[xyupi]

I think Britain agreed with us about overthrowing Sadaam

The British people certainly did not support Blair's enthusiasm to go to war against Iraq. Blair planned this in secret well before the British people or Parliament even had a whiff of what was going on behind closed doors. Blair had to resort to the dodgy intelligence dossier to somehow "justify" his illegal and immoral actions.

The Sunday Times May 01, 2005

Blair planned Iraq war from start

Michael Smith


INSIDE Downing Street Tony Blair had gathered some of his senior ministers and advisers for a pivotal meeting in the build-up to the Iraq war. It was 9am on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion began and long before the public was told war was inevitable.

The discussion that morning was highly confidential. As minutes of the proceedings, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, state: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.”
In the room were the prime minister, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, and military and intelligence chiefs. Also listed on the minutes are Alastair Campbell, then Blair’s director of strategy, Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Sally Morgan, director of government relations.

What they were about to discuss would dominate the political agenda for years to come and indelibly stain Blair’s reputation; and last week the issue exploded again on the political scene as Blair campaigned in the hope of winning a third term as prime minister.

For the secret documents — seen by The Sunday Times — reveal that on that Tuesday in 2002:

Blair was right from the outset committed to supporting US plans for “regime change” in Iraq.
War was already “seen as inevitable”.
The attorney-general was already warning of grave doubts about its legality. Straw even said the case for war was “thin”. So Blair and his inner circle set about devising a plan to justify invasion.
“If the political context were right,” said Blair, “people would support regime change.” Straightforward regime change, though, was illegal. They needed another reason.

[softy54534]

If I'm ranting then it is due to statements such as this, which to me shows a complete lack of forethought and little to no understanding of consequences, and thereby exhibits a failure of logic:


Could we please move beyond the words, words words and get own to the real terrifying results of the god-awfully stupid decision to "go in"?

Leaders who think they can "shock & awe" a people into a state of democracy are deluded. And those who follow behind the leaders who make such claims are not much more clear-headed.

Regarding Blair's motivation: One would have to dig into the netherworlds of the leader's head to find out what the motivation might be. I think if one can get beyond the platitudes of Freedom and Democracy and get down to the nitty gritty in the grey matter it would become apparent that some sort of personal aggrandizement is operating ("Look what Good I did for the World"). Unfortunately ego building like that that has nothing to do with the very improtant nation building, which might actually feed the mothers of deposed bureaucrats or educate the children of dead soldiers.

Here we are in 2008. We have MBAs / CEOs running the western world. The state of the finances in the USA shows that many of those folks aren't necessarily the sharpest pencils in the box.

These fools have tried to implement a 10-year plan that just doesn't work. Never could have. Never will.

But surely so much does lie in whether something is completed competently? The question of whether you believed it was right to invade should not really influence what our countries should do now: the likes of Obama seem to think that because they did not support the invasion (in 2002 at least...) that absolves them of any responsibility for the situation now. Surely you would accept that if your country invades another in the name of democacy and freedom, it has an obligation to its people not to leave until that objective is accomplished?

Western air strikes in Kosovo, for which there was pretty much consensual support for showed many of the characteristics of Iraq: US/UK led, even less of a UN Mandate, genocidal dictator... One of the biggest differences was in the execution. Britain had built up a major coalition of support for the attacks so that the lack of a UN Mandate was considered less important and the mission was a success. Iraq has not been so successful but the moral basis behind invasion does not seem hugely different to me...

Shock and awe was a successful military strategy against the Baathist armed forces, it's a bit glib to suggest it was used against the Iraqi people.

I think this is where we disagree. I wish there had been better plans made for nation building, that more resources were put in to the invasion and that more time was taken to encourage a broader coalition (as Blair wanted). But these are all practical concerns which would have probably made the invasion a success but not really changing the morality of the war. Look at Blair's foreign policy up to Iraq and read his 1999 speech in Chicago. I think it's clear he had a worked out doctrine of humanitarian interventionism. I'm sure that is because he thought it would do the world good, by spreading freedom and democracy.

We need to give gratitude to the Brits for making the same stupid mistake that our leaders made when invading Iraq?

Again you lump the practicalities (troop numbers) with the moral question (whether to invade in the first place). As of January 2007, Britain had 30,000 troops deployed abroad and spends more than any country in the world, bar the United States, on defence. Last year, the Chief of Defence staff warned that British forces were "very stretched" and the ex-Chief warned in November that "the forces are at full stretch".

[AngelBee]

If the invasion was justified on moral grounds (removing a repressive regime from power and installing a democracy), it should have been sold on that basis.

Iraq was the same dictatorship before 09/11. Would the people of Britain and the US have supported the war plans if 09/11 had not occurred?

The justification for the invasion was that Iraq was a threat to the US. Given that this view was not merely an error in judgment, but a deliberate distortion; I don't see how you could call the invasion morally justified.

Your WWII example is a poor one. Regardless of what was done after the war, the reason the Allies went to war had nothing to do with removing repressive regimes and installing democracy. There was reason and opportunity to do that long before the war began.

[egexgfczc]

capn, I agree the war was controversial in both the US and the UK, with more people in the UK in opposition. But I also think the UK is fairly democratic, and that there was a more vigorous discussion of the war's potential downside in the British media than in the US. But at the end of the day, parlaiment could have passed a no-confidence vote in Blair and there would have been a new PM who could have gone in a different direction. Just like Congress could have withheld funding for the war in the US. Democracy works, and polls don't always measure intensity of feeling by the way - I think a lot of people had the studious position the war was folly but didn't really vehemenetly opposse it the war people in favor of the war ardently favored it. If the politicians had misjudged sentiment about the war, Blair would have been gone a lot sooner.

