Jack Straw on Lib Dem Iraq policy.

Former Member

Originally posted by freethepeeps
All of which was obvious before the war was started - and both Blair and Bush received specific "intelligence" about what would happen if they effected a regime change - they preferred instead to go with the other "intelligence" - about WMDs and us being killed in 45 minutes ..................

And, the more 'we' try and clamp down on the militants, the more militants there will be, and the greater the danger to all of us.

Neat huh?

i fully agree.

Former Member

Being obvious before the war is academic now anyway. It's now the situation that there is a problem, and it need fixing. The current divide is how it needs to be fixed and the best way of doing it.

Former Member

Originally posted by Fiend_85
Being obvious before the war is academic now anyway. It's now the situation that there is a problem, and it need fixing. The current divide is how it needs to be fixed and the best way of doing it.

20 000 militants (and growing) say "get out of our country"

And, I think they mean it. And I think 'we' should.

Then, let the UN deal with it - without any US or UK forces- although I do think the US and UK should be allowed to bankroll the whole operation - as a special treat for messing it up so badly...........

Former Member

MR, You have a very culturally tainted and rather relativistic view both of the Iraqis (noting the reference to "extreme" muslims as have been the very references of mainstream media pronouncements against any who fight back and dare hold religious convictions) and of what they would or would not do.

What they have every right to do as (once again) a SOVEREIGN NATION is to decide their own terms for oil production and sales to anyone and everyone, especially as the enitre planet is now in the age of Peak Oil production.

You seem to hold two simulataneous and conflicting views MR. Acknowledging on one hand the historically precedented evil of our own unprovoked attack on another nation (which itself was incapable of launching a war against our western military industrial complexes), yet on the other hand ascribing to the belief that it's somehow okay "now that we're there" since we need the oil to fuel our continued gluttonous overconsumption.

The answer doesn't reside in even tacit justification for the wrongs of our lying leaders and ravenous profiteering military complexes, extractive industries and global banking elites, but rather in a redress of our own societies' refusal to wake up and read the writing on the wall and moderate our overblown consumeristic ways.

If you make any excuse for what has been allowed to come to pass, especially when our continued presence will never "correct the mess we made" but only exacerbate it further leading to many more thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, maimed or left to suffer the loss of loved ones at our hands, then you merely legitimise the groupthink paradigm that will be used to justify the next invasion and plunder.

We have no God given right to take what is not ours simply to maintain our wasteful consumption at the expense of the rest of the world.

War crimes have been commmitted by Blair and Bush (and their administrations) and they should be indicted and judged as have leaders of lesser nations.

Former Member

Originally posted by Clandestine
MR, You have a very culturally tainted and rather relativistic view both of the Iraqis (noting the reference to "extreme" muslims as have been the very references of mainstream media pronouncements against any who fight back and dare hold religious convictions) and of what they would or would not do.

What they have every right to do as (once again) a SOVEREIGN NATION is to decide their own terms for oil production and sales to anyone and everyone, especially as the enitre planet is now in the age of Peak Oil production.

You seem to hold two simulataneous and conflicting views MR. Acknowledging on one hand the historically precedented evil of our own unprovoked attack on another nation (which itself was incapable of launching a war against our western military industrial complexes), yet on the hand ascribing to the belief that its somehow okay "now that we're there" since we need the oil to fuel our continued gluttonous overconsumption.

The answer doesn't reside in even tacti justificiation for the wrongs of our lying leaders and ravenous profiteering military complexes, extractive industries and global banking elites, but rather in a redress of our own societies' refusal to wake up and read the writing on the wall and moderate our overblown consumeristic ways.

If you make any excuse for what has been allowed to come to pass, especially when our continued presence will never "correct the mess we made" but only exacerbate it further leading to many more thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, maimed or left to suffer the loss of loved ones at our hands, then you merely legitimise the groupthink paradigm that will be used to justify the next invasion and plunder.

We have no God given right to take what is not ours simply to maintain our wasteful consumption at the expense of the rest of the world.

