Iraq

[Keith]

 
ABC NEWS
 
US soldiers killed in Iraq gunfight
 

Two American soldiers have been killed and nine wounded after a gunman in Iraqi army uniform attacked them at an Iraqi base, US officials said.

The soldiers were part of a security detail for a United States company commander who was meeting members of Iraq's security forces at a commando compound near the city of Tuz Khurmato, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, US military said.

The assailant was shot and killed, the US military said.

"Initial reports indicate 11 US soldiers were engaged with small arms fire, killing two and wounding nine," the military said.

They were the first American soldiers killed since US forces formally ended combat operations in Iraq a week ago, more than seven years after the invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi soldiers and police have been largely responsible for security in Iraq for months.

"This is a tragic and cowardly act, which I firmly believe was an isolated incident and is certainly not reflective of the Iraqi security forces," Major General Tony Cucolo said.

The gunfight resulted from an argument between an Iraqi soldier and US personnel during a training session run by the Americans, according to Iraqi police and military sources.

Violence has declined sharply in Iraq since the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-07 but insurgents continue to launch attacks daily, many targeting Iraqi soldiers and police.

- Reuters

USA Has A History Of Attacking Themselves To Go To War!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkE94ayHlNg

Exclusive: One Iraq veteran?s harrowing journey from the battlefield to suicide
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/iraq-veterans-harrowing-journey-battlefield-suicide-part/

He said three times that he should have just died in Iraq and I would have loved him forever, because he didn't think we were going to get back together,Krissy Caudill, Sgt. First Class Spencer Kohlheims fiance said after his grandmother found him hanging in her garage less than a month after he returned from Iraq.


 
www.theaussiedigger.com The Aussie Digger
 
http://theaussiedigger.com/TheAussieDiggerForum/  Forum
 
http://www.austvetmatters.net/ Fraud and Wannabe Website
 
http://www.anzmi.net/  Fraud and Wannabe Website
 
All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

[Keith]

Its just a pity about the dead British Veterans buried in the lonely cemeteries and the disabled British Veterans who face a life of pain, suffering and minimal incomes. Blair, like Howard and the whole sick cabal, have no conscience, and worse still have trampled on the bodies of young Military members to make their names politically and set themselves up financially. Don?t hang by your thumbs waiting for either to have an epiphany and suddenly admit they lied and ignored the peoples will.

Keith Tennent.

SMH

I'm still a public servant, says $34m man Blair

Mary Riddle

September 7, 2010

"It's no great shock to say Gordon's not ... touchy-feely" ... Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister.

LONDON: For a prophet crying in the wilderness, Tony Blair scrubs up well. Though erstwhile disciples are scuttling to distance themselves from New Labour's founding father, sackcloth and ashes are not his style.

Mr Blair wears jeans and a pristine blue shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a gold chain nestling among greying chest hair. A crucifix, I presume, not a medallion? ''Yes,'' he says. ''Though we used to wear medallions in the '60s. Or was it the '70s?''

We meet in his London office after he arrives from Washington, where he had dinner with the US President, Barack Obama, and the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, discussing what may be ''the final opportunity to establish a peace''. He reports: ''Obama's completely up for it.''

Having missed the publication of his memoir, The Journey, Mr Blair is back in Britain for his publicity tour to promote the Brand Blair bible. Being an author strikes him as ''marvellously scary''; a verdict with which his former chancellor may concur.

In denouncing ''impossible'' Gordon Brown, a plotter of ''zero emotional intelligence'', did he not worry about being cruel? ''I wanted to make sure that, while it was essentially truthful, it also paid tribute to his enormous qualities.''

Did he warn Mr Brown of the character assassination? ''No. Anyway,'' he adds defensively, ''it's no great shock to say Gordon's not a touchy-feely politician.''

And has he spoken since the book was published to the man he once deemed as close as a lover? ''No, but I'm sure I will.''

Mr Blair says he still thought Mr Brown was the best for the job, and besides, he adds, he was loath ''to have [Mr Brown] outside the tent in what could have been a far more destructive form''.

This is the only newspaper interview Mr Blair has given since his book was published. Wealth (estimated at up to $34 million), staff (about 130), and the airy opulence of his headquarters have conferred on him the quasi-regal distance of the privileged. Whatever his critics think of him, he has absorbed the odium with some dignity and grace. Even so, he exudes the faintly glacial bonhomie of a man on his guard.

His book, more gripping and witty than his detractors allow, is a political bodice-ripper.

In person, Mr Blair is less expansive, not least because ''what most people are interested in are how much trouble you cause the next lot''.

Some have questioned whether Mr Blair's journey, like his father's, has ended at the portals of Tory HQ. ''I am Labour and always will be,'' he says. Does he admire David Cameron? ''I don't want to talk about my politics through his. I don't want to cause difficulties for him.''

And did he go over to the dark side when he took a 2.5 million ($4.2 million) salary from JP Morgan Chase (and a reported 2 million from Zurich Financial Services) Despite giving an expected 4 million in book royalties to charity, is his dash for cash not unseemly

''I am basically a public service person. I would have been very happy carrying on as PM or taking the job in Europe [the EU presidency]. I spend two-thirds to three-quarters of my time on unpaid work, as a Middle East envoy and for charity.''

But his string of properties showcases a fabulous lifestyle.

''Look, I work enormously hard, but I'm really lucky to be able to provide for my family ? I simply make the point that I [would] prefer a full-time public service job. If I can't, I'll do it like this because it allows me to pursue the same ends in a different way.''

He is, he says, ''working as hard as I've ever worked''.

''I don't know what I will do in the future. I'm basically a public service guy, so if the right job came up I'd definitely do it. But I enjoy the freedom to do different things. I'd be hopeless at retirement. For me there is absolutely no way that is ever going to happen.'' You have been warned.

❏ Mr Blair said he may cancel a book-signing session in London tomorrow after he was pelted with shoes, eggs and plastic bottles by people protesting against the Iraq war at a similar event in Dublin on Saturday.

Telegraph, London

The Zionist Murderers Of Iraq
http://www.jnoubiyeh.com/2010/09/zionist-murderers-of-iraq.html

Attributing the desecration of Iraq to such generalities as ?corporatism? or ?imperialism? is baseless and unequivocally cowardly. Corporatism and imperialism are not living, breathing entities which determine the affairs of mankind. There are individuals behind every action of corporate greed and imperial interests. They have names. They have affiliations. And in the case of the illegal invasion, occupation and subsequent genocide against Iraq, every individual involved is a Zionist of Khazarian or Anglo extraction with dual loyalty to the despicable, criminal, illegitimate state of Israel.

War Forevermore
http://mantiqaltayr.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/war-forever-more/

?Winning? today is to just keep on making war in any shape or form so the rich get richer while the masses are just tools ? now on the battlefield ? as they were in the worst of factories in the West during the Industrial Revolution ? and sitting on their fat asses at home mesmerized by pieces of shit like Glenn Beck. And since the media, owned of course by members of the Taliban, HAMAS, and Hizballah, have turned the American public into retards; most Americans don?t seem to notice that all we ever f***** do anymore is fight wars.

America is leaving the ruins behind in Iraq
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/05/100162/america-is-leaving-the-ruins-behind.html?
 
Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
They created a desolation, and they called it 'peace'." -- Tacitus


They caused the Iraq War and remain without shame
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100905/OPINION/709049944/1080

During the past week, as the US president Barack Obama announced the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq, there was considerable media commentary focusing on the lies that had been utilised to build public support for the war.

The two that received the most attention were the argument that Saddam had an active programme to develop weapons of mass destruction and the assertion, made most vigorously by the then vice president Dick Cheney, that there were ?proven links? connecting the Iraqi leadership to the terrorist attacks on September 11.

Both were, of course, deliberate fabrications but both did play important roles in shaping public opinion and justifying the invasion of Iraq. The propaganda effort to win support for the war involved much more.

[Keith]

GORDON DUFF: ZOMBIE CONTRACTORS, THE PENTAGONS 100 BILLION DOLLAR BOONDOGGLE
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/gordon-duff-zombie-contractors.html

A water truck backs up to the Euphrates River in Iraq. The driver, a Ugandan or maybe an Ethiopian, gets out, lowers a hose into the sewage ridden flow and fills his truck. 5 miles away, a US Army water purification center sits, too far away. The driver thinks, water is water. Another of the Pentagons Zombie Contractors take their toll, part of the army of undead and unqualified who are the worlds most expensive work force.

The driver, an employee of a company once headed by the Vice President of the United States, could care less, clean water, filth or sewage, it is only going to American troops as drinking water.

[Keith]

Former army chief slams Blair and Brown

Patrick Hennessy, London

September 6, 2010

THE AGE

THE former head of the British army has accused Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of letting down the armed forces during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a damning verdict, General Sir Richard Dannatt accuses Mr Brown of being a ''malign'' influence by failing to honour guarantees on defence spending during his time at the Treasury, and charges Mr Blair with lacking ''moral courage'' for failing to overrule his chancellor.

General Dannatt's book, Leading from the Front, with extracts published in The Sunday Telegraph, is the first major public critique of the Blair/Brown administration by a senior outside figure who served under both men.

He was Chief of the General Staff from 2006-09. He describes his efforts to persuade Mr Blair and Mr Brown that the army - fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering heavy casualties - was facing almost unbearable pressures as ''pushing a rock up a steep hill almost all the way through''.

His book is further evidence of the cripplingly dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which Mr Blair spelt out in his own memoir, A Journey, published this week.

The general also reveals in his book and in interviews for this newspaper that:

■ By early 2009, when the army was suffering a punishing casualty rate in Afghanistan, he had not had a face-to-face meeting with Mr Brown for six months. Eventually he was forced to ''ambush'' the prime minister during a chance meeting to get his concerns across.

■ The 1997-98 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which set out a ''good framework'' for future defence policy, could not cope with troops being committed to Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time and was ''fatally flawed'' through being underfunded.

■ The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, cited as the main reason for Britain joining the United States in the 2003 war, was ''most uncompelling''. Planning for the aftermath of the conflict was, he said, an ''abject failure''.

General Dannatt reserved his strongest criticism for Labour's two prime ministers, accusing them of letting down the troops they sent to Afghanistan and Iraq. He writes: ''History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown's malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the entire process from the outset.''

Mr Blair ''lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor''.

Asked why he thought Mr Blair did not overrule Mr Brown, he replied: ''To me it seems extraordinary that the prime minister cannot crack the whip sufficiently to his very close friend apparently, his next door neighbour, the chancellor.

''In the war cabinet that Margaret Thatcher put together in 1982 [during the Falklands conflict] there was no one from the Treasury. It's tough to criticise lack of moral courage, but moral courage is what you need.'' General Dannatt warns that carrying on with the current rate of casualties in Afghanistan would be unacceptable. ''We've got to have cracked it by 2014, 2015,'' he says.

TELEGRAPH

"The Militarization of Hollywood": Unlocking "The Hurt Locker"
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20910

Why did "The Hurt Locker," a well-acted, tension-filled but otherwise undistinguished Hollywood war movie focusing on a military bomb-disposal team in Iraq, win the 2010 Academy Award for Best Picture?

After viewing the film recently, it appears to us that the main reason the U.S. movie industry bestowed the honor is that Kathryn Bigelow, who also received the Best Director prize, concealed the real nature of the American war in two distinct ways.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Hollywood has historically been the "media consort" of the White House and Pentagon; that this film won such acclaim is simply another aspect of "selling" the war in Iraq, no matter how illegal or immoral this war has been


Tony Blair is a lying psychopath.The boy has very serious mental problems. Trouble is his untreated mental problems have caused the death and disablement of countless British and Coalition Veterans, including Australian Veterans. John Howard went along with Blair all the way. Howard too is responsible. You reckon Howard will be held accountable? Not on ya nelly. Too much money and too many connections will keep him free to roam the country and world, enjoying life and living in privilege and luxury. You reckon Howard loses any sleep at night about those Australians who have been killed and disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan? Not on ya nelly.
Keith Tennent.
 
Tony Blair: Cheney?s vision ?not stupid,? possible ?over time?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/blair-cheney-vision-possible-over-time/

Vice-President Dick Cheney's vision of completely redrawing the map of the Middle East following the 9/11 attacks is "not stupid," and is "possible over time," former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says.

In his new book, A Journey, the former Labour Party leader wrote that Cheney wanted a wholesale reorganization of the political map of the Middle East after 9/11. The vice president "would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it -- Hezbollah, Hamas, etc," Blair wrote.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
I would like to see an amendment passed to the US Constitution, stipulating one thing; that every member of the Congress, Cabinet,and the Executive in the US will have a close member of their families serving on the front lines during the time of their service, and be most apt to be blown to bits or maimed for life, when military action is ordered.

It perhaps may give those in power in the US just a little pause before using military force as opposed to diplomacy.

And as to Cheney's "vision", as Blair characterizes it, that just makes me want to throw up. Cheney's "vision" had utterly nothing to do with the safety and security of the American people.

This was simply an excuse, based on a pack of lies, for using the US military in order to potentially gain private profit for corporations.

In Iraq, it was supposed to be the oil, and we can see just how well that worked out.

In Afghanistan, it was pipelines with which to control Eurasian Oil, the drug trade (which the Taliban had actually curtailed under their watch), and the exploitation of Afghanistan's mineral wealth,and the only element of this which has happened under the US and NATO occupation is a soaring drug trade.

And an attack against Iran?!? Such an attack, now that the reactors for the power plant are being fueled, will send a radioactive plume around the world, sickening and killing many innocents. Such an attack would galvanize the Iranian people to Ahmedinejad's side, and have an absolutely opposite outcome from what the US and Israel want. And of course, Amanpour would never in her life ask the most obvious, glaring question here; what will nuclear-armed Russia and China do if the US and Israel attack Iran?!?

 

[Keith]

Angry protesters pelt Blair at book signing
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/04/3002768.htm?section=justin

ABC NEWS

Angry protesters threw objects at Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair as he arrived at the first public signing session to promote his memoirs in the Irish capital Dublin.

Gilad Atzmon: Bloody Memoir
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-bloody-memoir.html

Tony Blair, a man who launched a criminal war with no end, declared once again today that ?Radical Islam is the world's greatest threat?

Tony Blair unscathed after eggs and shoes thrown ahead of book signing protest
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/7981659/Tony-Blair-unscathed-after-eggs-and-shoes-thrown-ahead-of-book-signing-protest.html

This wanker should be euphoric about the fact he ain't getting the same treatment as all those he sent to a die in a illegal war.
 
As Iraq War Continues, a Surge in Contractors
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/09/03/as-iraq-war-continues-a-surge-in-contractors/

Less often mentioned are the massive army of private security contractors, tens of thousands of whom remain in Iraq and continue to go on largely as they have, fighting the same war they have been fighting for seven and a half years.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
"Combat operations" in Iraq have not ended: they have merely been rebranded.

THE LIE OF THE CENTURY
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html

First off is Tony Blair's "Dodgy Dossier", a document released by the Prime
Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!

The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated.

This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time is clear proof of a
deliberate attempt to deceive.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Letting Tony Blair know that we know he is full of shit!

How to Create an Angry American Video
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/09/03/gordon-duff-video-why-real-americans-should-be-angry/

Gordon Duff video Why real Americans should be angry

LIES

[Keith]

Middle East loses trillions as US strikes record arms deals
http://www.redress.cc/global/rrozoff20100904

Rick Rozoff views the United States growing arms exports to Middle East countries, which will spend an estimated 100 billion dollars on arms from the US by 2014, and the lost opportunities for development in a region that ?has known the least peace in the past 60 years and that is in most need of it.

The True Cost of the War
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/true-cost-of-war.html

Obama's "end of Iraq war" speech must have shattered any remaining belief in him. Forced to appease both his supporters and the warmonger right-wing, who denounce him as a Muslim and a Marxist, Obama resorted to Orwellian DoubleSpeak. He could only announce an end to the war by praising the president who started it and the troops who fought it. Yet, as most earthlings, if not Americans, surely know by now, the war was based on a lie and on intentional deception. The American troops died for a lie.

Urge Waterstone's to cancel Tony Blair book-signing event
http://stopwar.iparl.com/lobby/13

Tony Blair has announced that all proceeds from his book will be donated to a charity for helping rehabilitate seriously injured soldiers. This is very welcome but Mr Blair should be left in no doubt that donating a small fraction of the ?20 million he is estimated to have earned since he left office in 2007 cannot absolve him for the war crimes he committed as prime minister.

Please send an email to Waterstone's urging them not to host Blair's memoir launch on Wednesday 8 September. Use the model letter at the link above or delete this and write your own. Personal letters are more effective.

More War Lies
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54633

Lies aren't used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening.

Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then "terrorist" Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently caught up in. Uh huh.

U.S. participants in this crime are heroes, always and everywhere. That's sacred. The troops' mission has involved protecting the Iraqi people, and by golly they've done a superb job, as long as we don't mention the complete devastation of Iraq, the million dead, the millions of refugees, and the intense resentment of those remaining toward our country for what we've done to theirs.

The Iraqi people now (dead, in exile, in a ruined nation) have a chance that they supposedly didn't have before we destroyed their country, a country that was actually a better place to live in in every way in 2003 than it is now, and in 1989 than in 2003. To hear President Obama, this war has been for the benefit of the Iraqi people, and these wars have been about al Qaeda and 9-11.

[Keith]

And John Howard went all the way with George, arguably the most incompetent US President ever. If John Howard and the Cabinet he presided over had acted ethically, legally and with responsibility to the youth of this Nation young Australians would now be alive and not disabled.The Nation will pay the cost in terms of disability compensation, personal pain and grief and loss of international reputation for many years to come. For the record I publicly opposed the invasion BEFORE it occurred.

Keith Tennent.

Reason for war invalid: Gates

Richard Spencer, Baghdad

September 3, 2010

THE AGE

AMERICA'S Defence Secretary has conceded that the original premise for the war in Iraq was ''not valid'' as he marked the formal end of the US campaign.

Robert Gates acknowledged the divisions the war had inflicted on American society as responsibility for front-line operations passed to Iraq's forces.

''The problem with this war for many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid,'' he said before a ceremony in Baghdad. ''Even if the outcome is a good one from the standpoint of the United States, it will always be clouded by how it began.''

The ceremony, marking the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the beginning of Operation New Dawn, took place under American and Iraqi flags at the US forces' headquarters of Faw Palace, built by late dictator Saddam Hussein.

US Vice-President Joe Biden, who was also in Baghdad, repeated President Barack Obama's statement in his speech to the nation on Tuesday that the war ''divided Americans''.

Mr Biden said that the US presence in Iraq had divided America and proved ''that war is the realm of uncertainty''.

''They were 7 years that tested our mettle like no other conflict in recent American history,'' he said of the war that he had supported launching as a senator.

Mr Gates lamented the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction that propelled the two countries into war in 2003.

Speakers at the ceremony focused on the years of bloodshed - in which 4400 Americans and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians died - and expressed the hope that a ''stable, secure, and self-reliant'' Iraq might emerge.

Mr Biden said violence had fallen to its lowest level since the invasion and continuing negotiations to form a government showed ''politics has broken out in Iraq''.

On the streets of Baghdad, many fear that without a new government, this year's increase in bombings and shootings can only continue. ''Everyone is afraid of what is coming,'' said Wisam Ahmed, 35, a car salesman.

TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN

British Attorney General moves toward re-opening investigation into mysterious death of Iraq weapons inspector
http://www.rawstory.com/rs1/2010/09/02/british-attorney-general-moves-reopening-investigation-mysterious-suicide-wmd-expert/

The United Kingdom's top law enforcement official has taken possession of secret files surrounding the death of a prominent WMD researcher who was found dead in the months after the invasion of Iraq.

David Kelly, once employed by the British Defense Ministry, was a former UN weapons inspector who had been previously deployed to Iraq. He was found dead in July 2003 about a mile from his home, having ingested more than two dozen pain-killers and with a cut in his left wrist.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
If the files are kept secret, then it will be another whitewash.

Speech Defect: Emissions of Evil From the Oval Office
http://uruknet.com/?p=m69382&hd=&size=1&l=e

"We have met our responsibility!" No, Mister President, we have not. Not until many Americans of high degree stand in the dock for war crimes. Not until the United States pays hundreds of billions of dollars in unrestricted reparations to the people of Iraq for the rape of their country and the mass murder of their people. Not until the United States opens its borders to accept all those who have been and will be driven from Iraq by the savage ruin we have inflicted upon them, or in flight from the vicious thugs and sectarians we have loosed -- and empowered -- in the land.


The Wolf You Feed
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski255.html

Today we read, without surprise, that billions of dollars of American wealth (present and future) have been wasted, squandered and lost in various unfinished, subsequently destroyed or simply paid-for-never-started projects in Iraq. Many of these projects were on the to-do list the schools, hospitals, water purification systems, prisons, roads, bridges or electrical power plants because we destroyed them in 2003 and 2004, or ruined them years earlier with our endless bombing during the UN sanctions period. Those closest to the missing money US military and state department implementers and contractors, US allied governments and contractors, and Iraqi puppet class contractors know where it went.

[Keith]

IRAQ'S WMDS - THE LIE OF THE CENTURY
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html

Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium oxide, called "Yellow Cake" from Niger.

Since Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Contrary to the blaring of ABCNNBBCBS, we were not sold this war to bring Democracy to Iraq.

The Iraq Debacle: The Legacy of Seven Years of War
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/19-10

The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge "enduring bases" and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.


Combat troops on Iraq pullout: 'I'm going home'
http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/19/4931474-combat-troops-on-iraq-pullout-im-going-home

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Does anyone recall that we were sold this war to get Saddam's "Nookular" bombs? (He didn't have any) Does anyone recall that we were sold this war to avenge 9-11? (Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11). Does anyone recall that we were sold this war to stop Iraq from supporting Al Qaeda? (They weren't). And before we start exporting Democracy to other nations, maybe we need to get it working smoothly here in the US. In any event, Americans kids are still dying in Iraq, officially of "indirect" fire, but they are still dying in Iraq. Not since the the USSR has a government lied so openly and blatantly to its own people.

A trillion-dollar catastrophe. Yes, Iraq was a headline war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/31/trillion-dollar-catastrophe-iraq-war

today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama. As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Two million remain abroad as refugees from seven years of anarchy, with another 2 million internally displaced. Ironically, almost all Iraqi Christians have had to flee. Under western rule, production of oil ? Iraq's staple product ? is still below its pre-invasion level, and homes enjoy fewer hours of electricity. This is dreadful.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
"The Iraq war is over, and this time, I really, really, REALLY, mean it!!!" -- Official White Horse Souse

[Keith]

Much too late now phony Tony. The damage is done because you either lied or were too silly to ask questions of the Americans. See http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html
 
Your blubbering and mealy mouthed words will not bring back one life. You, Bush and Howard et al should be dragged kicking and screaming before the ICT in The Hague for War Crimes.

Keith Tennent.
 
 
ABC NEWS
Blair 'desperately sorry' for Iraq war deaths
 

Former British prime minister Tony Blair says he is "desperately sorry" for the deaths in the Iraq war, in extracts released from his memoirs.

In extracts from A Journey, his account of his decade in office, Mr Blair revealed he was "sorry for the lives cut short".

But he maintained it was right to remove dictator Saddam Hussein from power.

At least 100,000 Iraqis have died in the war and at least 1.5 million families have been displaced.

Mr Blair said the aftermath of the 2003 invasion was "terrible" and said he wept over the loss of life and still felt a sense of "anguish" for the relatives of those killed in the conflict.

"The anguish arises from a sense of sadness that goes beyond conventional description or the stab of compassion you feel on hearing tragic news," he wrote.

"Tears, though there have been many, do not encompass it. I feel desperately sorry for them, sorry for the lives cut short, sorry for the families whose bereavement is made worse by the controversy over why their loved ones died. Sorry for the utterly unfair selection that the loss should be theirs."

Mr Blair acknowledged that Britain "did not anticipate the role of Al Qaeda or Iran" in post-invasion planning.

He added: "On the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him and that, terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse."

Mr Blair announced he will donate all the proceeds of the autobiography to the Royal British Legion, a charity which helps severely injured war veterans.

Online seller Amazon said A Journey is already ranked 11th on the bestseller list of its British site, although it declined to give any sales figures.

Unusually for such a high-profile political autobiography in Britain, the book has not been serialised.

- AFP

 
 
www.theaussiedigger.com The Aussie Digger
 
http://theaussiedigger.com/TheAussieDiggerForum/  Forum
 
http://www.austvetmatters.net/ Fraud and Wannabe Website
 
http://www.anzmi.net/  Fraud and Wannabe Website
 
All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

[Keith]

In Defiance of the Constitution, 49,000 Troops Still Deployed in Iraq
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/constitution/4395-in-defiance-of-the-constitution-49000-troops-still-deployed-in-iraq

As the 4th Brigade boards military transport aircraft for the flight to Germany and then home, many of their comrades are moving into the barracks they quickly abandoned in their zeal to leave behind the less-than-friendly confines of their desert camp.

The Armys 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a unit in the 25th Infantry Division based in Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, will assume the 4ths duties, albeit under the less martial designation of Advise and Assist Brigade. All the military units remaining in Iraq will undergo similar rebranding.

[Keith]

Obama says Iraq war 'ending,' calls country 'sovereign'
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Obama_says_Iraq_war_ending_calls_co_08282010.html

Three days before the official end of the US combat mission in Iraq, US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that the war in the country was "ending" and called Iraq a "sovereign" nation free to determine its own destiny.

On Tuesday, after more than seven years, the United States of America will end its combat mission in Iraq and take an important step forward in responsibly ending the Iraq war," Obama said in his weekly radio address.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Memo to President Obama: you have not ended the war in Iraq, but merely rebranded it.

The violence, devastation, lack of infrastructure and lack of anything remotely resembling a functional government all speak volumes to this reality.

What You Will Not Hear About Iraq
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/08/27/what-you-will-not-hear-about-iraq

Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.

[Keith]

Dr. Lawrence Davidson: Victory in Iraq
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/08/dr-lawrence-davidson-victory-in-iraq-?-an-analysis/

Dr. Lawrence Davidson
We invaded a country and overthrew its dictator. Americans might take pride in that accomplishment if it were not for the fact that we did so on false pretenses. In other words, we initiated war on the basis of lies rather than actual self-defense. Such an action constitutes the most serious of international crimes. It is the one for which the Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg.

[Keith]

Dog Days: The War Party Never Takes Summer Vacation
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/08/24/dog-days-2/

In these, the dog days of summer, normal people everywhere are on vacation. They go to a resort: swimming, boating, family photos on the beach these are the woof and warp of American life. Standing outside and, in their estimation, above ? that life, with its prosaic concerns, the War Party never takes a vacation. Theyre always plotting and planning their next move.

Undeterred by the complete failure of the Iraq invasion described by the late Gen. William E. Odom as the biggest military disaster in the annals of Americas wars the cultists of the war god are bound and determined to continue their bloody wilding of the Middle East.

Video: The USA Deadly Legacy in Iraq
http://uruknet.com/?p=m69175&hd=&size=1&l=e

The number of babies born with severe deformities and children developing leukaemia is rising dramatically in parts of Iraq.
US forces used depleted uranium weapons to attack the city, which locals say has left them with this devastating legacy.
One report even says the number of such illnesses in Falluja is higher than that recorded after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Your tax dollars at work, folks; while homeless Vets sleep in our streets, and US infrastructure crumbles.

Troops still deploying to Mideast from BIA
http://www.bangordailynews.com/story/Statewide/Troops-still-deploying-to-Mideast-from-BIA,152133

As the nation watches troops being withdrawn from the Middle East, few perhaps are aware that another wave of soldiers is being deployed.

On Tuesday, a group of about 150 soldiers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based in Fort Hood, Texas, had a two-hour layover at Bangor International Airport on their way to southern Iraq.

Its funny because the big thing on the news as we were getting ready to leave was all the big hoopla about all the combat forces coming out, so all the soldiers and their families are asking, Why are we going? Lt. Col. Bryan Mullins said.

Well, we said it was the difference between the guys whose job it is to fight versus guys whose primary job it is to help people, or secure people, who are doing something else,he said.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
The US occupation of Iraq is not over: it has simply been rebranded.

Fort Carson soldiers' killing spree after Iraq combat
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11057430

Seventeen US soldiers from a Colorado military base who mostly served in Iraq have been linked to violent killings and attempted killings since their return to US soil. Three of them came from one platoon - highlighting how a generation of American soldiers are struggling to cope with life after military service.

[Keith]

Hundreds protest bad basic services in Iraq
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/08/22/iraq.services.protest/index.html?eref=rss_latest

At least 15 people, including nine police officers, were wounded Saturday night when hundreds of people protested in Nasiriya over power outages and bad basic services, city police officials told CNN.

The Iraq Legacy: Tell It Like It Is
http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/08/the-iraq-legacy-tell-it-like-it-is/

By Medea Benjamin (opednews.com)
With the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the administration, the military and the media are trying to put a positive spin on this grim chapter of U.S. history. It would certainly give some comfort to the grieving families of the over 4,400 soldiers killed in Iraq if their sacrifices had left Iraq a better place or made America safer. But the bitter truth is that the U.S. intervention has been an utter disaster for both Iraq and the United States.

Tony Blair's new book 'is like a love letter to George Bush'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305264/Tony-Blairs-new-book-like-love-letter-George-Bush.html

TONY BLAIR'S forthcoming memoirs will read like a 'love letter' to George W Bush, insiders claim.

The autobiography will praise the former U.S. president, with whom Mr Blair launched the controversial invasion of Iraq in 2003, as 'highly intelligent' and 'visionary'.

Iraq war dissenter Kellys postmortem report remains secret. Is British Attorney-General Grieve up to the job?
http://www.redress.cc/global/cking20100823

British Attorney-General Dominic Grieves response to widespread calls for Dr David Kellys postmortem files to be released continues to indicate that the government is hiding something of importance, argues Christopher King.

What You Will Not Hear About Iraq
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/08/what-you-will-not-hear-about-iraq/

Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.

[Keith]

THE AGE

Australia defends Iraq security deal

Dylan Welch

August 23, 2010

THE Defence Department gave a multimillion-dollar Iraq security contract to a company responsible for civilian deaths, and run by a former Australian army commander, without first offering it publicly.

The $9-million-a-year contract for security services at Australia's Baghdad embassy was awarded to Unity Resources Group in December and approved by Defence in a closed tender process.

Guards working for the firm - created in 2000 by former special forces commander Gordon Conroy - shot dead an Adelaide professor and two Iraqi women in Baghdad in separate incidents in 2006 and 2007.

Yesterday, a Defence spokesman said the department acted properly in choosing Unity, saying the tendering process had been ''competitive''.

