OT - Tony Blair straw poll

[cornish sam 953]

I know you''ve been in the military Morty so you are bound to be backing them up, and believe it or not, I''m not actually having a go in any way shape or form at the military. The issues were that we rushed into something that we weren''t prepared for and the reason that we weren''t prepared for it is because of politics and political decisions spanning many years before hand. Even the inadequate vehicles following the ''victory'' against Saddam when we started having to deal with ''insurgents'' (or pi55ed off locals who wanted their country back as they originally were) was identified on the ground almost immediately, but due to delays within the Govt it took years for it to be addressed, costing lives.

So yes, we were ill prepared, ill equipped and hadn''t even thought about an exit strategy, but none of this was the fault of the people who were actually over there fighting... For a prime example of how badly organised we were following the fall of Saddam see if you can find the story of person who was in charge of the Kirkuk province in the immediate aftermath, it was on the Today program this morning and was so farcical it was almost funny.

[morty 0]

[quote user="cornish sam"]I know you''ve been in the military Morty so you are bound to be backing them up, and believe it or not, I''m not actually having a go in any way shape or form at the military. The issues were that we rushed into something that we weren''t prepared for and the reason that we weren''t prepared for it is because of politics and political decisions spanning many years before hand. Even the inadequate vehicles following the ''victory'' against Saddam when we started having to deal with ''insurgents'' (or pi55ed off locals who wanted their country back as they originally were) was identified on the ground almost immediately, but due to delays within the Govt it took years for it to be addressed, costing lives.

So yes, we were ill prepared, ill equipped and hadn''t even thought about an exit strategy, but none of this was the fault of the people who were actually over there fighting... For a prime example of how badly organised we were following the fall of Saddam see if you can find the story of person who was in charge of the Kirkuk province in the immediate aftermath, it was on the Today program this morning and was so farcical it was almost funny.[/quote]I know that you aren''t having a go at the military.But I am telling you that every single conflict the military is involved in is run this way. Every single one.So I see that something being made of this, for this particular issue, is a bit of a misnomer.The mismanagement of the subsequent power vacuum was inept, though to use a phrase I''m using a lot today, its all very easy after the fact, isn''t it?

[Jools 584]

With respect to the soldiers + innocent Iraqi civilians who lost their lives and the families who lost their loved ones, why so much concern about what Blair did to Iraq? What about the damage he did to the UK? [:|]

[Essjayess 307]

No, certainly not.  Im not going into the debate about his close circle meetings and the like, i will just say this..he acted based on what info was in front of him, and personally im glad he did. He acted to reign in a very angry US President Bush, and persuaded him to go down the UN path to get the resolutions needed, and the coalition was tens of nations, not just the US and UK.Saddam was a barbaric butcher, every bit as barbaric as ISIS is today. He caused wars with Iran, overran Kuwait, chemically killed 1000s of Kurds, ordered his murderous followers to kill  the resident population. I was happy to see his end. Blair certainly made mistakes, but what leader doesnt in wartime? Winnie Churchill made many blunders in his times of war, all leaders are imperfect humans.I would wish humans could live in peace and harmony, but our world  does not run that way. War is a bloody business, and  soldiers get killed, innocents get killed. Since that time, we decided not to get involved with foot soldiers in Syria. Has Syria benefitted from that?..its a mess 10 times worse than Iraq ever was, and Iraq at least does have a fledgling voted for government, who are doing their best to make it a better nation. If Saddam was still in power, thousands more innocents would likely have been massacerd.

[Nuff Said 5,137]

OK Jools, going straight to Wikipedia:

In domestic government policy, Blair significantly increased public spending on health and education while also introducing controversial market-based reforms in these areas. In addition Blair''s tenure saw the introduction of a minimum wage, tuition fees for higher education, constitutional reform such as devolution in Scotland and Wales, and progress in the Northern Ireland peace process. The British economy performed well and the real incomes of Britons grew 18 per cent during 1997–2006. Blair kept to Conservative commitments not to increase income tax in the first term although rates of Employee''s National Insurance (a payroll levy) were increased. He also presided over a significant expansion of the welfare state during his time in office, which led to a significant reduction in relative poverty

There are things in there I don''t personally agree with, and so do could add, but in terms of domestic policy I would say his term as PM was more succesful than most of his recent prime ministers.

