WARHAMMER Chilcot Enquiry Findings

[Scouse]

So, the Chilcot report is out tomorrow (Wednesday). Wonder what it'll find?

At 2.6 million words long - or 3 and a bit bibles - I doubt that it can be of much use. I expect politicians will be able to cherry pick what they want out of it to defend whatever they want to defend.

/tinfoil on
I always wondered at the timing of the brexit referendum - so close to chilcot. Something to move the news organisations on after the predicted remain vote fallout? Who'd have thunk the fallout would have been this bad.
/tinfoil off

So, is Blair a war criminal? Jeremy Corbyn would like to see him hanged. Wonder if there'll be any legal kickoff over this**.

Probably not...


**Edit: Almost definitely not...

 

[Job]

Exactly the problem, endless out of context arguments...a complete waste of time that will simply keep lawyers in gold taps.

 

[Gwadien]

Worst case scenario; Blair's a war criminal and he'll never hold public office again.

Best case scenario; the Government is held accountable to agreeing to go to war, and we'll actually learn from our lessons.

 

[ECA]

Exactly the problem, endless out of context arguments...

Thought you were talking about the europe thread there for a minute....

 

[Moriath]

I doubt it will go out and blame blair out right. Its already been saying that we need to be more careful going to war next time. Iguess they will cite poor communication on thw wmd thing. Say dont be naughhty again.


Nothing will really change and it will be a waste of seven years. But im not an optimist. Lol.

 

[Raven]

Whitewash incoming.

 

[Embattle]

Blair is already disliked massively, not sure how much more damage this can do any way.

 

[old.user4556]

Is he going to jail? No? Waste of paper.

 

[Job]

My take is that no one said there were nuclear weapons, the wmds were quite clearly battlefield chemicals, we knew he had them.
Every idiot and every newspaper started describing nukes landing on Israel, the biggest lie was not pointing out how ridiculous that was.
We went to war to show the arabs we mean business and are not afraid of the horrors of war.
We just couldn't back down and retain any credibility in the region, sad reason to die, but nothing new.

 

[DaGaffer]

My take is that no one said there were nuclear weapons, the wmds were quite clearly battlefield chemicals, we knew he had them.
Every idiot and every newspaper started describing nukes landing on Israel, the biggest lie was not pointing out how ridiculous that was.
We went to war to show the arabs we mean business and are not afraid of the horrors of war.
We just couldn't back down and retain any credibility in the region, sad reason to die, but nothing new.

Nope. No one was really suggesting nukes, even back then, other than precursor work like centrifuges; the main focus was chemical and biological; but even then, it was pointed out that he had no delivery mechanisms for either, even if he did have them.

Looks like the Chilcott report isn't pulling any punches, which is good; but Blair will never see any punishment, so one wonders what the the point is?

 

[Scouse]

We all knew this beforehand...

"Saddam has gone, and we have one thousand Saddams now," he says. "It wasn't like this under Saddam. There was a system. There were ways. We didn't like him, but he was better than those people."

"Saddam never executed people without a reason. He was as solid as a wall. There was no corruption or looting, it was safe. You could be safe."

So hopefully the outcome will be that the next time our government wants to take us to war they'll have to consider the absolutely bleeding fucking obvious.

In the same way that people and their representatives bayed for the invasion of Libya, for Syria. For all the places that islamic fundamentalism is going from strength-to-strength.

In general war begets war. Hundreds of thousands dead. Millions displaced. Whole regions of our planet a lot less stable and now actual hotpits of murder and rape. UK and European citizens under attack from people who are raging against our involvement in this with a burning sense of injustice as their driving force. The response being UK and European citizens freedoms being attacked by the same witless institutions that took them into an idiotic conflict in the first place.

The only remedy is reduction of inequality, increased representation, increased cooperation and lots of time.

Unfortunately we're on a path of rapidly increasing inequality, decreasing representation and decreasing cooperation amongst the very people we need to be standing with.

 

[Moriath]

My take is that no one said there were nuclear weapons, the wmds were quite clearly battlefield chemicals, we knew he had them.
Every idiot and every newspaper started describing nukes landing on Israel, the biggest lie was not pointing out how ridiculous that was.
We went to war to show the arabs we mean business and are not afraid of the horrors of war.
We just couldn't back down and retain any credibility in the region, sad reason to die, but nothing new.

No one thought nukes. It was always chemicals and pre cursors.

 

[Job]

You might have got it, but even people I regard as well read were slating them off when no nukes were found.

 

[Moriath]

You might have got it, but even people I regard as well read were slating them off when no nukes were found.

Its iran with the nuke program always has been not iraq. And even iran dont have a functioning weapon iirc.

 

[old.user4556]

Blair press conference right now, already telling lies about not telling lies.

 

[Job]

You can't really apologise for carpet bombing hundreds of thousands of people for nothing more than proving a point.

 

[Job]

Volker Pispers nails the whole Iraq war, starts at 5.40.
He's German subtitled, but works really well.

Volker Pispers history of USA and terrorism 1 of 5:
View: http://youtu.be/n4H_E8b-qmo

 

[Bodhi]

The problem for me with Iraq wasn't the fact that we went in (Saddam was a brutal dictator, who was happy to starve his own people and deny them medical supplies, before we even go there on the gassing Kurds issue), but the complete and utter lack of plan in what to do afterwards. After Saddam went we seemed to lose interest and let the place descend into chaos, causing half the issues we had now.

