Chilcot condemns Blair’s behaviour, but declines to accuse him of lying

By Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

Seven years after it was commissioned and 13 years after the Iraq War began, the Iraq Inquiry’s report on Britain’s part in the invasion has been published – and the fallout has begun.

The headlines are already an excoriating verdict on Tony Blair’s actions before, during, and after the invasion: Crushing Verdict on Blair and the Iraq War, Iraq Invasion “Not Last Resort”. And yet, in a most British way, an upper limit has still been imposed on the criticism, first and foremost by Sir John Chilcot and his committee.

Faced with the politics as well as the evidence – dare anyone put Blair in a position to face war crimes charges, or even dare to accuse him of abusing his power? – Chilcot steered clear of the L-word.

In fact, the word “lie” does not appear once in the Executive Summary. The only time that “lying” is used refers not to Blair, but to Saddam Hussein: “When Iraq denied that it had retained any WMD capabilities, the UK Government accused it of lying.” Nowhere does the report invoke a more colourful, if politer, formulation of the conclusion: that the intelligence for the invasion was “sexed up” on the orders of the prime minister’s office.

As David Cameron said of the report after its release: “Deliberate deceit? I can’t find a reference to it.”

So how does Chilcot manage to pull off this balancing act, going just far enough in the criticism to chide Blair while not opening up the full extent of the former prime minister’s actions?

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The view of Chilcot from Iraq as it still reels from the upheaval unleashed by the war

The Guardian reports: Across the Iraqi capital, there is little sense that the long-delayed Chilcot report into Britain’s decision to go to war will change anything. Thirteen years after the invasion, the country is still reeling from the upheaval unleashed by the war. What was envisaged by planners in London and Washington to be a seamless transition from dictatorship to democracy has proved to be anything but.

A tussle for control of post-Saddam Iraq has barely relented, and continues to ravage the country’s finances, communities and social fabric. Citizens say the relentless grind has become a “forever war” that could rumble on over decades, ensuring that communities torn apart by sectarianism remain at odds for generations.

“Nothing Britain could say or do can address this, or make up for it,” said Safa Gilbert, a Christian who returned to her home city on Monday from exile in Lebanon. “Even if they wanted to help, they did not. And all they needed to do is understand the society first.”

Up the road from the cemetery, Saleh Mehdi Saleh was engraving tombstones for Sunni Muslims. He plied his trade throughout the invasion, then the eight-year occupation and the five years of chaos that followed. In that time he lost three brothers, four nephews and a sister to violence. He also carved the epitaphs for thousands more and seemed numbed by his unique perspective on Iraq’s suffering.

“This was a deliberate mistake,” he said of the decision to invade.

Like many in Iraq, Saleh would not accept Tony Blair’s claim that the war was planned in order to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of despotism. “They intended this,” he countered. “Bush and Blair conspired to destroy the most ancient civilisation in the world. They targeted us because we are rich in prophets and holy men. The beginning of creation was in Iraq and the end of creation will be here as well.

“They did not take away Saddam Hussein for the benefit of Iraqis. Britain was seeking revenge because it was driven out in 1921. There is now absolute authority for Shias to kill Sunnis in the name of the state.” [Continue reading…]

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Unconditional commitment to war in Iraq: ‘I will be with you whatever,’ Blair told Bush

The Associated Press reports: Letters published by the U.K.’s Iraq War Inquiry show that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair assured U.S. President George W. Bush of his support for regime change in Iraq eight months before the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003.

The report by retired civil servant John Chilcot offered a sweeping condemnation of Britain’s preparations for the war and its aftermath. The newly published documents offer one side of the vital relationship between Bush and Blair — Blair’s letters to Bush are published, but Bush’s responses are not.

In a six-page “Secret Personal” memo to Bush written July 28, 2002, Blair says he would do “whatever” with regards to removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain from power. Blair says toppling Saddam is “the right thing to do” adding that the important question is “not when, but how.”

At the time, Blair was telling the British public and Parliament that no decision to go to war against Iraq had been made.

“I will be with you whatever,” Blair wrote to his U.S. counterpart. [Continue reading…]

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Obama’s latest move to delay end of war in Afghanistan

The Daily Beast reports: President Obama announced Wednesday yet another delay in his plan to wind down the war in Afghanistan, saying 8,400 troops would remain there for a list of enemies that has grown from al Qaeda to the Taliban and now to the so-called Islamic State.

