A scary amount of detail is being exposed by the UK Iraq War Inquiry

[TheBigotBasher]

Sir Christopher Meyer, British Ambassadior to the US 1997 - 2003.

"It has to be emphasised that regime change in Iraq was official US policy. It went back to the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, passed unanimously by the Senate, by an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives, and signed into law by Bill Clinton in October 1998. So regime change and, to quote the act, "to establish a programme to support a transition to democracy in Iraq", was an official American policy which George Bush inherited from Bill Clinton. The fact that Clinton did not do very much about it is neither here nor there."Although the decision to invade Iraq is often depicted as one taken solely by Bush adminstration neocons, Meyer said the Bush regime was not an "aberration" and there was "more of a continuum with previous administrations" than either US party was willing to admit. While some blamed "the nutters" in the Bush administration for inventing the regime change policy, this was simply not true, he said.

Not that much of a reveal, but an example that US Foreign Policy, even if unlawful is not necessarily changed by elections.

"The real problem, which I did draw several times to the attention of London, was that the contingency military timetable had been decided before the UN inspectors went in under Hans Blix. So you found yourself in a situation in the autumn of 2002 where you could not synchronise the military timetable with the inspection timetable ? the result of that was to turn resolution 1441 on its head. Because 1441 had been a challenge to Saddam Hussein, agreed unanimously, to prove his innocence. But because you could not synchronise the programmes ? you had to short-circuit the inspection process by finding the notorious smoking gun ? and we ? the Americans, the British ? have never really recovered from that, because, of course, there was no smoking gun."

This was one of the most damning points made by Meyer. After the UN security council unanimously passed resolution 1441 in November 2002, the high point of British efforts to secure an international consensus, Hans Blix's weapons inspectors were admitted back into Iraq. But by that stage the US military was preparing for war in January (although the invasion did not start until March). Blix never had time to complete the inspection process and Meyer implies that the process was therefore something of a charade.

War was on the agenda no matter what happened. No real weapons inspection, no evidence of any weapons of any level of destruction, just a desire to get rid of a Leader that the US and UK Government did not like. Regime change. Completely illegal and nothing more than a war crime. Agreed because two men in high office both used the same tooth paste.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/26/chilcot-iraq-war-inquiry-evidence

[babylonsister]

1. Good. I'm very happy to see this happening and look forward

to Blair's testimony. I wonder if he'll throw anyone under the bus? :think:

[gimama]

2. not scarey, infuriating, disappointing..

for 9 years,now!
www.enduswars.org & www.rethinkafghanistan.com
www.bringthemhomenow.org
Sure am tired of these CRIMES being ignored, & again escalated.
Thanks for Your posting this.

[TheBigotBasher]

4. Scary because the news media lapped it up.

How many Americans still link Iraq to 9/11? It is not that they were necessarily stupid, they swallowed the war meme that was sold to them.

We watched "shock and awe" reign down on dozens and dozens of buidlings. Giant tower blocks and sky scrapers. Each of them had people in facing what was to them their own 9/11. All for a war agreed when the advisors had left the two Leaders alone and for what? A Secular Nation with a dictatoor whose wings had been clipped ends up being replaced by dictatorial local militia who murder women and gays.

Bush and Blair should not be free.

Now we watch Congressional Democratic Members and their Rethug counterparts pushing the Iran will soon have WMDs line.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. The silence about this from US media is deafening.

I am currently in the States to visit children and grands. We seem not to acknowledge the rest of the world in so many ways, even when those "ways" concern us. We live here in an echo chamber controlled by corporate media.

[winyanstaz]

6. Exactly and that silence is shouting to us that they are shills for the government.

[winyanstaz]

5. In the end...all will come out and there will be no more secrets...

Now they will start eating their own trying to cover their tracks even more.
Watch for the bodies to start piling up again.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. I thought nothing substantive would come out of the enquiry, but if it does,

it will be because of the Tories' intense hatred for Blair and NuLab(c). I hadn't factored that in.

