ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by hackle

Originally Posted by fertman

I remeber a while ago reading ( sorry, no time to check for a reference/link at the mo) that the Allies heaved a huge sigh of relief when Hitler topped himself because there was - maybe still is - some clause in inetrnational law that heads of State are immune to prosecution, ie not in any way responsible for their actions...

Interesting point, but more recent cases show that that type of immunity does not apply to former heads of state/heads of government after leaving office.

Milosevic was publically indicted by ICTY whilst still President of Yugoslavia.

Several Israeli ministers - past and present - are now unable to travel to certain countries due to possible arrest. The UK is one place they fear most. The very same legal cover applies to heads of state as well as other functionaries.

Immunity depends on the act for which they are accused. The UK won't enforce a speeding fine on a foreign president caught by GATSO. A foreign preseident with an ICC arrest warrent inforce will be cuffed.

Thing is, this enquiry is going to cost millions and only confirm what we knew years ago.. that we were lied to..

Lets save the money now use what would have been spent on a Ridgeback or 2.

I live for the day when Blair gets his come uppence.. I hope that one day he will show some remorse for the pain he has caused.

All I see is the buffoon earning money at our expense.. He seems to be able to live with this..clearly he as no remorse

Otherwise whats the point, there must be a legal way that he and his cronies can be made accountable for this..

Bin Chilcot now... What about a petition to Parliament??? lets stop this now before yet more money is wasted

Today's 'star-witness', or should I say 'Toadies star-witness', could barely prevent an orgasm in public as he extolled the virtues and unimpeachable rectitude of T. Bliar.

Why don't we stop this farcical waste of OUR money tomorrow? The outcome is already known.

Bliar - a great 'war-leader' - as honest a man as ever lived.

Campbell - a hero of the free-world - he knew what 'the people' wanted to hear.

Goldsmith - an inconsequential and subsequently disgraced coward.

Scarlett - was clearly due for promotion.

Straw - was a joke and still is a joke.

Dr Kelly and Dr Cook - deceased MARTYRS!

Admiral Boyce - an honourable man, submerged in a sea of filth.

The Electorate - guilty, guilty, guilty, for voting thrice for the dishonest and grinning 'spiv'.

Originally Posted by Marc_St_Hilaire

IIRC the Joint Intelligence Commitee (JIC) had a lot to do with 'interpreting' the intelligence. John Scarlette, the head of JIC, got his reward later by being made boss of MI6. Lets hope he gets hauled in too.

So Scarlette wrote the report on his own?

He was the only one to sign off on the report?



Or did ALL the members of the JIC agree with the findings of the report and put their signatures against it?

Originally Posted by Whet

Originally Posted by Marc_St_Hilaire

IIRC the Joint Intelligence Commitee (JIC) had a lot to do with 'interpreting' the intelligence. John Scarlette, the head of JIC, got his reward later by being made boss of MI6. Lets hope he gets hauled in too.

So Scarlette wrote the report on his own?

He was the only one to sign off on the report?



Or did ALL the members of the JIC agree with the findings of the report and put their signatures against it?

Dunno whet, why don't YOU tell us the answer instead of just posturing a question?

Originally Posted by Oil_Slick

Originally Posted by Whet

Originally Posted by Marc_St_Hilaire

IIRC the Joint Intelligence Commitee (JIC) had a lot to do with 'interpreting' the intelligence. John Scarlette, the head of JIC, got his reward later by being made boss of MI6. Lets hope he gets hauled in too.

So Scarlette wrote the report on his own?

He was the only one to sign off on the report?



Or did ALL the members of the JIC agree with the findings of the report and put their signatures against it?

Dunno whet, why don't YOU tell us the answer instead of just posturing a question?

No

No

Yes

The JIC reports did retain most of the caveats from the source intelligence. It was No 10 that removed them when compiling the dodgy dossier, and in crafting the various statements that Blair made in Parliament.

The JIC reports did make an appearance in the Iraq Debate, but I noted that when quoting from them Blair would stop before he arrived at the caveats.

