Back in 2003 and 2004 over 70% of American’s polled were telling pollsters not only that they believed Saddam Hussein had WMDs but that he was personally involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre.
Now they’re at it again, with over 70% telling pollsters that they think Iran has nuclear weapons.
Should this country really be allowed to deal in international politics?
Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions between 2003-2008, writing for the Times:
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible.
Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn’t trouble her on the way to a confident conclusion that Mr Blair’s fundamental flaw was his sycophancy towards power.
Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that “hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right”. But this is a narcissist’s defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death.
Obama accepting his Nobel prize:
… perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek …
Except that America did seek armed conflict with Afghanistan.
In October of 2001 the Taliban publicly offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country, provided the U.S. halted the illegal bombing of Afghanistan and produced the necessary evidence about involvement of bin Laden or any of his associates in the 11 September attacks. Bush rejected this, putting an end to any possibility of a potentially peaceful, legal resolution to the events of 11 September 2001, and opened up the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and the threat of invasion of Iran, along with the millions who have lost their lives or had them destroyed as a result.
As part of negotiations with Iran over nuclear fuel Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently proposed that Iran transfer about 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment by the end of this year, then to France for conversion into fuel plates for medical use, effectively negating its use in alleged [...]
They invade and lay waste another country, destroy the lives of millions of Iraqis for generations to come, all on some trumped up drivel about “weapons of mass destruction.”
Now they’re arguing over the real reason. Oil. It’s not enough that control of Iraq’s crude is being divvied up amongst the capitalists of the world. Thomas [...]
With current events this is a must read for any Westerner.
‘No credible evidence’ of Iranian nuclear weapons, says UN inspector:
The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no credible evidence” that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.
Anyone surprised by this is just a fucking plonker.
Neda Agha-Soltan is a young women from Iran who was shot dead while protesting against repression in Iran. She has a page on Wikipedia. Photos and video and of her death have been widely broadcast by the Western media, with copious amounts of faux sympathy.
She deserves our sympathy because she appears to be a victim [...]
I was surprised today to find one of my favourite technology commentators, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, declaring that no doubt remains as to whether the election was fraudulent. Really, because a theocratic government is cracking down on dissidents?
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from my experiences in the Middle East it is that all is not what [...]
Fareed Zakaria writing for Newsweek:
… over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued [...]