''This selection was conducted through a competitive tender process by a joint Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade evaluation team,'' he said.

 

 
 
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[Keith]

THE AGE

Australia defends Iraq security deal
Dylan Welch
August 23, 2010

THE Defence Department gave a multimillion-dollar Iraq security contract to a company responsible for civilian deaths, and run by a former Australian army commander, without first offering it publicly.

The $9-million-a-year contract for security services at Australia's Baghdad embassy was awarded to Unity Resources Group in December and approved by Defence in a closed tender process.

Guards working for the firm - created in 2000 by former special forces commander Gordon Conroy - shot dead an Adelaide professor and two Iraqi women in Baghdad in separate incidents in 2006 and 2007.

Yesterday, a Defence spokesman said the department acted properly in choosing Unity, saying the tendering process had been ''competitive''.

''This selection was conducted through a competitive tender process by a joint Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade evaluation team,'' he said.

U.S. ready to resume Iraq combat role if needed
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67L15520100822?type=politicsNews&feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq said local security forces will be ready for the withdrawal of American troops next year, but the United States could return to combat operations if needed.

Obamas Delusions: The Economy and Iraq
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20730

Contrary to his recent statements, Obama has not improved the economy. He has overseen a catastrophic destruction of jobs on a state-by-state basis, in part due to state budget crises and the pathetic lack of response on the national level: Obamas first stimulus was under-funded and misdirected (too much emphasis on tax cuts for businesses, etc.), while Obamas recent stimulus only $26 billion  is simply farce.

When it comes to the Iraq war, Obama is equally off kilter. He recently announced the end of ?combat operations in Iraq, which we are meant to interpret as mission accomplished.

Odierno Raises Prospect of US Troops Returning to Iraq
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/08/22/odierno-raises-prospect-of-us-troops-returning-to-iraq/

Though the Obama Administration?s claims that the war in Iraq is over is a myth to begin with, top US Commander in Iraq Gen. Ray Odierno today detailed the possibility of US forces returning to Iraq in larger numbers.

Odierno insists this would only happen if Iraqs security forces suffer a complete failure in the ability to provide security in Iraq. And while Odierno insists ?we dont see that happening, the reality on the ground makes this all the more plausible.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Translation: we are never really leaving Iraq; the occupation is simply being rebranded, period, end of discussion.


 

[Keith]

Iraq War Vet Camilo Mej?a: US Withdrawal Plan Marks "Privatization of Military Occupation"
JUAN GONZALEZ: Camilo, your reaction now to this so-called news of the withdrawal of the last combat brigade from Iraq?
http://uruknet.com/?p=m69006&hd=&size=1&l=e

CAMILO MEJ?A: My reaction is that this is just another media stunt, because what is not being reported as strongly as the final troop leaving Iraq is that we?re still leaving 50,000 troops in country, not to mention that the 4,000 who are leaving are being replaced by 7,000 security contractors, called "dirty gangs" by Iraqis. I think that basically what we have is just a recycling of forces in what effectively could be called a transferring of military duties from the US military into the hands of corporate paramilitary forces in Iraq.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
This is not a US "withdrawal" from Iraq: it is simply a re-branding of US occupation.

[Keith]

Torture. Corruption. Civil war. America Has Certainly Left Its Mark
http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/08/robert-fisk-us-troops-say-goodbye-to-iraq/

Up to a million Iraqis are dead. Blair cares nothing about them they do not feature, please note, in his royalties generosity. And nor do most of the American soldiers. They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they?ve won.

'The Invasion of Iraq Was Wrong, Unjust and Damaging'
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,712897,00.html

US President Barack Obama had pledged to bring the troops home during his election campaign. And by Aug. 31 there will be just 50,000 US troops in the country, a contingent which is to take on a non-combat role. Yet doubts persist that Obama can fulfil his promise to have all the soldiers out of the country by the end of 2011.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
I suspect that the troops will start flowing back into Iraq right after the November elections.


Deconstructing the Official Narrative on the U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/08/20/deconstructing-the-official-narrative-on-the-u-s-withdrawal-from-iraq/

One may recall President George W. Bush announcing the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003, speaking on board an aircraft carrier under a sign declaring Mission Accomplished. More than seven years later, the announced end of Operation Iraqi Freedom may be similarly illusory.

U.S. withdrawal from Iraq The Post also notes that About 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, mainly as a training force, and concedes that There might never be an acknowledged end to the Iraq war a moment where it ceases being Americas conflict. Or a moment where the U.S. military presence in Iraq truly comes to an end, for that matter.

Petraeus: Were Not Leaving Iraq
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/08/19/petraeus-were-not-leaving-iraq/

As Obama Administration officials and a willing mainstream media report that yesterday was the end of the Iraq War it would likely surprise many that 56,000 US troops remain on the ground engaging in combat operations.

But it seems like the spin is even more surprising to the Pentagon leadership, as Gen. David Petraeus was pressed today on whether this was the right time to have left Iraq, and he said what he most likely wasn?t supposed to say.

[Keith]

Blair a 20m man of conviction
http://www.smh.com.au/world/blair-a-x00a320m-man-of-conviction-20100820-138xh.html

The former British prime minister remains a polarising figure.

[Keith]

Iraq war vet kills pregnant wife, daughter, self
http://tinyurl.com/28957dq
 
April Oles-Magdzas was due to give birth to her second daughter Wednesday, a little more than a year after she and her Iraq war veteran husband became new parents.

But when Oles-Magdzas' mother showed up that day at the couple's home in Superior, she found the entire family dead of an apparent murder-suicide.

Superior police said Thursday that Matthew Magdzas, a 23-year-old Wisconsin National Guard soldier who earned a combat badge in the Iraq war, shot and killed his pregnant wife, their 13-month-old daughter Lila, and their three dogs before turning the gun on himself.
 
 
US Announces Second Fake End to Iraq War
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/08/18/us-announces-second-fake-end-to-iraq-war/

It was another of those great TV moments. Embedded reports filming as the last brigade of American troops in Iraq cross the border into Kuwait bringing over seven years of unhappy conflict to its final, conclusive end. America was, at last, at peace.

But like so many other great TV moments, this one was a scripted fantasy, a fake exit done purely for political gain by an increasingly unpopular president trying to look like he is keeping at least one campaign promise.

It was perhaps a different sort of scripted, mythical end to the Iraq War than the last one, the May 1, 2003 Mission Accomplished speech of President Bush, but it was no more real, as over 50,000 US troops remain on the ground in Iraq tonight.

[Keith]

The Ecstasy of Empire
http://poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com/2010/08/ecstasy-of-empire.html

If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.

Obviously, the corporations and Wall Street would use their financial power and campaign contributions to block any legislation that would reduce short-term earnings and bonuses by bringing jobs back to America. Americans have no greater enemies than Wall Street and the corporations and their prostitutes in Congress and the White House.

The neocons allied with Israel, who control both parties and much of the media, are strung out on the ecstasy of Empire.

Gates: Iraq occupation could go on, if we?re asked to stay
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0816/gates-occupation-iraq-continue-asked/

 
Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
"And we will be asked to stay after we ... ummm... I mean, 'Al Qaeda' blow up enough schools and hospitals!" -- Official White Horse Souse

[Keith]

Obama's exit strategy from Iraq under threat once again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/15/christopher-hill-iraq-obama

Throughout this most brutal of summers (where the daytime temperature in Baghdad has rarely been below 48C), Iraqis have been getting by with around four hours per day of electricity (usually too weak to run more than one air conditioner). Even more concerning is the creeping return of terror; almost daily assassinations, a spike in bombings and rocket fire. This was not the way it was supposed to be when the conquerors left town.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
There is no US exit strategy for Iraq: it has simply been rebranded, period, end of discussion.

[Keith]

Iraq: NATO Assists In Building New Middle East Proxy Army
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20610

It was announced this week that Washington plans to transfer 209 advanced interceptor missiles - MIM-104E Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-T Missiles - to Kuwait in a $900 million deal that, according to the U.S., would "contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a major non-NATO ally...." [26]

A BBC News report added that "US officials say Patriot batteries also have been stationed in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain." [27]

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
The encirclement of Iran may well be continuing apace, but there is one issue this article does not address; China, Russia, and South Korea are all ignoring UN and US sanctions against Iran (regarding oil and refined petroleum products )with impunity. Even Kurdish Iraq is still trading with Iran on refined petroleum.

Unless and until these countries observe the UN sanctions by the book (and they have already said they will not), the sanctions are going to prove utterly useless under the current circumstances.

Unfortunately, this, coupled with a US government desperate for the appearance of "the mother of all distractions" to misdirect the anger of the American people against a manufactured enemy, may well indicate an attack against Iran is going to happen sooner rather than later.

[Keith]

More progress in Iraq I see.
 
 
ABC NEWS
 
Iraqi traffic cops get AK-47s
By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker

Traffic police in Iraq will soon have assault rifles to help them do their jobs after a spate of attacks against them by insurgents.

Iraq is arming its traffic officers with AK-47 assault rifles because more and more are being killed or wounded by militants.

In the past five days alone in Baghdad, five traffic officers have been killed and 19 have been wounded, either by bombs or by gunmen using silenced weapons.

Some officers believe militants are targeting them to incite chaos in Iraq and authorities say terrorists shoot them because they are an easy target.

Police chiefs are now equipping officers with a rifle at every intersection.

 
 
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[Keith]

Tariq Aziz: We are all Victims of America and Britain. They killed our country."
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2010/08/tariq-aziz-we-are-all-victims-of-america-and-britain-they-killed-our-country/

By Martin Chulov
"For 30 years Saddam built Iraq, and now it is destroyed. There are more sick than before, more hungry. The people don't have services. People are being killed every day in the 10s, if not hundreds. We are all victims of America and Britain. They killed our country."

[Keith]

Fallujah a poisoned city
http://uruknet.com/?p=m68629&hd=&size=1&l=e

Unreported in the New Zealand media and virtually unreported in the United States was the release of a report by public health academics who studied the cancer rate, infant mortality and the birth to sex ratio of children in Fallujah. The authors concluded that the findings, "show increases in cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human population birth sex ratio significantly greater than those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945."

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Take a good hard look at the kids in the photo midway through this article.

Then, imagine for just one second that these were your kids; poisoned, ill, and robbed of any semblance of a normal life.

What would you be thinking about the people who did this to your familiy?!?!

[Keith]

The War on Iraq: Five US Presidents, Five British Prime Ministers, Thirty Years of Duplicity, and Counting
http://peacebytruth.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/the-war-on-iraq-five-us-presidents-five-british-prime-ministers-thirty-years-of-duplicity-and-counting/

Twenty years ago this August, with a green light from America, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had walked in to possibly the biggest trap in modern history, unleashing Iraqs two decade decimation, untold suffering, illegal bombings, return of diseases previously eradicated and what can also only be described as UN-sponsored infanticide.

[Keith]

The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation
http://uruknet.com/?p=m68577&hd=&size=1&l=e

For much of the British and American press, this was the real thing: headlines hailed the "end" of the war and reported "US troops to leave Iraq".

Nothing could be further from the truth. The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all it's rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush's war on terror was retitled "overseas contingency operations" when Obama became president, US "combat operations" will be rebadged from next month as "stability operations".

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
I wonder if the families of the dead kids take any comfort that their loves ones were blown to bloody bits in "stability operations" instead of combat.

[Keith]

End of Iraq Combat Operations or Beginning of Downsized, Rebranded Occupation Relying Heavily on Private Military Contractors?
http://uruknet.com/?p=m68552&hd=&size=1&l=e

"The fact is that Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, last month submitted a request to the Pentagon for an incredible beefing up of the State Department?s own paramilitary force. And what the State Department is saying is, when you take out all these combat troops, we want to have a replacement for that capacity. So Clinton, who as a candidate for president said she would ban Blackwater and other mercenary firms, is now presiding over what is going to be a radical expansion of the use of these companies and private soldiers in Iraq. The US embassy is the size of eighty football fields; you know, it?s the size of Vatican City. The Vatican has embassies around the world. Our embassy is the size of the Vatican, in Iraq. "

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Translation: we are never, ever completely leaving Iraq.

[Keith]

MORE PROGRESS AFTER JOHN HOWARDS WAR


More progress in Iraq I see.

ABC NEWS

39 killed in Iraq attacks

Twin car bombs in south Iraq have killed 30 people while Al-Qaeda fighters also shot dead five policemen and planted their flag, a day after the US pledged no delays to its withdrawal timetable.

The violence also comes amid a deadlock over the formation of a new government nearly five months on from parliamentary elections. Concern is moutning that Iraq's security may be deteriorating after officials said more people died in violence in July than in any month since May 2008

Overall, 39 people were killed in violence across Iraq on Tuesday, officials said.

"We have so far received 30 corpses and 80 people have been wounded," the head of the emergency services at Kut hospital said,160 kilometres south of Baghdad.

Police lieutenant Ismail Hussein said "two cars, parked 10 metres from each other, exploded at the same time at Al-Amel crossing," he said.

A journalist at the scene said the streets were covered in blood while several shops were badly damaged and multiple cars destroyed.

"It was around 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) when the two cars exploded one after the other in the middle of a crowd," said Nasir Salman, 47, whose nearby tyre shop was badly damaged in the attacks.

"I saw with my own eyes, women and children lying dead and wounded on the ground."

Meanwhile In Baghdad, nine security force members were killed.

Al Qaeda fighters with silenced pistols "shot dead five policemen at a checkpoint before planting the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq," an interior ministry official said.

He added that a traffic policeman was killed by a homemade bomb while a statement from Baghdad security forces said a soldier was killed by a second bomb and two other troops perished when they tried to disarm a third device.

July deadliest month in Iraq for two years
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7921565/July-deadliest-month-in-Iraq-for-two-years.html

The figures released late Saturday show that 535 people were killed last month, the highest since May 2008 when 563 died, heightening concerns over Iraq?s precarious security situation even as the U.S. troops are reducing their numbers.

The US military vehemently rejected the casualty numbers Sunday afternoon, however, countering that its own data showed that only 222 Iraqis were killed in July.

[Keith]

Obama On The Iraq Drawdown: 'As Promised and On Schedule'
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/08/obama-on-the-iraq-drawdown-as-promised-and-on-schedule.html

?As a candidate for President, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010 America?s combat mission in Iraq would end. That is exactly what we are doing?as promised, and on schedule.?

The president says that by the end of the month more than 90,000 troops will have come home from Iraq since he took office.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Actually, when Obama was campaigning, he said nothing about waiting until August 1, 2010. He said "first thing" and "you can take that to the bank."

Now we are in another campaign season and Obama is crowing how 90,000 troops have been brought back home from Iraq since he took office ... without mentioning how may have been sent, and more to the point, how many were sent back two and three times.

The fact is that this is Obama's "Mission Accomplished" moment; an election season hoax underscored by the admission that at least 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq, just under a different name, so they don't count as combat troops.

Pentagon's vanishing act
http://toledoblade.com/article/20100802/OPINION02/8010325

Forgetting to deduct an expense from a checkbook, a temporary lapse in accountability, is something ordinary Americans can relate to. But their government losing track of how billions of dollars were spent in Iraq is impossible to comprehend.
What makes the lapse infuriating as well as unfathomable is the U.S. Defense Department's inability to explain, let alone correct, the continuing irresponsibility. The scope of the Pentagon's laxity in accounting for money designated to rebuild a war-ravaged Iraq is astounding.

[Dallas]

This is the same man who turned a blind eye to treason when he oversaw the AWB payments to Saddam Husein.

[Keith]

More progress in Iraq. John Howard was spot on the money with his invasion of Iraq I see. He is off now enjoying a life of luxury and privilege while young Australian ex service and service members are disabled and suffering and while Iraq falls to bits. Not bad for an invasion which Howard said would make Australia secure and destroy Saddams non existent weapons of mass destruction.
 
July deadliest month in Iraq since 2008
ABC NEWS

July was the deadliest month in Iraq since May 2008 with a total of 535 people killed across the country as a result of violence, according to government figures released this weekend.

The figures show a sharp upswing in the level of violence nearly five months after parliamentary elections which have yet to result in the formation of a new government and as the United States continues a major withdrawal of its forces.

A total of 396 civilians, 89 policemen and 50 soldiers died in attacks in July, data compiled by the health, defence and interior ministries showed.

The death toll is the highest for a single month since May 2008 when 563 people were killed in violence.

The figures also showed that 1,043 people - 680 civilians, 198 policemen and 165 soldiers - were injured in attacks this month, the highest such number this year.

The data also showed that 100 insurgents were killed and 955 were arrested.

US and Iraqi officials have warned of the dangers of an upsurge in violence if negotiations on forming a new government drag on, giving insurgent groups an opportunity to further destabilise the country.

Nearly five months since the March 7 general election which gave no single bloc an overall parliamentary majority, the two lists which won the most seats are still bickering over who should be the next prime minister.

Both former premier Iyad Allawi and incumbent prime minister Nuri al-Maliki insist that they are best placed to tackle the war-torn country's insecurity and shaky public services.

Four American soldiers died in July - only one in a hostile incident - bringing to 4,413 the total number to have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, according to a news agency tally.

The latest figures come as the US military carries out a steady drawdown of its forces in Iraq, and a month before it concludes combat operations in the country.

There are approximately 65,000 American soldiers currently stationed in Iraq, but that figure is set to drop to 50,000 by September 1. All US troops must withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011, in line with the terms of a US-Iraq pact.

- AFP

 
 
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[Keith]

Too late now. He should have had the courage of his convictions before the invasion of Iraq and maybe he would have stopped the deaths and disablement of not just British servicemen but young Australians. It takes people of great courage and principle to speak the truth when lies are more popular.
 
ABC NEWS
 
Deputy leader doubted case for Iraq war
By London correspondent Rachael Brown

Britain's former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has told the Iraq inquiry he was nervous about the intelligence being relied on before the invasion in 2003.

Lord Prescott was Tony Blair's loyal deputy for a decade, and party to 23 secret war cabinet meetings.

He told the Chilcot inquiry he had significant doubts about 2002 intelligence reports upon which the case for war was based.

"The conclusions were a little ahead, I think, of what the evidence we had, but perhaps that's the way it is," he said.

"What you do in intelligence is a bit of tittle tattle here and a bit more information there and a judgement made."

But he defended the military action taken as legal, and said while it is fashionable to criticise Tony Blair for taking the UK to war, the PM agonised over the death of every British soldier.

 
 
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[Keith]

The US and Britain wanted any old excuse for War. Simple. And John Howard was silly or slimy enough to go along with them. And young Australians paid with their lives and now suffer disabilities for life. Beware any Government which tells you we must invade another country to defend ourselves.

THE AGE

US 'high on military' in rush to Iraq war: Blix

GAVIN CORDON AND SAM MARSDEN, LONDON

July 29, 2010

BRITAIN and the United States should have realised their intelligence about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction was flawed, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors has told an inquiry.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry in London on Tuesday, Dr Hans Blix said it should have set alarm bells ringing in Whitehall and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam Hussein still had WMD.

Dr Blix said it remained his ''firm view'' that the 2003 invasion by British and US forces had been illegal.

He did not doubt the sincerity of former British prime minister Tony Blair and his US counterpart, President George W. Bush, in their belief that Iraq did have WMD, but added: ''What I question was the good judgment.''

Dr Blix said he had privately confided to Tony Blair in the autumn of 2002 - shortly before the inspectors returned to Iraq - that he thought it was ''plausible'' that Saddam did have WMD. But in the weeks leading to the invasion in March 2003, after inspectors had failed to uncover anything significant, he had cautioned Mr Blair that there might be nothing.

''What I said was I still thought there were prohibited items in Iraq but ? our belief in the intelligence had been weakened,'' he said.

Dr Blix said that the inspectors had visited 30 sites based on intelligence tipoffs but found little.

He suggested the Americans had been ''taken in'' by claims made by Iraqi defectors.

The pressure of the US military build-up in the region had led Saddam Hussein to agree to the return of UN inspectors in September 2002, he said.

He did not believe that Britain and the US were entitled to invade Iraq without a further UN Security Council resolution.

Dr Blix accused the US administration of being ''high on military'' in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001.

''They felt that they could get away with it and therefore it was desirable,'' he said.

By spring 2003, with British and US forces massing in Kuwait on the Iraq border, Dr Blix said progress to war had been ''almost unstoppable'' and Britain was ''a prisoner on that train''.

PA


Was Saddam a danger to the world? No, says Blix
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/66424,news-comment,news-politics,was-iraq-leader-saddam-hussein-a-danger-to-the-world-no-says-blix

However, despite carrying out six inspections a day, and visiting a total of 700 sites, they found almost nothing that could be deemed "a major breech" of UN resolutions - though both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair claimed the contrary.

Of these 700 sites, 30 had been pointed out to the Blix team as major weapons establishments by the CIA and MI6 ? yet no serious weaponry was found there.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Now that it is too late to change the outcome, the Chilcot inquiry is admitting today what the blogs were telling you back in 2003, when there was still a chance to change the outcome; that the case for war with Iraq was a total lie http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html

So, will you wait 6 years until the government officially tells you what I am telling you now; that the case for war with Iran is a total lie?

 

[Keith]

And don't forget it was John Howard and his cabinet, which included Mr Abbott, who were responsible for sending Australian Troops to Iraq, and who didn't have the intelligence or principle to analyse US and British positions on the need for the Iraq invasion. It was all lies of course, as many knew at the time. Of course people will say, so what, that is old news and was ages ago. Well I will tell you so what. We now have young Australians dead, injured and disabled because of the decision to send them into harms way in Iraq. But of course they are out of sight and out of mind now. BUT they are presenting and will continue to present at DVA to claim for legitimate disabilities. And this is a cost to them, their families and the nation which should have been avoided.
 
Worse still regarding Afghanistan the Wikileaks website has exposed how John Howard wanted to double our Troop numbers in Afghanistan. If Mr Abbott is elected to office will he increase the Troop commitment to Afghanistan? He is well known for being gung ho. One never knows with Tony Abbott because he is a loose canon and plays his cards very close to his chest. What you see and hear on TV radio etc with Tony Abbott is not the real Tony Abbott.
 
And for those who can't stand me criticising their beloved Liberals and love me criticising the Government I say you are sickening biased observers. We in "swinging" Australia can see through the lies and nonsense from both sides. Both sides of the Parliament must be held to account.
 
Keith Tennent.
 
SMH

Hans Blix slams Bush, Blair over Iraq war

July 28, 2010 - 7:04AM

Ex-UN weapons inspector Hans Blix questioned on Tuesday the judgment of Britain and the United States in invading Iraq on the basis of evidence of weapons of mass destruction that was clearly "poor".

Giving evidence to an independent British inquiry into the March 2003 war in London, Blix said "I have never questioned the good faith" of then US president George W Bush and then British prime minister Tony Blair over the conflict.

"What I question was the good judgment, particularly in Bush, but also in Blair's judgment in accepting the intelligence that suggested Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - the stated reason for war," he said.

Blix was executive chairman of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq from March 2000 to June 2003, charged with finding the WMD that London and Washington were convinced Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hiding.

Such weapons were never found, undermining the whole basis for a conflict that left thousands of Iraqis and foreign soldiers dead.

Blix told the Iraq inquiry in London that he initially believed Iraq had WMD, saying that while it had "unilaterally" destroyed much of the weapons it used in the early 1990s, elements remained that could have been built on.

He told the panel that he felt at first that a British dossier setting out the intelligence case in September 2002 was "plausible", adding: "I felt that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction."

However, he began to change his view after January 2003 because of a greater willingness by the Iraqis to cooperate with his inspectors and because sites identified by intelligence documents kept coming up empty.

"What was really important was about this business of sites given, was that when we reported we did not find any WMD they should have realised in Washington and London that their sources were poor," he said.

Blix said he informed Blair and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of his concerns, telling the inquiry: "I alerted them that we were sceptical. Certainly, I gave the warning.

The former inspector said he wanted to continue the inspections and so indeed had Britain. "But the military timetable did not permit that," he added.

AFP

FLASHBACK - Bush Cites Oil As Reason to Stay in Iraq
http://www.truth-out.org/article/bush-cites-oil-as-reason-stay-iraq

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil - President Bush.

Audit: U.S. Can't Account For Billions In Iraqi Funds
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128793151#commentBlock

A U.S. audit has found that the Defense Department can't properly account for how it spent about 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money earmarked for rebuilding the war-ravaged country.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
95%???

[Keith]

FLASHBACK - False Pretenses
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

 
 
McCain On The Iraq War: ?We Already Won That One?
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/26/mccain-iraq-already-won

When Geoff introduced himself as chairman of the board of Iraq Veterans against the War, McCain retorted, ?You?re too late. We already won that one.?

McCain is now the second U.S. official to declare ?mission accomplished? in a war that continues to ravage the people and land of Iraq.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Then why are our kids still getting blown to bits there?

More to the point, in what way did the US win? The US did not remove Saddam's weapons of mass destruction because he did not have any. The US did not avenge 9-11 because Saddam had nothing to do with it. The US did not punish Iraq for supporting Al Qaeda because Iraq and Al Qaeda were ideological enemies. The reasons given for the war were all lies. Therefore, victory, at least in the public perception, is impossible to achieve.

[Keith]

 
More progress in Iraq.
 
Car bombs kill Shiite pilgrims
By Foreign Affairs editor Peter Cave

ABC NEWS

A double car-bombing has killed 19 people in the Iraqi Shia holy city of Karbala.

Four people have also been killed in a separate car-bombing at the offices of a Saudi-owned television network in Baghdad.

The attacks in Karbala came two days before ceremonies to mark the birth of Imam Mohammed al-Mehdi, the 12th and last Imam of the Shiite faith.

The occasion brings hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the holy cities of Karbala and nearby Najaf.

The car bombs targeted Shiite pilgrims on the road between the two cities.

In Baghdad, a single suicide car bomber struck at the offices of the Al-Arabiya network, which is regarded as pro-Western by militant groups in Iraq.

Those killed were three security guards and an office worker. The network had abandoned operations at the bureau a month ago after warnings of a possible insurgent attack.

 
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[Keith]

The blackest hearts: War crimes in Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/24/war-crimes-us-soldiers-iraq


As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, "They're all dead. I killed them all." Cortez held Abeer down and Green raped her. Then Cortez pushed a pillow over her face, still pinning her arms with his knees. Green grabbed the AK, pointed the gun at the pillow, and fired one shot, killing Abeer.

The men were becoming extremely frenzied and agitated now. Barker brought a kerosene lamp he had found in the kitchen and dumped the contents on Abeer. Spielman handed a lighter to either Barker or Cortez, who lit the flame. Spielman went to the bedroom and found some blankets to throw on the body to stoke the fire

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

[Keith]

If you are looking for truth believing politicians is a no no. If you want lies and spin then you will be right at home hanging on their every word. Always, always read between the lines. And you need a good memory and information filing system to compare what they say now to what they said before. Of course politicians know most people simply live in the present , they forget the past, and most will believe what they want to believe. It's the sheep mentality.

 

THE AGE

Iraq policy sunk in a mire of mendacity
SIMON JENKINS
July 24, 2010

THIS is a ''clarification'' from No. 10 Downing Street. When the Deputy Prime Minister says illegal, he means legal. When he says disastrous, he means brilliant. When he says black, he is fumbling for the word white.

On Wednesday, Nick Clegg stood in the British House of Commons and described the Iraq war as ''the most disastrous decision of all'' and the invasion of Iraq as ''illegal''. Downing Street hurriedly explained that he actually meant that the invasion was a triumph of British arms and as lawful as driven snow.

Earlier in the week, the head of British intelligence service MI5 at the time of the war, Lady Manningham-Buller, had vindicated Clegg's statement. So, too, had earlier evidence from Lord Goldsmith, the then attorney-general. But Clegg was caught between the whirring flywheel of truth and the crashing gears of a mendacious diplomacy. He was torn to shreds.

The Liberal Democrat leader appears to have come unqualified to the task of high office. When pushed against the wall by the arch-warmonger, Labour's Jack Straw, he showed himself a serial truth-teller. While this handicap may not be insuperable at home, in foreign affairs it is a killer. Clegg was supposed to lie under political torture.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was in a difficult position. He was visiting Barack Obama in Washington at the time. Cameron and Obama have emerged from their first bilateral meeting as sensible men who must somehow navigate their respective ways from an inherited war to an honourable peace, amid a Western foreign policy that has spent a decade drenched in sophistry.

Commentators are often asked to predict history's verdict on a particular era, and are well advised to decline. But it is hard not to see Western policy in the first decade of the 21st century as sunk in a morass of folly. It was subcontracted to a defence lobby desperate for a role, which it found in exploiting weak leaders by playing on the ideology of fear.

As a result, at the end of the decade, Western states found themselves spending more money to become less safe, with their global interests more at risk than at the start. The legacy of the victory over communism was squandered.

This has applied not just to the bloodthirsty horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has applied to the stance taken against other peoples opposed to these wars, such as Iran and Pakistan. It has led the West into contentious relations with the entire Muslim world, fuelling anti-Western sentiment not only across Asia but among Muslim populations within the West.

The past decade has seen an entire foreign policy elite lose the art of friendship.

Bred under the communist threat, the West's leaders craved a mighty enemy and found it by exaggerating the threat from militant Islam and elevating terrorist gangs to the status of state enemies.

The enmity of states has given rise to the deployment of other counterproductive crudities such as sanctions on Iran, trade barriers against the developing world and the exchange of rhetorical abuse, beloved of George Bush and his amanuensis, Tony Blair. These two seemed at times to mimic Plato's tyrants, ''always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader''.

Bush and Blair treated the world as an enemy: ''He who is not with us is against us.'' From French surrender monkeys to Chinese traders, from Latin American drug growers to British computer hackers, from international lawyers to UN mediators, every alien was a suspect foe. Foreign policy lurched into paranoid mode. Guantanamo filled with victims and ludicrous sums were spent on security. The world responded in kind. Airports became nests of xenophobia.

This was nowhere better demonstrated than in Blair's dreadful January appearance before Britain's Chilcot inquiry, which now meekly claims to be unconcerned with the legality of the Iraq war (so what is it concerned with?). All evidence has testified that the war was a mistake and undermined Britain's security. Blair's contradictory display of pro-war self-delusion, arrogance and folly should be a textbook video for any school of 21st-century statesmanship.

Though Cameron's public remarks on foreign policy so far have seemed reactionary, especially on the war, he learns fast, and is comfortable at summits and in bilateral encounters. His preamble to this week's successful visit to Washington rejected the past emphasis on a special relationship and recognised that Britain was a ''junior partner'' but a partner ''of choice''. It had its own view of the world. Subsequent confused signals over an Afghanistan withdrawal have hinted that Britain may at last realise some leverage over US war policy.