The case for the defence, as made by Blair apologist & biographer, Dr. Anthony Seldon, in today's Telegraph.
There's precedent to taking the country to war on lies.. No remorse... this was the morally right thing to do... and even the Attorney General didn't resign etc. etc.

Blair's Defence in the Telegraph

The Iraq war and its aftermath have seen the most contentious decisions taken by any British Government since 1945. Tony Blair stands accused of leading the country into war on a false prospectus, subordinating British interests to George W Bush and showing gross negligence in failing to plan for postwar Iraq.

The only other event that comes close to earning a prime minister such ignominy is the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Anthony Eden lied to the House of Commons. In that short-lived conflict, 21 British servicemen were killed. By contrast, 179 British soldiers died in Iraq, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians lost their lives as a result of the hostilities and the instability that followed.

Blair's place in history will forever be coloured by the war. The Channel 4 drama, The Trial of Tony Blair, struck many as far-fetched when first aired in early 2007. Now a full public inquiry, so long in the offing, is upon us. Technically, Blair will not be on trial, but he will be forced to defend his actions in the full glare of the public arena.

Sir John Chilcot and his team are examining thousands of pages of secret government documents, while witnesses from the highest echelons unburden themselves daily to the inquiry. The hope is that, at last, the public may find out the truth from this fifth inquiry into the Iraq war.

Major conflicts in recent British history have usually yielded the truth in real time. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, details of the collusion between Britain, France and Israel, before the latter's invasion of Egypt, began to leak within days of the plan being hatched.

Following the 1982 Falklands War, a public inquiry was established, chaired by Lord Franks, but it produced few revelations. Most significantly, it found no support for the charge that Margaret Thatcher deliberately ordered the sinking of the Argentine vessel, the Belgrano, to scupper peace talks.

Those hoping that the Chilcot inquiry might break with historical precedent and expose major new insights about the war in Iraq are likely to be disappointed. We will know more detail, but the key facts are already in the public domain.

So was Blair a "criminal" for taking Britain to war? The motivation for his action is entirely transparent. Far from being the poodle, overawed and compliant, signing onto George W Bush's vendetta, Blair had long been ahead in being determined to take on Saddam Hussein.

Intellectually, he was convinced that Saddam was determined to develop a WMD arsenal, and had keenly backed President Clinton's decision to launch airstrikes against Iraq in late 1998, even as Clinton wavered. He supported President Bush's early efforts to tighten sanctions on Iraq and then, after 9/11, became convinced that Iraq had to be disarmed, through military means if necessary.

Blair, for whom morality was always a key touchstone, was repulsed by Saddam and his "cruel" regime. Ahead of both Clinton and Bush in advocating regime change on humanitarian grounds, he gave a speech in Chicago in April 1999 urging military intervention overseas to achieve humanitarian ends. He was determined to end Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and urged Clinton to send ground troops even without a UN mandate. "I have been involved as British Prime Minister in three conflicts involving regime change," Blair said as conflict with Iraq loomed. "Milosevic. The Taliban. And Sierra Leone… I can honestly say the people most pleased have been the people living under the regime in question."

Blair was sincere about trying to find a solution to Iraq through the UN but, as his efforts to secure a second UN resolution faltered in early 2003, he had to decide whether to oppose military action or push ahead regardless. The choice was a deadly serious one, but, to him, not tortuous. But Blair's decision-making style proved dangerously informal, to the point of being careless. Rather than drawing on a range of diverse voices, Blair worked out the details with a very close group of friends and advisors in his "den" in Number 10, with the War Cabinet little more than a rubber stamp for precooked decisions. It was "denocracy" not democracy.

Like Blair, his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, was a hawk who "helped create a culture that Number 10 should support and back Blair's instincts", in the words of one close insider. His Foreign Affairs Adviser, David Manning was instinctively cautious, but elected to support Blair, while Alastair Campbell was a forceful advocate of getting the deed done. Of all the insiders, Sally Morgan, his Political Secretary, was the most dovish for pragmatic political reasons. They all took their cue from Blair: they were all the Prime Minister's men.