War crimes have been commmitted by Blair and Bush (and their supporters) and they should be indicted and judged as have leaders of lesser nations.

thats all very well clan but the reality is our societies WILL use every last drop of oil on the earth ...we are dependant to the point of addiction.
i in no way see the iraqi people as extremist muslims ...
but bush and co were warned and warned that they would be the best recruiting seargents for these people.
there are now so many extremely angry people ...and people waiting to fill the power vaccum that would appear ...that it is a very real possibility ...even a liklyhood ...that those who siezed power would in no way reflect the will of the iraqi people ...we have given an entire nation over to the extremists to take and have ...and they will.
far more extreme than bush and co ...and crtainly western hating.
we have manufactured our own worst enemy.

Former Member

Originally posted by freethepeeps
20 000 militants (and growing) say "get out of our country"

You could probably find that number of people in the UK that want anyone of black or asian decent to 'get out of our country'

Former Member

Originally posted by Fiend_85
You could probably find that number of people in the UK that want anyone of black or asian decent to 'get out of our country'

Indeed, but they aren't running around with explosives, rocket launchers and a much better knowledge of the local terrain than the soldiers charged with trying to sort it all out.......

Former Member

Originally posted by freethepeeps
Indeed, but they aren't running around with explosives, rocket launchers and a much better knowledge of the local terrain than the soldiers charged with trying to sort it all out.......

So where did this abitrary '20,000' come from, and why is that the British Troops managed to calm things in Basra, while the US troops are still under heavy fire?

Former Member

His critical error and that which actually marked his downfall was his nationalisation of Iraq's oil production, revocation of US and British oil conglomerate control, and ultimately his decision to apply the Euro standard rather than the cheaper dollar standard for oil sales to the West

Perhaps his critical error was invading Kuwait? Or maybe using WMD on his Kurdish minority? Or draining the Shia Marshlands in the south?

Former Member

Well you and I differ then on even the nature of those claimed to be "terrorists" or "extremists". I dont for one moment believe the paradigms offered by either our repeatedly exposed lying leaders nor the mainstream press and media. The Iraqis are just normal people, no different than you or I (who would ourselves be fighting with anything at our disposal to attacked and kill foreign invading forces on our own soil as true patriots are called to do) and certainly NOT "extremists".

The suggestion that the resistance to our control is the work of "radical", "extremist", "fanatical" muslims or further the rallying point for international non-Iraqi fighters, is to the student of history the same sort of inflated and false propaganda sold to every populace of warmongering nations down through the decades.

Never once has more than the suggestion been made for even the very supposed atrocities of Saddam (Halabja, Anfal, babies thrown from incubators, 100's of thousands slaughtered, etc.) without one shred of emprical forensic evidence to substantiate the charges used amongst the many ever changing pretexts for this illegal invasion. How much more transparently propagandistic and false then are the claims we have heard since against resistant Iraqis?

To use a simple analogy, would you continue to trust a shop that sold you faulty goods advertised as "fresh off the factory floor and tested thoroughly for your satisfaction"? Why then continue to allow your perceptions of what is and what must be be determined by those repeatedly proven to be false and misleading?

Former Member

Originally posted by The Matadore
Perhaps his critical error was invading Kuwait? Or maybe using WMD on his Kurdish minority? Or draining the Shia Marshlands in the south?

Those were indeed errors, but not nearly as big as the error of believing the US mantra that he was a friend of the West as he shook Donald Rumsfeld hand and bought US-made anthrax and VX gas.

He should've known that there is nothing more treacherous and dodgy in this world than the US government, and that all assurances of 'friendship' 'alliance' should be treated with extreme caution.

Osama bin Laden could have told Saddam that, in fact.

Former Member

Originally posted by Fiend_85
So where did this abitrary '20,000' come from, and why is that the British Troops managed to calm things in Basra, while the US troops are still under heavy fire?

more than 20 000

Basra is not Baghdad, nor is it Fallujah or Najaf - so I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm aware theres some jingoistic nonsense about our troops having more experience of "pacifying locals" cos of our colonial experience, but its patent nonsense, they're simply not old enough..........