To leave only the US hopelessly fighting the Taliban would visit on Washington an even lonelier defeat than is implied by the current talk of a phased withdrawal. Obama is on a painful hook. It is for Britain to help him off it without the senseless slaughter of more soldiers.

The prize before these two leaders is now great, of bringing the mendacious bravado of the past decade into line with reality on the ground. It is to end two unnecessary wars and rebuild trust with a Muslim world that has no more interest in the pestilence of terror than does the West. It is to accept that the world is not a place of blocs but of individual states, each with divergent interests and fears. It is to realise colossal savings in defence spending and to shift the emphasis of foreign policy from state-sponsored paranoia to global trade and prosperity.

Clegg is right. So if Cameron cannot yet tell the truth, he can at least mean what Clegg says.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist.

Iraq Withdrawal? Obama and Clinton Expanding US Paramilitary Force in Iraq
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212530-Iraq-Withdrawal-Obama-and-Clinton-Expanding-US-Paramilitary-Force-in-Iraq
As a candidate for president, Senator Hillary Clinton vowed to ban the use of private security contractors, which she referred to as mercenaries. "These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq," Clinton said in February 2008. "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." Clinton was one of only two senators to sponsor legislation to ban these companies. Fast forward to the present and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is presiding over what is shaping up to be a radical expansion of a private, US-funded paramilitary force that will operate in Iraq for the foreseeable future--the very type of force Clinton once claimed she opposed.

[Keith]

U.S. Gen. Odierno presses case for $2B in funding to rebuild Iraq
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/110101-us-general-in-iraq-presses-case-for-2b-in-funding

Revenues from about a dozen oil contracts will not start being significant until 2013 or 2014, when Iraq will be able to produce enough oil, according to Odierno.


Fallujah children's 'genetic damage'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10721562

Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.

Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
This is the aftermath of depleted uranium weapons. And the really scary part is that the same thing is happening to returning veterans http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x67989

Photos Iraq babies born deformed depleted uranium US Veterans becoming sick with DU Children living lives with DU
http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/depleted_uranium_iraq_afghanistan_balkans.html

In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital, Iraq, had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.

This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.

Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects but what is more alarming is: "a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage."

State Dept. planning to field a small army in Iraq
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/21/97915/state-dept-planning-to-field-a.html

Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.

In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Hillary gets her own Army?

[Keith]

More progress in Iraq.
 
ABC NEWS
 
Three killed in Baghdad Green Zone attack
 

Three security contractors working for the US government have been killed and 15 wounded in a rocket attack on the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, the American embassy says.

"Two Ugandans and one Peruvian were killed and 15 people injured" by "a rocket fired into the International Zone," the embassy said, using another name for the Green Zone in central Baghdad.

"Two of the injured were American citizens," it said. "All the dead and injured worked for a US government security contractor which protects US government facilities in Iraq."

The Green Zone, which houses the US and several other major embassies as well as Iraqi government buildings, is still the target of frequent rocket and mortar attacks.

- AFP

 
 
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[Keith]

 
And Australia went along with the fraud hook, line and sinker. Ah well it seems we still can?t think or act for ourselves. The days of Empire remain, the only difference being the head of Empire lives in Washington and not London. It's all too late now. Australian lives have been lost, young Australians have been disabled and Iraq has been left a uranium dump with destroyed infrastructure and a fractured society.

THE AGE

 

Ex-MI5 chief blasts Iraq invasion
RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, LONDON
July 22, 2010



Eliza Manningham-Buller leaves after giving evidence to the Iraq War Inquiry in London. Photo: AFP

THE former head of MI5, Britain's Security Service, has delivered a devastating critique of the invasion of Iraq, saying it substantially increased the threat of terrorist attacks in Britain and was a significant factor behind the radicalisation of young Muslims.

Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in Iraq: ''Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack upon Islam.''

Asked by Sir Roderic Lyne, a member of the inquiry, to what extent the conflict exacerbated the threat from international terrorism facing Britain, she replied: ''Substantially.''

She was not surprised, she said, that British citizens were behind the July 7, 2005 attacks in London nor that an increasing number of Britons were ''attracted to the ideology of Osama bin Laden and saw the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their co-religionists and the Muslim world''.

Invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein allowed al-Qaeda to establish a foothold in Iraq that it had never previously managed. ''Arguably, we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before,'' Lady Manningham-Buller told the inquiry.

She referred to assessments by the Joint Intelligence Committee, of which she was a member, warning ministers that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat to Britain. If they read the reports, she said, ministers would have been in no doubt over the threat.

The former MI5 chief said she did not have individual discussions at the time with Tony Blair about the effect invading Iraq would have on the terrorist threat to Britain.

She referred to Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, which provided intelligence for the infamous Iraqi weapons dossier.

''I believe the head of the SIS saw him [Blair] much more frequently than I did, for understandable reasons''.

Lady Manningham-Buller also mentioned Sir David Omand, the government's security and intelligence co-ordinator in 2003, who told the Chilcot inquiry earlier this year that MI6 had ''over-promised and under-delivered'' on Iraq.

She said that in March 2002, a year before the invasion, MI5 had advised the Home Office that Iraqi intelligence agents in Britain would pose little threat in the event of war. ''We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low,'' she said.

''We did think that Saddam Hussein might resort to terrorism in the theatre if he thought his regime was toppled, but we didn't believe he had the capability to do anything in the UK. That turned out to be the right judgment.''

MI5 was concerned about the threat from al-Qaeda even before the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, she said. She dismissed claims made by elements in the Bush administration that Iraq had been involved in the attacks. ''There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection,'' she said.

She was asked about an interview she gave to The Guardian newspaper last year in which she first set out her concerns about an invasion of Iraq. As US and British forces were preparing to invade, she had asked her superiors, ''Why now?''

She said it ''as explicitly as I could. I said something like, 'The threat to us would increase because of Iraq,' '' she told The Guardian.

By focusing on Iraq, the British government was diverted from the continuing threat posed by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Lady Manningham-Buller said.

GUARDIAN

BP 'Awarded' MASSIVE Iraq Oil Contracts in Gordon Brown's 'New World Order'
http://www.activistpost.com/2010/07/bp-awarded-massive-iraq-oil-contracts.html

Iraqi oil fields become a treasure trove for the usual suspects as our soldiers protect their booty

Eric Blair
Activist Post

Is anyone still confused as to why we continue the absurd wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

In Afghanistan, the Director of the CIA has openly boasted that fewer than 100 Al Qaida members remain there, yet there are reportedly 102,000 U.S servicemen and at least 120,000 private contractors still stationed there. Incidentally, the recent "discovery" of vast mineral deposits is being touted as a new justification to stay.

[Keith]

And this is exactly what Mick Kelty, former AFP head, said would happen until he was muzzled by John Howard.

Threat rose after Iraq war: ex-spy chief

AFP
From: AFP
July 21, 2010
HERALD SUN

A convoy of British armoured vehicles in southern Iraq. Picture: British Ministry of Defence handout Source: AFP

IRAQ posed little threat to Britain just before the 2003 war - but the danger of extremist attacks surged following the conflict, the ex-head of domestic security service MI5 told an inquiry on Tuesday.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, chief of the intelligence agency from 2002 to 2007, also dismissed any connection between Iraq and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

She was giving evidence at Britain's public inquiry into the Iraq war, which has heard from figures including former prime minister Tony Blair, who was in power when the country joined the US under then US President George W Bush in the war.

Manningham-Buller said that in 2002, MI5 had advised Blair's government that the "direct threat" from Iraq was "low".

"We did think that Saddam Hussein might resort to terrorism in the theatre if he thought his regime was toppled but we didn't believe he had the capability to do anything in the UK," she said.

But MI5 "did not foresee" the number of Britons who became involved in extremist plots at home - such as the July 7, 2005 bombings in London which killed 52 people - following the conflict, she said.

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people - not a whole generation, a few among a generation - who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam," she said.

"During 2003-04, we realised that the focus was not foreigners. The rising and increasing threat was a threat from British citizens and that was a very different scenario to, as it were, stopping people coming in."

Manningham-Buller also said there was "no credible intelligence" linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks in the US.

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest that connection. That was the judgment of the CIA. It was not a judgement that found favour in some parts of the American machine," she said.

The probe is due to report by the end of the year and will hear from former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix as well as senior military figures next week

 
 
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[Keith]

NATO: Whoring Itself To American Imperialism
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930842-nato-whoring-itself-to-american-imperialism

Where the US claims its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is only temporary the massive infrastructures established in these countries in the form of military bases belies this claim. They are not dispensing Enduring Freedom but an enduring presence and Afghanistan and Iraq are only the most recent franchises in a global network of over 700 US military bases.

Imperialism is a very expensive game and has left America the most indebted country in the world. It is fighting foreign wars with borrowed money on borrowed time. It then becomes necessary to defray the costs of this cretinous extravagance by coercing allies, namely NATO, into being the whores of US imperialism all too willing to cough up cash and lives in a sorely corrupted cause for despicable motives.

[Keith]

WMD claims were lies says former envoy
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/wmd-claims-were-lies-says-former-envoy-2024868.html

Britain was taken to war in Iraq on the basis of ?lies?, scaremongering and deliberate exaggeration, a former UK diplomat told the Iraq inquiry.

Carne Ross claimed that Britain and the United States privately did not believe that Iraq's weapons programmes posed a ?substantial threat? before launching the 2003 invasion.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/

Oooh. Big shock there http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html

[Keith]

Biden in Iraq: US Influence Shrinks, Iran Gains
http://uruknet.com/?p=m67692&hd=&size=1&l=e

The United States isn't abandoning Iraq. Quite the reverse: Iraq is abandoning the United States, in favor of closer ties with Iran. The problem is that even if the United States wanted to "interfere too much" in Iraq's affairs, it would fail. Such interference would backfire, stir Iraqi anti-Americanism, fuel the support for rebels such as Muqtada al-Sadr, and push Iraq even closer to Iran.

The clearest sign of the lack of US influence in Iraq is that oil contracts, once seen as a great prize for the US occupiers of Iraq -- remember Ahmed Chalabi promising to make sure that US oil companies get the lion's share of Iraqi oil -- have gone not to US firms but to rival firms from China, Russia, and other Asian and European companies.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/

 

So, please, let me get my head wrapped around this; after all the blood and money spent here, the greatest benefactor of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is... IRAN?!?!?

[Keith]

"Falluja Worse Than Hiroshima "
http://uruknet.com/?p=m67560&hd=&size=1&l=e

As some of you know, Falluja is a forbidden city. It was subjected to intense bombardments in 2004, with DU bombs and White phosphorus, and since it has become a no go zone - meaning that both the Iraqi puppet authorities and the U.S invading/occupying forces do not allow anyone to conduct any real study in Falluja. Falluja is basically under siege.

Obviously both the Americans and the Iraqis know something and are hiding it from the public. And this is where Prof. C.Busby comes in the picture. He was/is adamant to get to the bottom of what took place in Falluja in 2004.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/

 

Just as was the case with Agent Orange poisoning, and the genetic damage it wreaked on the lives of Vietnamese people, what the US has done to the people of Falluja will be with them for generations.

Your tax dollars at work, folks: doesn't it make you feel proud?!?

[Keith]

More progress in Iraq I see.
 
Iraq?s Ancient Ruins Face New Looting
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/world/middleeast/26looting.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The looting of Iraqs ancient ruins is thriving again. This time it is not a result of the stuff happens chaos that followed the American invasion in 2003, but rather the bureaucratic indifference of Iraq?s newly sovereign government.

Thousands of archaeological sites containing some of the oldest treasures of civilization have been left unprotected, allowing what officials of Iraqs antiquities board say is a resumption of brazenly illegal excavations, especially here in southern Iraq.

 
 

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[Keith]

 
State Dept Wants Own ?Combat Force? for Iraq
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/14/state-dept-wants-own-combat-force-for-iraq/

Tenuous though it may be, the Obama Administration maintains that it still intends to complete the Iraq military pullout by the end of December 2011. Even that won?t be the end of combat operations, however.

Now the US State Department is looking to get into the war fighting business in its own right, saying it needs its own combat force to meet the ?extreme security challenges in Iraq.?

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Translation: we are never completely going to leave Iraq militarily!

 

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[Keith]

From: Greg Mitchell
Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2010
Subject: My tour of Hell


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/my-tour-of-hell/story-e6frg8h6-1225875472110

 

My tour of Hell

Cameron Stewart
From: The Australian
June 04, 2010 12:23PM


Debra Robilliard in the HMAS Cerberus medical training room. Photo: Aaron Francis

THE young Iraqi girl was carried into the military hospital like a rag doll, her nose blown off by a piece of shrapnel.

Debra Robilliard remembers the moment clearly. The Australian Army nurse was on duty at the Balad US air force base in central Iraq, commonly known as Camp Anaconda, frantically tending to a line of stretchers carrying newly maimed American soldiers who had been flown in from the battle for Fallujah.

Four-year-old Melak had also been found in Fallujah, lying alone in a field, seriously injured. She had been choppered in with the troops and it was left to Robilliard to nurse her through. ?They found this little girl in a paddock with a shrapnel wound which had basically wiped off her nose,? recalls Robilliard, 53. ?She had been lying there for days, and no family members could be found, so we assumed they?d been killed. So she lived with us in the hospital as the surgeons tried to reconstruct her face. She was the cutest little thing, and soon she was being spoilt rotten and had us all under her thumb.?

Robilliard did not realise it at the time, but watching Melak?s recovery would also help to save the nurse from a descent into despair as the human debris of the Iraq war threatened to engulf her.

The story of the Australian Defence Force Medical Detachment ? 20 nurses, doctors and medics who were sent into Iraq as the insurgency against Coalition forces erupted in 2004 and 2005 ? has never been fully told, in part because their deployment was not widely publicised. ?It was not announced at the time, but I don?t know why. Maybe because it was a bit political because the war was not popular,? says Robilliard, an intensive-care nurse who has agreed to be interviewed about her experience for the first time.

She and her group saw more carnage than any other Australians in Iraq, because they were the ones whose job it was to greet the medivac choppers at the M.A.S.H-style tent hospital at the sprawling base 70km north of Baghdad. The hospital was part of a base for 25,000 troops and was a funnel for US casualties across much of central Iraq, as well as for injured Iraqi civilians and even prisoners of war. ?It was like a big slaughterhouse; it was just revolting,? says Robilliard. ?Lots of bullet wounds to the head, lots of amputations and terrible wounds from IEDs [improvised explosive devices], grenade blasts and mortar explosions. Lots of these victims were fit young men with an average age of 19 years. It was heartbreaking.?

Five years on, Robilliard flicks through photos of patients she treated during her six-month deployment. There are graphic images of soldiers on operating tables with red raw stumps where legs had been only hours earlier, as well as other more terrible injuries. As we speak at the HMAS Cerberus navy base southeast of Melbourne where she now works training young medics, it is clear that her Iraq deployment from September 2004 to March 2005 was a near-miss for Robilliard as well. She almost lost her life ? not to mention her faith in humanity.

Robilliard?s private diary covering her tour in Iraq is instructive ? even without reading the words. Early entries are neatly written as she describes her excitement at having been chosen as an Army reservist for the inaugural Australian medical deployment into the country. But as the months progress, the entries morph into wild scrawls full of loathing at what she is witnessing.  I?m tired and I?ve just had enough of this killing crap, she writes one night after almost four months in Balad. Americans killing Iraqis, Iraqis killing Americans, Iraqis killing Iraqis. Had enough. What?s all this about?

Welcome to Mortarville
The request for Australia to send a medical contingent to Iraq was delivered quietly by US forces in mid-2004. It was a response to the alarming rise in attacks on Coalition troops by insurgents following the 2003 invasion by the US-led Coalition to topple Saddam Hussein?s regime. Robilliard?s group was to be the first of three rotations, and she was thrilled to be asked to join.

As a young girl growing up in Chelsea, in Melbourne?s southeast, she had dreamed of being a nurse. She chose to specialise in intensive care because she says she was ?fascinated by the ability to help patients through technology?. But in 1998, after years of civilian nursing, she had a hunger for more excitement and so she joined the Army, where she was deployed as an intensive care nurse to support the Australian military deployment to East Timor. She then transferred from full-time service to the Reserves in 2003, to run a shop in rural Victoria with her partner, Woody, before getting the call-up for Iraq in 2004. ?I don?t think any of us knew how extreme the job would be,? she says.

The Australians flew to Kuwait and then by military plane into Baghdad without being told where they were to be deployed. They hunkered down in one of Saddam Hussein?s abandoned palaces for several days before being transferred to their new home. What no one told them was that the Balad base was a prime target for insurgents, who would regularly lob mortars from the opposite bank of the nearby Tigris River. ?On our first day in Balad,? Robilliard recalls, ?four mortars went off as they were trying to show us around the base, forcing us to take cover. They told us the nickname for the base was Mortarville.?

To make matters worse, there was no concrete bunker protection available for nurses while on duty, because they had to remain at the bedsides of their critically ill patients. ?Every time a mortar siren went off,? says Robilliard, ?we would put on our helmet and vest and stay where we were, hoping it would miss the hospital.?

To her surprise, the Australian contingent was not only responsible for treating injured US troops but also for treating wounded Iraqi civilians and even enemy insurgents, who were chained to their beds, sedated and blindfolded, and held under 24-hour armed guard in the POW ward. As a result, Robilliard came to understand some of the complexities of the war through the stories of her patients.

?One day a young Iraqi woman came in with her seriously injured mother,? she says. ?The young woman had been working as interpreter for a high-ranking US officer, so the insurgents tried to kill her. They planted a bomb at her front door, but her mother answered the door instead and lost a leg and almost an arm. The daughter stayed by her bedside and was devastated. Her brothers believed that if the mother died the daughter would have to commit suicide, because the accident was her fault.?

Another time a young Iraqi woman and her young daughters ? one aged two years and the other two months ? were brought in with severe burns. ?A grenade had been thrown through her back door, only because she was married to a soldier in the Iraqi army. The two-year-old girl did not survive. It was so sad.?

Robilliard discovered that Iraqis were just as likely to be victims of the IEDs laid by insurgents as were US soldiers. ?One Iraqi guy came in because he had picked up a [booby-trapped] torch and it had exploded in his face when he turned it on. It blew out both his eyes and both his hands off. I watched him when he finally woke up: he had no hands and he couldn?t see. He was trying to scratch himself but he couldn?t. We had to get an interpreter to explain to him what had happened.?

The daily routine for Robilliard and her colleagues was physically and mentally exhausting, even without the daily mortar attacks. She worked in stifling heat for 12.5-hour shifts, six days a week, and often more when mass casualties came in during special operations such as the US assault on Fallujah. Her job was to stabilise the soldiers for long enough so that they could be airlifted to hospitals in Germany.

?During the attack on Fallujah they came through all day, every day,? she says. ?In lots of cases I actually hoped that the soldiers we saw would not survive because their injuries were so terrible. I remember one soldier who came in was so badly burned that we could not even tell if he was black or Caucasian.?

When her shifts were over Robilliard would walk across the base to her small room, where she would try to sleep despite the almost constant noise of landing choppers and F-16 fighter jets.

Lucky escapes
But amid the madness there were some uplifting moments. Robilliard recalls treating a US soldier who was one of eight Marines inside an armoured personnel carrier when it veered into deep water and sank. Six of them died, but this survivor told her how he was trapped in the vehicle with water rising up to his chin when an unknown person reached in and pulled him out. ?He told me he would really like to meet the guy who saved him,? recalls Robilliard.

Two days later, another Marine was brought in after attempting to commit suicide. ?He said, ?I?m tired of all this ? all I do is pick up body parts,?? recalls Robilliard. ?He said the only good thing that had happened to him was that he got to save the life of a soldier who had been trapped in a Bradley [armoured personnel carrier]. When I told him that I had nursed that man a few days ago, and that he wanted to meet the person who saved him, that guy?s face broke into a huge smile. For me, that smile was worth the whole six months over there.?

For the Australians who worked in the hospital ? little more than a long row of tents ? the daily mortar attacks became a test of nerves. Robilliard felt she had almost come to terms with the danger when a mortar landed directly in front of the hospital entrance, burying itself into the dirt. Miraculously, it did not explode. ?If that one had gone off we would have lost most of the hospital,? she says. On another occasion a mortar actually fell through a tent in the hospital, landing on a computer keyboard and breaking the fingers of a woman who was typing. Once again their lives were saved when it failed to explode.

Robilliard remembers one day sitting on the toilet in an outdoor portable when she heard what she thought was a mortar. ?I heard a thud and I freaked out because I thought a mortar was landing on the toilet,? she recalls. ?So I ran out with my pants down, but it turns out that it was only a door slamming. It is funny how fear can get to you like that.? Another time a siren sounded, signalling a chemical weapons attack. The only problem was that the chemical protection suits for the hospital staff were back in their cabins, 500 metres away. ?We all went pale and thought, ?What are we going to do? There is nothing we can do because our gear is in our rooms,?? she says. ?We all thought we were gone, but actually they had just pressed the wrong button ? it was a mortar, not a gas attack.?

After four months of trying to save mutilated soldiers and civilians while dodging mortars, Robilliard began to struggle. She wrote in her diary: We all feel that it?s just a matter of time before one of us at the hospital gets hit ... I wish I was brave enough to tell my boss that I want to go home, I feel less and less safe each day.

As she became more tired, Robilliard became irritated by the favouritism which American medics showed towards US soldiers compared with the injured Iraqis. While the Australians sought to treat each of the hospital patients equally, she was disappointed to sometimes see American medics treat Iraqi patients in a second-class manner. She also found it harder to accept the rationale behind the conflict. ?It occurred to me one day that the only injuries we were seeing were war-related. It just seemed like a maze of hatred and horror, and it was hard sometimes to remain focused on the good things.?

One day, towards the end of her posting, Robilliard recalls staring at a healthy US soldier in the mess hall and picturing him as one of her patients. I found myself imagining what he would look like with his face all blown up and burnt, she wrote in her diary. All of a sudden I realised what I was doing and snapped out of it ? a bit shocked that I was doing that.

On another occasion she heard the sound of incoming choppers and watched as the medics brought in a young American soldier with severe head wounds. ?I just stood there as they tried to revive him, and then they said, ?Nup, he?s gone,?? she recalls. This young man?s death was no different from those that Robilliard had witnessed every other day in Iraq, but this time something snapped inside her. ?I thought, ?No, you?ve got to be kidding ? another 19-year-old. I had never met him, but I just cried for the rest of the day. I was shedding tears for an unknown soldier and I thought, ?I?ve just had enough of this.??

Against her better judgment, Robilliard began to count down the days in her head until her deployment was up. Only days before she was due to leave there was a suicide bomb attack on the base. Robilliard records the moment in her diary: A failed suicide bomber today ? how embarrassing. This guy needs to go in the Darwin Awards [the tongue-in-cheek ?awards? given to people killed or seriously injured in stupid ways]. He was heading towards a vehicle control point and he stopped about 500 metres before it with a flat tyre. He was scrounging around the back of the car and two of his 10 bombs went off. The would-be-bomber was only injured, so Robilliard suddenly found herself nursing the man who had tried to kill her and her colleagues. It really is an incredible feeling, caring for someone who went out that morning with killing lots of people in mind, she wrote in her diary that night.

Finally, her turn came to go home. But as she was standing on the airstrip watching the RAAF Hercules coming in to land, a mortar siren sounded. ?We could see the Hercules in the air with the Australian flag on it,? she says, ?but then we had to rush back into the shelter and stay there for about four hours.? Eventually the all-clear sounded and Robilliard and her colleagues took off, as 20 more Australians arrived to take their place. ?As we flew away I looked out the window and thought, ?This is nothing but a murderous country.? I was so happy to get out of there.?

Unhappy landings
Unlike the East Timor mission, when Australia welcomed home those who served (including Robilliard and her fellow nurses) with big ceremonies and open arms, there was no welcome home after her Iraq deployment. The Australian Medical Detachment members caught separate flights back to their respective cities. Robilliard found herself flying alone from Kuwait to Sydney and then on a small plane to Albury where she waited alone at the airport for her partner, who was late. ?It hit me like a brick wall. I had gone from a war zone to a tiny airport at Albury. It was surreal.?

Robilliard struggled to fit back into life in rural Victoria, and says she almost lost her relationship with Woody in the months afterwards. ?You romanticise everything when you are away, but the reality when you come home is the opposite,? she says. ?You fight badly, because you feel that your other half does not want to talk about it and does not understand what you?ve been through.?

She found that others, too, could not relate to her experience. ?We had a shop in the country and people would say to me, ?Oh, how was your trip away?? Then I would start to tell them, but I realised they really didn?t want to know about it.? Some even suggested to her that she should never have gone to serve in such an unpopular war. But Robilliard, a mother of two, says she and her family worked hard to get through her bumpy landing and came out the other side intact.

For their efforts in Iraq, the US military awarded Robilliard and her colleagues the US Air Force Achievement Medal. Her citation reads: ?Captain Debra Robilliard distinguished herself by outstanding achievement as a nurse in providing emergency medical care for over 5000 coalition and civilian patients. She provided lifesaving triage and treatment to over 300 coalition force members during seven mass casualty surges. Her extraordinary ability to overcome austere conditions, periodic mortar and rocket fire and multiple challenging barriers to care, while initiating trauma wound and haemorrhage management, established her as an indispensable member.?

Despite her courage and commitment, Robilliard is modest about her achievements in Iraq and says she did not make a difference to the war effort, ?but I know that my Australian colleagues and I made a personal difference to our patients?. Determined not to let her experiences in Iraq spell the end of her military service, in 2007 she volunteered to serve as an intensive-care nurse in Afghanistan. ?I spent four months in Tarin Kowt [the capital of Oruzgan province],? she says. ?That was pretty sad, but it was much better than Iraq. I?ve not seen anything like Iraq.?

Yet even Iraq had the ability to deliver a surprise happy ending for Robilliard. On her second last day in Balad, an Iraqi man approached the base waving photos of a young girl, asking if anyone had seen her. ?The photos were of Melak ? the little girl who had lost her nose and who we had been looking after,? she says. ?It was the girl?s uncle and he had been looking for her for months. Now he could be reunited with her. He was absolutely ecstatic.? Robilliard tells the story and then falls silent. Tears are welling in her eyes. Even now, the memory of a little girl who gave heart to an Australian nurse so far from home burns brightly.

[Keith]

Iraq violence set to delay US troop withdrawal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/12/iraq-us-troop-withdrawal-delay
 
The White House is likely to delay the withdrawal of the first large phase of combat troops from Iraq for at least a month after escalating bloodshed and political instability in the country.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
"Golly gee shuckies, I really meant to bring your kids back home; honest I did with a cherry on top, but ain't it just amazing that every time we are ready to bring the kiddies home, some unknown jerk goes and blows something up!" -- Official White Horse Souse

 
 

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[Keith]

 
Obama administration defies congressional subpoena on Fort Hood documents
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042703170.html

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would provide more information to Congress about the Fort Hood shootings but continued to defy a subpoena request for witness statements and other documents.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
At the time of the shooting, inside sources at Fort Hood reported that what actually happened was that enraged soldiers, informed they were to be deployed yet again to Iraq after having already served their enlistment commitments, rebelled and went on a shooting spree. The US Government decided that admitting there was rebellion in the ranks was probably a good way to inspire other soldiers fed up with the wars to quit shooting themselves and start shooting the politicians. So a plan was quickly improvised to blame the deaths on a crazed long nut assassin (Copyright 1963 CIA) and of course the villain de jour is always going to be a nasty mean ol' Muslim.

With the White House defying a subpoena to provide witness statements, one thing that we now know for a fact is that the story of Fort Hood spoon-fed to us all by ABCNNBBCBS is likely not true.

 

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[Keith]

Iraq says local al Qaeda leader has been killed
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/19/AR2010041901788.html?referrer=emailarticle

Maliki said the team also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported leader of al Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, in an operation backed by U.S. forces.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Killing Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is a real trick when you consider that this article claims he was arrested (after being reported killed) back in 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6155579.ece and this article admits Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is just a made up fictional creation http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E7DF1431F93AA25754C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&emc=eta1

 
 

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[Keith]

Not to mention the thousands and thousands of Military members who have been killed, disabled and scared for life. All because of a lie.
 
GORDON DUFF: MUSINGS ON A SERIES OF UNFOLDING PLOTS; WHAT IS BEING KEPT FROM US
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/04/11/gordon-duff-musings-on-a-series-of-unfolding-plots-what-is-being-kept-from-us/

The movie, Green Zone, covers our attack on Iraq with considerable accuracy. The film clearly outlines how, in order to justify an illegal invasion, an American government created ?false flag? intelligence. Despite any crimes Saddam may have committed, currently America has caused more civilian deaths in Iraq than Saddam in 30 years, the invasion was illegal and any and all involved in its planning, according to international law, should face tribunals. Those who were misled are innocent. Those who did the misleading are war criminals, exactly like Saddam. Our war to save Iraq from a brutal dictator was simply cover for a bank robbery and some ?dirty work? that needed to be done, work that opened the door to country after country being destabilized.

 
 

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[Keith]

PHONY TONY BLAIR HAS MADE A FORTUNE FROM THE IRAQ WAR


London Papers: Tony Blair has Middle East Financial Interests


by Rachel Sylvetsky

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136610

 

(IsraelNN.com) The London Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail have published findings on former Prime Minister Tony Blairs Middle East financial interests as disclosed by the official UK government committee which vets former ministers business interests.

The Daily Mail described Blair as waging an  extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq, referring to the just revealed  fact that Mr. Blair  serves as advisor to a South Korean firm, UI Energy,  since August 2008, and  has made at least 20million since leaving Downing

Blair had convinced the [vetting] committee to keep details of both his business deals from the public for almost two years.
Street in June 2007.


In addition, the daily claimed, the former head of state who is now the European Quartets envoy to the Middle East went to great efforts to keep hidden a separate 1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait,  since June 2008,  reportedly with the task of producing a 1million report on the oil state's future over the next 30 years.

 

None of this was known to the public, when, in a November 2009 interview, shortly after the announcement by PM Netanyahu of a ten month settlement freeze, Tony Blair said: The Office of the Quartet Representative will continue to work hard for the recent growth on the West Bank to be sustained and expanded, for the changes in [Palestinian] access and movement to be deepened; and for a different strategy on Gaza...

 

Blair had convinced the committee to keep details of both his business deals from the public for almost two years, claiming they were market sensitive. The committee's chairman, former Tory Cabinet minister Lord Lang, reviewed the papers recently and ordered the information made public on Thursday.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: 'These revelations show that our former Prime Minister is for sale - he is driven by making as much money as possible.

Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said of Mr Blair's links to UI Energy Corporation: 'This doesn't just look bad, it stinks.

'It seems that the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been in the pay of a very big foreign oil corporation and we have been kept in the dark about it.

'This is revolving door politics at its worst. It's not as if Mr Blair has even stepped back from politics, because he is still politically active in the Middle East.

Blair, speaking to Reuters today after a meeting in Moscow of the Quartet of Middle East mediators from the United States, the EU, Russia and the United Nations, made no reference to the committees disclosures.

He said, referring to the Israel-Arab conflict: I hope very much that in the next few days we will have a package that gives people the sense that yes, despite all the difficulties of the past few days, it is worth having proximity talks and then those leading to direct negotiations.  He added that both sides had to build confidence if the process was to be credible, singling out the Israeli announcement of the construction of 1600 housing units in Jerusalem as an example of what could thwart the start of talks that ultimately aim to create a viable Palestinian state.

"I think there is a continuing discussion about settlement construction and so on and obviously it's very important that neither party does anything that disrupts the possibility of getting the talks going," Blair said.

"The only thing that will give people confidence that meaningful negotiation can take place, is if things aren't done that disrupt this process, which is why the announcement on settlements was unhelpful."

Blair?s spokesman refused to comment on the medias disclosure of Blairs  financial deals with Kuwait and firms with oil interests in the Middle East.

 

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/

That Blair made a "killing"- literally and figuratively - from his involvement in the Iraq war should surprise no one who has any insights into the man's true character.

Waging war, to create profits for private business, is something with which Blair was completely and perfectly comfortable.

To the best of my knowledge, none of his children are in the UK military, so it was always other people's kids and families who were getting killed or maimed for life in this pursuit.

Blair's fight to keep his oil cash secret: Former PM's deals are revealed as his earnings since 2007 reach ?20millionhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259030/Tony-Blairs-secret-dealings-South-Korean-oil-firm-UI-Energy-Corp.html

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.

The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation.

Mr Blair - who has made at least 20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a ?1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait.

 
 

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[Keith]

And this applies to Australian apologists for the Iraq War. Hardly a word of protest or questioning was heard in the Australian Parliament from either side as John Howard sent young Australians off to defend a lie. On top of this a compliant mainstream media sat idly by.
 
Can the 'Bush Lied' Deniers Handle the Truth?
http://readersupportednews.com/off-site-opinion-section/54-iraq/1260-can-the-bush-lied-deniers-handle-the-truth
 
Conservative apologists for the George W. Bush crew are swinging hard these days to defend their man -- and themselves -- from the charge that W. and his gang misled the nation into war. They must worry that they are going to end up on the wrong side of history. After all, a 2008 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans believed that the Bush administration "deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." (This was a big change from a poll taken two months after the 2003 invasion that noted that 67 percent believed Bush had played it straight.)

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
There is far more at stake here than Bush's historical legacy.

Bush did not act alone to lie the nation into war. The entire US GOVERNMENT lies the people of America into wars of conquest. When the obvious lies used to ignite a war of conquest were exposed http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html nobody stood up to call for an end to the wars and the lies, Republican or Democrat.

Obama campaigned on a promise to end the wars, and as he perpetuates and indeed expands them, once again all members of the US Government, in lockstep, go along with the new lies about Iran.

The lies used to start a war are not an indictment of any one man or any one party. The lies used to start a war is a condemnation of the entire US Government, which rather than admit they have mis-managed this nation into total ruin prefer to start a war and hide their crimes under a sea of blood.

 
 

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[Keith]

Gordon Brown to blame for Forces funding cuts, Iraq inquiry is told

David Brown

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/

The Armed Forces had to make cuts every year while troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan because Gordon Brown did not provide sufficient funding, the military?s top civil servant said yesterday.

Sir Bill Jeffrey told the Iraq inquiry that the military had been left with ?significant? financial problems when Mr Brown ordered cuts six months after the start of the campaign.

The comments came three days after the Prime Minister told the inquiry that as Chancellor he had never turned down any request to buy military equipment for the campaign in Iraq. Sir Bill, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence since November 2005, said however that ministers were forced to seek ?cuts? because the defence budget was not sufficient to meet increases in costs.

?The upward pressures have meant that in successive years, I and ministers, we had to think hard about what we would cut,? Sir Bill said.

The military budget had also been left with a ?significant problem? which ?persists to this day? after Mr Brown ordered cuts after a dispute over accountancy rules in 2004, he said.

The Ministry of Defence had to find ?2-?3 billion of ?efficiency savings? in the spending reviews in 2004 and 2007. As a result the military had ?reduced a number of the main equipment programmes and in one or two notable cases chosen to acquire things later than we originally planned?, he added.

Former military commanders had accused Mr Brown of deliberately misleading the inquiry on Friday when he blamed the military for failing to equip the Armed Forces properly.

Sir Bill said that Mr Brown was correct in his evidence that the military budget had increased in real terms by a percentage point or two each year. However, spending had risen because of increased equipment costs, the high level of deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq and the weakness of sterling.

?The defence budget has been stretched and our estimated cost of the programme has exceeded our ability to pay for it,? he added. ?That does not mean that defence is underfunded or has been cut, but that we have a very serious management issue which we have been trying to work through in the last few years.?

Sir Bill said that significant additional pressure was put on the Armed Forces when Britain sent troops to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in 2006 while maintaining a large deployment in Iraq.

?There was some apprehension that if we ended up being involved in Iraq for longer than we were then assuming, then we would become very stretched indeed, as proved to be the case,? he said. ?Being involved in both theatres undoubtedly constrained how much we could contribute to either of them.?

He also revealed that military commanders had been raising concerns about the safety of Snatch Land Rovers almost five years ago. He said he was aware that they were ?very concerned about the protection of the vehicles?.

The Armed Forces started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with ?an outdated stock of armoured vehicles? but the situation had improved, he added.

Sir Bill defended the delays in replacing Snatch Land Rovers after families of troops blown up by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan repeatedly argued that the vehicles were not fit for purpose.

Officials travelling with Mr Brown in Afghanistan at the weekend said that an announcement on 200 new armoured vehicles to replace Snatch Land Rovers was expected within weeks. The Conservatives pointed out that the original contract notice was for ?up to 400? vehicles.

?The reason the Prime Minister?s announcement was confined to these 200 was because we are able to acquire these through an urgent operational requirement as a call on the reserve,? Sir Bill said. ?It certainly does not mean that they won?t acquire more.?

Sir Bill added: ?The fundamental problem is that for some purposes military commanders will always argue that a highly mobile, lightweight vehicle of that sort is important and indeed operationally critical in some cases.

?That is little comfort to those who lost loved ones in Snatch Land Rovers. It is ghastly. I feel that very strongly?.

Earlier David Miliband told the inquiry that Britain must not turn its back on the world as a result of the controversy over the Iraq war. The Foreign Secretary said that it was important not to learn the ?wrong lesson? from the conflict and to decide to leave international engagement to other countries.

He admitted that the March 2003 invasion of Iraq exposed ?divisions? in the international community but insisted the UN would have been damaged if the conflict had not gone ahead.

?We must not be a country that turns our back on the world because if we do, because of the hard decisions that we are faced with, we will be much poorer in all senses of that term,? he added.

Mr Miliband told the inquiry that he voted for the invasion of Iraq in the Commons because Saddam Hussein?s defiance of the United Nations posed a danger to global peace and security.

Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry chairman, adjourned the public sessions until after the general election.and issued a warning to politicians not to use the inquiry for party-political reasons.

 

 
 

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[Keith]

THE AGE
 
'Hurt Locker' team forgotten
NICK MCKENZIE
March 10, 2010
 
Their work helped inspire The Hurt Locker (inset), but for Australian explosives experts such as Tony Gilchrist (above, on one of his 102 missions in Iraq), it seems Oscars come easier than bravery awards.

IF ART is meant to imitate life, then something went wrong when Kathryn Bigelow's film, The Hurt Locker, won the main awards at the Oscars.

In contrast to the very public adulation of the film, there has been a battle for recognition waged behind closed doors at the Australian Defence Force headquarters in Canberra.

In this battle, Australian soldiers who were part of the secret multinational taskforce in Iraq, whose work helped to inspire The Hurt Locker, have come out losers.

Despite the unique and deadly nature of their work and the support of the recently retired ADF deputy chief of joint operations, Greg Evans, none of them have been decorated for bravery.

Among the soldiers is former army captain Tony Gilchrist, who served an incredible 102 missions with the Combined Explosive Exploitation Cell in Iraq.

His missions include one in 2005 in which he crawled on his hands and knees to find a bomb hidden just metres from where two other devices had exploded hours before, killing four US soldiers and maiming one of Gilchrist's colleagues. On another occasion, Gilchrist defused a live suicide vest by hand.

Serving with Gilchrist was army sergeant Andrew Street, who served on more than 70 missions and was shot at, handled bikes packed with explosives and attended bomb scenes where secondary devices were known to be hidden.

Another Australian member of the bomb taskforce, Drew Martin, went "outside the wire" to dangerous bomb sites on more than 15 occasions.

The men's work exposed them to danger and carnage, sometimes on an almost unimaginable scale. Live bombs, known as secondary devices, hidden beneath the debris and the twisted bodies of dead soldiers and civilians, posed a constant threat.

Insurgents also waited for bomb squad members to attend blast sites so they could launch rocket and sniper attacks.

Senior defence sources have told The Age that the half-dozen or so Australians who served with the Combined Explosive Exploitation Cell were undoubtedly among the bravest soldiers who served in Iraq and have not been properly recognised by the ADF.

Because the men have already received awards for distinguished service, it is difficult to subsequently grant them medals to recognise their brave conduct in particular incidents. The sources blame the inflexibility of Australia's defence awards system for this failure.

Among the men's most senior supporters is retired Air Vice-Marshal Greg Evans, who was their commander in Iraq and who privately pushed for the ADF to reconsider upgrading its medals.

He declined to comment to The Age, but it is believed he is disappointed that, due to the rigidity of the awards system, the ADF was unable to easily deal with an anomaly when it occurred.

Executive director of the Australian Defence Association Neil James said it was an anomaly that should be corrected and was indicative of a tendency in the military to give bravery awards to those in ''more glamorous roles, like the special forces''.

''Bomb squad members have always found it difficult to win recognition ? [they] have been short-changed,'' he said.

Last October, Lieutenant-General Mark Evans confirmed in a letter obtained by The Age that the commendation already given to Andrew Street "does not inherently recognise bravery". But he stated that having reviewed Street's conduct, it served as an "appropriate recognition of his outstanding actions".

Gilchrist, who is campaigning for Street and the other Australian bomb squad members to receive bravery awards, was perplexed at this decision.

He is also frustrated at the failure of the ADF to contact any of the US bomb squad members who witnessed Street's conduct in Iraq.

In contrast to their Australian colleagues, the US and British members of the bomb taskforce have had their bravery promoted by their defence forces and been given some of their nations' highest bravery awards.

One of Gilchrist's colleagues who lost his left leg and part of his left arm after detonating a secondary device at a bombsite, British captain, now major, Peter Norton, was awarded the George Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry not in the face of the enemy.

Gilchrist and Street both attended the bombsite where Norton was injured and helped find another hidden bomb.

Gilchrist stressed that his desire for his Australian colleagues to have their role fully and formally recognised was not about seeking publicity. He said it was about knowing that the price they paid for their service had been properly noted by those that sent them to war.

Gilchrist, along with most of the men he served with, have left the army suffering from trauma.

"We are not saying we are heroes. We just want our time in Iraq recorded for what it was,'' he said. ''Then we can try to get on with the rest of our lives."

 
 

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[Keith]

This is how the political game is played. Brown must have studied under John Howard, the expert in this area.
 
ABC NEWS
 
Former PM savages Brown over Afghan visit
By Rachael Brown in London

 
Under fire: Gordon Brown, right, watches a display at the Helmand police training centre (Reuters: Darren Staples)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been accused of using British troops in Afghanistan as a political prop.

Mr Brown flew out to visit troops in Afghanistan the day after he appeared at the Chilcott inquiry in London to deny that he had inadequately funded the British military during his time as chancellor.

He then used the surprise visit to Helmand province to announce the introduction of new armoured vehicles.

Former prime minister John Major has accused Mr Brown of "profoundly unbecoming conduct" for a prime minister, saying Mr Brown used the troops as a cynically timed pre-election backdrop.

Sir John said Mr Brown did the same thing two years ago "before the election that never was; now he's doing so on the eve of the election he cannot avoid".

 
 

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[Keith]

THE MILITARY COMMANDERS HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE....BROWN DOES AND TRIES TO COVER UP FOR THE UPCOMING ELECTION


ABC NEWS

Former military heads challenge Brown on Iraq
 
Mr Brown says no request for equipment was ever turned down. (AFP: Carl Court)

Related Story: Iraq war was right, says Brown
Two former heads of the British armed forces have challenged evidence that Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave to a public inquiry into the Iraq war.

Families of British soldiers killed in Iraq have complained that some died because equipment was either inadequate or not available.

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Mr Brown insisted that as Chancellor, every request he received from military commanders was answered.

But writing in The Times, Admiral Lord Boyce accused Mr Brown of dissembling.

Lord Boyce, who was chief of the defence staff in the run-up to the war in Iraq, said Mr Brown was being disingenuous, adding that it was not the case that the ministry of defence was given everything that it needed.

That view has been backed up by Lord Guthrie, another former chief of the defence staff.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said that Mr Brown's claims were simply not true.

He said the armed forces had been denied a request for more helicopters.

Downing Street has denied the claims and repeated Mr Brown's statement that no request for equipment had ever been turned down.




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[Keith]

`Lives lost as Brown held back funds'
From: AP, The Times
March 06, 2010

THE lives of British soldiers were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan because Gordon Brown failed to fund the army properly when he was chancellor, a former chief of the defence staff said last night as Britain's Prime Minister fronted the nation's inquiry into the Iraq war.

Mr Brown was to testify before the inquiry on mistakes made over the Iraq war, a potentially embarrassing session before a looming national election.

The British leader, who served as Treasury chief from 1997 to 2007 and approved military spending, was due to give about four hours of evidence to the five-person panel, watched in an inquiry room by relatives of those killed in the US-led conflict.

His appearance came as General Charles Guthrie, who led the British Armed Forces from 1997 to 2001, told London's The Times newspaper: "Not fully funding the army in the way they had asked . . . undoubtedly cost the lives of soldiers. He should be asked why he was so unsympathetic towards defence and so sympathetic to other departments."

The families of servicemen who died on the front line in lightly armoured Land Rovers are demanding to know why the government did not send troops out with more helicopters and stronger vehicles. The Chilcot inquiry into Iraq has heard that defence chiefs threatened to resign after Mr Brown ordered defence cuts six years ago while troops were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A senior serving officer told The Times commanders had to use a Treasury contingency fund to buy new equipment. The rough terrain in Afghanistan meant new vehicles kept breaking down and, with no spare parts to fix them, soldiers had to improvise with parts to keep other vehicles on the road.

Susan Smith, whose son died in Iraq in 2005, was in the public viewing area at last night's hearing. Writing in The Times, she challenged Mr Brown: "You were chancellor at the time, holding the purse strings, so why wasn't money spent on getting the right equipment?"

It also emerged that Lieutenant General Graeme Lamb, a former head of the Special Forces, told officers the Ministry of Defence was buying equipment "we probably do not need". He said the SAS had been denied even Vietnam-era equipment that could have saved lives.

According to The Daily Telegraph, he said much of the British Army's equipment was "either broken or lacking", that the Iraq conflict had tarnished Britain's standing and that, until recently, Afghanistan had been "stumbling towards failure".

Sir Graeme has since taken up a post with US general Stanley McChrystal as head of the counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan. Mr Brown planned to meet privately last night with some soldiers' families. He has been accused of insensitivity in dealings with bereaved families.

The panel was likely to question Mr Brown on the timing of Britain's withdrawal from Iraq last year -- in particular on the decision to pull troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, despite the prevalence of militia there.

Hearings in the inquiry began in November and have seen Tony Blair, MI6 intelligence agency chief John Sawers, the head of Britain's military Jock Stirrup and a host of ministers and government officials offer testimony.

Mr Brown commissioned the inquiry last year to address concerns over the case made for war, and to scrutinise mistakes made over post-conflict security and reconstruction.

 
 

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[Keith]

AUSTRALIAN SOLDIERS HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO DEPLETED URANIUM. THERE WILL BE A GROWING INCIDENCE OF BIRTH DEFECTS.


Fallujah doctors report growth in birth defects
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8549033.stm

It seems they went out of their way to NOT mention Depleted uranium, instead blaming white phosphorus which can likely be more easily dismissed as the cause. A Red herring?

When we behave like barbarians we are no better than the barbarians we stand against.

USA CRUSHES CHILDREN'S TESTICLES IN FRONT OF MUSLIM PARENTS TO GATHER 'ANY' INFORMATION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvz-uqa7Soc&feature=player_embedded
 
How would you feel if your child's testicles was being crushed in front of you? Do you think you would admit to being a terrorist or make something up to stop your son crying out in excruciating pain? I WOULD, I would even make something up.

[Keith]

ABC NEWS
 
Hurt Locker in trouble over Oscars campaign
 

 
Will it win? Best picture favourite The Hurt Locker. (www.imdb.com)
Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker has been engulfed by controversy in the final sprint to the Oscars finishing line but should still win the coveted best picture prize at the awards extravaganza next Monday AEDT.

The independent film about a US Army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad emerged as the overwhelming favourite to win the top honour at the 82nd Academy Awards after collecting a string of other honours earlier this year.

However it has been revealed in the past few days that one of the film's producers, Nicolas Chartier, has broken strict rules concerning negative campaigning.

Chartier could face censure from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after sending emails to swathes of Oscar voters urging them to vote for The Hurt Locker instead of a "500 million dollar film".

Chartier's emails were seen as a direct attack on best picture rival, James Cameron's big-budget science-fiction blockbuster Avatar.

The Frenchman has since been forced to issue an embarrassing apology, describing his email as "inappropriate and stupid".

"My email to you was out of line and not in the spirit of the celebration of cinema that this acknowledgment is," Chartier said.

"I was even more wrong, both personally and professionally, to ask for your help in encouraging others to vote for the film and to comment on another movie.

"As passionate as I am about the film we made, this was an extremely inappropriate email to send - and something that the Academy strongly disapproves of in the rules.

"My naivete, ignorance of the rules and plain stupidity as a first time nominee is not an excuse for this behaviour and I strongly regret it."

A spokeswoman for the Academy declined to comment on what action - if any - might be taken against Chartier.

Analysts have speculated that sanctions could range from withholding tickets to the ceremony for individuals connected to the film, all the way to the nuclear option of eliminating The Hurt Locker from the best picture race.

Pundits, however, are sceptical that the controversy will adversely impact the film's Oscars hopes, noting that the furore erupted only days before Tuesday's 5:00pm deadline for final ballots.

"When it's this late in the game, most of the ballots - or a good percentage of them - will be in," said Pete Hammond, Maxim magazine film critic and an awards season expert with the Los Angeles Times.

"It takes time for a story like this to permeate into the Academy.

"Will it have any effect? I doubt it. The bottom line is I think people still tend to vote for the film they like the best."

Veteran Oscarologist Tom O'Neil from the Los Angeles Times' TheEnvelope.com agrees.

"I'd say around three-quarters of the ballots were done by the time this broke," O'Neil told AFP.

"The widespread consensus is that The Hurt Locker has it in the bag and that even these issues aren't going to trip it up."

This year's Oscars, which take place at the Kodak Theatre, will see eight other films vying for best picture alongside Avatar and The Hurt Locker.

Other nominees include acclaimed science-fiction thriller District 9, Pixar's animated Up, sports drama The Blind Side and Quentin Tarantino's World War II revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds.

Recession-era drama Up In The Air is also nominated along with low-budget films including An Education, Precious and A Serious Man.

Clear favourites have emerged across most of the other major categories.

Kathryn Bigelow is widely expected to become the first woman in Oscars history to win the best director prize for her work on The Hurt Locker, while Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock are poised to take the top acting awards.

"It looks as if all the top award races are locked in now," said O'Neil.

"It looks like there will be virtually no suspense.

"Usually you can feel the rumblings of a possible upset at this stage. But there's been nothing like that so far."

- AFP

 
 

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THE BLATANT HYPOCRSIY OVER IRAQ...AND HOW OUR YOUNG WERE USED AS CANON FODDER


Ron Paul vs. Bizarre Ben Bernanke
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul644.html

I thank Congressman Ron Paul for bringing to the public?s attention the Federal Reserve cover-up of the source of the Watergate burglars? source of funding and the defective audit by the Federal Reserve of the bank that transferred $5.5 billion from the U.S. government to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

[Keith]

HOW MANY AUSTRALIANS WERE NEAR THESE BURN PITS?


Klayton Thomas and his wife, Mia.


Published Sunday February 21, 2010


Why did Sgt. Thomas die?
By Matthew Hansen
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

? Metro/Region


Sgt. Klayton Thomas looked every bit the poster boy Marine as he strode into a military hospital last September to get his back checked.

He taught karate and earned his abs in the gym. He had survived a 2007 deployment to Iraq, even thrived during his prolonged stay in the middle of the then-treacherous Sunni Triangle. He rarely drank. He didn't smoke. Life seemed perfect on this mid-September Thursday, if only his back would stop aching. The 25-year-old Columbus, Neb., native thought he had wrenched it playing soccer. Three months and 10 days later, he died in hospice care.

This much is known: Thomas succumbed to an unstoppable lung cancer that crushed his vertebrae, blitzed his bones and invaded his brain, dumbfounding doctors who had spent their entire careers treating the disease.

His death leaves a medical mystery, one similar to those posed by hundreds of other American military personnel battling exotic cancers or struggling with rare respiratory problems.

This mystery begins in the unlikeliest of places: Iraqi ?burn pits? ? large, primitive landfills where contractors set trash aflame, causing ever-present black smoke to drift over dozens of U.S. military bases.

Health experts, a high-powered defense lawyer, Congress and even the president have taken notice, asking questions like Klayton Thomas' parents and doctors asked in the weeks after he fell ill.

Why would an otherwise healthy young nonsmoker contract a cancer that generally haunts older smokers? Why did this cancer spread like wildfire when experts say its normal path can take years?

Simply put: Why did Sgt. Klayton Thomas die?

?We were scared to death when he went to Iraq, scared of a mortar attack, an IED,? said his mother, Connie Thomas of Columbus. ?But nothing like this. Not in our wildest dreams.?

Just before Halloween, Thomas and his parents met Dr. Ray Lin at San Diego's Scripps Medical Center. A month had passed since doctors first found white spots on Thomas' lungs, and as the Marine and his parents took their seats in the radiologist's office, they felt as if they now lived inside a never-ending nightmare.

First the cancer had spread into Thomas' spine, his hips, his shoulder blades. Then he had endured his first chemo treatment and an excruciating back surgery to put cement into his crushed sixth vertebra.

The pain had gotten so severe he couldn't sleep, even with the aid of morphine, and could barely move without a walker.

Thomas' wife could comfort him only by cell phone ? Mia, a Filipina whom Thomas had married while stationed in the Philippines, was struggling to secure her American visa.

But the blackest day had come on the last day in September, on Thomas' first visit to the highly regarded Scripps hospital.

On that day, Dr. Robert Sarnoff, president of the facility's medical group, had delivered the news:

Sgt. Thomas, he said, this is bad. You have a 5 percent chance to live.

Connie and Dave Thomas had flown from Columbus to San Diego to fight through layers of military bureaucracy and secure their son special treatment at the nonmilitary hospital.

Now Lin pulled out an X-ray of Thomas' shoulder. A healthy shoulder X-ray should show up white. The X-ray Lin held was shrouded in black.

Lin told the family that Thomas could have a genetic predisposition to cancer ? his father and several uncles had survived various cancers in middle age.

But there must have been an additional trigger for the cancer to spread this quickly, he said, according to the Thomas family. (Lin was out of the country, according to a hospital spokesman, and privacy laws prevent Scripps from discussing Thomas' case.)

Have you been exposed to something toxic, Klayton?

Thomas sat silently for a moment and then told the doctor and his shocked parents about the burn pit near where he lived and worked at al-Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq.

He told them about the hazardous materials burned there. He told them the smoke sometimes darkened the sky and grew so thick it choked him.

That night, his mother, a nursing home administrator, sent out one of her mass e-mails updating family and friends on Thomas' condition. Usually she wrote these e-mails resolutely, marking them with hope that a miracle could occur, that her son would recover.

Not that night.

?I can't understand why God is allowing this to happen,? she wrote.

The burn pits kept on burning as the Iraq war stretched to its third year, then its fourth.

Military contractors burned nearly every bit of waste from military bases ? trash that included plastics, batteries, old weapons, ruined machinery and a fuel known to cause cancer, according to government and independent reports.

They burned because military leaders originally saw the pits as temporary, a congressman thinks, the simplest way to dispose of trash before troops quickly exited Iraq.

But as the war continued, they burned because it saved money, according to subsequent lawsuits, allowing U.S. contractors to avoid having to install costly incinerators.

For most service members, the resulting clouds of smoke were a nuisance, simply a part of deployed life, like the Iraqi sandstorms and the scorching desert heat.

But troops and contractors stationed at al-Taqaddum Air Base, where Klayton Thomas eventually served, and all across Iraq started to complain about a grab-bag of symptoms often diagnosed as severe colds.

But for a select few, those clouds of smoke represented something far more ominous.

Cpl. Chris Bravo, suffering from constant headaches and no longer able to climb a flight of stairs without gasping for breath, suspected a different culprit after spending most of 2004 and 2005 at al-Taqaddum, commonly known as ?TQ.?

His unit often escorted trash trucks into the burn pit, providing security while the contractors dumped waste into the football field-size landfill.

On several occasions, Bravo spent most of his day inside the pit. The smoke was so thick he sometimes couldn't see the man in front of him.

?Awful smell, like burned plastic,? said Bravo, now 27 and a military policeman in South Carolina. ?I would question myself, like, ?Man, I don't think I should be out here in this.' ?

Service members stationed at more than 100 bases in Iraq and Afghanistan began to ask similar questions as more and more complained of the ?Iraqi crud? ? a constant cough with darkened phlegm ? often blamed on the horrific sandstorms.

The burn pit smoke got so bad around the Air Force base at Balad that computer programmers included it in a simulation teaching pilots how to land there.

Elizabeth Hilpert, a maintenance contractor working near the TQ burn pit in 2006, said she and several co-workers experienced fatigue and shortness of breath, especially when they entered the burn pit to scrounge for salvage parts. Hilpert wrote a safety report to her supervisor, questioning whether the pit was sickening her and others.

?I was told they wouldn't submit it,? said Hilpert, a North Carolina resident who has suffered chronic headaches, lung problems and memory loss since returning from Iraq.

In 2006, an Air Force bioenvironmental engineer, Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, became the first military expert to give credence to the troops' isolated concerns.

He wrote a memo warning his superiors that a potpourri of poisons ? arsenic, cyanide, Freon, formaldehyde and benzene, an aircraft fuel known to cause cancer ? had likely burned in the Balad pit, causing an ?acute health hazard for individuals.?

?It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years,? wrote Curtis, an expert in environmental workplace hazards. Curtis' memo, eventually obtained by the Military Times, was co-signed by the chief of aeromedical services for the Air Force's 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing.

But for years, the military's senior health protection officials dismissed the memo, saying there was no proof that burn pits caused long-term health risks.

The memo prompted a joint Air Force and Army assessment, a draft of which concluded that the burn pits greatly elevated the risks of cancer at the Balad base.

Military leaders quickly retracted that draft, saying a computing error had caused a faulty conclusion. A second study concluded that burn pits caused only two health problems: Eye irritation. And short-term coughing.

Sgt. Thomas insisted: no wheelchair.

It was Thanksgiving weekend, and his parents had planned a trip to SeaWorld, their first real break in months from the hospital-and-hotel routine.

At long last, Thomas' wife, Mia, was in town; she had finally been issued a visa and had joyfully reunited with her husband in early November.

The Marine wanted to show Mia San Diego. He wanted his parents, aunt, cousins, nephews and nieces to enjoy themselves.

But he'd be damned if he was going to ride in a wheelchair across SeaWorld's massive parking lot.

Instead, the former martial arts expert and serious weightlifter steeled himself for his biggest physical challenge in months.

He would make it to the whales on his own two feet.

?He didn't want to be left out in any way,? Connie Thomas said. ?He was too proud.?

The Marine's struggle to walk, a mere two months after his initial diagnosis, perplexed his doctors and confuses outside experts.

Dr. Rudy Lackner, a University of Nebraska Medical Center surgeon who often operates on lung cancer patients, said it's shocking enough that a 25-year-old got lung cancer at all.

Only 0.1 percent of lung cancer patients are younger than 30, Lackner said.

Most of them have smoked continuously since they hit puberty or grew up in a household where secondhand smoke was always present.

Neither is true in Thomas' case. He told doctors he had smoked for less than a year, and even then only an occasional puff on a cigarette. And no one in his immediate family smoked.

The medical center surgeon speculated that Thomas' cancer might have been caused by a genetic predisposition to the disease coupled with an exposure to something toxic.

That squares with what Thomas' San Diego radiologist had told the family in October, when he first learned of the burn pit.

Said surgeon Lackner: ?To see somebody that young with cancer present in September, and then be dead by December, that would certainly seem much more rapid than you'd ever expect.

?Burning rubber, plastics, asbestos ? all of that or any of it could contribute to the development of a cancer.?

By the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when the Thomas family visited SeaWorld, the tumor in Klayton Thomas' lung had grown so large it threatened to cut off his airway. Cancer cells had entered his brain, giving him pounding headaches and causing short- and long-term memory loss.

Still, he walked all the way to the whales. He trudged up the stadium stairs, trying to ignore the searing pain in his hips. He cheered along with his family as Shamu and the gang pirouetted in the water and leaped into the air.

It was only after he had fed the whales and posed for photos with Mia that his strength started to wane. His mother had secretly reserved a SeaWorld wheelchair in case this moment arrived.

?Klayton, I think you need this,? she said.

?I guess so,? he agreed.

They started to move around the park ? everyone wanted to see the flamingos ? but soon the Marine's temples pounded so hard that he bent over and clamped his head between his hands.

That was the signal, the family agreed. They headed for the parking lot.

On Nov. 6, the burn pit movement got its day on Capitol Hill.

