant oil supplies and casting his eyes over other neighbouring states with other significant oil supplies.

Saddam was in many ways, the most predictable ruler in the region. Baring in mind the terrorists at 9/11 and Bin Ladan were mainly Saudi born and or funded, they were hardly 'predictable'. Saddam could be guaranteed to act as an evil dictator, but then, that is no different to how he acted when he was our friend and we turned a blind eye. We even turned a blind eye post Gulf War 1 when the Marsh Arabs rose up against him and he massacred them, before draining the marshes and destroying their way of life as punishment. Despite apparent backing from the US for an uprising (over the radio, broadcast from outside of Iraq) they were left to fend for themselves, almost certainly because an over throw at that time would have led to another Muslim state rather than a 'democracy'. As seen elsewhere in the Middle East, democracy only goes so far, the democracy has to elect the person that the US (including it's 53rd state) tell them to elect.

But this is history, the relevance now is that Brown and Mandleson etc were involved in the lies that took us in to the war. They either knew they supporting a lie (Clare Short knew it and wrote about it at the time, Robin Cook said so and resigned) or they didn't know it, in which case they are too incompetent to be allowed to carry on running the country.

And yes, I've not read either manifesto but the reporting on the news hasn't really mentioned it. The differences between the two main parties remains minimal in terms of economy, health or education.

[marky]

The lack of a difference doesn't make it any the less important.

[Keith]

The lack of a difference doesn't make it any the less important.

You're happy to be governed by people who lie in order to kill people, that's your choice. Given there is such a minimal difference between the two main parties, other than 'the other lot' didn't lie to kill people, I'd actually rather vote for them than the war-mongers. As painful as that would be. But I'd vote Lib Dem well before either of the other two. For me, a fully paid up union member since I was 19yrs old, I'd be happy to see Labour come third.

[marky]

If the polls are to believed, Labour will come third when it comes to popular vote, but could still easily be the largest party in the Commons. That's our screwed up political system for you. Still, I'm not sure how "The lack of a difference doesn't make it any the less important" can be twisted into "You're happy to be governed by people who lie in order to kill people, that's your choice", mind. However, my answer to that question is would yes. I won't be voting for Labour, but there are so many ways that their legislation has directly improved MY life that I'd be hypocritical to say otherwise.

[shrimpnsave]

over to you keith

its your turn to reply.......

[Keith]

over to you keith

its your turn to reply.......

Nah, we're beginning to go around in circles so I'm not going to bother.





oh bugger

[shrimpnsave]

Oyez, Oyez

final result 0-0

[mrpotatohead]

Basics suggest it does not matter who is right, truth is, its all about oil in iraq and afghanisan, we, like the usa are becoming poor, we have invented global waming to create new taxes, no party in this shit tip could sort the usa and its poodle state out, saudi arabia, for now, are bullying us via their nieghbours, when the oil runsout it will be china and india, its called natural selection, darwin told us it was commin when we were nearly all still
monkeys

[shrimpnsave]

cleggy is on a roll again

won hands down at the moment

[Posh]

cleggy is on a roll again

won hands down at the moment

and can you please KEEP your politic views to yourself

this is a football forum






(see page 2)

[shrimpnsave]

cleggy is on a roll again

won hands down at the moment

and can you please KEEP your politic views to yourself

this is a football forum






(see page 2)

hahahaha

[Suzi Quatro]

Gordon Brown from where I was standing. It is very easy to be in opposition becasue you can blame the government in power as well as promising the earth. There will be a local hustings for our local perspective M.Ps, watch this space. The wprld of media and the ungrateful public are always ready to attack the government even though most people have benefited by our current government.

[shrimpnsave]

(even though most people have benefited by our current government.)



sorry but i cant stop laughing at your comment ohhhhhh