[no02rSx2]

More than that, there was a vote in Parliament on March 18 2003 on whether Britain should go to war. Blair stated Britain would not invade and he would resign as Prime Minister if the government lost the debate. A debate on a war, having never been done before in Britian, struck a new precedent and Brown is now working on plans to constitutionally transfer powers of declaring war from the Prime Minister to Parliament.

If the invasion was justified on moral grounds (removing a repressive regime from power and installing a democracy), it should have been sold on that basis.

Iraq was the same dictatorship before 09/11. Would the people of Britain and the US have supported the war plans if 09/11 had not occurred?

The justification for the invasion was that Iraq was a threat to the US. Given that this view was not merely an error in judgment, but a deliberate distortion; I don't see how you could call the invasion morally justified.

Your WWII example is a poor one. Regardless of what was done after the war, the reason the Allies went to war had nothing to do with removing repressive regimes and installing democracy. There was reason and opportunity to do that long before the war began.

It's true that Britain didn't declare war on Germany to spread democracy, although I would argue self-interest only played a part in the decision. Naivety and unwillingness to deal with reality combined with a justifiable long-term view explains the ultimately successful policy of appeasement under Chamberlain. But anyway, I don't see how the weak argument that a lack of history of democracy somehow makes democracy impossible is anyway altered by the reasons for WW2. I also gave the examples of Eastern Europe, which now have very strong democracies despite over 40 years of Soviet domination.

I accept that the war probably would have encountered more opposition, certainly in the US, if it had been proposed before 9/11. I wish Iraq had been sold on humanitarian interventionism from the start, although to be fair Blair's speech to Parliament on the day of the vote spoke of regime change in these terms:

"But [regime change] is the reason, I say frankly, why if we do act we should do so with a clear conscience and strong heart.
I accept fully that those opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? Iraq is a wealthy country that in 1978, the year before Saddam seized power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia.
Today it is impoverished, 60% of its population dependent on food aid.
Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine.
Four million people out of a population of just over 20 million are in exile.
The brutality of the repression - the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented.
Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others.
I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam.
"But you don't", she replied. "You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear."
And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to live." March 18, 2003

If you read the assessment of the British government prior to invasion, the evidence appears pretty strong. I don't recall any government opposed to the war at the time saying that Iraq didn't have WMDs...

[TouccuraLar]

I'm oppossed to the war and was at the time, as I thought Hussein was a bad guy but a lower priority than rebuilding Afghanistan.

But, I think its unlikely we attacked them for oil, as some have proposed, for the simple reason that we would have just taken the oil and stayed clear of the urban warfare that hobbled us. Defending an oil field is the kind of mission the militaries of the west are good at - its the guerilla warfare where friend and foe look alike and we don't want to harm civilians that we don't do well.

[b3JOkwXL]

I'm oppossed to the war and was at the time, as I thought Hussein was a bad guy but a lower priority than rebuilding Afghanistan.

I agree with you investordude, but we in Britain were worried by Blair's, (as it turned out, false), claim that Saddam had missiles he could deploy within 45 minutes. This statement painted all sorts of frightening scenario's in people's minds, which was probably the reason for Blair uttering it in the first place. The dodgy dossier, built on exaggerated and tenuous intelligence was the cornerstone of Blair's headlong rush into war.

It is all about OIL. J P Morgan has nicely and neatly mortgaged Iraq'a oil production to American banks for the next 40 years with little chance that much will find its way to helping the poor Iraqi people in their everyday lives.
I'm sure, given the chance, this is how the Military/Industrial/Oil/Neo-Con complex would love to redraw the map of the Middle East:

[sbrscnds]

JP Morgan is an investment bank. Do you have any evidence for it becoming an energy company? If we were so fussed about the oil, we would have done as France and Russia did and continued to trade with Iraq rather than take part in a multi-trillion dollar war. Even if the war was (against economic sense) for oil, we would have given control of the oilfields to BP, Esso, Shell etc. It has been kept for use by the Iraqi people. The only possible way one could argue it has been used for Coalition interests is the way in which (in a resolution passed 14-0 by the UN) some of the oil wealth was used to pay for reconstruction of Iraqi infastructure. But that hardly makes us a profit...

[Plaumpholavup]

J P Morgan is not an energy company, its as you rightly say an investment bank, but you're missing the point. The part it plays is as a financial co-ordinator in terms of securing the oil assets against goods and services provided by Halliburton, Bechtel, etc.

Suggest you take a look at these links:

http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/m...designs_UK.pdf

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...War+Profiteers

[KevinDonae]

In truth, US banks haven't done enough financial business with either Iraq or Afghanistan. If I as president had a war, I'd have put some pressure on the banks to do business there. You don't need to force that with legislation - just use the bully pulpet and keep the issue in the public eye.

I'd also have written enough of a first draft of their legal systems to ensure constracts get enforced, etc, so the banks agreed to sign on. But I think the antiwar folks make a mistake when they paint banks as the villain - you need banks to rebuild a nation.

Halliburton is a different story - we made a mistake by handing them contracts instead of local companies. The west is also ignoring the potential for Indian and Chinese companies to help us. Very few skilled people want to give up their comfortable lives to go live in Africa or Afghanistan. China and India have willing people who could help (just look at Africa and Chinese business emerging there)