But many in the Pentagon are concerned that the president’s new plan isn’t much of a strategy at all. It’s just a holding action, to hopefully keep a lid on Afghanistan until after the election.

“There is no desire to end the war in Afghanistan. There is a desire to keep it off the front pages and make it a problem for the next administration,” as one Pentagon official explained to The Daily Beast.

The U.S. had planned to keep 5,500 troops through the end of the year. At first glance, the change in number may not have seemed particularly significant; the president added only 2,400 troops to the number of forces that will be in Afghanistan by the end of his presidency. But the fact the U.S. had to slow down its withdrawal from its longest war ever was a major acknowledgement by the administration that the U.S. has yet to train local forces that can successfully stop a burgeoning Taliban and the jihadists protected by them. In other words, the cornerstone of the American effort in Afghanistan was still shaky, a decade and a half into the war. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump’s rigged system


As Donald Trump warns about a “rigged system,” he’s indirectly training terrorists.

No, he doesn’t have secret training camps in Montana or Utah. Nor does he need to disseminate any information about bomb-making. He doesn’t even need to have the desire to see anyone turn to violence.

All he needs to do is carry on bottling rage, distributing it far and wide and sooner or later this incendiary infusion is bound to explode.

Whenever and wherever this happens — and there’s no telling how many times it has already happened — it will be hard to pin the blame directly on Trump. The ticking time-bombs within the brittle minds of many an American are scattered from coast to coast.

Rage contained will get released when the person within whom it has been festering no longer feels like this is their own possession — their own demon that they must struggle to restrain.

As rage gets sanctioned and fueled by a powerful and prominent man like Trump who has positioned himself as a champion of the people, then the would-be perpetrator of violence who previously went unnoticed now believes he has been transformed into an instrument of a higher law and an expression of the will of his nation.

Not my will, but Thy will be done, thinks the American terrorist for whom this country, its people, and God form a holy trinity.

When Trump says this is a “rigged system,” he’s telling his followers they don’t live in a democracy.

Figuratively or literally, this is a call to arms — and that’s exactly the message that some of Trump’s followers are receiving.

Trump, like every experienced white collar criminal, is an expert in covering his tracks. As an agitator, he adopts the posture of an impassive witness, observing events without telling anyone what to do. But as Alex Massie observed after Jo Cox was murdered in the UK:

When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, ‘Mate, you weren’t supposed to take it so seriously. It’s just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.’

When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you don’t get to be surprised when someone breaks. When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, don’t be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didn’t make them do it, no, but you didn’t do much to stop it either.

When Trump calls out to his followers that the FBI’s decision not to indict Hillary Clinton means that he and they are up against a “rigged system,” these are the kinds of responses he triggers:

“There’s a place in hell for this CARELESS, CORRUPT, LYING WITCH! 😡” tweets @MiddleClazzMom.

“I’d like to see her on fire in hell, and our sick terrorist Obama” tweets @vickilynne58.

“Disband the FBI!! Start a Citizen Secret Police to interorgate them!! Yes! I’m pissed!!” tweets @wiley4454.

“When #Government doesn’t follow the #Laws the #Citizens don’t need to!” tweets @drginareghetti.

“We all received a major blow today but like our founding Fathers this will not stop us from wining the war #MAGA #Trump2016” tweets @jrmadmen.

When you say the system is rigged, this isn’t a callout to voters — it’s a declaration that voting is worthless.

This is the message that ardent Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, hears loud and clear: “The Fix Is In: @HillaryClinton Will Be The Next President! #RiggedSystem”

“If this DONT WAKE THE AMERICAN people up, I dont know what will.. Time for the pitchforks,” tweets @BeezakaMrB.

But don’t expect a big rush on farm-supply stores, because in a country where it’s easier to buy an assault rifle than it is to track down a pitchfork, those who feel most enraged about a rigged system won’t be grabbing agricultural implements.

The more Trump claims he’s up against a rigged system, the more angry his supporters will be when he loses. They won’t accept loss as a defeat; they will view it as a crime.

Seeing themselves as victims of evil global forces, there will be a few who decide that violence is the only path to justice.

