Tuesday 24 November 2009

Iraq war inquiry into Bomber Blair's role begins


Remember "Yo, Blair!"?

I was going to bring you video footage of a graphic novel launch on Sunday at the ICA where German comics star Reinhard Kleist brought out his first English language book, Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness, but battles with my new Final Cut Express 4 and a stupid new iMovie version which has no timeline means I won't get it edited until the weekend. I just want to mention the event was sponsored by Chivas Regal ... Oh my poor head.

Meanwhile, back at the funny farm ...

The Chilcot inquiry into the British role in the Iraq war gets under way today. There's an excellent minute-by-minute update by Andrew Sparrow at the Guardian of proceedings at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Hall in Westminster. A tellingly bad opening established that there weren't enough seats for the relatives of dead soldiers, let alone all the press that needed access. Only ONE seat for the Guardian?

Sparrow reports this from Michael Howard on this morning's BBC Radio 4 Today programme:
Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the intelligence he received on weapons of mass destruction was 'detailed, extensive and authoritative'. What he had actually been told by the intelligence community was that the information they had was 'limited, sporadic and patchy'. He translated those words 'limited, sporadic and patchy' into 'detailed, extensive and authoritative' and ... that is a clear example of how he misled the House of Commons and the nation.
Pretty bloody damning.

And it looks as if Gordon Brown — a key member of Team Bomber Blair — will refuse to testify. This is our form of "Pleading the Fifth".

In the Daily Mail the other day, Peter Oborne wrote this powerful piece on Blair and why he was so desperate to get that EU Presidency job.
Tony Blair looks haunted, but with new claims that he was behind torture and war lies he's got a lot to be haunted by ... For the truth is that evidence continues to amass that, under the Blair premiership, the British state was responsible, at times, for some illegal actions which, on occasions, could be considered to be barbarism.
Precisely.

Tony Blair's World War Tour: Iraq 1998, Serbia 1999, Sierra Leone 2000, Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003

Former British diplomat Craig Murray on the first day of the Chilcot inquiry.

See also Madam Miaow on President Blair: The Great Escape

5 comments:

The villager: said...

I would like to see Tony prosecuted and jailed over the Iraq war based on lies.

VenerableSage said...

'As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport.' (King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37. )

Or maybe Wild Bill shoulda changed it to, ' ... they kill us for their business interests, geopolitical agendas and weird ideologies.'

Anonymous said...

From the Guardian's profile of Chilcot:

"Chilcot is seen as a safe pair of hands."

Well that is a surprise! I'd like an independent inquiry into government inquiries (aka whitewashes)!

http://is.gd/52XSN

DAVE BONES said...

That Kosovo article is fascinating. Serbia were always painted as the evil side of that, and I always thought the other side of the story to be Russian propaganda.

willis said...

Great post. I have high expectations that this effort might bleed over to the US to support exposing worse deeds by the Bush cabal. Perhaps too "high", but still.....

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