The chief allergist of a New York veterans hospital testified that Americans who deploy to Iraq were twice as likely as other veterans to develop respiratory illnesses, according to his four-year study.

Others who testified cited a large group of Kentucky soldiers found to suffer from bronchiolitis, which can irreparably damage the lungs, after exposure to a particularly toxic Iraqi fire in 2003.

They ridiculed the military's previous burn pit studies. One tested for air quality during Iraq's wet season, which, according to the VA hospital's allergist, ?is like testing for snow in Albany during the summer.?

In response, Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., introduced a bill that would create a complete list of burn pits, mandate a registry for all troops exposed to the pits and give those troops special physical exams. It is designed to build on a previous Bishop proposal, passed into law, that seemingly barred the use of most burn pits in Iraq, though dozens are still operating.

?There is just too much evidence that these burn pits are hazardous for (the military) to continue to ignore it,? Bishop told The World-Herald.

It's also getting harder to ignore a class-action lawsuit originally filed in Texas in December 2008.

Since then, more than 300 service members and contractors in 42 states have joined the multimillion-dollar lawsuit, which alleges that burn pits run by the military contractor KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) caused their health problems.

Most who have joined the lawsuit are suffering from pulmonary illnesses, said Susan Burke, the group's lawyer.

A smaller number of military personnel joined the suit after being diagnosed with cancer, which they say developed because of known carcinogens burned in the pits.

Ten of those with cancer have died. Burke said most of them were in prime physical condition but succumbed in months.

?These are young men and women who voluntarily went off to fight for all of us, and an American company poisoned them,? Burke said.

KBR lawyers say the company followed military protocol when it designed and operated the burn pits. There's no definitive proof that a burn pit directly harmed anyone's health or caused the myriad symptoms described in the lawsuit, they contend.

The sick service members and contractors sense that no matter the outcome of the lawsuit, they are turning a corner with the U.S. government.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told military reporters last year that his administration would not repeat the errors of Agent Orange. For decades, the military denied that the herbicide ? used to destroy dense jungles during the Vietnam War ? caused sickness. Eventually officials admitted the link between Agent Orange and the illnesses of thousands of veterans.

President Barack Obama said last year that his administration had no interest in ?sweeping things under the rug.?

And, on Dec. 16, R. Craig Postlewaite, the American military's senior health protection official, publicly acknowledged that the burn pits had probably caused serious illness.

?We feel at this point in time that it's quite plausible ? in fact, likely ? that there are a small number of people that have been affected with longer-term health problems,? he told the Salt Lake Tribune.

The Department of Defense is launching a more comprehensive study that could further validate outside research that indicates the burn pits have sickened troops. And the military has installed incinerators at Balad, closing Iraq's most infamous burn pit.

?At times you feel like you are battling this all alone,? Elizabeth Hilpert said. ?But the story is changing.?

Sgt. Klayton Thomas won't see it end.

Two days after Christmas ? two weeks after the military acknowledged a probable link between the burn pits and serious illness ? Thomas walked from his bathroom to the living room recliner where he spent all his time.

He sat back down, looked toward his reading lamp, gasped twice and stopped breathing.

His family buried him on a frigid Saturday in January.

Bundled-up Marines carried the flag-draped casket. They fired a 21-gun salute into the air. They hugged his mother and his widow.

In the weeks since, Connie Thomas has continued to e-mail friends and family.

She sends photos of her son. Klayton in his dress uniform. Klayton showing off his muscles at the beach. Klayton gritting out a smile during the final month of his life.

She forwards inspirational poems ? poems about Marines in heaven, standing guard.

She occasionally passes along a few details of burn pit information, but mostly she leaves that to the experts and the lawyers.

The medical mystery might never be completely solved, but Connie said she doesn't need to see more public health studies or lung biopsy research projects.

She said she knows why her boy is buried beneath a temporary marker, covered by snow.

?I have no doubt,? she said. ?That burn pit killed my son.?

Contact the writer:

 matthew.hansen@owh.com

 

 
 

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[Keith]

ABC NEWS
 
Hurt Locker wins BAFTAs battle 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/22/2826161.htm?section=justin
 

Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker swept 3D blockbuster Avatar aside at the BAFTAs, picking up best film and best director among its six prizes.

 
 

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[Keith]

In another time and place the AWB directors would have been charged with treason.
 
AWB Iraqi 'deception' under fire
ELISABETH SEXTON
February 20, 2010
 
THE AGE
The commission of inquiry into AWB's payment of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime would have taken a dramatically different course if the company had conceded at the outset it knew its ''transport fees'' were delivering hard currency to the Iraqi government, according to the man who led the investigation.

AWB admitted on February 10 in a shareholder class action in the Federal Court that it knew a Jordanian trucking company was passing the money on to Baghdad between 1999 and 2003.

John Agius, SC, who was counsel assisting the 2006 inquiry, said he was ''astounded'' by the admission, which came after seven years of public denials. ''There was no concession coming close to that at any time during the running of the inquiry,'' he said.

If there had been, ''the focus would have been on whether or not the United Nations knew about it and whether or not any Australian entity or Australian department or the government knew about it''.

There would also have been an opportunity to explore why there was ''so much deception''.

''What the public has lost because of the attitude AWB took in the inquiry is an opportunity to have an explanation as to the real circumstances in which it came to be that the money was paid,'' he said.

''If, for example, the money was paid to Iraq because the Iraqis made it absolutely plain that they would not buy any Australian wheat unless it was paid, and that it was paid because a conscious decision was made to protect the Australian wheat farmers' interests in these markets, that's something that could have been explored and some good could have come out of that.''

The head of the inquiry, Terence Cole, QC, found that the company concealed payments totalling $US221 million to maintain its sales to Iraq.

Mr Cole's November 2006 report said AWB's internal rationale was: ''Do whatever is necessary to retain the trade. Pay the money required by Iraq. It will cost AWB nothing because the extra costs will be added into the wheat price and recovered from the UN escrow account. But hide the making of those payments, for they are in breach of sanctions.''

Mr Agius said he found no evidence Australian ministers knew about the payments, but if AWB had admitted what it had done, the inquiry could have paid more attention to ''whether [ministers] ought to have known or whether they should have had a different approach to the one which they did have, which was to accept what AWB said when it made its denials''.

The public would also have benefited from an examination of whether the UN's oil-for-food program was capable of success.

''I think there's still room for argument that it may be that the United Nations turned a blind eye to what was happening because the consequence of exposing it would be people dying of starvation,'' he said.

In this month's class action, AWB conceded its knowledge but denied the payments contravened UN sanctions. The company said the UN and Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade knew AWB was paying the fees.

It denied that it had misled the sharemarket or breached its continuous disclosure obligations.

AWB settled the case on Monday by agreeing to pay $39.5 million.

 
 

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[Keith]

SAS withheld from Fallujah attack, says author
RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, LONDON
February 18, 2010

BRITISH SAS troops were prevented from joining a US assault on the Iraqi town of Fallujah because British commanders strongly disapproved of US military tactics, it has been revealed.

Fallujah, a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency, was the target of a fierce attack by US forces in the spring of 2004. Despite the fact that the bombing led to huge civilian casualties and gave the insurgency a propaganda gift, US commanders planned a fresh onslaught on the city in November of the same year.

British defence chiefs were worried about the impact of US tactics on both the Sunni insurgency, backed by al-Qaeda, and increasing Shiite militancy in southern Iraq, where most British soldiers were based. They believed the US tactics were counterproductive.

So concerned were they that they vetoed plans for the SAS to take part in the November assault, the journalist Mark Urban reveals in his book Task Force Black, which is published today.

''Orders came down from the chain of command that they [the SAS] were not to do so. Britain had played another red card in a national caveat,'' he writes.

It is known that then prime minister Tony Blair had already expressed the concerns of British military commanders about US tactics in the first assault on Fallujah at a meeting with then US president George Bush in April 2004. Urban also says Britain's MI6 secret service was so concerned about conditions at a secret US detention centre at Balad, north of Baghdad, that SAS soldiers were told to hand over prisoners to American forces only if the US undertook not to send them there.

John Hutton, then Britain's defence secretary, admitted to MPs last year that in 2004 British forces handed over individuals to US counterparts who subsequently flew them to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

He referred to allegations by Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, that Iraqi and Afghan prisoners handed over by British special forces had ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva Convention and international law. Britain's Ministry of Defence obtained a gagging order to prevent Mr Griffin from saying anything further.

Urban's book is the latest to drive a coach and horses through the official line that nothing should be published about British special forces operations.

Urban says in his preface that the ministry objected to certain passages in his book. He agreed to some changes, though he says many were ''essentially pointless''.

GUARDIAN

 
 

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[Keith]

If you recall the Australian Wheat Board was caught out paying money to the Saddam Hussein regime, and at least some of this money was used to buy weapons which could well have been used against Australian Defence members. During WW2 this would have been called treason, trading with the enemy and would have brought imprisonment.Why is it ok to cavort with our declared enemies during the Iraq War but not during WW2?
 
 
AWB settles on payout
http://www.theage.com.au/business/awb-settles-on-payout-20100215-o2zh.html

 ELISABETH SEXTON | Shares in grain exporter AWB leap nine per cent after company's lawyers remove uncertainty of litigation over Iraqi kickbacks scandal by settling shareholder class action.

 
 

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[Keith]

Jack Straw faces UK Iraq inquiry again
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/09/2814022.htm?section=justin

[Keith]

I'm so proud of you, Robin Cook... you're the only man to emerge with honour from the Iraq debacle
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248873/MARGARET-COOK-Im-proud-Robin--youre-man-emerge-honour-Iraq-debacle.html

But make no mistake, the spectre of my late, former husband Robin Cook should haunt the collective conscience of all those who have given their testimonies. The inquiry cries out for his evidence - the only minister who spoke out and walked out of a shamed government that, seven years ago, waged what Robin knew to be 'an illegal war built on a false prospectus. . . without any international authority'.

Wriggle and obfuscate as they have done at the inquiry, those former ministers and aides who have given evidence have only been able to cover their backs partially.

For we now know they either followed blindly and willingly into the conflagration or they saw the folly, but failed to speak out.

[Keith]

ICH:Clare Short: Goldsmith Misled Cabinet Over Iraq

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/ichclare-short-goldsmith-misled-cabinet-over-iraq.html

[Keith]

The best way to support our Afghanistan Troops is to bring them home. Let those who support the Afghan War send their kids down to the enlistment centres....now.
 
From: Terry Davies
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 8:27 AM
Subject: Diggers home from battle but war not over


Source: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH


Diggers home from battle but war not over
By Paul Toohey
From:The Daily Telegraph  February 06, 2010 12:23AM


ANGUS Sim draws deep breaths. He warns, as he tells his story, that he is becoming worked up. He looks like most modern young warriors, built strong and emblazoned with heavy ink. He shifts between tears and rage.

For Sim, the quiet streets of Sunbury in outer-Melbourne may as well be filled with concealed improvised explosive devices, creeping snipers and trucks being prepared for suicide bomb missions.

Sim, 24, returned from Iraq in June 2005 after serving with the Brisbane-based 6RAR infantry battalion.

He was involved in four incidents that would separately and together damage him profoundly.

His energy has nowhere to evaporate. Time bomb or loose cannon, take your pick. Sim doesn't like people much. "I got back to Sunbury after Iraq," he said. "I had a girlfriend and I broke up with her. It turned nasty. I got called a 'psycho from Iraq' and this sort of stuff. People don't understand. But the Australian people need to understand."

Sim likes his memories even less. They corner him, crowd him. The need for hyper-vigilance after being assigned to the security detachment, or SECDET, guarding Australian Embassy staff within Baghdad's red zone - the uncontrolled, dangerous part of that city - stays with him.

Sim has post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition which the military once regarded with hostile scepticism. PTSD sufferers were bludgers looking for a pension and compo.

The military now accepts the reality of PTSD, but the condition remains stigmatised long after the sorry lessons of Vietnam. Those vets took it hard. Not only did they witness gruesome events, they came home to a country that did not support their service.

The country learned it was better to judge the government's policy than take it out on soldiers. But Sim feels the current public disquiet on Australia's Middle East engagement shifting wider, slowly winding the clock back to Vietnam.

But who could blame the public for not understanding Sim's pain? This Government, like the previous, has kept a choking leash on all information from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defence drip-feeds abbreviated information on Australians wounded or killed in conflict and has less to say on the mentally damaged. Meanwhile, just like Vietnam, a new battalion of lost souls is bunkered down in suburban homes, haunted by images of carnage that will not quit.

The Federal Government claims it is trying harder with mental health issues and has promised $83 million over the next four years to implement the recommendations of Professor David Dunt, who last year produced two ADF reports on improving mental health.

But they have done nothing to help the Australian public cushion the landing for returning soldiers. Public knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan has been mostly limited to wives and babies kissing camouflaged homecoming soldiers at airports.

Sim's got an inbuilt bulldust-detection meter. It's set to maximum.

"I'm safe, but I got a short fuse and a bad temper," he says. "People just annoy me. On Anzac Day a few years ago there was this guy at the pub telling me he was SAS. I questioned him and his story didn't add up. I finished my beer and slammed the glass into his face. He was lying. He was showing no respect."

These days, Sim has almost totally withdrawn. He feels safer indoors - and knows he is less of a threat.

It's hard to believe these are the comments of a man who, at 24, should be just starting out on his working life. He feels Australia did the right thing in going to Iraq but says his country used him then threw him out without preparing him for normal life.

"My debrief from Iraq was with one psychiatrist, for half an hour, in Iraq. It's just stupid. I had some real dramas. I hit the drugs pretty hard. I'd never touched them in my life. I was 19. The last year I was in the army I was on drugs every weekend. You name it - speed, ice, ecstasy, acid.

"I went off the rails. It just took me away from everything. It was just a way of dealing with it.

"It's just disappointing. I hate this country now. Well, I don't hate it, but f . . . ing hell, we're soldiers going over to do a bit of good for the world. We didn't just look for terrorists. We were trying to bring some peace to Iraq. And I think we achieved that."

Sim is discharged, classified TPI. He likes cooking for his fiancee Jess and he likes his widescreen TV. Not much else. "I'm always on guard, high strung and on edge. If I'm in bed and Jess comes home, I'll wake up ready to kill her. We hooked up a year ago. We fight - but she's good, she's caring. She understands, as much as she can."

The sense around Australia's veteran community is that the PTSD numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan are creeping above 10 per cent, although delayed onset means that number will grow.

We know, now, why those who served in WWI and WWII rarely talked about their wars. They couldn't. Many were undiagnosed PTSD sufferers. They get angry about the petty concerns of those back home. Spilt milk doesn't compare to spilt brains.

They know they're being unfair on their loved ones when comparing everything against their war. But they can't help it.

But mates help, don't they? "Some of my mates have bad problems," Sim said. "They don't answer their phones these days."

On January 19, 2005, a truck laden with explosives attempted to ram the Australian Embassy compound. Sim was blown out of his bed but - like the other Australian soldiers guarding the vicinity - was unhurt.

Several Iraqi civilians were killed. The bomb was followed by a secondary IED and sniper fire. "That woke us up and told us we were in Baghdad," Sim said.

Sim's detachment became renowned for the number of events it faced in the first half of 2005. A week after the embassy attack, Sim and others stopped a vehicle.

"This bloke, a civilian, was drunk and staggering around. We looked in his van and he had drums in the back. We didn't take any risks, we shot him. Turned out it was only some barrels of petrol, no detonators. It was silly of him the way he was acting."

The following day, Australia Day, an Australian light-armoured vehicle was hit by a suicide car bomber on Route Irish, the road to the airport.

Sim's detachment arrived at the scene minutes later. "I don't know how no one died. One guy had serious facial wounds, he lost his nose. We dragged the vehicles back to the nearest base, which was American, and I had to clean the vehicles of (the bomber's) body pieces. There was skin all over our vehicles."

By then, everyone in SECDET was on edge. The next incident affected Sim more than the others.

"These civilians were driving up the road," he said. "We had night-vision goggles. They didn't stop. One of the boys opened fire with a burst of machinegun fire. One bullet hit a female passenger in the head - she was sitting in the front seat. A little kid in the back got hit with glass in his eye, lost his eye. It was just a family.

"It wasn't me who shot him. We donated a heap of money to try and fix his sight but he ended up losing his eye. The mum didn't die. I think she had brain damage. We went to hospital, tried to do the right thing."

Sim's mental health care upon return was to be given two weeks stress leave and told he'd be right.

"The help was crap," he said. "I just said to myself, 'I'll deal with this.'

"I dealt with it until I couldn't deal with it any more. I have bad days, bad months, still. It's not as bad as when I tried to keep it all in. I thought I was going crazy. And in a way I was."

The Department of Veterans Affairs now pays for Sim's medication and psychiatric help, but it only came after he was hospitalised for suicide attempts. He wants it known he only appeared here so that other soldiers might benefit from it.

Professor Dunt believes that it's not better to warn service personnel about PTSD.

"Learning about the facts of PTSD won't help," he said. "Defence briefs on what to expect, but not particularly focusing on the disease and its symptoms. A lot of people have the symptoms when they come home, it's almost normal, but not all will go on to form the full disease."

An estimated 36,000 Australians have served in Iraq and Afghanistan but the figure is higher if multiple deployments are factored in. Those cracks need to be closed.

From: Greg Mitchell
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 10:50 PM
 
 
Iraq war means a new batallion of lost souls bunkered down in suburban homes
Paul Toohey
From: Herald Sun
February 06, 2010 12:00AM
 
 
Former soldier Angus Sim, 24, at his Sunbury home in Melbourne, now suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after returning from Iraq in 2005. Picture: Phil Hillyard Source: Herald Sun

ANGUS Sim draws deep breaths. He warns, as he tells his story, that he is becoming worked up.

He looks like most modern young warriors, built strongly and emblazoned with heavy ink. He shifts between tears and rage.

For Sim, the quiet streets of Sunbury, in Melbourne's northern outskirts, may as well be filled with hidden home-made bombs, snipers and trucks being prepared for suicide bomb missions.

Sim, 24, returned from Iraq in June 2005 after serving with the Brisbane-based infantry battalion, 6RAR.

He was involved in four incidents that would separately, and cumulatively, damage him profoundly.

His energy has nowhere to evaporate. Time bomb or loose cannon, take your pick.

Sim doesn't like people much. "I got back to Sunbury after Iraq," he said. "I had a girlfriend and I broke up with her. It turned nasty. I got called a 'psycho from Iraq' and this sort of stuff. People don't understand. But the Australian people need to understand."

Sim likes his memories even less. The need for hyper-vigilance after being assigned to the security detachment, or SecDet, guarding Australian embassy staff within Baghdad's red zone - the uncontrolled, dangerous part of that city - stays with him.

Sim has post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition the military once regarded with scepticism.

PTSD sufferers were seen as bludgers looking for compo.

The military now accepts the reality of PTSD.

But who could blame the public for not understanding Sim's pain? This Government, like the previous one, has kept a tight leash on all information from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Defence drip-feeds abbreviated information about Australians wounded or killed in conflict, and has even less to say on the mentally damaged.

Just like Vietnam, a new battalion of lost souls is bunkered down in suburban homes, haunted by intrusive images of carnage.

The Federal Government claims it is trying harder with mental health issues and has promised $83 million over the next four years to implement the recommendations of Prof David Dunt, who last year produced two Australian Defence Force reports on improving mental health.

BUT they have done nothing to help the Australian public cushion the landing for returning soldiers.

Public knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan has been mostly limited to wives and babies kissing camouflaged homecoming soldiers.

Sim doesn't like it. Most soldiers don't.

They feel their service is undervalued.

Sim has an inbuilt bull detection meter. It's set to maximum. "I'm safe, but I got a short fuse and a bad temper," he said. "People just annoy me. On Anzac Day a few years ago, there was this guy at the pub telling me he was SAS. I questioned him and his story didn't add up.

"I finished my beer and slammed the glass into his face. He was lying. He was showing no respect. And I'd do it again."

These days, Sim has almost totally withdrawn.

He feels safer indoors and knows he is less of a threat to others there. "I don't really go out much any more," he said.

"I stay around here. I might as well be in jail. I avoid situations, I suppose."

It's hard to believe these are the comments of a man who, at 24, should be just starting out on his working life. He feels Australia did the right thing in going to Iraq, but says his country used him, then threw him out without preparing him for normal life.

"My debrief from Iraq was with one psychiatrist, for half an hour, in Iraq," he said. "I had some real dramas. I hit the drugs pretty hard. I'd never touched them in my life. I was 19. The last year I was in the army I was doing drugs every weekend. You name it - speed, ice, ecstasy, acid.

"I went off the rails. It just took me away from everything. It was just a way of dealing with it. Not the right way, I know. And I was drinking a fair bit, too.

"It's just disappointing. I hate this country now. Well, I don't hate it, but f------ hell, we're soldiers going over to do a bit of good for the world. We didn't just look for terrorists. We were trying to bring some peace to Iraq.

"And I think we achieved that. We helped them get their first election up."

Sim is discharged, classified TPI - totally and permanently incapacitated.

He likes cooking for his fiancee, Jess, and he likes his widescreen TV.

NOT much else. "I'm always on guard, high strung and on edge. If I'm in bed and Jess comes home, I'll wake up ready to kill her," he said.

"We hooked up a year ago. We fight - had a doozy the other night. But she's good, she's caring. She understands, as much as she can."

The sense around Australia's veteran community is that PTSD numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan are creeping above 10 per cent, though delayed onset means that number will only grow.

We know now why those who served in World Wars I and II rarely talked about their wars. They couldn't talk about them. Many were undiagnosed PTSD sufferers.

On January 19, 2005, a truck laden with explosives attempted to ram the Australian embassy compound. Sim was blown out of his bed, but, like the other Australian soldiers guarding the vicinity, he was unhurt.

Several Iraqi civilians were killed. The bomb was followed by a secondary device and sniper fire.

"That woke us up and told us we were in Baghdad," said Sim. His detachment became renowned for the number of events it faced in the first half of 2005.

A WEEK after the embassy attack, Sim and others stopped a vehicle. "This bloke, a civilian, was pissed and staggering around," he said. "We looked in his van and he had drums in the back. We didn't take any risks, we shot him.

"One of my mates did, shot him four times.

"Turned out it was only some barrels of petrol, no detonators. It was silly of him the way he was acting. His missus was all upset."

Now it's Sim, recounting this story, who's upset.

The next day, Australia Day, an Australian light-armoured vehicle was hit by a suicide car bomber on the road to the airport.

Sim's detachment arrived at the scene minutes later.

"I don't now how no one died. One guy had serious facial wounds, he lost his nose. We skull-dragged the vehicles back to the nearest base, which was American, and I had to clean the vehicles of (the suicide bomber's) body pieces.

"There was skin all over our vehicles. I found a bit of his spine and had to pull his foot out of the exhaust system. I got all the flesh, put it in the bin. A few of our boys were sent to (hospital in) Germany."

By then, everyone in SecDet was on edge. The next incident affected Sim more than the others.

"These civilians were driving up the road," he said. "We had night-vision goggles. They didn't stop. One of the boys opened fire with a burst of machinegun. One bullet hit a female passenger in the head. She was sitting in the front seat.

"A little kid in the back got hit with glass in his eye, lost his eye. It was just a family. That just plays on me. It wasn't me who shot him. We donated a heap of money to try and fix his eyesight, but he ended up losing his eye. The mum didn't die. I think she had brain damage. We went to hospital to see them, tried to do the right thing."

SIM'S mental health care on return was two weeks' stress leave.

"The help was crap," he says. "I just said to myself, 'I'll deal with this.' I dealt with it until I couldn't deal with it any more. I have bad days, bad months, still.

"It's not as bad as when I tried to keep it all in. I thought I was going crazy. And in a way I was.

 

"The biggest kick in the a--- was when we got back, the way we were handled.

"We should have gone straight into a debriefing program. If you want help, you should be able to get it."

The Department of Veterans' Affairs pays for Sim's medication and psychiatric help, but only after he was admitted to hospital for suicide attempts.

He wants it known he is only speaking out so other soldiers might benefit.

An estimated 36,000 Australians have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Vincent, of the Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Veterans Association says 30 per cent of those who serve in conflicts will develop some form of PTSD.

[Keith]

Plan to oust Saddam drawn up two years before the invasion
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/plan-to-oust-saddam-drawn-up-two-years-before-the-invasion-1885155.html

A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the Government two years before the invasion of Iraq, The Independent can reveal.

Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.

The document, headed "confidential UK/US eyes", was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers.

 
 

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[Keith]

And remember the former Australian Government went along with Blair and Bush all the way. This War was entered into for political and economic interests. Saddam was a peripheral matter.Did Bush, Blair and Howard  send their kids off to the enlistment centres?
 
Former minister savages Blair over war
By Europe correspondent Philip Williams for AM

ABC NEWS

 
Damning testimony: Clare Short leaves the Chilcott Inquiry (AFP: Carl de Souza)

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has been accused of running a dishonest, dysfunctional government that played to the Americans at a time of war.

The harsh assessment came from Mr Blair's former colleague and cabinet minister Clare Short in her evidence to the Iraq war Chilcott Inquiry in London overnight.

Ms Short was never expected to tread softly in her evidence, and she used her day in the limelight to argue that Britain's involvement in Iraq was based on deceit.

The former international development secretary has long been a critic of Mr Blair, especially over the way he ran his government and cabinet.

"There were little chats about things, but it [cabinet] wasn't the decision-making body in any serious way," Ms Short told the inquiry.

"I don't remember, at all, Iraq coming to the cabinet in any way whatsoever, at that time."

Ms Short says she was taken aback when attorney-general Lord Goldsmith appeared at a cabinet meeting with new advice, saying he firmly believed an invasion was legal, only days before the war began.

"I said, well that's extraordinary, why is it so late? Did you change your mind?" she said.

"And they all say, 'Clare. Stop'. Everything was very fraught by then and they didn't want me arguing, and I was jeered at to be quiet. That's what happened.

"If he won't answer and then the prime minister's saying be quiet and that's it, no discussion, there's only so much you can do."

But perhaps Ms Short's most damning evidence came in reaction to Mr Blair's earlier assertion that after the September 11 attacks, the rules had changed forever.

"Tony Blair's account of the need to act urgently somehow because of September 11 I think doesn't stack up to any scrutiny whatsoever," she said.

"We've made Iraq more dangerous as well as causing enormous suffering."

Ms Short resigned as a result of the war, something she says may have been avoided if only the UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix had been given more time in Iraq.

"If we tried and had done all those things, there would have been much more honour in what was done. There was no reason to rush, none whatsoever, except that the Americans wanted to go," she said.

"And they, I believe, were scared of Blix being successful and they started to smear him. There's no doubt about it if you go back to those days and look at the media."

Some have criticised the early hearings of the inquiry as being a tame whitewash where hard questions and answers were not demanded nor put.

Not many are saying that now.

 
 

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[Keith]

There is no known George Galloway in the Australian Parliament. Hopefully though none is known there is a politician with such courage, conviction and honesty waiting for his/her day. I doubt it.
 
To the naysayers, you are free to agree or disagree with Galloway and anybody else.
 
What you cannot deny and will never be able to deny is the truth that young Australians were sent to War by the Howard Government and some have died, some were wounded and many have become disabled, all based on lies.
 
This is the truth those who support the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars do not want to hear.
 
Let those who support the Afghanistan War send their kids to the enlistment centres now and let their kids be the first to volunteer.
 
GEORGE GALLOWAY LIAR WAR CRIMINAL TONY BLAIR KNEW IRAQ WAR WAS ILLEGAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtN_gkb9EPs
 
 

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[Keith]

Taliban 'buy out' fund to cost hundreds of millions
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100126/FOREIGN/701259829/1138

An international fund amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars will be established this week in a bid to buy off Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Tribute?

Did we lose and nobody told us?

IRAQ

Leaked UK documents detail Iraq war chaos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WsCtQm2t_A
 

Blair admits "legal" basis for Iraq war an Orwellian lie; psychopathic monster then threatens Iran
http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m1d29-Blair-admits-legal-basis-for-Iraq-war-an-Orwellian-lie-psychopathic-monster-then-threatens-Iran

*hyperlinks and video at source*

The UK Chilcot inquiry of the Iraq war previously disclosed unanimous legal opinion in the Foreign Office that the war is unlawful. Today former Prime Minister Tony Blair testified that he authorized war when his Attorney General ?changed his mind? to embrace an "interpretation" of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 that any objective legal analysis definitively proves as an obvious Orwellian lie.
 

Um Saddam,butcher and oppressor of his own people, had nothing to do with 9/11

Saddam's WMDs could not be ignored after 9/11, says 'coward' Blair after avoiding protesters
http://www.innworldreport.net/inn/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2027&Itemid=1

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was defiant Friday at the Iraq War Inquiry, saying he made it clear he would join the U.S. in a war to topple Saddam Hussein even if the US failed to get UN backing. Blair said 9/11 convinced him he couldn?t 'run the risk' of allowing Saddam Hussein to use chemical, biological or nuclear missiles.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
What 'chemical, biological or nuclear missiles', phony Tony?
 

Obama renews pledge to have troops in Iraq come home by end of August
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100127/BREAKING/100127074/Obama-renews-pledge-to-have-troops-in-Iraq-come-home-by-end-of-August
 
President Obama is renewing his pledge to have all of the nation's combat troops out of Iraq by the end of August. And he says he's confident of success in Afghanistan.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
I'll believe it when I see it.

Bin Laden struggling to stay relevant: US
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Bin_Laden_struggling_to_stay_releva_01292010.html
 
"So we've gone from being the 'Great Satan' to the 'Great Emitter,'" State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said sarcastically.

"He's working hard to stay relevant -- that's all I can say."

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Memo for anyone involved in the process of concocting this drivel: are you all completely barking mad?!?

As reported at:

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/osama_dead.html?q=osama_dead.html

"Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama's gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama's ghost alive or because they have no means of communication."

Folks at the US Department of Disinformation:

1. The world knows bin Laden is dead.

2. THAT message was truly hysterical!

[Keith]

Tony Blair the point is not you don't regret sending British youth into Iraq. The point is not you don't regret removing Saddam.
 
The questions are why did you act illegally, not just ignoring international law but British law, why did you connive with George Bush via secret letters to invade Iraq for nefarious purposes, why did you lie about Iraq's non existent WMD and the non existent connection between Saddam and Bin Laden and why did you allow the dodgy dossier to be the basis for your political and military decisions.
 
Of course you have no regrets. It was not your kids who were killed and disabled in Iraq. You Tony Blair are a disgrace to the British Nation.
 