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Growing sense that strong women leaders are needed to ‘clean up the mess created by men’

The Guardian reports: There was a time when German political commentators loved to compare Angela Merkel to Margaret Thatcher. When the German chancellor first took office more than a decade ago, admirers and detractors alike wondered whether she would be her country’s Eiserne Frau or Iron Lady.

No one makes that comparison any more. With Theresa May the current frontrunner to become Britain’s next prime minister, commentators in Germany have been wondering, mostly approvingly, whether it is the British home secretary who could be “a duplicate of the German chancellor”. Like Merkel, the German TV commentator Wolfram Weimer noted on Tuesday, May “operates in an aloof and sober way, but … always knows what she wants”.

But she is also, of course, a woman, and in a piece for the German daily newspaper Die Welt, the writer Mara Delius expressed an increasingly widespread sense that May, along with Merkel and Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, represents part of a new “femokratie”, coming to “clean up the mess created by the men”. They were, she said, “postmodern Elektras in trouser suits and rubber gloves”. Thank goodness, the piece suggested, Europe looked at last to be in safe (female) hands.

Certainly these might seem to be remarkable times for female political leadership in Britain and across the world. May is joined at the front of the Conservative leadership race by Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister and former banker.

Should Labour MPs ever decide to move against Jeremy Corbyn, Angela Eagle has declared she will challenge him. Aside from Sturgeon, the Conservative and Labour party leaders in Scotland, the first minister of Northern Ireland and the leader of Plaid Cymru are all women. The Green party has been led by a woman for almost a decade and its former leader, Caroline Lucas, is running again as a job-share candidate.

Internationally, meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is the favourite to take the US presidency in November, and could even pick another woman, Elizabeth Warren, as her running mate. The head of the International Monetary Fund and the US attorney general are women, and the next UN secretary general, due to be chosen later this year, may well be too. [Continue reading…]

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Tony Blair demonstrates once again how he took Britain to war in Iraq

Anne Perkins writes: Prime ministers blamed for catastrophic diplomatic failure tend to go quietly to their country houses to grow roses. Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, paralysed by fear of the cost of war then blamed for failing to rearm in the 1930s, Anthony Eden for the lying deception of Suez in the 1950s, retreated entirely from public life.

In contrast, Tony Blair, although no longer the representative of the Middle East quartet, has a sports foundation, a faith foundation, an Africa governance initiative, a climate change initiative, and of course Tony Blair Associates, whose earnings fund them all.

The criticisms of the Chilcot report were familiar to him from the privileged access given months ago so that he could challenge the conclusions. They had been trawled over by him and, no doubt, his lawyers. Thus, soon after Chilcot had made his statement, at about the time Rose Gentle was accusing him of murdering her son at the press conference for the families, Blair’s office was ready with a rebuttal, insisting the report had exonerated him of all charges of falsification, deception and a secret war pact with George W Bush.

A couple of hours later, in the mid-afternoon, Blair himself launched his press conference with an expression of responsibility for the Iraq war, for which he felt “more sorrow and regret and apology … than you can ever believe”. He looked, and sounded, utterly stricken.

It feels cheap at such a time to doubt someone’s sincerity. But I have seen him look stricken before – and like millions of other voters, I don’t trust him any more. [Continue reading…]

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Chilcot’s judgment is utterly damning — but it’s still not justice

George Monbiot writes: Little is more corrosive of democracy than impunity. When politicians do terrible things and suffer no consequences, people lose trust in both politics and justice. They see them, correctly, as instruments deployed by the strong against the weak.

Since the first world war, no British prime minister has done anything as terrible as Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq. This unprovoked war caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the mutilation of hundreds of thousands more. It flung the whole region into chaos, which has been skillfully exploited by terror groups. Today, three million people in Iraq are internally displaced, and an estimated 10 million need humanitarian assistance.

Yet Blair, the co-author of these crimes, whose lethal combination of appalling judgment and tremendous powers of persuasion made the Iraq war possible, saunters the world, picking up prizes and massive fees, regally granting interviews, cloaked in a forcefield of denial and legal impunity. If this is what politics looks like, is it any wonder that so many people have given up on it?