Former Member

No mat, Kuwait was a diplomatic trap and connivance set up precisely to give the bogus justification for Gulf War I and to have something upon which to convince our Western publics of the need for militant action.

The reality of the Kuwait situation is precisely the convoluted matter, most acute at that time, of Saddams refusal to acquiesce to OPEC demands for a reduction in Iraqi output quotas compunded by the illicit and illegal theft of Iraqi oil through slant drilling by Kuwait itself. The latter being an act which would have uncurred military response even from our own governments were it our sovereign reserves being syphoned by another state.

As to the issue of the gassing of the Kurds, I have already addressed the absolute lack of anything other than innuendo and heresay (without any empirical forensic evidence to date) upon which that claim is made. This is compounded further by the fact that the context in which this was to have occurred was at the height of the Iran Iraq War itself and thus (given that the Kurds sided with Iran and were thus deemed (as they would be if part of our own nations and fighting with our enemies) as enemies of the state.

Given that the few cases (certainly nowhere near the levels claimed by our leaders) are documented with conditions pertaining to blood agents (which were used by Iran not Iraq), it is again without sufficient basis for any court of law that Saddam was behind the gassing. Until proven, it not only remains an unfounded allegation but certainly no sufficient condition upon which to justify our own war of yet further destruction.

As for the Marsh Arabs, I submit to you that they were mere pawns used by George Bush Sr. to create an inevitable further victimisation for which the hard-line warmongers of his administration (now duly reinstated in the administration of his son) to beat the drums of war.

They were purposely encouraged to rise up upon promise of US support which was never intended, knowing full well that like even our own governments, Saddam would brutally crush the rebellion within Iraq's borders. Blair and Bush would do precisely the same if any faction rose up in armed insurrection and just as brutally (as demonstrated equally by our willingness to bomb entire cities like Fullujah because of resistance to our domination and control).

Former Member

Originally posted by freethepeeps
more than 20 000

Basra is not Baghdad, nor is it Fallujah or Najaf - so I'm not sure what your point is.

I'm aware theres some jingoistic nonsense about our troops having more experience of "pacifying locals" cos of our colonial experience, but its patent nonsense, they're simply not old enough..........

basra partially is easier to look after since it shia muslims not sunnai

but really we havent made a mess of it in basra, as soon as saddam was toppled we went about just keeping the peace, and having a good balance of keeping the peace and pacifiying resistance, the americans go in with virtualy no training in peace keeping, well apart from israeli crowd cntrol method which we all know to be so effective, and go in seeing the locals as enemies, not as potetntial allies against the odd insurgent

Former Member

Originally posted by wheresmyplacebo
basra partially is easier to look after since it shia muslims not sunnai

but really we havent made a mess of it in basra, as soon as saddam was toppled we went about just keeping the peace, and having a good balance of keeping the peace and pacifiying resistance, the americans go in with virtualy no training in peace keeping, well apart from israeli crowd cntrol method which we all know to be so effective, and go in seeing the locals as enemies, not as potetntial allies against the odd insurgent

I bow to you sir.

The difference can be summed up thus

UK: hearts and minds
US: take them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow

What they fail to realise is that grabbing someone by their testicles will result in screaming and failing around.

Former Member

great article for this
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3944741.stm

Former Member

But I believe this is a vicious circle of their own making, that much of the hatred of the Americans that is now violently expressed was provoked by their ignorant disrespect of decent people.

Down with the British in Basra it's all a bit different.

I am still incarcerated - but in an armoured Land Rover.

And we stop here and there, and get out, and talk to people.

Out on patrol the British soldiers sling their helmets from their belts and wear soft hats and buy cans of Coke from street stalls. Softly, softly.

Former Member

Nice to know that when a 'mass grave' is found they let reporters walk all over it to take pictures. Because that's going to be great for the foresics, and of course isnt in any way disrespectful to the bodies.