UK media sprays 'no regrets' Blair
ABC NEWS

 
As Mr blair left the hearing, there were shouts of "liar" and "you're a murderer" (REUTERS : Toby Melville)

Related Story: Brown to face Iraq war inquiry
Related Story: 9/11 changed WMD risk: Tony Blair
Related Story: Blair denies 'covert' war deal with Bush
Related Story: Defiant Blair stands by Iraq war decision
Britain's newspapers have expressed shock at Tony Blair's defiant insistence he had no regrets about removing Saddam Hussein, blasting what they saw as the former prime minister's blind self-belief.

But commentators also showed grudging respect for his assured performance, conceding it would have been near impossible to force an admission of guilt from the man who took Britain into the divisive Iraq war in 2003.

Despite getting off to a nervous start at the London hearing on Friday, said the Guardian, Mr Blair quickly returned to his confident old self and the panel was soon "listening mute to a seminar on neoconservatism for slow learners."

The paper said he was handed an "invitation to humility" when asked if he had any regrets.

"Blair blew it, spoiling a near faultless performance," lamented the daily.

"For an audience which he knew included bereaved families it was too much. The room lost its self-control in boos and tears."

The Independent said that he "finished with the only clear lie of the day. He had no regrets. That can't be true. Too many dead for zero regrets, surely."

The press attacks came after Mr Blair, making a long-awaited appearance at the public inquiry, said he accepted "responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam."

As he left the hearing, there were shouts of "liar" and "you're a murderer" from the public gallery, where some of the relatives of the 179 British troops killed in Iraq watched his appearance.

Almost seven years after the invasion and six months after British troops left Iraq, Mr Blair's decision to go to war remains highly controversial, and hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the inquiry venue.

The Times, which ran a front-page story headlined Unrepentant, unforgiven, Blair says 'I'd do it again', said the former prime minister's stance demonstrated his belief "that all bad people are on the same side."

"He believes that the Universe is best understood as an eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, in contention for dominance," said the paper.

"For Mr Blair at least 'Axis of Evil' was not just a Bushite soundbite," it added.

Most observers, however, were forced to admit that Mr Blair gave a typically self-assured performance.

"Whatever one thinks of Tony Blair, he is a brilliant performer," noted the Telegraph.

It added the hearing ended "with few of us any the wiser about what happened to take Britain to war with Iraq in 2003, and Mr Blair coming out not even bloodied, let alone bowed."

"He was annoying, consummate and as hard to nail down as a jellyfish - but then, he always was," commented the London Evening Standard.

There was also criticism directed at the inquiry's panel, with some claiming their weak questioning let Mr Blair take control of the hearing.

"The slow-footed panel danced to his tune," said the Guardian, adding that "much of the questioning was dire."

The Times pointed to the "distinctly lukewarm questioning."

-AFP

 
 

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[Keith]

Blair Defends Iraq War: Tells Inquiry That Sending A Message Was 'Primary Consideration'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/29/blair-defends-iraq-war-te_n_441591.html

An unrepentant Tony Blair defended his decision to join the United States in attacking Iraq, arguing Friday before a panel investigating the war that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks made the threat of weapons of mass destruction impossible to ignore.

The former British Prime Minister said that before Sept. 11 he thought "Saddam was a menace, that he was a threat, he was a monster, but we would have to try and make best."

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/ 
Memo to Tony Blair:

1. Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

2. 9/11 was an inside job.

3. Apparently the millions of Iraqis killed, maimed, or who fled as refugees as a result of this war are of no consequence. Sociopaths like you (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al), have utterly no conscience.

4. The oil, however, was of great consequence to you and Washington. The first buildings to be protected and guarded during the invasion of Iraq were the oil ministries.


In short, Tony Blair, you have a massive amount of blood on your hands.

History will judge you through the dark and harsh lens of the truth.

Blair's 'we're with you' letter to Bush is kept secret from Iraq inquiry
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246915/Blairs-letter-Bush-kept-secret-Iraq-inquiry.html

Tony Blair is today set to dodge questions about secret letters he sent to George Bush promising to 'be with you' in the invasion of Iraq.

The Government was last night refusing to agree to the release of the letters and other key documents as the former Prime Minister faced what is being described as his 'Judgment Day'.

 
 

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[Keith]

Defiant Blair stands by Iraq war decision
By Europe correspondent Philip Williams and wires

ABC NEWS

 

Mr Blair denied there was any secret deal to join military action with George Bush. (Reuters: UKBP)

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has defended his decision to go to war in Iraq, saying he would do it again in the same circumstances.

Mr Blair was heckled as he gave his testimony before the Iraq war inquiry in London.

But he was not about to apologise for anything to do with Iraq; he said Saddam Hussein was a monster and the world was safer without him.

"The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction, we should stop him," he said.

Shouts from the gallery came as Mr Blair was asked if he had any regrets. He said the world was a safer place without Saddam and he would have made the same decision to go to war today.

"Responsibility, but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein," he said, when asked if he had misgivings about taking military action.

He said a majority of Iraqis would say they were better off now than under the former dictator.

Facing the first official public grilling on why he sent 45,000 British troops to war in Iraq, he reportedly said he was concerned that such a risk remained today, referring to fears over Iran's disputed nuclear program.

In six hours of evidence, he said he did not regret his dossier's claim that the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "beyond doubt", even though it did not exist.

"In the end it was divisive. And I'm sorry about that," Mr Blair said.

"But if I'm asked if I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of power and out of office, then I believe indeed we are."

Mr Blair denied there was any secret deal to join in military action with former US president George Bush in 2002 and says he joined a US-led effort to remove Saddam from power because he posed a threat to Britain and the world.

"It isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception," Mr Blair said.

"It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he'd caused, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programs?"

Mr Blair said he had not lent on his attorney-general to change his legal opinion to support the war.

The former UK leader also said the September 11 Al Qaeda attacks on the United States meant rogue states had to be dealt with to prevent WMD falling into the wrong hands, risking even greater carnage.


Angry families

Family members of British soldiers killed in Iraq shouted murderer and liar from the public gallery and outside demonstrators called for Mr Blair to be tried as a war criminal.

Valerie O'Neill, whose son Kris, 27, was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra in April 2007, was angered by Mr Blair's evidence and accused him failing to admit errors over the war.

"I think he's an autocratic dictator. He wouldn't have taken any notice of anyone other than himself," she said.

"He doesn't admit he's made a mistake."

It is possible Mr Blair will be recalled to give more evidence later in the year.

The decision to go to war was the most controversial episode of Mr Blair's 10-year premiership, provoking huge protests, divisions within his Labour Party and accusations he had deceived the public about the reasons for invasion.

The invasion was based on UN Security Council resolution 1441, which in November 2002 gave Saddam a final deadline to disarm, but former British government lawyers have said this did not provide a legal basis for war.

Asked about this, Mr Blair insisted: "I think all countries who took military action believed they had a sound legal basis for doing so."

- ABC/AFP/Reuters

 
 

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[Keith]

Details of Iraq whistleblowers alleged suicide to be sealed 70 years
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/details-iraq-whistleblowers-alleged-suicide-sealed-70-years/

By 2080, anyone with a direct interest in learning how Dr. David Kelly died, will themselves be dead.

That's how an Oxford coroner reacted to a recent ruling ordering the details of the former United Nations weapons inspector's death locked away for 70 years, according to a Mail Online report.

Kelly's story, however, was gravely important in 2003, just before he was found dead in the woods behind his home in Oxfordshire, U.K. As the BBC revealed in the wake of his passing, he had been the key source behind a story claiming intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up."

Brown accused of cover-up: PM under fire as key papers on Iraq war are kept confidential
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246632/Gordon-Brown-key-papers-Iraq-war-kept-confidential.html

Gordon Brown was accused of 'gagging' the Iraq inquiry last night as it emerged the Government is blocking the release of secret documents about the war.

Senior MPs from all three main parties said the decision bore all the hallmarks of an official 'cover-up' and made a mockery of the Prime Minister's pledge of a fully open investigation.

Lord Goldsmith: I changed my mind about legality of Iraq war after talks with Bush's lawyers in Washington http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246419/Chilcot-Inquiry-Iraq-war-Lord-Goldsmith-pressured-yes-answer-conflicts-legality.html

Despite confusion over its meaning and if it was sufficient, he told the public inquiry into the conflict: 'We ultimately depended on their [the American] view.'

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
The UK just dropped the blame for Iraq on George W. Bush.

To recap:

1. George W. Bush assured us all that Saddam had "nucular" bombs, justifying a pre-emptive war. The reality is that Saddam had complied with the United Nations and already destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction, leaving himself defenseless to a foreign invasion.

2. Bush insisted the attack on Iraq was in retaliation for 9-11. After the invasion, Bush admitted Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on the World Trade Center.

3. Bush insisted that Iraq could legally be invaded because they were supporting Al Qaeda. The reality is that the claimed link rested on a single confession extracted under torture and was later denied by the Pentagon. Al Qaeda itself appears to be a fake threat created by various intelligence agencies to justify a new global war.

So what could the Bush administration have said to Lord Goldsmith to convince him the invasion was legal?

 
 

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[Keith]

SMH
 
War post mortem checking for blood on the hands of lawyers

January 29, 2010

 

Lawyers are incredibly keen on preening themselves about their ''independence''. Little crests with mottos abound: Without fear or favour; Servants of all, yet of none; All are equal under the law.

Frequently it helps if these little warrior calls are in Latin.

We shouldn't get too misty eyed. The Chilcot inquiry in London comes as a handy reminder, if we needed one, that beside all the nifty mission statements in which the law wraps itself, there's another overriding one: he who pays the piper plays the tune.



Illustration: Simon Letch

The Chilcot inquiry is examining Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq, the events that preceded the invasion and the conduct of the war.

What has been the subject of its most immediate concentration is the legal advice about the legality or illegality of the war.

This week has seen evidence from three key British lawyers. Lord Goldsmith, former Labour attorney-general, former president of the English and Welsh bar, former deputy High Court judge and previously known as Pete Goldsmith from Liverpool; Sir Michael Wood, the most senior lawyer in the Foreign Office at the time of the invasion; and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy to Wood at the FO.

It has been nothing short of fascinating. All three at various points in the preparation for the war advised the Government that an invasion of Iraq without a specific UN Security Council resolution to that end would be unlawful.

The civil service lawyers could be ignored by the politicians, and they were. Goldsmith as attorney-general was a different kettle of fish. He was the Government's most senior and theoretically independent legal adviser. Wilmshurst was asked by Sir John Chilcot whether it made any difference that her views were rejected by the foreign secretary Jack Straw, himself a lawyer. ''He's not an international lawyer,'' she shot back.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned from the Foreign Office because she believed that what the Government was embarking upon was utterly devoid of any legitimacy.

Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, asked for a clear ''unequivocal'' legal position about the war.

From telling Tony Blair two months before the invasion that its lawfulness was questionable, Goldsmith subsequently saw the light - this war would be legal. And he explained it all in one page.

He had the advantage of a trip to Washington where various of Bush's rogue lawyers got him in a headlock. He came back refreshed and with a new independent opinion. Straw and Blair's people were also applying the thumbscrews to the first law officer. Like a good barrister, Goldsmith had the law coming out of both sides of his mouth.

Why is this important at all? Most people in the pubs couldn't give a fig about it. The short answer is that the military made it clear that to go to war on the basis of equivocal advice was untenable. It needed ''certainty''. To that extent, as the London barrister Philippe Sands, QC, has written: ''The attorney-general had his finger on the trigger.''

Not an insignificant position to be in, considering the vast amount of national treasure to be lavished, the countless lives to be spent and the pending waste and destruction.

Importantly, it enabled prime minister John Howard to wave a bit of paper, Chamberlain-like, and say Australia's participation in the coalition of the willing was entirely ''valid''. He told Parliament on March 18, 2003: ''Our legal advice ? is unequivocal ? This legal advice is consistent with that provided to the British Government by its attorney-general.''

Howard claquers in the media were also beating out the message, ''This war is legal''.

Whereas the politicians in Britain were ignoring the critical advice of the civil service lawyers, in Australia the opinion of legal people in the relevant departments was being warmly embraced.

The key advice the Government relied on came from Bill Campbell, QC, first assistant secretary, office of international law in the Attorney-General's Department, and Chris Moraitis, senior legal adviser, Department of Foreign Affairs.

It was essentially predicated on the view that an earlier UN Security Council resolution dealing with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and a more recent resolution giving Saddam the nudge to comply with previous resolutions were the basis for legitimising the invasion.

At the time the opinion was torn apart by other authorities. The former solicitor-general Gavan Griffith said the advice was ''fanciful ? an Alice in Wonderland inversion of meaning of plain words in the resolutions themselves. It is unsupportable. The authors are making it up.''

The vast preponderance of legal advice was clearly of the view that for war to be legitimised there had to be a specific and clear resolution of the Security Council. The US opposed going to an extra resolution. That was the end of it.

The law had to fit the exigencies and importantly the politicians had to find lawyers with suitable honorifics to sprinkle holy water on their position.

It has got to the point now where there are judicial rulings that the laws of war don't apply to war.

The president has to decide what is appropriately legal in these circumstances.

Likewise, as Jonathan Freedland said, writing in The Guardian: ''The war was legal - because Tony Blair said it was legal.''

One foot down the corridor of a dark place leads to other compromises: black hole prisons, illegal detention and ''trial'', plus liberal applications of torture - to mention a few.

justinian@lawpress.com.au

 

 
 

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[Keith]

My Ancestry is English, Scot and Irish. Blair and others leave me wondering just what has happened to the land of my ancestors.A land which led the way forging representative and democratic Government and a just legal system.


Iraq war was a crime of aggression: The damning verdict of top Whitehall lawyers which No.10 refused to accept
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246312/Chilcot-inquiry-Iraq-war-The-damning-verdict-Whitehall-lawyers-invading-Iraq-ministers-refused-accept.html

Tony Blair and Jack Straw brushed aside repeated warnings from Government lawyers that they would not have a 'leg to stand on' if Britain invaded Iraq.

Devastating evidence at the Iraq inquiry yesterday revealed that every senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office believed the conflict was in breach of international law.

Astonishingly, Downing Street asked lawyers to assess what the consequences would be if Britain toppled Saddam Hussein without legal authority. When they received the lawyers' memo, No.10 demanded: 'Why has this been put in writing?'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246312/Chilcot-inquiry-Iraq-w...

 
 

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[Keith]

You didn't have to be a nuclear physicist to understand what Blair, Bush and Howard were up to in Iraq.And the media at the time went along for the ride.
 
ABC NEWS
Iraq war advice 'not welcomed' by Blair
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

 

Britain's top lawyer at the time the country decided to go to war in Iraq has told the Chilcot inquiry that his legal advice to Tony Blair was not welcome at the time.

Until the eve of the conflict, the former attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, believed the use of military force in Iraq would contravene international law.

He told the inquiry that he had looked at the possible justifications for war and rejected them.

"I knew the prime minister [Mr Blair] was going to see President Bush," Lord Goldsmith said.

"I didn't want there to be any doubt that in my view the prime minister could not have the view that he could agree with President Bush somehow without going back to the United Nations.

"I wasn't asked for it and I don't frankly think it was terribly welcome."

When asked why he first said the war was illegal only to change his mind 10 days later, Lord Goldsmith said it was nonsense to suggest that he had been "pinned to the wall" by Mr Blair's aides to change the advice.

He said he felt the need to firm up the advice because the armed services were concerned about potential prosecutions.

 
 

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[Keith]

THE AGE
 
Iraq advice ignored, says aideThis article contains a video that will play automatically.http://www.theage.com.au/world/iraq-advice-ignored-says-aide-20100127-mywx.html?autostart=1


 PAOLA TOTARO, LONDON | British Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been humiliated by his own top legal adviser, who insisted his boss twice overruled his entreaties against military action in Iraq.

 
 

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[Keith]

Jack Straw ignored advice the Iraq invasion would be illegal, Foreign Office law chief tells Chilcot inquiry

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246156/Chilcot-inquiry-Iraq-war-Ministers-WERE-told-invading-Iraq-illegal-Foreign-Office-law-chief-tells-Chilcot-inquiry.html

Jack Straw brushed aside warnings that the invasion of Iraq would be illegal under international law, the inquiry into the conflict was told today.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
I have three words for Jack Straw, Tony Blair, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell: war crimes trials.

 
 

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[Keith]

ABC NEWS
Iraq war illegal, says former top UK advisers
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici for AM

 

Video: Iraq invasion 'unlawful' (ABC News Breakfast)
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201001/r503864_2678586.asx

Audio: UK lawyers testify over government advice on Iraq war (AM)
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/am/201001/20100127-am-07-iraq-inquiry.mp3

Related Story: Brown to face Iraq war inquiry
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/23/2799521.htm

Related Story: Backing Iraq war was toughest choice: Straw
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/22/2798526.htm

Related Story: Iraq war based on UK 'assumption'
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/19/2795460.htm

Two former Foreign Office legal advisers have told the UK's Iraq inquiry that the decision to launch the 2003 invasion was illegal.

One of the witnesses was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned as the government's chief international lawyer in March 2003 in a protest at the UK's participation in the war.

She and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, told the inquiry that their advice was ignored.

Sir Michael was the first to give evidence overnight. He was the most senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office when war was declared.

He told the panel that he had considered resigning on the eve of the invasion in March 2003.

In a memorandum to the inquiry he said: "I considered the use of force against Iraq was contrary to international law."

"In my opinion that use of force had not been authorised by the Security Council and had no other legal basis in international law."

Five months before the invasion, Sir Michael was summoned to the office of the then-foreign secretary Jack Straw.

"When he'd been at the Home Office, he'd often been advised things were unlawful and he'd gone ahead anyway and won in the courts," Sir Michael said.


'Crime of aggression'

His deputy Elizabeth Wilmshurst was an expert in international law.

She came to the conclusion that the war was illegal without a second United Nations resolution. She resigned from the Foreign Office after stating her opinion that the war would amount to a crime of aggression.

She told the inquiry that she felt specifically aggrieved by the overall handling of the legal process and the fact that government ministers waited until just days before the war to get a final ruling on the legality of it from the then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith.

"It seemed to have been left right until the end, the request to him for his formal opinion, as if it was simply an impediment that had to be got over before the policy could be implemented," she said.

Her former boss admitted for the first time overnight that he had disagreements with Mr Straw who had sidelined Sir Michael, calling his advice dogmatic.

Sir Michael said that the foreign secretary had taken the view that international law was vague and in the end it was unlikely the UK Government would ever be taken to court.

"Where I would strongly disagree is the implication of the following sentences, where he says because there's often or usually no court to decide these matters, he's somehow implying that one can therefore be more flexible," he said.

"That, I think, is probably the opposite of the case and I think because there is no court the legal adviser and those taking decisions based on legal advice have to be all the more scrupulous."

The final word went to Ms Wilmshurst.

"Did it make a difference that Jack Straw is himself a qualified lawyer?" the inquiry official said.

"He's not an international lawyer," he said.

Even Sir John Chilcot could not resist but laugh.

The public gallery erupted in applause as Ms Wilmshurst left the room. Her evidence and that of her former boss will intensify pressure on the then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith, who fronts the panel tomorrow.

On March 7, 2003, he told the Prime Minister that it was better to get a second UN resolution by March 17. Just days before the war, he changed his mind, saying an invasion would be legal.

 
 

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[Keith]

'Chemical Ali' executed
Article from: Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Baghdad, Iraq

January 26, 2010

SADDAM Hussein's notorious henchman "Chemical Ali'' was executed, an Iraqi Government spokesman said, a sentence carried out around a week after he received a fourth death sentence.

"The condemned Ali Hassan al-Majid has been executed by hanging until death today,'' said spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

On January 17, Majid was sentenced to death for ordering the gassing of Kurds in the northeastern town of Halabja, one of the worst atrocities of late dictator Saddam Hussein's regime that killed an estimated 5000 people.

Three-quarters of the victims at Halabja were women and children, in what is thought to be the deadliest ever gas attack carried out against civilians.

The conviction for the gas attack that came as the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in 1988 was the fourth time that Majid, better known by his macabre nickname, has received a death sentence.

Handing down the ruling, Judge Abud Mustapha al-Hamani branded Majid's offences as "deliberate murder, a crime against humanity'' when the verdict was delivered amid muffled applause in the courtroom.

"Al hamdulillah, Al hamdulillah (praise be to God),'' said a stone-faced Majid, in a hearing broadcast on television.

Majid's execution had previously been held up by legal wrangling.

The first execution was due to have been carried out by October 2007 but delayed so as not to coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A close cousin of Saddam, Majid earned his moniker for ordering poisonous gas attacks in a brutal scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that killed an estimated 182,000 Kurds in the 1980s.

He had already been sentenced to hang for genocide over the Kurdish offensives when in December 2008 he received a second death sentence for war crimes committed during the ill-fated 1991 Shiite uprising in southern Iraq.

Last March, the Iraqi High Tribunal handed down a third death sentence over the 1999 murders of dozens of Shiites in the Sadr City district of Baghdad and in the central shrine city of Najaf.

 
 

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[Keith]

And don't forget the previous Government went along for the ride, committing young Australians to the Iraq War and subsequently being responsible for the deaths of young Australians and their disabilities which have begun to surface right now.
 
I am no Johnny come lately to the anti Iraq War group, having publicly opposed any Australian involvement BEFORE the invasion and having attended an anti Iraq War protest. It was as clear as crystal we were being lied to, manipulated and befuddled for hidden agendas.
 
Iraq inquiry to be told Foreign Office lawyer thought war illegal as nervous Blair works until 3am to prepare
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245614/Nervous-Blair-works-till-3am-prepare-Chilcot-grilling.html


Explosive evidence showing the Government was 'clearly advised' the Iraq war was illegal will be disclosed at the inquiry into the conflict this week, it was revealed today.

Sir Michael Wood, who was the Foreign Office's chief legal adviser, is expected to reveal he believed the war was unlawful without a second United Nations resolution.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a senior FCO lawyer who quit in protest at the invasion, will also say she was not 'a voice in the wilderness' in having doubts about its legality.


FLASHBACK - THE LIE OF THE CENTURY

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html
The Downing
Street Memo is only the beginning of the proof we were all lied to.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Relinked in light of Britain's formal inquiry into just how the Iraq war got started!

Iraq Inquiry To Hear 'Illegal War' Evidence
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Iraq-Chilcot-Inquiry-Lawyers-Michael-Wood-And-Elizabeth-Wilmshurst-Cast-Doubt-Over-War-Legality/Article/201001415534405?lid=ARTICLE_15534405_IraqChilcotInquiry:

Two former Foreign Office lawyers are expected to tell the Chilcot inquiry the Government was "clearly advised" that the Iraq war was illegal, it has been reported.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
See "The Downing Street Memo"

 
 

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[Keith]

Jan 23 08:27
Hans Blix warned Tony Blair Iraq might not have WMD
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7051059/Hans-Blix-warned-Tony-Blair-Iraq-might-not-have-WMD.html


The United Nations' former chief weapons inspector in Iraq told the official inquiry into the war that he had cautioned Tony Blair the month before the 2003 invasion about the possibility that no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) would be found.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Remember how hard the US and UK governments tried to discredit Blix after that?

And young Australians have breathed, eaten and washed in the dust and sand of Iraq.Remember Dioxin is probably the most poisonous chemical on the planet and was the cancer causing agent in Agent Orange.
 
Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/22/iraq-nuclear-contaminated-sites

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.

Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.

 
 

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[Keith]

Blair held back on equipping troops
RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, LONDON
January 21, 2010

THE British inquiry into the Iraq war has heard that defence chiefs could not order equipment for troops deployed to Iraq because then prime minister Tony Blair did not want to signal to the UN that Britain was preparing for war.

Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon also told the Chilcot inquiry that the Treasury, then under current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, forced military planners to cut their budget, depriving British troops of much-needed helicopters.

Asked by Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the inquiry panel, whether a lack of helicopters meant British troops were much more dependent on using the roads, Mr Hoon agreed. He also agreed that it meant troops had to rely more on Snatch Land Rovers, designed for Northern Ireland, which have been vulnerable to roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Hoon, who was behind an attempted Labour leadership coup this month, did not mention Mr Brown by name.

But he said his department had to make ''difficult cuts'' due to the Treasury demands. Recently leaked letters show Mr Brown personally intervened in the dispute. Mr Hoon warned in a letter that the Ministry of Defence ''would have to scale back on major equipment programs''.

The ministry's helicopter budget was cut by ?1.4 billion ($A2.5 billion) in 2004.

The opposition Conservatives seized on Mr Hoon's admission. ''It is increasingly clear that the preparations to provide our troops with the necessary kit were hampered not only by political interference by Tony Blair, who did not want to send a signal that the government was preparing for war, but also by the financial handicap applied by Gordon Brown as chancellor,'' Liam Fox, the Conservatives' defence spokesman, said.

Mr Hoon also revealed he had opposed Mr Blair's decision in July 2004 to commit troops to southern Afghanistan while still committed to Iraq. Defence chiefs ''did not want to be involved in two major operations simultaneously'', he said.

Mr Hoon, the first person the inquiry has interviewed who was a cabinet minister during the war, insisted Britain always wanted a diplomatic solution before the 2003 invasion.

Mr Blair's influential spokesman at the time of the war, Alastair Campbell, told the inquiry last week that Mr Blair had sent secret notes to then US president George Bush in the months before the March 2003 invasion.

Mr Hoon described Mr Blair as ''a great note-writer'', adding: ''It would not surprise me at all that there were private notes that he would send to the president [Mr Bush].''

Panel member Sir Roderic Lyne asked him: ''If he [Mr Blair] was writing notes that could be read by the recipient and committing Britain to military action, wouldn't you have expected, as defence secretary, to have been consulted?''

Mr Hoon replied: ''I would have been, and that's why I don't believe he was ever unconditionally committing us to anything ? I never assumed that we were in a position of unconditionally resorting to military action actually right up until the [March 2003] vote in the House of Commons.''

GUARDIAN, AFP

 
 

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[Keith]

And don't forget that Australia never questioned the "intelligence" upon which we based our decision to deploy Troops to Iraq. The Australian Intelligence Agencies must have had all the doubts the Brit Intelligence Agencies had, yet off we went to War, playing politics with the lives and well being of young Australians.Of course it's all history now the politicians and media claim and we have forgotten about this matter. Yes and the Troops and their families and friends will have to live out the disabilities they inherited and the deaths they saw for the rest of their lives.
 
Let all those out there, mainly politicians and media, who call for War, send their kids and grandkids to the enlistment centres FIRST.
 
Iraq war based on UK 'assumption'
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

One of Tony Blair's chief aides has told the Iraq Inquiry that Britain went to war on the "assumption" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair's chief of staff throughout his premiership.

He said Downing Street was in no doubt that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, based more on their instincts about Hussein's past history than on any specific intelligence.

Mr Powell denied any secret deal to go to war had been hatched with the United States in early 2002 at a meeting in Crawford, Texas.

But he revealed that not long after that encounter, Tony Blair had warned then-US president George W Bush of the need to move quickly if it came to military action.

 
 

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[Keith]

Fool me once.............................
 
Revealed: Jack Straw?s secret warning to Tony Blair on Iraq
Michael Smith

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6991087.ece



A ?SECRET and personal? letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair?s plans for Iraq a year before war started.

The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.

It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.

The letter will be a key piece of evidence at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war when it questions Straw this week.

Read it in full: Straw?s Iraq war letter
So why didn't you quit, Mr Straw?
The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: ?The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq.?

Straw said Iraq posed no greater threat to the UK than it had done previously. The letter said there was ?no credible evidence? linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and that the ?threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September?.

Implying Blair was already seeking an excuse for war, it warned of two legal ?elephant traps?. It states ?regime change per se is no justification for military action? and ?the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh [UN] mandate may well be required?.

The letter went on to question the very objective of military action. Straw warned Blair: ?We have also to answer the big question ? what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything.?

Straw said there was ?no certainty that the replacement regime will be better? than that of Saddam Hussein.

Despite this warning a year ahead of the war, the planning by Blair and other coalition leaders for the aftermath of war was dismal. Iraq descended into bloody chaos that cost more lives than the war itself.

Straw later wrote a further secret memo in early 2003 again doubting that the case for war had been made.

The release of Straw?s letter will pile further pressure on Blair ahead of the former prime minister giving evidence to the inquiry sometime between January 25 and February 5.

The issue of the war remains highly sensitive among the public. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend shows that 52% of people believe Blair deliberately misled the country over the war. Almost one in four ? 23% ? think he should be tried as a war criminal.

The inquiry burst into life last week during tense questioning of Alastair Campbell. Blair?s former communications director rejected evidence from Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador in Washington, that Blair agreed to regime change at the Crawford summit. Campbell claimed the agreement came later in a series of private letters to Bush.

Philippe Sands QC, an expert on the legality of the war, said: ?Mr Campbell sought to persuade Chilcot that there was no early decision [on war]: the Straw letter is plainly inconsistent with Mr Campbell?s narrative.?

In addition, a Cabinet Office briefing paper, previously leaked to The Sunday Times, contradicts Campbell?s evidence.

The briefing paper states: ?When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.?

The YouGov poll shows that 49% of people believe Campbell did not tell the truth about the Iraq war at the time and is still not telling the truth, while 31% think he told the truth as he saw it at the time.

Other witnesses appearing before the Chilcot inquiry next week include Blair?s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary. Hoon is expected to be asked about his contribution to a war cabinet meeting in July 2002.

The minutes of the meeting were leaked to The Sunday Times in May 2005 and have since become widely known as ?the Downing Street memo?. It recorded that ?military action was now seen as inevitable in Washington? and that the ?intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy?.

The memo also refers to Hoon saying that ?spikes of activity? had already begun. These were attacks on Iraqi military installations in preparation for the ground invasion. The RAF took part in them.

Additional reporting: Richard Woods

 

 
 

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[Keith]

THE AGE
 
Iraq's 'Chemical Ali' sentenced to death

BAGHDAD
January 18, 2010

Saddam Hussein's notorious enforcer "Chemical Ali" has been sentenced to death for ordering the gassing of Kurds in the Iraqi town of Halabja, a brutal attack that killed an estimated 5,000 people.

Ali Hassan al-Majid will die by hanging after he was found guilty of the attack yesterday, the state-run Al-Iraqiya television channel reported.

The attack took place in the northeast of the country as the Iran-Iraq war drew to a close in 1988. Three-quarters of the victims at Halabja were women and children.

It's the fourth time Majid, better known by his macabre nickname, has received a death sentence.

"This judgment is a victory for all Iraqis, humanity and the Kurds because Halabja is the biggest crime of modern times," said Majid Hamad Amin, minister of the martyrs and displaced in the Kurdish regional government.