The moral case now came to the fore. "Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity," Blair insisted publicly. "It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane." Just days before military action began, Bush called Blair in great secrecy and suggested that British troops could drop out of the coalition to ease Blair's position at home. Blair would have none of it. Military action, he insisted, was the right thing to do.

Like virtually everyone else, Blair firmly believed that Iraq possessed WMD. He did not invent intelligence or resort to bare-faced lies. But the very intensity of his conviction discouraged divergent views, notably the claim that Saddam could launch WMD within 45 minutes, or the intelligence report received just days before the war that Saddam's chemical weapons may have been "disassembled". In the Commons, Blair described the relatively thin intelligence on Iraqi WMD as "extensive, detailed and authoritative". This, believes Robin Butler, was the "closest Blair came to the 'lie direct'. He was perfectly aware of what he was saying and I think his tongue ran away with him." Chilcot, who served on the Butler Inquiry, is unlikely to disagree.

The war's legality is the other principal charge in the prosecution against Blair. But here again, the crucial facts are already in the public domain. We know that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, expressed concerns about military action as early as July 2002, but that his final legal advice contained no such doubts. Blair has denied pressuring Goldsmith to alter the advice. Goldsmith has denied he was pressured. And Chilcot is unlikely to produce evidence to the contrary.

Had Goldsmith been unhappy with the legality, he could have tendered his resignation. He chose not to do so. Nor did virtually anyone else, with the exceptions of Robin Cook, Clare Short (somewhat belatedly), and FCO deputy legal advisor, Elizabeth Wilmshurst. Politicians, officials, ministers and servicemen were either convinced or were happy to go along. Their silence was deafening. Fellow travellers included Gordon Brown, the principal figure who could have blocked British participation in military action at any point. Instead, Brown sat through meetings in silence, unhappy with events, but choosing to keep his counsel. Iraq was Blair's war, but there is a collective sense of guilt among former ministers and officials who failed to speak out.

While Blair's decision-making in the run-up to war contained significant flaws, history is likely to absolve him of intentionally misleading the public. It will not be so kind to him for squandering British influence to shape the course of the war and its aftermath. British support for military action against Iraq mattered in Washington, but it was an asset Blair repeatedly failed to leverage.

He talked regularly to Bush about international coalitions and progress in the Middle East peace process, but as Colin Powell recalls, Blair never implied that British support was conditional on progress in these areas. "Blair would express his concerns, but he would never lie down on the railroad tracks. Jack Straw and I would get him all pumped up about an issue. And he'd be ready to say, 'Look here, George…'. But as soon as he saw the President he would lose all his steam." Blair believed that steadfast loyalty would give him influence in Washington. Instead, British support was taken for granted. For this, Blair deserves blame.

Blair compounded this error by failing to insist on adequate plans for postwar Iraq: instead the British were regularly palmed off with assurances that Washington had this under control. Indeed it had, but not as the British believed: the Pentagon had seized control of the process and devoted little energy or resources. Only when Blair saw postwar Iraq descend into chaos did the penny fully drop.

Chilcot will be highly critical of Blair's decision making. Never again must a prime minister take such momentous choices without the checks and balances provided by the government machine and an active, engaged War Cabinet. There will be more conclusions in this vein, but when it comes to the broader picture, we should not look for game-changing revelations. We can be certain of only one thing: that those who believe in conspiracy will rubbish the Inquiry. Some people still believe Elvis is alive.

Blair took the country to war because he believed it was the right thing to do. He still believes he was right. Early next year he will explain his decisions before the Chilcot Inquiry. Don't expect regret, introspection or second-guessing. For a man who once said he was "ready to meet my Maker", meeting with Sir John Chilcot will be a walk in the park.

* Anthony Seldon is the author of 'Blair' (Free Press) and – with Daniel Collings and Peter Snowdon – 'Blair Unbound' (Pocket Books)