The Chilcot Inquiry

luka

Well-known member
It was all Craner's fault. He is going to war crimes tribunal. A vindictation for all the people (me) who opposed craner from the very begining.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
For all the talk of faulty intelligence, the intelligence regarding post-Sadam Iraq was impressively accurate.
 

droid

Well-known member
Laughable.

British intelligence agencies accepted false information even after a source told them of a supposed chemical weapon that was remarkably similar to one from the 1996 movie The Rock, my colleague Ewen MacAskill has learned from the report.

The incident is just one of a series of blunders described by the Chilcot report committed by Britain’s overseas spy agency, the Secret Intelligence Service in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the incident, the report describes a source providing details about spherical glass containers allegedly filled with chemical weapons at an establishment in Iraq.

MI6 at the time defended the authenticity of the source and the material, according to the Chilcot report. “However, it drew attention to the fact that the source’s description of the device and its spherical glass contents was remarkably similar to the fictional chemical weapon portrayed in the film The Rock,” the report says.

In the 1996 movie, Nicolas Cage, playing an FBI chemical warfare specialist, joins Sean Connery, playing a former British spy, to prevent chemical weapons being launched against San Francisco.

The similarity between the movie and the source’s alleged device had been noted when the MI6 report was first circulated on 11 and 23 September 2002, well before the Iraq invasion in March 2003.

But this and other bogus claims were not formally withdrawn by MI6 until 29 July 2003, four months after the invasion, Chilcot reports.

In a devastating finding, Chilcot said: “SIS did not inform No 10 or others that the source who had provided the reporting issued on 11 and 23 September 2002 about production of chemical and biological agent had been lying to SIS.”
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Forgive my ignorance, but is there any such inquiry going on stateside which would see Bush et al criticised in similar terms?
 

Leo

Well-known member
Forgive my ignorance, but is there any such inquiry going on stateside which would see Bush et al criticised in similar terms?

no. we don't reflect on things.

plus, washington is too busy trying to crucify hillary.
 

droid

Well-known member
'Mistakes were made'... 'regret the loss of life'... 'would do it again'...

Has somebody we all know been writing speeches for Blair?
 

trza

Well-known member
If you had paid attention to the primary campaign in 2008 and 2016, and the rest of the general campaign this year, you would recognize that the be all end all arbiter of all judgment of the past twenty years of American politics was Hillary's decision to vote in favor of the Iraq war. Its literally the first thing some of the Sanders/Trump/Republican people bring up as some kind of proof of her judgment or anything related to the Iraq war. You would have no idea any other person had any kind of responsibility except for the Junior Senator from New York State.
 

Leo

Well-known member
If you had paid attention to the primary campaign in 2008 and 2016, and the rest of the general campaign this year, you would recognize that the be all end all arbiter of all judgment of the past twenty years of American politics was Hillary's decision to vote in favor of the Iraq war. Its literally the first thing some of the Sanders/Trump/Republican people bring up as some kind of proof of her judgment or anything related to the Iraq war. You would have no idea any other person had any kind of responsibility except for the Junior Senator from New York State.

absolutely...but we haven't had any comparable, formal inquiry/report on the iraq war. but washington did spend three years and $7 million of taxpayer money on benghazi because of, you guessed it, hillary.
 

droid

Well-known member
no. we don't reflect on things.

plus, washington is too busy trying to crucify hillary.

It must also be said, that this is unusually damning. The primary function of these types of inquiries is to vindicate the establishment - not to condemn them. Look at Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday.
 

droid

Well-known member
The moral problem for the left is reconciling opposition to the death penalty with the historical treatment of war criminals. Obviously the senior offenders at Nuremeberg were all hanged, but the then you look at the likes of Kurt Franz... released after 28 years in prison and lived another 5 after committing the vilest of crimes.

If death is ever a suitable punishment, then aggression must be one of the few crimes where it might be justified.
 

vimothy

yurp
The moral problem for the left is that it is impossible to have a system in which aggression is punished, whether by execution of those held responsible or some other means, without the aggression needed to secure it.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
From Blair's press conference:

“Nowhere in this report do they say what they believe would have happened if we had taken the decision [not to invade].

We might have had the same situation in Iraq today as we have in Syria

In Syria today more than double the amount of people who died in Iraq died in Syria*”

* This is approximately correct when using the figures from body counts. Other methodologies produce higher fatality figures, but given that we are comparing Iraq and Syria it is important to use the same methodology. Also, per capita this disparity is even more severe.

This is the point I made when me and Droid were having our Iraq debate earlier in the year.
 

droid

Well-known member
The moral problem for the left is that it is impossible to have a system in which aggression is punished, whether by execution of those held responsible or some other means, without the aggression needed to secure it.

Eh, no. It is possible to have a system of international law without committing the specific and supreme crime of the launch of a war of aggression.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
The moral problem for the left is that it is impossible to have a system in which aggression is punished, whether by execution of those held responsible or some other means, without the aggression needed to secure it.

I'm not sure that justice and punishment have to be the same things.

Also I don't think that a moral opposition to the death penalty is necessarily a left wing position. A liberal one certainly. It should not be used on an industrial scale against the working class / black population as is the case in the USA. Best used sparingly, if at all.
 

droid

Well-known member
From Blair's press conference:

“Nowhere in this report do they say what they believe would have happened if we had taken the decision [not to invade].

We might have had the same situation in Iraq today as we have in Syria[

In Syria today more than double the amount of people who died in Iraq died in Syria*”

* This is approximately correct when using the figures from body counts. Other methodologies produce higher fatality figures, but given that we are comparing Iraq and Syria it is important to use the same methodology. Also, per capita this disparity is even more severe.

This is the point I made when me and Droid were having our Iraq debate earlier in the year.

This assertion is morally and logically bankrupt.

First of all there's the 'might'.

  • Saddam might have choked on his food.
  • Saddam might have had an aneurysm
  • Saddam may have discovered mystical powers and ascended to the godhead.
  • Saddam and his cabinet may all have spontaneously combusted.
  • Saddam and his sons may have been hit by lightning on a trip to the seaside.
Secondly there is the moral problem with justifying a war based on what 'might have' happened. By that logic every conflict can be justified.

  • 911 is morally justified as it hastened the decline of an American empire responsible for the deaths of millions.
  • WWII was justified as the USSR might have invaded and enslaved Europe.
  • Kurdish Genocide was justified as they may have sparked a much more murderous civil war in Iraq.

It is the worst kind of sophistry. A self serving, amoral and utterly ludicrous argument.
 

droid

Well-known member
I'm not sure that justice and punishment have to be the same things.

Also I don't think that a moral opposition to the death penalty is necessarily a left wing position. A liberal one certainly. It should not be used on an industrial scale against the working class / black population as is the case in the USA. Best used sparingly, if at all.

And war crimes (a very specific one in this case) are one of the few cases where the chances of executing an innocent are slim to none (in comparison to criminal cases where it is inevitable).
 
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