The crucial issue – the legality of the war – was, of course, beyond Sir John Chilcot’s remit. A government whose members were complicit in the matter under investigation (Gordon Brown financed and supported the Iraq war) defined his terms of reference. This is a fundamental flaw in the way inquiries are established in this country: it’s as if a defendant in a criminal case were able to appoint his own judge, choose the charge on which he is to be tried and have the hearing conducted in his own home. [Continue reading…]

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Reporter calls out Donald Trump’s son-in-law over anti-Semitism

The New York Times reports: On Tuesday morning, Dana Schwartz, a culture reporter for The New York Observer, sent a pitch to the paper’s editor in chief.

After posting a message on Twitter criticizing Donald J. Trump for using an image of Hillary Clinton with a shape resembling the Star of David and a pile of cash, Ms. Schwartz spent the Fourth of July weekend getting trolled by anti-Semitic Trump supporters.

Now she wanted to write about the experience.

“I feel an obligation to use whatever platform is available to me to bring that hatred out of the shadows, acknowledging it and discussing it,” Ms. Schwartz wrote to the editor, Ken Kurson.

Mr. Kurson responded swiftly, she said, with a single word: “Go.”

He didn’t see the piece until it was published online. It may not have been what Mr. Kurson was expecting.

It did not simply criticize Mr. Trump’s anti-Semitic supporters. It called out Mr. Trump’s Orthodox Jewish son-in-law and de facto campaign manager, Jared Kushner — the owner of The Observer. [Continue reading…]

Kushner released a statement in response to Schwartz’s letter, saying:

My father-in-law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. I know that Donald does not at all subscribe to any racist or anti-semitic thinking. I have personally seen him embrace people of all racial and religious backgrounds. The suggestion that he may be intolerant is not reflective of the Donald Trump I know.

Unable to face such a courageous expression of dissent from an employee, Kushner (or his loyal underlings) removed Schwartz’s letter from the Observer — but it can still be read here.

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Quiet fixer in Donald Trump’s campaign: His son-in-law, Jared Kushner

The New York Times reports: International diplomacy is a world of careful rituals, hierarchy and credentials. But when the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, wanted to communicate with Donald J. Trump, he ended up on two occasions in the Manhattan office of a young man with no government experience, no political background and no official title in the Trump campaign: Jared Kushner.

Mr. Kushner held court at length with Mr. Dermer, doing his best to engage in the same sort of high-level conversation that the ambassador conducted with career diplomats and policy experts from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

A 35-year-old real estate developer, investor and newspaper publisher, Mr. Kushner derives his authority in the campaign not from a traditional résumé but from a marital vow. He is Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.

Yet in a gradual but unmistakable fashion, Mr. Kushner has become involved in virtually every facet of the Trump presidential operation, so much so that many inside and out of it increasingly see him as a de facto campaign manager. Mr. Kushner, who is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, helped recruit a sorely needed director of communications, oversaw the creation of an online fund-raising system and has had a hand in drafting Mr. Trump’s few policy speeches. And now that Mr. Trump has secured the Republican nomination, Mr. Kushner is counseling his father-in-law on the selection of a running mate.

It is a new and unlikely role for Mr. Kushner, a conspicuously polite Harvard graduate whose prominent New Jersey family bankrolled Democrats for decades and whose father’s reputation was destroyed, in a highly public and humiliating manner, by his involvement in electoral politics.

Now, in a Shakespearean turn, Mr. Kushner is working side by side with the former federal prosecutor who put his father, Charles Kushner, in prison just over 10 years ago: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whom Mr. Trump named as a top adviser. Mr. Kushner originally voiced objections to Mr. Trump about the appointment, but Mr. Kushner and Mr. Christie have since become wary allies in seeking to impose greater discipline on Mr. Trump’s unconventional campaign.

Much about the Trump candidacy seems at odds with Mr. Kushner’s personality and biography: An Orthodox Jew and grandson of Holocaust survivors, Mr. Kushner is now at the center of a campaign that has been embraced by white nationalists and anti-Semites. [Continue reading…]

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I governed in Iraq, and saw the lack of postwar planning first-hand

Emma Sky writes: Although I opposed the Iraq war, I went on to serve in Iraq longer than any other British military or civilian official. When I testified before the Iraq inquiry on 14 January 2011, I explained how in 2003 I had responded to the government’s request for volunteers to administer Iraq for three months before we handed the country back to the Iraqis.

I felt I had useful skills to contribute, after a decade in Palestine working on capacity building and conflict mediation. And I did not want the only westerner Iraqis would meet to be a man with a gun.