"Halabja is not only a Kurdish case but it is an issue for all Iraqis and the rest of the world."

A close cousin of Saddam, Majid earned his ghastly moniker for ordering poisonous gas attacks in a brutal scorched-earth campaign of bombings and mass deportations that left an estimated 182,000 Kurds dead in the 1980s.

He had already been sentenced to hang for genocide over the Kurdish offensives when in December 2008 he received a second death sentence for war crimes committed during the ill-fated 1991 Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq.

And in March last year, the Iraqi High Tribunal handed down a third death sentence over the the 1999 murders of dozens of Shi'ites in the Sadr City district of Baghdad and in the central shrine city of Najaf.

However, he is probably best known for the Halabja attack when in March 1988, Iraqi jets swooped over the small town and for five hours sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX.

Majid was the King of Spades in the pack of cards of most wanted Iraqis issued by the US military in 2003 and was arrested in August of that year.

Like Saddam, Majid hails from the northern town of Tikrit, where he was born in 1941, according to court documents, although he told a tribunal last year that he was born in 1944.

Considered Saddam's right-hand man and bearing a strong resemblance to the former dictator, he was a member of the decision-making Revolutionary Command Council and regularly called upon to wipe out rebellion.

He was most infamous for his role in northern Iraq. In March 1987, the ruling Baath party put him in charge of state agencies in the Kurdish area, including the police, army and militias.

As Iraq's eight-year war with Iran drew to a close, fighters from the rebel Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, with backing from Tehran, took over the farming community of Halabja, near the border.

As Saddam's henchman, Majid then ordered the gas attack to crush the uprising.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said Majid was responsible for the deaths or disappearances of around 100,000 non-combatant Kurds when he put down the revolt across the Kurdish region.

But Majid said he ordered the attacks against the Kurds, who had sided with Iran in the war, for the sake of Iraqi security. He has refused to express remorse for the killings.

AFP
   

 
 

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[Keith]

When I was Prime Minister I told the truth: Major accuses Blair of attacking Iraq on false pretext

By Glen Owen, Mail on Sunday Political Correspondent
Last updated at 1:42 AM on 03rd January 2010

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major launched a devastating attack on Tony Blair yesterday, effectively accusing his Downing Street successor of going to war in Iraq on a false pretext.

Sir John cranked up the pressure on Mr Blair, who is due to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the war within the next few weeks, by saying he suspected the action ?was more about regime change than it was about weapons of mass destruction? ? the reason MPs were given for the invasion.

His damning criticisms came as it emerged Price Charles had been so opposed to the invasion he broke Royal protocol and actively campaigned against it behind the scenes.



Former Prime Minister Sir John Major has demanded to know whether Tony Blair's Cabinet knew of doubts over Iraq's WMD threat

Tellingly, Sir John revealed that during his time at No 10, the idea of removing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by force had been raised by US President Bill Clinton?s administration, but that his Downing Street aides had warned that it needed to be ?legal and viable?.

Mr Blair is expected to face intense interrogation by the Chilcot team over the advice he was given on the legality of the war.

His claims that Saddam possessed WMDs have turned out to be completely bogus.

And Sir John, who was defeated by Mr Blair in his 1997 landslide Election victory, said the handling of the 2003 invasion had done more damage to trust in the British political system than the MPs? expenses scandal.

He demanded to know whether Mr Blair?s Cabinet had been aware of doubts about Saddam?s WMD threat before the decision was made to take military action.

?The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change,? Sir John told Baroness Shirley Williams, who was guest-editing the BBC Today programme.

'There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don?t topple them and, indeed, in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran.

'I had myself been Prime Minister in the first Gulf War, and I knew when I said something I was utterly certain that it was correct, and I said less than I knew. I assumed the same thing had happened and on that basis I supported reluctantly the second Iraq war.?

 

More...

Defence probe into secret Army unit accused of torturing Iraqis

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239897/Defence-probe-secret-Army-unit-accused-torture.html

Hostage Peter Moore 'certainly' held in Iran, insists U.S. general, as freed Briton enjoys first taste of being home

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239815/Peter-Moore-How-PlayStation-eased-hostage-hell.html

Christmas Day bomber was trained by al Qaeda, confirms Barack Obama

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1240137/Christmas-Day-bomber-trained-al-Qaeda-confirms-Barack-Obama.html
 
A Royal source told the News of the World that Prince Charles, who would become Commander-in-Chief of Britain's armed forces if he became King, used to mockingly refer to Blair as 'our glorious leader'.

He reportedly warned senior politicians and influential figures that the war would be a disaster and could only make Britain's problems worse, while failing to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which he felt was the real source of Islamic tension.

Last year The Mail on Sunday disclosed that former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith wrote to Mr Blair in July 2002 ? eight months before the war ? warning him that deposing Saddam was a blatant breach of international law.

Instead of persuading him to call off the invasion, Mr Blair issued instructions to gag Lord Goldsmith, banning him from attending Cabinet meetings and ordering a cover-up to stop the public finding out.

Shortly after our report appeared, Mr Blair used a television interview with Fern Britton to change his rationale for the war, arguing for the first time that he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known it did not have any WMDs.

?I would still have thought it right to remove him,? he said.

His statement triggered accusations that Mr Blair was mounting a pre-emptive damage-limitation exercise ahead of his appearance in front of Chilcot.

The anti-war campaigner Reg Keys pointed out that in February 2003 Mr Blair had told the Commons that Saddam could remain in power if he gave up his WMDs.

Mr Keys said of Mr Blair: ?The man is just telling lie after lie. It?s inconceivable that a former Prime Minister can be doing this.?

Mr Blair used the interview to claim his religious faith gave him the strength to ?hold to? his decision to go to war, and supported him during the ?loneliness? of having made that decision.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240183/When-I-Prime-Minister-I-told-truth-Major-accuses-Blair-attacking-Iraq-false-pretext.html##ixzz0baf5UTNB

 
 

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[Keith]

ABC NEWS
Ex-PM Major criticises Blair over Iraq war
 

Former British prime minister Sir John Major has criticised Tony Blair's handling of the Iraq war and his presentation of the case for invasion in 2003.

Sir John says he had reluctantly backed the war because he believed what Mr Blair had said as prime minister.

But now, he said, big questions had been raised by the evidence given to the Chilcott Inquiry into the war.

Sir John says the argument that Saddam Hussein was a bad man who needed to be removed was an "inadequate" one.

"There are many bad men around the world who run countries and we don't topple them, and indeed in earlier years we had actually supported Saddam Hussein when he was fighting against Iran," he said.

"The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change."

-BBC

 
 

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[Neil Macdonald]

Could it be in any way possible that this has absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan and is a back passage into a next door nabour via the Hindo Housh to cause more international basterdry.  Just a thaught but worth thinking about.
Have a good day Neil.

[Keith]

FLASHBACK - THE LIE OF THE CENTURY
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html


There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.

All of the many many informed international affairs honest brokers and students know we have been conned by the so called international war on terrorism.Some have been aware of this con since at least 2002. The term war on terror has been used since 2001 to strike fear and terror into the hearts of ordinary people around the world and it is used by our Government and the Governments of the US and UK to manipulate the populations into accepting military excursions into countries where we have no legitimate business being. It's the lives and limbs of our young people we are playing with here. Not one more young Australian life is worth one more patrol, one more operation or one more extension of our Afghanistan deployment.
 
Bring the Troops home. Look after our own security at home and in our immediate geographical area and stop letting the Yanks con us into supporting their lies and ineptitude. Curtin stood up to Churchill and we now must stand up to the Americans.
 
The Americans are like the Bourbons of France. They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
 
Let those who support this Afghan War send their kids to volunteer first.



FLASHBACK - Fake Al Qaeda
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/fakealqaeda.html


"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US . . ." -- Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook

CAUTION. MUCH COARSE LANGUAGE
 
George Carlin - Airport Security And Terrorists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G6URhJTvVg&feature=player_embedded

[Keith]

Nailing the Iraq Lie


By Aijaz Zaka Syed

How right Edward Gibbon was when he said history is little more than the register of crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. But perhaps no register is enough to chronicle the crimes double-speaking and double-dealing politicians routinely commit against humanity.

Look at Tony Blair. You would think two years out of power would have narrowed down the gap between the former British prime minister and what is commonly known as common sense. But then there's no antidote to hubris.

In the countdown to the Iraq invasion and long since, Blair insisted ad nauseam that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Speaking in the world's oldest parliament, a grim faced Blair solemnly warned the British public ? and the world ? that Saddam had the capability and the intent to launch a WMD attack against Britain within 40 minutes.

In fact, with his gift of the gab the man once known as Britain's most successful politician played a crucial role in building the case for Iraq war, and gifting the much-needed legitimacy to with-us-or-against-us Bush and his cowboy coalition.


Without Britain's support, its just inconceivable how Bush would have put together his Coalition of the Willing and gone to war against Iraq. As Ken Macdonald, one of Blair's senior public servants and Britain's former chief public prosecutor, wrote in the Times this week, the British leader used alarming subterfuge with his partner George W Bush to take the world to war.

A sham war that has totally destroyed Iraq, unleashing chaos that continue to rock the Arab country and the Middle East from one end to another!

Blair and Bush told us this war had been absolutely critical to the security and stability of the civilized world. Just like the morally bankrupt politicians before them did, they told us the war was necessary for peace!

Even when the whole world stood up against the war, from Americas to Asia, the coalition stuck to its guns, insisting the war on Iraq-already on the brink after two major wars and years of devastating Western sanctions-was essential to rid the world of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction!

And now Blair turns around to tell us WMD or no WMD, the Coalition of the Willing would have invaded Iraq anyway. Ironically though, in doing so, the man who has turned the old-fashioned deceit and lying into a refined art, may be telling the truth for a change!

In a now infamous interview with BBC's Fern Britton that captured Blair at his smug best, he gloated: "I would still have thought it right to remove him (Saddam). I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat."

Can this get any more disingenuous? No wonder Blair's claim has reignited the Iraq war debate with some familiar names associated with the circus that preceded the invasion joining the fray.

While individuals like Ken Macdonald, whose conscience hasn't gone to sleep, have blasted the former premier for his lies, deception and sucking up to Bush, there are more revelations from those close to the former prime minister that the Atlantic allies were indeed determined to attack Iraq, WMD or no WMD. This is what anti-war groups, human rights activists and majority of peace-loving people around the world have been saying all along.

This war never had anything to do with Saddam's mythical weapons or his alleged links to Al Qaeda. The West just wanted to invade Iraq and was looking for an excuse to hit it. In fact, it

According to fresh testimony before Britain's new Iraq inquiry, Blair had signed on to America's Iraq war mission during his visit to Bush's Texas ranch in June 2002. That was a year before the Iraq invasion-and long before Secretary of State Colin Powell swore before the United Nations that Iraq was a 'clear and present danger' to world peace. Remember Powell's claim about Saddam moving around his 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' on trucks?

Sir Christopher Meyer, UK's envoy in Washington during that critical year, told the Iraq inquiry this week that Bush and Blair had 'signed in blood' their Iraq pact during that meeting.

The oil, the Israeli lobby, Bush's Oedipal complexes or old-fashioned hegemonic ambitions, whatever drove the coalition, clearly Iraq had been in its sights right from the day one. This was a war based on and driven by lies and treachery right from the word go.

And Blair's BBC interview has nailed this monumental lie on which this sham war was built. What more do we need? Is that not enough to put him and other leading lights of the coalition in the dock for crimes against Iraqi people and for crimes against humanity? Blair is supposed to appear before the Iraq inquiry later next year. But he has already confessed to his crimes, hasn't he? Blair and Bush are not just guilty of war crimes against Iraqi people but are also guilty of misleading the international community.

It was their WMD claim that persuaded the United Nations and the world community to give that fig leaf of 'international mandate' to Iraq invasion.

Would the United Nations, ineffective and toothless as it is, have given its blessings to the invasion, if its august members had known Saddam didn't have all those frightening weapons that Bush and Blair claimed he had?

The UN Resolution 678 approved use of force against Iraq, only if it failed to 'disarm' itself of its weapons of mass destruction. The coalition used this Security Council resolution, passed in the 1990s during the first Gulf War, to justify the war.

Denuded of that legal and moral cover, the Iraq invasion is nothing but war crimes against a helpless, defenceless people. Which it essentially was! International law doesn't allow any country to force a regime change in other countries even on humanitarian grounds.

As former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who desperately pleaded with the UN and Western powers to give more time to Iraq for disarming itself and a diplomatic solution, writes in the Guardian this week, "The responsibility for launching the war must be judged against the knowledge (about Iraq's non-existent weapons) that the allies had when they actually started it."

This was a 'criminal enterprise,' as Ken Macdonald puts it. And there exists a strong war crimes case against all those who planned and visited this calamitous war on a country that posed no threat to anyone, let alone the powerful, nuclear-armed Western countries or even Israel. It's time to hold them to account

Otherwise, another toothless British inquiry is not going to bring any succor or hope to Iraqi people. After all, this is the fourth inquiry that is looking into the legality and morality of the Iraq war. Another round of harmless testimonies and pointless brainstorming by retired civil servants and diplomats is hardly going to make Blair and his old friends and allies lose their sleep.

What we need is a Yugoslavia style tribunal. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia has been trying political leaders who plotted 'large-scale violence' against civilians for collaborating in a 'joint criminal enterprise'.

What's happened in Iraq in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights is far worse than what happened in the Balkans more than a decade ago. More innocents have died ? and continue to die ? in Iraq than in Kosovo or Bosnia Herzegovina.

In fact, there's no comparison between what happened in the Balkans and what's still going on in Iraq. One was a scene from the Hell-Dante's Inferno, if you will. And the other is a living hell itself. It still is.

* Aijaz Zaka Syed is Opinion Editor of Khaleej Times and can be reached at ?aijaz@khaleejtimes.com

 

 
 

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[Keith]

Outraged Brits want Blair prosecuted for war crimes http://rawstory.com/2009/12/outraged-brits-blair-prosecuted-war-crimes/


Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have backed the Iraq war even if he knew it did not have weapons of mass destruction sparked outrage Sunday and calls for his prosecution for war crimes.

The former British prime minister, who backed the US-led invasion in 2003, told the BBC he would "still have thought it right to remove" Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein because of the threat he posed to the region.

Lawyers representing the deposed Iraqi leadership said they would seek to prosecute Blair following his remarks, while one newspaper commentator said it was a "game-changing admission" for the ongoing official inquiry into the war.

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The only "threats" Hussein posed were those of having nationalized the oil fields, and the people of Iraq having had nearly the highest standards of living in the Middle East!

I wouldn't hold my breath on actual criminal charges being successfully filed against Blair, but the people of the UK are finally waking up as to why their kids in the military were fighting, dying, and getting maimed for life, and they're getting angry.

Would that some of that anger and outrage would rub off on this side of the Atlantic.

 
 

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[Keith]

It is very important we sift through the Iraq commitment and understand what happened. Politicians are very good at sending somebody else's children off to War.When politicians advocate the raw muscle of the Military be deployed with subsequent loss of life and limb they should ensure their kids and grandkids are there to volunteer to set the national example.
 
It's not so bad when there is a clear reason for sending young citizens to War, the most serious and onerous decision any Parliament can make. It is not ok to send any young Australians off to a War for international political games and economic reasons. The Iraq War was blatantly political and was never in response to weapons of mass destruction nor Saddams non existent support of al-Qaida .
 
Saddam was a violent dictator and they are a dime a dozen around the World. However we cannot save countries from their own internal political hatreds and bitterness. We must never send young Australians off to War again unless the security of Australia is directly threatened.It is the job of our security organizations to monitor and deal with security threats in this country. The Military's job is to defend the country against aggressors.
 

 
'Sycophant' Tony Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war, says former DPP

Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008, says Blair misled and cajoled the British people into a war they didn't want
 

         Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent
         guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 December 2009 09.22 GMT

Article history



Macdonald said that Blair's fundamental flaw was his 'sycophancy towards power' and that he could not resist the 'glamour' he attracted in Washington. Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

Tony Blair used "deceit" to persuade parliament and the British people to support war in Iraq, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said today.

In an article in the Times, Macdonald attacked Blair for engaging in "alarming subterfuge", for displaying "sycophancy" towards George Bush and for refusing to accept that his decisions were wrong.

Macdonald's comments about Blair's decision to go to war are more critical than anything that has been said so far by any of the senior civil servants who worked in Whitehall when Blair was prime minister.

Macdonald was DPP from 2003 until 2008 and he now practises law from Matrix Chambers, where Blair's barrister wife, Cherie, is also based.

In his article Macdonald highlighted a remark Blair made in an interview broadcast yesterday about supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein regardless of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to explain why he thought the former prime minister was guilty of deceit.

But Macdonald also expressed concerns about the Iraq inquiry, suggesting that some of its questioning so far had been "unchallenging" and that Sir John Chilcot and his team would be held in "contempt" if they failed to uncover the truth about the war.

Macdonald wrote: "The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage.

"It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible."

Macdonald said that Blair's fundamental flaw was his "sycophancy towards power" and that he could not resist the "glamour" he attracted in Washington.

"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so," Macdonald went on.

"Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death."

Macdonald said that, with the exceptions of some of the interventions from Sir Roderic Lyne, the questions asked when the Chilcot inquiry has been taking evidence from witnesses have been tame.

"If this is born of a belief that it creates an atmosphere more conducive to truth, it seems naive. The truth doesn't always glide out so compliantly; sometimes it struggles to be heard," Macdonald said.

Many commentators have criticised the fact that all members of the Chilcot team are establishment figures ? Chilcot himself is a former permanent secretary ? and Macdonald said the inquiry needed to prove its independence.

"In British public life, loyalty and service to power can sometimes count for more to insiders than any tricky questions of wider reputation. It's the regard you are held in by your peers that really counts, so that steadfastness in the face of attack and threatened exposure brings its own rich hierarchy of honour and reward.

"Disloyalty, on the other hand, means a terrible casting out, a rocky and barren Roman exile that few have the courage to endure."

Macdonald said Chilcot and his team needed to tell the truth without fear of offending the Whitehall establishment.

"If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt," Macdonald said.

Yesterday, in an interview with Fern Britton broadcast on BBC1, Blair said he would have backed an attack on Iraq even if he had known that Saddam had no WMD.

"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked.

He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

 

 
 

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[Keith]

Blair told to delay Iraq war: officer
GORDON RAYNER, LONDON
December 9, 2009
 

 A SENIOR army officer urged Tony Blair to delay the invasion of Iraq two days before the conflict began because preparations for the aftermath were not ''anywhere near ready'', an inquiry has heard.

Major-General Tim Cross was attached to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which was set up by the US to manage post-war reconstruction. He said plans were ''woefully thin''.

In a statement to the Iraq inquiry, he said he briefed Mr Blair in Downing Street on March 18, 2003, about the shortcomings he and his colleagues in the office faced.

''We talked for about 30 minutes or so,'' he said. ''I was as honest about the positions as I could be, essentially briefing that I did not believe post-war planning was anywhere near ready.

''I told him that there was no clarity on what was going to be needed after the military phase of the operation, nor who would provide it.

''Although I was confident that we would secure a military victory, I offered my view that we should not begin that campaign until we had a much more coherent post-war plan.''

General Cross also criticised Clare Short, the international development secretary at the time, who later resigned over the war.

He said she would not allow one of her officials to work with him full-time because of her ''well-known concerns''. ''This was, I am bound to say, unhelpful for me and it was an early indicator that Whitehall was not much more joined up than Washington,'' he said.

''There was a strong reluctance to formally support ORHA. We did have DFID [Department for International Development] representation, but it was nowhere near sufficient to meet our needs.

''Considering the expected scale of the humanitarian suffering, the projected numbers of [refugees], civilian casualties, this was, once again, more than a little disappointing.''

Previous witnesses have told the inquiry that the Department for International Development believed it was wrong for Britain to take part in the invasion without having first secured a second United Nations Security Council resolution supporting military action against Saddam Hussein's regime.

TELEGRAPH

 
 

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Iraq Inquiry bombshell: Secret letter to reveal new Blair war lies

An explosive secret letter that exposes how Tony Blair lied over the legality of the Iraq War can be revealed.

The Chilcot Inquiry into the war will interrogate the former Prime Minister over the devastating 'smoking gun' memo, which warned him in the starkest terms the war was illegal.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote the letter to Mr Blair in July 2002 - a full eight months before the war - telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.

It was intended to make Mr Blair call off the invasion, but he ignored it. Instead, a panicking Mr Blair issued instructions to gag Lord Goldsmith, banned him from attending Cabinet meetings and ordered a cover-up to stop the public finding out

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Blair and his bloody-handed US compatriots, that vile and unholy trinity of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, should be tried and convicted for war crimes; unfortunately, given current circumstances, that will only happen when pigs fly.

The question is, what has the acceptance, tacit or enthusiastic, of these immoral and illegal wars without end done to the moral character of the American and British people?

By supporting these wars, or not having the courage to fight against them by whatever peaceful means necessary, both societies has lost the ability to ever call themselves a moral, courageous people again.

We will collectively have to live with that stain on our consciences, unless and until all the rogues in power who sold these wars on a pack of lies, are brought to justice, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to insure that this madness, and the devastation it has wreaked, will never happen again.
 

Iraq Inquiry bombshell: Secret letter to reveal new Blair war lies
Simon Walters


November 29, 2009

An explosive secret letter that exposes how Tony Blair lied over the legality of the Iraq War can be revealed.

The Chilcot Inquiry into the war will interrogate the former Prime Minister over the devastating 'smoking gun' memo, which warned him in the starkest terms the war was illegal.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote the letter to Mr Blair in July 2002 - a full eight months before the war - telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.

It was intended to make Mr Blair call off the invasion, but he ignored it. Instead, a panicking Mr Blair issued instructions to gag Lord Goldsmith, banned him from attending Cabinet meetings and ordered a cover-up to stop the public finding out.

He even concealed the bombshell information from his own Cabinet, fearing it would spark an anti-war revolt. The only people he told were a handful of cronies who were sworn to secrecy.

Lord Goldsmith was so furious at his treatment he threatened to resign - and lost three stone as Mr Blair and his cronies bullied him into backing down.

Sources close to the peer say he was 'more or less pinned to the wall' in a Downing Street showdown with two of Mr Blair's most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.

The revelations follow a series of testimonies by key figures at the Chilcot Inquiry who have questioned Mr Blair's judgment and honesty, and the legality of the war.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that the inquiry has been given Lord Goldsmith's explosive letter, and that Mr Blair and the peer are likely to be interrogated about it when they give evidence in the New Year.

Lord Goldsmith gave qualified legal backing to the conflict days before the war broke out in March 2003 in a brief, carefully drafted statement. As The Mail on Sunday disclosed three years ago, even that was a distortion as Lord Goldsmith had told Mr Blair a week earlier he could be breaking international law.

But today's revelations show that Lord Goldsmith told Mr Blair at the outset, and in writing, that military action against Iraq was totally illegal.


Pressured: Lord Goldsmith leaves No10 in March 2003 after talks with Blair

The disclosures deal a massive blow to Mr Blair's hopes of proving he acted in good faith when he and George Bush declared war on Iraq. And they are likely to fuel further calls for Mr Blair to be charged with war crimes.

Lord Goldsmith's 'smoking gun' letter came six days after a Cabinet meeting on July 23, 2002, at which Ministers were secretly told that the US and UK were set on 'regime change' in Iraq.

The peer, who attended the meeting, was horrified. On July 29, he wrote to Mr Blair on a single side of A4 headed notepaper from his office.

Friends say it was no easy thing for him to do. He was a close friend of Mr Blair, who gave him his peerage and Cabinet post. The typed letter was addressed by hand, 'Dear Tony', and signed by hand, 'Yours, Peter'.

In it, Lord Goldsmith set out in uncompromising terms why he believed war was illegal. He pointed out that:

War could not be justified purely on the grounds of 'regime change'.

Although United Nations rules permitted 'military intervention on the basis of self-defence', they did not apply in this case because Britain was not under threat from Iraq.

While the UN allowed 'humanitarian intervention' in certain instances, that too was not relevant to Iraq.

It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.

Lord Goldsmith ended his letter by saying 'the situation might change' - although in legal terms, it never did.

The letter caused pandemonium in Downing Street. Mr Blair was furious. No10 told Lord Goldsmith he should never have put his views on paper, and he was not to do so again unless told to by Mr Blair.

The reason was simple: if it became public, Lord Goldsmith's letter could make it impossible for Mr Blair to fulfil his secret pledge to back Mr Bush in any circumstances. More importantly, it could never be expunged from the record as copies were stored in No10 and in the Attorney General's office.

Although Lord Goldsmith had Cabinet status, he attended meetings only when asked. After his letter, he barely attended another meeting until the eve of the war. Mr Blair kept him out to reduce the chance of him blurting out his views to other Ministers.

When Mr Blair is quizzed by the Chilcot Inquiry, he will be asked why he never admitted he was told from the start that the war was illegal.

Equally ominously for Mr Blair, a defiant Lord Goldsmith is ready to defend the letter when he appears before the inquiry. Friends of the peer, widely derided for his role in the Iraq War, believe it will vindicate him.

A source close to Lord Goldsmith said: 'He assumed, perhaps naively, that Blair wanted a proper legal assessment. No10 went berserk because they knew that once he had put it in writing, it could not be unsaid.

'They liked to do things with no note-takers, and often no officials, present. That way, there was no record. Everything could be denied.



Heavy-handed: Baroness Morgan and Lord Falconer are said to have 'more or less pinned Lord Goldsmith to the wall and told him what Blair wanted'


'Goldsmith threatened to resign at least once. He lost three stone in that period. He is an honourable man and it was a terribly stressful experience.'

Lord Goldsmith's wife Joy, a prominent figure in New Labour dining circles, played a crucial role in talking him out of quitting.

'Joy was always very ambitious on Peter's behalf and did not want to see him throw it all away,' said a source.

Lord Goldsmith's letter contradicts Mr Blair's repeated statements, before, during and after the war on its legality.

In April 2005, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman repeatedly asked him if he had seen confidential Foreign Office advice that the war would be illegal without specific UN support.

Mr Blair said: 'No. I had the Attorney General's advice to guide me.' At best, it was dissembling. At worst, it was a blatant lie.

Mr Blair knew all along that Lord Goldsmith had told him the war was illegal, and that when the peer finally gave it his cautious backing, he did so only under extreme duress.

The Mail on Sunday has also obtained new evidence about the way Lord Goldsmith was bullied into backing the war at the 11th hour.

He was summoned to a No10 meeting with Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Baroness Sally Morgan, Mr Blair's senior Labour 'fixer' in Downing Street. No officials were present.

A source said: 'Falconer and Morgan performed a pincer movement on Goldsmith. They more or less pinned him up against the wall and told him to do what Blair wanted.'

After the meeting, Lord Goldsmith issued his brief statement stating the war was lawful.

Lord Falconer said in response to the latest revelations: 'This version of events is totally false. The meeting was Lord Goldsmith's suggestion and he told us what his view was.'

Baroness Morgan has also denied trying to pressure Lord Goldsmith.

The legal row came to a head days before the war, when the UN refused to approve military action. Stranded, Mr Blair had to win Lord Goldsmith's legal backing, not least because British military chiefs refused to send troops into action without it.

On March 17, three days before the conflict started, Lord Goldsmith said the war was legal on the basis of previous UN resolutions threatening action against Saddam - even though in his secret letter of July 2002, he had ruled out this argument.

A spokesman for Lord Goldsmith said: 'This letter is probably in the bundle that has been supplied to the inquiry by the Attorney General's department. It is presumed they will want to discuss it with him. If so, Lord Goldsmith is content to do so.

'His focus is on the legality of the war, its morality is for others.'

A spokesman for the Chilcot Inquiry said: 'We are content we have obtained all the relevant documents.'

A spokesman for Mr Blair refused to say why the former Prime Minister had not disclosed Lord Goldsmith's July 2002 letter.

'The Attorney General set out the legal basis for action in Iraq in March 2003,' he said. 'Beyond that, we are not getting into a running commentary before Mr Blair appears in front of the Chilcot committee.'

Leading international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands said: 'The Chilcot Inquiry must make Lord Goldsmith's note of 29 July, 2002, publicly available to restore public confidence in the Government.'




Diary of deceit ... and how the Attorney General lost three stone

2002

April 6: Blair meets Bush at Crawford, Texas. They secretly agree 'regime change' war against Iraq.

July 23: Blair tells secret Cabinet meeting of war plan. Goldsmith is asked to check legal position.

July 24: Blair tells MPs: 'We have not got to the stage of military action...or point of decision.'


JULY 19, 2002: Lord Goldsmith photographed ten days before he tells Blair war is illegal


MARCH 20, 2003: Haggard Goldsmith arrives for War Cabinet on day Iraq is invaded

July 29: Goldsmith secretly writes to Blair to tell him war is illegal.

July 30: No10 rebukes Goldsmith. He is excluded from most War Cabinet meetings.

November 8: UN urges Saddam to disarm, but stops short of backing war.


2003

March 7: Despite duress from No10, Goldsmith tells Blair war could be unlawful.

March 13: Goldsmith is allegedly 'pinned against wall' by Blair cronies Charlie Falconer and Sally Morgan.

March 17: UN rules out backing war.

March 17: Goldsmith U-turn. In carefully worded brief 'summary', he says war is lawful.

March 20: War begins.


2005

April 21: Jeremy Paxman asks Blair if he saw Foreign Office advice saying war was illegal. Blair says: 'No. I had Lord Goldsmith's advice to guide me.'

April 24: Mail on Sunday reveals Goldsmith told Blair two weeks before war that it could be illegal.


2009

November 24: Chilcot Iraq War Inquiry begins.

Today: Mail on Sunday reveals Goldsmith's 'smoking gun' letter to Blair in July 2002.




Blair 'knew WMD claim was false'

By DAVID ROSE


By the time Tony Blair led Britain to attack Iraq, he had stopped believing his own lurid claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, according to an unpublished interview with the late Robin Cook, the former Leader of the Commons who resigned from the Cabinet just before the invasion in March 2003.

In the interview, which Cook gave me in 2004, the year before his death, he described Blair's actions as 'a scandalous manipulation of the British constitution', adding that if the then Prime Minister had revealed his doubts, they would have rendered the war illegal.


Cook, who was in almost daily contact with Blair in the months before his resignation, said that in September 2002, when the Government published its infamous dossier claiming Saddam had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons and could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes, Blair did believe these claims were true. But he added:

'By February or March, he knew it was wrong. As far as I know, at no point after the end of 2002 did he ever repeat those claims.'