Whilst going into Iraq has caused death, chaos and civil war, inaction in Syria has had pretty much the same effect. We're pretty much damned if we do.....

 

[Job]

I would hardly call the portrayal of Assad as a mad dictator while supporting the rebels to keep a devastating civil war going as inaction...another grade A fuk up by the west based on bastardised liberal..everything will be roses under democracy...values that have destroyed a country and killed millions.
We should have just let him wipe them out= no isis.

 

[DaGaffer]

The problem for me with Iraq wasn't the fact that we went in (Saddam was a brutal dictator, who was happy to starve his own people and deny them medical supplies, before we even go there on the gassing Kurds issue), but the complete and utter lack of plan in what to do afterwards. After Saddam went we seemed to lose interest and let the place descend into chaos, causing half the issues we had now.

Whilst going into Iraq has caused death, chaos and civil war, inaction in Syria has had pretty much the same effect. We're pretty much damned if we do.....

Well it should have been. Invading sovereign nations because you don't like them is never really a good idea (one man's brutal dictator is another man's strong leader), and a fairly consistent principle, and of course the Americans and Blair would never have been able to make the case for invasion on that basis, which is why there was the bullshit about WMDs in the first place.

I do agree that the lack of an after-invasion plan was also shameful, (Donald Rumsfeld, come on down), but I'm firmly of the view that there was no plan that would have been successful anyway.

As for Syria, part of the problem is that events in Iraq have taken away any moral authority the West had to act. Without Iraq, its entirely possible that western troops could have gone in as liberators, given Syria was one of the more secular arab countries.

 

[Bodhi]

If you want to refer to someone who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people a strong leader then fair enough, we'll agree to disagree on that point.

Whilst military actions is not the greatest of mankinds inventions, and usually leads to death and destruction, we have to remember that inaction can result in exactly the same effect. I'm just glad it's not a decision I ever have to make.....

 

[DaGaffer]

If you want to refer to someone who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people a strong leader then fair enough, we'll agree to disagree on that point.

Whilst military actions is not the greatest of mankinds inventions, and usually leads to death and destruction, we have to remember that inaction can result in exactly the same effect. I'm just glad it's not a decision I ever have to make.....

Its not me that refers to him as a strong leader, but there's no denying that plenty of Iraqis felt that way, and human nature being what it is, probably more of them feel that way about him now than they did when he was in power. My point is that you can't simply assume because a country is run by a murdering arsehole, that gives us the moral right or obligation to do something about it. After all, we have a country run by murdering arseholes as well...

 

[Moriath]

You can't really apologise for carpet bombing hundreds of thousands of people for nothing more than proving a point.

Carpet bombs are banned and not used any more iirc. You take things apply a bit of shit to them and regurgitate

 

[Moriath]

Its not me that refers to him as a strong leader, but there's no denying that plenty of Iraqis felt that way, and human nature being what it is, probably more of them feel that way about him now than they did when he was in power. My point is that you can't simply assume because a country is run by a murdering arsehole, that gives us the moral right or obligation to do something about it. After all, we have a country run by murdering arseholes as well...

I think his people see it that every day life was safer and more predictable than it is now with the vacuum filled by IS. He may have been evil but he kept stability. And as long as you werent a kurd you were ok mostly.

Now it could be anyone walking down the street that is blown up at any point.

 

[Job]

Carpet bombs are banned and not used any more iirc. You take things apply a bit of shit to them and regurgitate

The role of the large conventional bomber was revalidated in the Gulf War. B-52s flew 1,624 missions, dropped over 72,000 weapons, and delivered over 25,700 tons of munitions on area targets In the KTO, and on airfields, industrial targets, troop concentrations and storage areas in Iraq. Despite being over 30 years old, the B-52 had a mission capable rate of over 81%--- 2 % higher than its peacetime rate. B-52s dropped 29 % of all US bombs and 38 % of all Air Force bombs during the war. Through effectivee modification of the B-52, it remains a useful platform. As Iraqi prisoners report, B-52 raids had devastating effects on enemy morale. Estimates show that from 20 to 40 % of troop strength had deserted their units prior to the G-Day. While fighters employed precision guided munitions to destroy pinpoint targets, the B-52s successes demonstrated the need to preserve the large conventional bombers' ability to destroy large area targets.

 

[Tom]

So not only do you copy and paste stuff from Reddit, you copy and paste stuff from other websites like Desert Shield/Storm

And still it's completely irrelevant, you stupid cunt.

 

[Moriath]

Desert storm was decade or more before we invaded iraq. Lol

 

[Moriath]

Geneva convention

Area bombardments and other indiscriminate attacks are forbidden. ( Protocol I, Art. 57, Sec. 2b)

 

[Scouse]

I watched all of Blairs statement and press conference this afternoon. Regardless of content, and really quite bizzarely, I've found myself wishing Cameron had half the intellect and gravitas of the man.

Watching Major, Blair and Brown you realise you're looking at people that, no matter how you may despise them or their policies, they are thinkers. Cameron, Johnson, Gove, May, et. al. are just petty little arseholes.

 

[Job]

More devious than clever for Blair I would say.