Last Straw

Great piece by George Monbiot on the campaign to arrest Tony Blair:

Already the campaign has borne fruit. Outside the Chilcot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the website, tried to apprehend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qualifies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to relevant charities. The fund will remain open until Blair is officially prosecuted, and we will keep paying out to those who follow Grace’s example.

You can donate here.

Finally. Let’s hope this guy is good.

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.

There have been a number of inquiries into the 2003 invasion of Iraq but as someone commenting on the European Tribune website put it, they

… are not intended to reach a finding that the public find credible, they exist to provide a smokescreen for a few years to cover the establishment for a few years in the hope everyone forgets about it.

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 [...]

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 [...]

Looks like Blair is running scared he’ll end up in the dock for war crimes. Not surprising considering the lengths he went to to help bring about the war of aggression against Iraq.

If Gordon Brown were to open the way for a truly independent and open inquiry into the invasion and occupation of Iraq he would quite likely find himself in the dock for war crimes.

In a devastating interview with George Monbiot Hazel Blears pulls this lovely comment out of the bag, regarding the decision to invade Iraq:
Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died—and that is a tragedy—I still believe that it was the right thing to do.
If there was a hell Hazel Blears would surely [...]