[TheBigotBasher]

8. They

and quite possibly the UK Liberal Democrats, who the Conservatives are likely to need to form a coalition, will also be the ones who see the end of this enquiry.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. I think NuLab(c) will thrash the other two. I think the people who vote are savvy enough

to recognise the Tories as demented knuckle-draggers, and sufficiently fearful for their own jobs to flock to NuLab(c), come election-time. What's more, Brown seems to be recovering some of his Labour beliefs. People matter. Though you should never bet on anything that can think.

[TheBigotBasher]

10. The demented knuckle dragger is Brown.

Heavy Social Security cuts very deliberately backlogged until after the election. Support for an illegal war. The UK Property market and the City have a great deal to do with the World recession. It did not start in America.

Labour needs punishing. I support any reasonable Party that can beat Labour on a seat by seat basis. Conservative, Scots Nat, Plaid, Liberal Democrat. If that leads to a hung Parliament so be it. The UK needs a decent coalition to sort out the mess it finds itself in.

Brown was a part of the Iraq war crimes. Milliband is continuing them.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. The idea that the Conservatives are a reasonable party is an utterly laughable claim.

They ceased to be a one-nation party during Thatcher's anarchic, neoliberal tenure. What on earth makes you think they have changed!
Liam Fox is some kind of a leading light in your party. He wants to privatize the NHS! NuLab(c) have tried to do it, piece-meal, by the back door, Fox would do it one fell swoop.

The Tories have been yelling and whining that Brown should be making cuts in the public services. Mustn't put up the income-tax on the higher income brackets, must we? But, to their fury and evidently yours, Brown is acting like an honest Labour man and addressing the increasingly grotesque inequities of our tax system over the past 30 years, to name but one of the mammoth disasters visited upon the country by its successive, right-wing governments. I wonder you have the bare-faced gall to open your mouth on the subject.

'Why surely raising income tax on high-earners would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs!' do I hear you cry? Well, no, BashingBigot, it wouldn't. It will surely have escaped your attention that neoliberal economics have been definitively disgraced for all time. You must understand: the Tory party you know and love is gone for ever.

What sort of a nut are you, to think Brown would suddenly stop throwing the public bones - something the Tories are too thick to do, though Cameron pretended he wanted to - until the 'blue-rinse' knuckle-draggers began howling for his blood? By at least beginning to address the inequitable distribution of wealth in the country via changes in the tax system, he is taking a major step in the right direction, i.e left.

Cuts will, I expect, have to come in due course, but I believe most people would be absolutely terrified of a Tory government, when so many of their jobs, for which their income has been remorselessly reduced over the past 30 years, now look to be in serious jeopardy. And that infamous photograph of Cameron and his pals at the Bullingdon Club will be front and center in the eyes of the public.

[moodforaday]

11. The Chilcot inquiry has thrown up some good stuff

but they are not above stark manipulation, either:

Chilcot censors Iraq inquiry's live broadcast | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the Iraq inquiry, cut the live video of today's hearings, raising fears that he is suppressing evidence on grounds of embarrassment rather that any damage to national security.

. . .

The broadcast was stopped as Greenstock was speaking about how the US drew up plans on the basis of a "best-case scenario" in Iraq. Immediately before being cut off he said: "When I talked to other members of the American team, when I talked informally to the military, to the intelligence agencies, to other people who were operating, I found a very much more gloomy prognosis of what was going on than I felt or understood ambassador in Baghdad was reporting back to the Pentagon." Greenstock added as the broadcast was cut: "I reported these things …"

Most people following the inquiry do so by listening to it in an adjacent media room or remotely via the inquiry's website. There is a very brief time gap between what is said in the inquiry chamber itself and what is heard via the live video feed.

A member of the audience in the inquiry chamber said that after the feed was cut Greenstock went on to say that Colin Powell, who was then secretary of state, used British intelligence reports about the situation in Iraq because they were more accurate than the more optimistic dispatches that Bremer was sending to Washington.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/15/chilcot-inquiry-video-cut-off

Interesting though to think whose face Chilcot was trying to save from an airborne egg by cutting the feed. He seems to have protected the Bush admin rather than Blair's.