Before I went out to Iraq I was not briefed, and had no idea what my job was going to be. I received a phone call from someone in the British government telling me to make my way to RAF Brize Norton, jump on a military plane and fly to Basra, where I would be met by someone carrying a sign with my name on it and taken to the nearest hotel.

It sounded plausible. It was June 2003. The invasion was three months previous. The war was apparently over. I assumed the British government knew what it was doing – it had just not told me. So I followed the instructions. But I arrived in Basra airport to find no one expecting me, no sign with my name. [Continue reading…]

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After invoking Article 50, UK could still rescind notice to withdraw from EU, say French legal sources

The Guardian reports: [At a] hearing of the Treasury select committee, leading constitutional lawyers revealed that the French government legal service has informed the French government that the UK would be entitled to rescind a notice to withdraw even though it had invoked article 50.

Such flexibility would mean that even if it was triggered, the UK could reverse a decision to withdraw, if either parliament or a second referendum endorsed the step.

Michael Dougan, professor of European law at Liverpool University, also pointed out that any UK application to join Norway as a signatory to the European economic area (EEA) agreement – a means of maintaining access to the EU single market – could be vetoed by any single one of the remaining 27 EU member states, the four members of the European free trade area (Efta) and the European parliament, meaning 31 different institutions or states could block the UK signing the EEA.

The EEA is seen by some as the best stopping off point for the UK, since it retains UK access to the EU single market, but all EEA members are required to apply the principle of the free movement of people. [Continue reading…]

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Tony Blair took Britain to war in 2003 — but most of Fleet Street marched with him

By John Jewell, Cardiff University

When, in October 2015, Tony Blair apologised for the use of “wrong” intelligence in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war, his contrition was qualified. Speaking to Fareed Zakaria on CNN, the former prime minister also said:

I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.

Blair’s belated regret for how events transpired cut little ice with the British press. Writing in The Guardian, Roy Greenslade expertly discussed editorial responses which ranged from the scathing: “Blair’s weasel words insult Iraq war dead” in the Daily Mail – to the rather more considered. The Independent, which had offered qualified support for the invasion of Iraq, stated that the apology represented progress in coming to some sort of understanding about that ill-starred adventure and its longer-term consequences.

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Dutch Pegida leader and expelled German deputy hunt migrants on Bulgaria border

The Telegraph reports: The former frontwoman of Germany’s Pegida anti-Muslim movement and a leader of its Dutch offshoot have travelled to Bulgaria to hunt down migrants attempting to cross the border from Turkey, it has emerged.

Tatjana Festerling called on the “men of Europe” to travel to Bulgaria and join local vigilantes attempting to hunt down migrants.

Ms Festerling, who came to international notoriety earlier this year when she called for asylum-seekers to be shot if they attempted to cross the German border, was expelled from her post as Pegida’s deputy leader two weeks ago.

She boasted on her Facebook page on Friday of spending a day with the “Bulgarian Military Veterans Union”, a paramilitary group of vigilantes who patrol the border searching for illegal immigrants. Ms Festerling said she was accompanied on the trip by a leader of the Dutch offshoot of Pegida, Edwin Wagensveld.

She posted pictures of herself and Mr Wagensveld posing alongside men in military-style uniform, their faces masked with balaclavas, holding up a banner which read “Fortress Europe”. Requests for comment made to the Dutch branch of Pegida have not yet been returned. [Continue reading…]

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David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage described as ‘rats fleeing a sinking ship’ after Brexit vote

The Independent reports: David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have been described as “rats fleeing a sinking ship” following their resignations in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s historic European Union referendum.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Prime Minister of Belgium who now heads up the alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe, made the comparison the day after Mr Farage resigned as the leader of the UK Independence Party, saying “he couldn’t possibly achieve more”.

Mr Verhofstadt: “The Brexiters do not have a clue what needs to be done. Cameron, Johnson and Farage behave like rats fleeing a sinking ship.”

His unflattering depiction of the three senior British politicians came as Jean-Claude Junker, president of the European Commission, accused the former London mayor Mr Johnson and Mr Farage of quitting when things got difficult. “The Brexit heroes of yesterday are now the sad heroes of today,” Mr Juncker told a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. [Continue reading…]

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