THE BIG CHILCOT
Jul. 8th, 2016 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogAs you may or may not know, the Chilcot Report – the official UK investigation into the decision made by Tony Blair to help George W Bush invade Iraq – is out. It’s very long. And it basically concludes what some of us figured out a long time ago – the war was unnecessary and based on a complete sham, and Blair knew it.
A lot is being written about this, and given how much material there is to go through, there may be even more written in the next couple of weeks. Most of it will be hyperpartisan nonsense. But here’s a few worthwhile links for now:
1. This BBC report covers the main findings quite well, as well as responses from Blair and Bush. Notice that Blair issued his directly and at length, while Bush had a spokesperson issue a very short statement that basically said, “I’m busy, but we did the right thing and Tony is a stand-up guy, now let’s forget the past, unite and fight terrorism together!”
2. Regarding Blair’s statement, he basically apologized for everything except the actual decision to invade Iraq, which he still says was the right thing to do, regardless of whether the WMDs were real or the intelligence was wrong, cherry-picked, fake, or whatever. Which is really another way of saying that the US has the right to invade any country it wants and instigate regime change so long as it provides a good reason, whether that reason is based on facts or not.
Blair also said the report proves he didn’t knowingly mislead anyone about Hussein’s WMDs. However, this story from The Intercept notes that in fact Blair knew early on that Bush had already decided to get rid of Saddam on pretenses of WMDs and terrorism – and that he didn’t have the evidence to justify either of them.
3. According to this BBC story, some of the “evidence” that MI6 eventually came up with that Saddam had an active biochem weapons program turned out to be not only made up by the agent who provided it, but may have actually been cribbed from a Michael Bay film. Moreover, it was clear by September 2002 that the agent was lying, but his reports were still being circulated as actionable intelligence until well after the war had started, the apparent reasoning being: just because he was lying doesn’t mean it’s not true.
4. This Vox article points out that The Chilcot Report isn’t just about Tony Blair’s failures – it’s also a detailed chronicle of how the Bush Posse not only made up their case for war, but also how incompetently they planned for the aftermath, despite being told by British intelligence officials that taking Saddam out of power would result in a quagmire of unmanageable civil war that would make the terrorism problem worse instead of better – which of course is more or less exactly what happened.
5. If you were hoping the Chilcot Report would be instrumental in putting the architects of Iraq War 2 on trial for war crimes – sorry, but that’s never going to happen. The report doesn’t explicitly say that Blair outright lied or did anything technically illegal, so regardless of the revelations in the report, no one is going to go jail over it apart those who already have (i.e. a couple of overenthusiastic soldiers and private security contractors).
But I’m willing to settle for a documented and detailed historical record of how the Bush Posse – with Blair playing the Tonto to Bush’s Lone Ranger – invaded Iraq on false pretences and with complete disregard of the consequences that they were told multiple times would happen. Let history books record George W Bush’s “legacy” as a disastrous, expensive and failed foreign policy coupled with a blatant disregard for civil liberties and human rights in pursuit of terrorism, and the impact of both on America, the UK and the world.
Not that it matters, since many people in 2016 live in alternate realities with decidedly different interpretations of history that no amount of fact-checking by experts will ever correct. After all, what the hell do experts know?
Write that down,
This is dF
A lot is being written about this, and given how much material there is to go through, there may be even more written in the next couple of weeks. Most of it will be hyperpartisan nonsense. But here’s a few worthwhile links for now:
1. This BBC report covers the main findings quite well, as well as responses from Blair and Bush. Notice that Blair issued his directly and at length, while Bush had a spokesperson issue a very short statement that basically said, “I’m busy, but we did the right thing and Tony is a stand-up guy, now let’s forget the past, unite and fight terrorism together!”
2. Regarding Blair’s statement, he basically apologized for everything except the actual decision to invade Iraq, which he still says was the right thing to do, regardless of whether the WMDs were real or the intelligence was wrong, cherry-picked, fake, or whatever. Which is really another way of saying that the US has the right to invade any country it wants and instigate regime change so long as it provides a good reason, whether that reason is based on facts or not.
Blair also said the report proves he didn’t knowingly mislead anyone about Hussein’s WMDs. However, this story from The Intercept notes that in fact Blair knew early on that Bush had already decided to get rid of Saddam on pretenses of WMDs and terrorism – and that he didn’t have the evidence to justify either of them.
3. According to this BBC story, some of the “evidence” that MI6 eventually came up with that Saddam had an active biochem weapons program turned out to be not only made up by the agent who provided it, but may have actually been cribbed from a Michael Bay film. Moreover, it was clear by September 2002 that the agent was lying, but his reports were still being circulated as actionable intelligence until well after the war had started, the apparent reasoning being: just because he was lying doesn’t mean it’s not true.
4. This Vox article points out that The Chilcot Report isn’t just about Tony Blair’s failures – it’s also a detailed chronicle of how the Bush Posse not only made up their case for war, but also how incompetently they planned for the aftermath, despite being told by British intelligence officials that taking Saddam out of power would result in a quagmire of unmanageable civil war that would make the terrorism problem worse instead of better – which of course is more or less exactly what happened.
5. If you were hoping the Chilcot Report would be instrumental in putting the architects of Iraq War 2 on trial for war crimes – sorry, but that’s never going to happen. The report doesn’t explicitly say that Blair outright lied or did anything technically illegal, so regardless of the revelations in the report, no one is going to go jail over it apart those who already have (i.e. a couple of overenthusiastic soldiers and private security contractors).
But I’m willing to settle for a documented and detailed historical record of how the Bush Posse – with Blair playing the Tonto to Bush’s Lone Ranger – invaded Iraq on false pretences and with complete disregard of the consequences that they were told multiple times would happen. Let history books record George W Bush’s “legacy” as a disastrous, expensive and failed foreign policy coupled with a blatant disregard for civil liberties and human rights in pursuit of terrorism, and the impact of both on America, the UK and the world.
Not that it matters, since many people in 2016 live in alternate realities with decidedly different interpretations of history that no amount of fact-checking by experts will ever correct. After all, what the hell do experts know?
Write that down,
This is dF