Tony Blair secures MPs' support for war on March 18, 2003, as Clare Short looks on. But according to Robin Cook, the PM already knew WMD claims were untrue

On March 18, Blair had to face the Commons to ask it to vote for war but he knew, Cook added, 'that if he now publicly withdrew the dossier's claims, his position would be lost'.

Therefore Blair kept silent and so secured the war resolution, though 139 Labour MPs voted against him.

Cook added that if Blair had revealed his doubts, this would also have made it impossible for Lord Goldsmith to issue the fateful legal advice that Britain's Service chiefs had been demanding: that war would be lawful.

'What I've never seen satisfactorily defended by the Government is whether that opinion still stands up if the premise on which it was based - the claims in the dossier - turn out to be false,' Cook said.


'Tony didn't focus on WMDs only for political reasons, but for legal reasons. He knew he was not going to get the Attorney General on side on any basis other than that Saddam had illegal weapons and could not be disarmed by any means other than war.'

Cook's is not the only bombshell that remains unpublished. Last week, Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, told the Chilcot Inquiry that though Blair kept insisting almost to the end that 'nothing was decided' on Iraq, his decision to support the invasion actually went back to April 2002, when he visited President Bush's Texas ranch.

However, both Meyer and other British and American officials told me in 2004 that Blair made up his mind even before April and that even then, Blair was saying in private that Britain would join the attack as long as Bush got UN backing. That meant proving Saddam had active WMDs, as the UN would not authorise an attack on any other basis.



Revelations: Sir Christopher Meyer and the late Robin Cook

Meyer told me: 'Some time during the first quarter of 2002, Blair had become resigned to war.'

Having committed himself to war, Blair believed he had to get military action approved by the UN to make the invasion legal, and to get the support of his own party back home. But leading figures close to Bush were deeply hostile to this idea, and would have much preferred to attack unilaterally.

Perhaps the most shocking disclosures concerned Blair's propensity to bend the truth. For example, on July 26, 2002, Clare Short, then International Development Secretary, asked Blair whether war was looming.

His response was that she should go on holiday untroubled, because 'nothing had been decided, and would not be over the summer'.

In fact, at that very moment, his adviser Sir David Manning was engaged in feverish diplomacy in Washington - because although Blair thought Bush had promised to go to the UN, he seemed to be changing his mind. Manning even had a personal audience with Bush.

A few days later, Bush and Blair spoke by telephone. A senior White House official who read the transcript told me: 'The way it read was that, come what may, they were going to take out the regime. I remember reading it and thinking, "OK, now I know what we're going to be doing for the next year."'

Later, both leaders would state repeatedly that they had not decided to go to war. But the official said: 'War was avoidable only if Saddam ceased to be president of Iraq. It was a done deal.'

Yet the hawkish neo-conservatives at the Pentagon were still fighting hard to avoid the UN route, which would require a narrowing of focus on to WMDs. The crunch came at a summit at Camp David on September 7, 2002, when, most unusually, not only Bush but the neo-con vice president Dick Cheney met Blair. Cheney's role, Meyer said, was solely to try to persuade Bush not to go to the UN.

In desperation, Blair, according to another White House official, told Bush and Cheney that he could be ousted at the Labour conference later that month if Bush ignored the UN. Afterwards, the official said, he and his colleagues pored over the party's constitution, discovering that it was most unlikely that this threat would materialise.

But by then it was too late: a week after the summit, Bush spoke at the UN General Assembly, and announced America would be seeking what became Resolution 1442 - the resolution that, in Lord Goldsmith's eyes, allowed British soldiers to kill Iraqis without being prosecuted for murder.

But not all who once saw Blair as a friend have forgiven him. 'Blair was absolutely the reason why we went to the UN, because it was believed that his political fortunes absolutely demanded it,' said David Wurmser, formerly Cheney's chief Middle East adviser. 'It really was a political concession to Blair - and also a disastrous misjudgment.'


:: Article nr. 60597 sent on 29-nov-2009 16:08 ECT

 
 

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THE AGE
 
Envoy tells of Bush's Iraq war drive
DAVID STRINGER, LONDON
November 29, 2009



BRITAIN'S top diplomat at the United Nations in the build-up to the 2003 Iraq war has told an inquiry that attempts to win international authorisation for the invasion were deliberately undermined by the United States.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock told Britain's inquiry on the war that then US president George Bush had no real interest in winning a UN resolution, which Britain and others had hoped would provide global backing for the conflict.

The ex-diplomat, who later served in Iraq as Britain's envoy, said on Friday that serious preparations for the war had begun in early 2002 and the US was little troubled by Britain's hopes of forming an international consensus to justify military action.

''The United States was not proactively supportive of the UK's efforts and seemed to be preparing for conflict whatever the UK decided to do,'' Sir Jeremy said in a written statement to the inquiry. He said the US stance was ''decidedly unhelpful to what I was trying to do in New York''.

The investigation is the most sweeping probe yet into the war and will seek evidence from former prime minister Tony Blair, military officials and spy agency chiefs. The comprehensive study will not apportion blame, or establish criminal or civil liability, but offer recommendations in the hope that mistakes will not be repeated in the future.

Sir Jeremy said that in his opinion the US-led invasion of Iraq was legal, a view rejected by critics who said it violated international law because there was no second UN resolution authorising the use of force.

But he acknowledged the unpopular war might have lacked legitimacy because the decision to invade did not have broad public support in Britain or in many other countries.

Sir Jeremy said British officials worried about Mr Bush's private assurances to Mr Blair. Mr Bush insisted he supported work to try to win the backing of key allies, including France, Russia and Germany. Attempts to agree on a resolution failed in March 2003, days before the Iraq invasion began.

''President Bush's words on this subject in public were rather less warm and specific than those he had used with the prime minister in private,'' Sir Jeremy wrote.

He told the inquiry the UN process also was dented because the Bush administration failed to use sympathy for the US after the September 11, 2001, attacks to develop stronger relationships with international partners.

''It was the policy of the Bush administration to seek allies only when they needed allies for a particular piece of policy. If they could do it on their own, they would do it on their own,'' Sir Jeremy said.

He told the five-person inquiry panel that, with plans for the invasion accelerating in late 2002, he had threatened to resign his post if no international backing were agreed.

After Mr Bush and Mr Blair met at Mr Bush's ranch in Texas, in April 2002, Sir Jeremy realised Britain ''was being drawn into quite a different discussion''.

He said that by early 2003 the US was unwilling even to consider delaying the Iraq invasion until October 2003, which would have given UN weapons inspectors more time to seek evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the key justification for the war.

AP

 
 

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[Keith]

Intelligence revealing that Saddam Hussein's WMD had been dismantled was received by the Government just days before Tony Blair sent troops into the country, senior officials have admitted.

Ministers were also given repeated warnings that intelligence gathered on Iraq's weapons programmes was unreliable. However, Mr Blair told the Commons that Saddam Hussein did have chemical and biological weapons as he prepared the way for the invasion in March 2003.

Webmaster's Commentary: http://whatreallyhappened.com/

When do you get angry at the sea of lies in which you are drowning?

 

Officials knew WMD evidence was tainted

Intelligence against Iraq used by Blair on eve of invasion had only arrived days before, civil servant tells inquiry

By Michael Savage, Political Correspondent

Thursday, 26 November 2009



GETTY IMAGES

Under scrutiny: Tony Blair's version of events leading up to the conflict

Intelligence revealing that Saddam Hussein's WMD had been dismantled was received by the Government just days before Tony Blair sent troops into the country, senior officials have admitted.

Ministers were also given repeated warnings that intelligence gathered on Iraq's weapons programmes was unreliable. However, Mr Blair told the Commons that Saddam Hussein did have chemical and biological weapons as he prepared the way for the invasion in March 2003.

Sir William Ehrman, who was a senior official within the Foreign Office, told the inquiry into the Iraq war yesterday that "in the final days before military action", the department received information that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons may have remained broken up.

Related articles

Top diplomat attacks Blair's Iraq decision http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-diplomat-attacks-blairs-iraq-decision-1827991.html

Adrian Hamilton: The one thing Chilcot won't reveal is the truth http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-the-one-thing-chilcot-wont-reveal-is-the-truth-1827469.html

Iraq: The inquiry cover-up that will keep us in the dark http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-the-inquiry-coverup-that-will-keep-us-in-the-dark-1827612.html

Search the news archive for more stories http://www.news-archive.independent.co.uk/

"On 10 March we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled, that Saddam hadn't ordered their re-assembly, and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents," said Sir William. Figures within the Foreign Office also doubted whether Iraq had a large number of long-range missiles, Sir John Chilcot's inquiry heard. A series of memos from officials within Whitehall described the intelligence coming out of Iraq as "sporadic and patchy". It was queried as having "limited" value as late as September 2002.

Intelligence ignored

The inquiry was told how officials within the Foreign Office had become convinced that the regime in Baghdad was developing chemical and biological weapons. When it received intelligence contradicting the claim in March 2003, this was discounted. "There was contradictory intelligence, so I don't think it invalidated the point about what weapons [Saddam] had," Sir William said. "It was more about their use. Even if they were disassembled the [chemical or biological] agents still existed."

It also emerged that a secret paper drawn up in the summer of 2002, which pointed to Iraq as a potential threat, was based almost entirely on uncorroborated and outdated assumptions. Tim Dowse, the former head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office, said the document was based on information obtained before weapons inspectors were thrown out of the country in 1998. "We had got ourselves in a particular mindset," Mr Dowse said.

Nevertheless, there were repeated warnings to ministers about the reliability of the intelligence on Iraq. In April 2000, intelligence was said to be "limited to chemical weapons". By May 2001, knowledge of major weapons programmes was described as "patchy"; by March 2002 it was "sporadic and patchy". Advisers admitted in August they knew "very little" about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, while intelligence information "remained limited" by September.

It was from that point that more intelligence seemed to emerge, Sir William said. Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the inquiry panel, asked whether it had occurred to him that this upsurge "might not have been wholly coincidental". Sir William said: "No."

'Misleading' claim

Mr Dowse said that the Government's now notorious claim that Saddam Hussein had WMD he could use within 45 minutes, made in a dossier published ahead of the 2003 invasion, had never meant to refer to weapons that could reach other countries. He said the claim had not come as a surprise to many experts, who all assumed it referred to short-range weapons.

"Speaking personally, when I saw the 45-minutes report, I did not give it particular significance because it didn't seem out of line with what we generally assessed to be Iraq's intentions and capabilities with regard to chemical weapons," he said. "It certainly took on a rather iconic status that I don't think that those of us who saw the initial report really gave it." He added: "I don't think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile."

Mr Dowse also admitted that another passage in the dossier, which detailed how aluminium tubes found in Iraq could be used in the production of nuclear weapons, was included at the last minute after the tubes were mentioned by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, during a television interview.

Iraq not 'top of list' of threats

Iraq had not been "top of the list" of concerns within the Foreign Office before the 2003 invasion. "In terms of my concerns on coming in to the job in 2001, I would say we put Libya and Iran ahead of Iraq," Mr Dowse said. Sir William added that at no time did the Government receive any evidence that Saddam Hussein was handing WMD to terrorist groups. "Obviously in the future we couldn't know what might happen," he said.

He even revealed that Iraq had "stepped further back" from its connections with terrorist groups after the 9/11 terror attacks on the US. Sir William said that the Foreign Office never received any evidence that there was a connection between Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

Lack of WMD a 'PR disaster'

The inquiry also learnt that Tony Blair's confident declaration in December 2003 that weapons inspectors had already found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" prompted officials to warn against declaring victory prematurely. Mr Dowse said that if no weapons were found after such statements, it would create a "disaster in PR terms" for the Government.

When asked about Mr Blair's comments, Mr Dowse said: "I did not advise him to use those words." He added that it prompted him to warn the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, not to make the same predictions. "Some key elements of reporting [from Iraq] were simply wrong," Mr Dowse said.

He admitted that no significant weapons had been discovered since the invasion. Asked about the failure of inspectors to find WMD stocks in many of the sites identified by intelligence sources, Sir William said: "Four out of 10 as a strike rate is pretty good." In reply, Sir Lawrence stated: "Not when you are going to war."

Blair's words... and what his officials told the inquiry

* Blair, September 2002 dossier:

"What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and that he has been able to extend the range of his ballistic missile programme.

Sir William Ehrman stated intelligence was "limited" in April 2000, "patchy" in May 2001, "sporadic and patchy" in March 2002, and that officials knew "very little" in August. Intelligence remained "limited" in September.

* Blair, September 2002 dossier:

"His military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. I am quite clear that Saddam will go to extreme lengths, indeed has already done so, to hide these weapons and avoid giving them up.

Tim Dowse, who was head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office: "Speaking personally, when I saw the 45 minutes report, I did not give it particular significance because it didn't seem out of line with what we generally assessed to be Iraq's intentions and capabilities with regard to chemical weapons... I don't think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile."

* Blair, March 2003, House of Commons:

"Iraq continues to deny it has any WMD, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them.

Sir William Ehrman: "We did, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly. There was also a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."

* Blair, December 2003, interview:

"The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles.

Tim Dowse: "I did not advise him to use those words." He added that nothing of "significance" had been found in Iraq since the invasion.

Study: Bushies Lied 935 Times to Sell Iraq Invasion

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, The Center for Public Integrity
Posted on January 24, 2008, Printed on January 25, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/74715/

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "

In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.

In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."

On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
 

The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

 
It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.

In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.

The cumulative effect of these false statements -- amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts -- was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.

The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.

On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly -- and in some cases vociferously -- accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence -- not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials -- Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz -- have testified before Congress about Iraq.

Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

 

? 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/74715/

[Keith]

Britain 'had to prove Saddam was guilty'
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

ABC NEWS

The Iraq war inquiry in London has been told that the United States' insistence on going to war left Britain scrabbling for evidence of dangerous weapons to justify the invasion.

The former British ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, has been giving evidence on the third day of hearings.

Sir Christopher arrived in Washington in 1997 and held his role as chief conduit between London and Washington until 2003.

He told the inquiry that regime change in Iraq was US policy under the Democrats led by Bill Clinton.

He recalled conversations with the former US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz during which the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was first mentioned.

"[It was said] that we should invade southern Iraq, seize their oil fields, base ourselves in Basra; from there we should launch raids on Saddam Hussein and little by little bring the regime down," Sir Christopher said.

But he said the military timetable for an invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not allow enough time for United Nations weapons inspectors in the country to do their job.

Sir Christopher said the "unforgiving" nature of the build-up after American forces had been told to prepare for war mean that Britain found itself scrabbling for the smoking gun.

"Which was another way of saying 'it's not that Saddam has to prove that he's innocent, we've now bloody well got to try and prove he's guilty'," Sir Christopher said.

"And we - the Americans, the British - have never really recovered from that."

He told the inquiry that Washington had suggested a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda within hours of the September 11 attacks.

 
 

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[Keith]

ABC NEWS
Iraq wasn't the biggest threat, war inquiry hears
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici for AM
 

The Iraq war inquiry in London has heard that Britain's international security chiefs considered Iraq was not as big a threat as three other rogue states.

The Chilcot inquiry has now heard two days of evidence from the most senior Foreign Office officials who received and analysed intelligence on Iraq for two years before the war and in the year after the invasion.

It has emerged that Britain's Foreign Office also told former prime minister Tony Blair that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had been dismantled, 10 days before Britain invaded Iraq.

Overnight, the head of international security in that office, Sir William Ehrman, told the inquiry that Britain had never found any evidence to substantiate claims coming from the White House that Saddam Hussein had a link to Al Qaeda.

"Our view was that there was no evidence to suggest serious collaboration of any sort between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime," he said.

Tim Dowse was the man responsible for counter-proliferation and he too was adamant that no relationship was ever established.

"After 9/11 we concluded that the Iraqis had actually stepped further back, that they didn't want to be associated with Al Qaeda," he said.

The Foreign Office did not believe that Iraq had nuclear missiles and officials were convinced that the International Atomic Energy Agency had successfully dismantled Saddam Hussein's capabilities.


No dangerous weapons

Sir William Ehrman told the inquiry that in the 10 days before military action, he had received intelligence that debunked the notion that Iraq was an immediate threat.

"We did at the very end, I think on March 10, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly," he said.

"And there was also suggestion that Iraq might lack war heads capable of the effective dispersal of agents."

Not only were there no nuclear or chemical weapons considered dangerous, but the UK's intelligence community ranked Iraq fourth on a list of states posing the greatest risk to Britain's national security.

Iran, North Korea and Libya were all thought to be bigger threats.

The officials said government ministers were warned before the invasion and throughout the war that there were huge gaps in the UK's intelligence about Iraq's weapons program.

Yesterday Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the Iraq inquiry's five panel members, asked Mr Dowse this question:

"Would you regard the prime minister's statement in December 2003 that the Iraq survey group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, as corresponding to the advice you were giving to ministers?"

"I did not advise him to use those words," Mr Dowse replied.

The issue of Iraq's ability to produce or use weapons of mass destruction is central to the inquiry, which must ultimately decide whether Mr Blair misled the parliament over the reasons for going to war in 2003.

The next hearing will focus on the relationship between Mr Blair and former US president George W Bush and whether Britain went to war just to please Washington.

 

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[Keith]

US, Britain wanted to overthrow Saddam
By Belinda Tasker
From: AAP
November 25, 2009
 
BRITISH government officials raised the prospect of toppling Saddam Hussein two years before Allied troops invaded Iraq but rejected the idea in case it was illegal, an inquiry has heard.

Sir William Patey, who headed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Middle East department between 1999 and 2002, said the idea was raised in an internal departmental paper but was quickly dismissed on legal advice.

The revelation came as Britain's third inquiry into the Iraq war began its public evidence sessions in London today.

The first day of the inquiry was dominated by questions about Britain's policy on Iraq in 2001 - two years before the 2003 invasion - as well as how sanctions and no-fly zones imposed on the country were holding up.

The inquiry heard how the United Nations sanctions against Iraq - a key plank in the plan to contain Saddam's ambition to expand his weapons arsenal and lucrative oil exports - were beginning to show signs of weakness.

As a result, the British government had begun a review of its Iraq policy.

Sir William said while "drum beats" had been heard within the Bush administration about the need for a regime change in Iraq, British policy was to "stay away from that end of the spectrum" and stick with trying to contain Saddam.

However Sir William said he asked his staff to come up with a list of options on dealing with Saddam. Among the ideas suggested were "hard" and "soft" containment proposals as well as the lifting of sanctions.

"I have to say we even had at the end of it a regime change option ... which was dismissed at the time as having no basis in law," Sir William said.

The inquiry is designed to focus on the lead-up to the Iraq war, the conflict itself, its aftermath and whether it was legal.

Evidence about why the British government changed its policy about the need for regime change in Iraq and decided to join the US-led invasion will be a key part of the hearings.

The former head of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir Peter Ricketts, told the inquiry the US appeared to being considering Iraq "in a different light" after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

He said in late 2001 there was talk in the US of a "phase two" policy towards Iraq, raising the prospect of military action.

Britain's great hope was that weapons inspectors would be allowed back into Iraq so sanctions could be dropped, he said.

But the US was worried about terrorists getting hold of weapons of mass destruction Saddam.
Around the same time, the US began losing patience with the sanctions regime imposed on Iraq.

Sir William described the sanctions as an "impossibly complicated system which was leaking all over the place", with Saddam exploiting its loopholes.

However, despite the problems with the system, the sanctions did constrain Saddam's ability to add to his weapons arsenal.

Asked if, militarily, Saddam and his regime had effectively been put "in a cage", Sir William replied: "Yes".

The inquiry, which is not expected to report until late 2010, will switch its focus to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction tomorrow.

 
 

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[Keith]

It's simple. Phony Tony was shoring up votes using scare tactics.
 
THE AGE
 
Military to show Blair misled public on Iraq
RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR, LONDON
November 24, 2009


BRITISH military commanders are expected to tell an inquiry into the Iraq war, due to open today, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by government attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, The Guardian has been told.

The lengths the government, led by Tony Blair, took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's ''appalling'' failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a ''full and insightful'' account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence has emerged on how Mr Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was ''disarmament, not regime change''. Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only ''very small numbers'' of officials.

The documents, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, are ''post-operational reports'' and ''lessons learned'' papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. They refer to a ''rushed'' operation that caused ''significant risk'' to troops and ''critical failure'' after the war.

One commander said the government ''missed a golden opportunity'' to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: ''It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves.'' One, describing the supply chain, added: ''I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.''

Some troops were deployed in civilian flights to countries neighbouring Iraq with their equipment ''brought in by hand baggage''.

Interviewed for the postwar report drawn up by the Ministry of Defence, Brigadier Bill Moore, commander of 19 Brigade, was asked: ''Did you receive the correct level of advice for the nation-building you faced?'' He replied: ''We got absolutely no advice whatsoever. The lack of advice from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], the Home Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] was appalling.''

The ''lessons learnt'' report stated: ''Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle.''

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted - that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert Parliament and the United Nations that Mr Blair was already determined to go to war.

Mr Blair had in effect promised president George Bush he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action.

Documents leaked in 2005 show that almost a year before the invasion Mr Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Mr Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from attorney-general Lord Goldsmith that the ''desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action''.

GUARDIAN

 
 

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[Keith]

Not only did phony Tony mislead but so too did George Bush and John Howard. Once again young Australian lives were lost and health ruined because of politicial duplicity. Read the Lie of the Century here http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/lieofthecentury.html
 
ABC NEWS
 
Blair misled MPs on Iraq war: papers
By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici

 

Secret British government papers reveal that former prime minister Tony Blair misled MPs and the public about the reasons the country was going to war in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph has published correspondence between military commanders and their political masters.

The correspondence shows that in July 2002, Mr Blair told the public and MPs that Britain's objective in Iraq was "disarmament, not regime change", and that there had been no plan for military action.

But the documents reveal that a full invasion of Iraq was being planned five months earlier.

The leaked reports also reveal that Britain was not prepared for war and was under-equipped when the invasion began in 2003.

The need to conceal that fact had "constrained" the planning process and the result was a "rushed" operation "lacking in coherence and resources", which caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the post-war period.

The revelations come two days before public hearings begin in the Iraq inquiry.

 
 

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[Keith]

Saddam either put the money in his family bank account or bought weapons to kill and disable Australians, or maybe both.
 
AWB boss in court over Iraqi kickbacks
By Alison Caldwell for PM

 

ABC NEWS

 
The wheat exporter paid $300 million in illicit kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime. (Getty Images: Sean Garnsworthy, file photo)

Audio: Former AWB boss faces civil court (PM) http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/audio/pm/200910/200091019pm7-awb-court.mp3

Related Story: ASIC accused of abuse of process in AWB case http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/19/2717708.htm

Related Story: AWB appeal dismissed http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/05/2705314.htm

The corruption scandal described as the biggest in Australian history is back in the Victorian Supreme Court.

The former boss of the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), Andrew Lindberg, faced a civil court in Melbourne today to defend himself over his role in the wheat exporter's payments of $300 million in illicit kickbacks to Iraq.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) alleges Mr Lindberg breached his duties to AWB because he knew about the payments and failed to stop them.

Dressed in a dark charcoal suit and looking older than his years, Mr Lindberg sat beside his wife in the front row of the courtroom in only his second court appearance in as many years.

In an affidavit filed months ago, he said the stress of waiting for the court case was taking its toll.

Mr Lindberg presided over AWB from March 2000 until February 2006, when he was forced to resign as a result of the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

He is the only AWB executive to face court proceedings over the secret payments.

From 1999 until 2003, AWB paid almost $300 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime. The scheme involved payments of hard currency for trucking fees, which was barred under United Nations agreements.

ASIC alleges AWB made no attempt to investigate whether the fees were justified.

It claims Mr Lindberg was aware or ought to have been aware of the payments. He will argue he did not know about them.

Over the next few months, Justice Ross Robson will hear details of AWB's secret payments from at least 30 witnesses.

Among them are several former AWB managers involved in the Iraq wheat trade, at least two former AWB directors, officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs, and a New York-based official of the United Nations' Oil for Food program.

Another witness will be the Jordan-based general manager of Alia, the trucking company half owned by Iraq's Ministry of Transport which was used by Saddam Hussein's regime as a facade for receiving AWB's kickbacks.


Possible new case

The hearing began dramatically with ASIC being accused of an abuse of process.

Mr Lindberg's defence lawyer, David Collins SC, told the court his legal team received an email from ASIC's lawyers after hours on Friday in which they revealed they may begin a new court case against his client.

Mr Collins described the email as vexatious and oppressive and said it aggravated the intolerable burden of having these proceedings hanging over his client's head.

He said it was unthinkable Mr Lindberg should have to deal with this trial then line up for second proceedings next year.

Mr Collins called on the court to order ASIC to clarify whether the second case was going ahead. Justice Robson said he would consider the question.

ASIC's counsel, Norman O'Bryan, says ASIC has emails showing inland transport fees and contracts that do not say anything about the kickbacks. He described the contracts as shams.

He said the payments were disguised as trucking fees or after-sales service fees in invoices submitted to the UN oil-for-food program.

They amounted to about $US12 a tonne a decade ago and rose to more than $US50 a tonne at the height of the scandal.

Mr O'Bryan told the court Mr Lindberg breached his duties as an officer of AWB. Mr O'Bryan said Mr Lindberg's most fundamental duty was to guard against obvious harm.

Mr O'Bryan said a large number of people inside AWB knew about the payments.

ASIC will not finish its case before Christmas. Mr Lindberg's defence will begin after that.

 
 

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John Howard ministers took no advice before joining Iraq war
 
Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large | September 04, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

THE Howard government actively discouraged official advice on whether Australia should commit to the Iraq war and was given no such advice, senior public servants who ran the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs and Defence have revealed.

The disclosures show the dominance of ministers in the Iraq war decision and their insistence that advice concern "how" to wage the war, not "whether" it was right for Australia.

These revelations are contained in The March of Patriots -- the Struggle for Modern Australia to be launched by Kevin Rudd next Monday. The book is an inside story of the Keating and Howard prime ministerships.

Defence Department head Ric Smith said: "The message from ministers by that time (November 2002) was that they did not want strategic advice from the Defence Department. This reflected a conviction that ministers knew the issues and would take the decisions for or against the war."

Foreign Affairs and Trade head Ashton Calvert, interviewed for the book, said: "DFAT did not argue against that war role. In my view there was a strong and shared sense of policy direction on Iraq from Howard and Downer. In my view they didn't need advice on what they should do because they had, in effect, made up their minds."

The head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, said: "Ministers felt it was their responsibility to decide whether or not Australia entered the war.

"It would be wrong to think they were not interested in advice but the advice they wanted ... was about the conduct of the war and capabilities, not the decision to go to war."

Ministers confirm this view of history. Former foreign minister Alexander Downer said: "DFAT didn't express any reservations about our strategy.

"I don't think Ashton Calvert had any reservations about it. He didn't say so."

Former defence minister Robert Hill said: "Nobody argued not to do it." This offers a dramatic contrast between the generation of advisers to the Howard government and the previous generation, given the war triggered a 2004 public condemnation by the "group of 43" former diplomats, advisers and military leaders.

Calvert, who died in 2007, and Mr Smith made clear the current generation had not opposed the war. Calvert said: "I personally was satisfied with their (Howard and Downer) strategic judgment on Australia's commitment."

Mr Smith said: "I think the key officials involved felt an Australian commitment was right. I was not aware of any senior official advising against it in my time. We accepted the advice on WMD and understood the alliance's interests that were involved, although there was continuing concern about the state of planning for 'phase four' (after Saddam Hussein's fall)."

Offering a general perspective, Mr Howard's former foreign policy adviser Michael Thawley said: "Howard is always keen on advice. But his views on the big issues are clear and he really wants advice on how best to achieve his goals."

 
 

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[Keith]

AUSSIE DIGGER COMMENT
 
And our PM at the Time, John Howard, was best mates with this bloke and his lap dog in the south west Pacific.

 
A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible?s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn?t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their ?common faith? (Christianity) and told him: ?Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East?. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled?. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people?s enemies before a New Age begins.?

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its ?coalition of the willing? to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush?s call and ?wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.?

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn?t comply with Bush?s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to ?turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,? and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, ?and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.?

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush?s strange behavior in Lausanne University?s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: ?When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.? France?s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline ?A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.? But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le R?p?tez, Je D?mentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada?s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a ?stranger-than-fiction disclosure ? which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.? Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush?s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was ?on a mission from God? to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim ?absurd.?

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: ?Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.?

It?s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who ?got saved.? He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven?t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn?t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq?s oil?or to protect Israel?or to complete Bush?s father?s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.

 
 

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Flag lowered as last 12 Diggers leave Iraq

Mark Dodd | August 01, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

THE last 12 Australian troops serving with US units in Iraq have finished their mission and are heading home, formally ending Canberra's controversial six-year involvement in the bloody conflict.

Yesterday marked the historic fulfilment of a key election pledge by the Rudd government to withdraw all Australian combat forces from Iraq.

No Australian soldier was killed in action but one, Private Jake Kovko, died from a self-inflicted wound.

Although a member of the so-called coalition of the willing, with the exception of the Special Air Service Regiment, Australian troops serving in Iraq were kept out of combat operations which cost the lives of 4328 US servicemen and women and 179 British military personnel.

Estimates of the number of Iraqi civilian dead exceed 92,000.

Under an agreement between Canberra and the Iraqi government all Australian troops except those serving with an embassy-based security detachment had to be withdrawn by July 31.

Speaking on Melbourne radio, Kevin Rudd said he believed it would be appropriate for a formal acknowledgement of the Australian Defence Force contribution in Iraq.

"I think it's appropriate that we do, I really do," the Prime Minister said. "You see, we all know the history of Australia's engagement in the Iraq War.

"It was a matter of huge debate in the country and the two major parties in Australian politics took a different view."

Departing Australian troops were farewelled with flag-lowering ceremonies, with the honour of the last Australian soldier to leave Iraq going to Corporal Don Mander.

"Don was the last guy to step on to the ramp of the aircraft as we brought them out," said Major General Mark Kelly, the ADF's Middle East commander.

Defence Minister John Faulkner said the withdrawal of the last Australian troops marked an end to Operation Catalyst, which saw about 20,000 ADF personnel deployed to Iraq over the past six years.

"As the operation has now successfully concluded, Defence will consider suitable opportunities for public recognition which may included parades in appropriate locations," he said.

"It would be appropriate, now that the contribution to the Iraq effort has been concluded from Australia's perspective, that perhaps we look at some form of public recognition of the wonderful contribution of all of those who served in Iraq have made," RSL national president Major General Bill Crews said.

 
 

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