[Nuff Said 5,137]

* some I could add *

[Row D Seat 7 0]

No, he shouldn''t.

[cornish sam 953]

Jess, he did not act on the info in front of him, the info in front of him said containment was working and would continue to work and that there was no need or appetite for military intervention at that point. He then had some flaky intelligence claims strengthened and presented everything as a scary fact to get support for his predetermined actions.

Whilst I am not trying to defend Saddam in any way shape or form, he was barbaric, but, to compare him to ISIS is far from the truth. Saddam deliberately cultivated a sectarian nation that since his demise has descended into violence based on religion. He only invaded Iran because the Americans supported him and gave him the means to (because the puppet Shah that was in place in Iran had been overthrown by the locals and they wanted to be able to control Iran again). He was able to gas the Kurds because the UK and the US had turned a blind eye towards his development of such weapons as they thought they could control him and it was only when he went into Kuwait that they realised they''d help create a monster.

The main root cause of a lot of the problems in the middle east is due to ''the West'' trying to control it and dictate what happens there, go back to early C20 and see how we just carved it up arbitrarily and then put puppet regimes in place that it turns out we couldn''t control or they couldn''t control the local populace, then we try to influence things by proxy through people like Saddam and Assad, that always turns out well....

[cornish sam 953]

I''m not disagreeing that the military engagements are being run in this way these days, and I might be being fanciful with this, but are you saying that when we shipped out to the Falklands we didn''t have enough ammunition or equipment suitable for the conditions out there?

I realise that the equipment now is more numerous, more complicated, more expensive and harder to maintain en masse, but the point I was making was that we did go out there under prepared, if that is always the case that doesn''t make it right and I was calling you out because you seemed to be claiming that we went out there fully stocked and ready for the conditions we were going to face.

[morty 0]

[quote user="cornish sam"]I''m not disagreeing that the military engagements are being run in this way these days, and I might be being fanciful with this, but are you saying that when we shipped out to the Falklands we didn''t have enough ammunition or equipment suitable for the conditions out there?

I realise that the equipment now is more numerous, more complicated, more expensive and harder to maintain en masse, but the point I was making was that we did go out there under prepared, if that is always the case that doesn''t make it right and I was calling you out because you seemed to be claiming that we went out there fully stocked and ready for the conditions we were going to face.[/quote]Ask the guys who got trench foot in the Falklands, because their boots were inadequate....[;)]I wasn''t claiming we were fully prepared at all, merely stating that this is how every single military deployment goes, and in a lot of ways we were even more poorly prepared for the first Gulf war. We were in the midst of massive military cuts then, mainly due to the scaling down of the armed forces after the end of the cold war. To further illustrate this, when I joined the RAF in 1986, we numbered 120,000. When I left in 2008, I think it was about 35,000. The tax paying public won''t stand for huge military budgets if theres schools and hospitals to build. War isn''t convenient, and rarely goes to plan I''m afraid. You can prepare to a certain extent, but it rarely goes how you expect.

[Mello Yello 2,291]

Poor old ''Charles Lynton'' has suffered long enough......Leave him be, so that he can spend some semi-retired quality time with his lovely missus. Both surviving on his mediocre savings and political pension, suppin'' soda, chowin'' down Southern Fried Chicken, Twinkies and Hershey bars. Whilst they reside on a downtrodden trailer park.....somewhere in the United States.......

That is, unless Delia offers him a position as our next CEO....... Blair, Balls and Nephew Tom....Worra Team!

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

[quote user="cornish sam"]I''m not disagreeing that the military engagements are being run in this way these days, and I might be being fanciful with this, but are you saying that when we shipped out to the Falklands we didn''t have enough ammunition or equipment suitable for the conditions out there? I realise that the equipment now is more numerous, more complicated, more expensive and harder to maintain en masse, but the point I was making was that we did go out there under prepared, if that is always the case that doesn''t make it right and I was calling you out because you seemed to be claiming that we went out there fully stocked and ready for the conditions we were going to face.[/quote]

 

The Falklands war is the perfect example.  We sent 5,000 troops to take back the islands from a garrison of 8,000 defenders (fortunately the Argentines removed their elite troops after the invasion and left conscripts - a bizarre decision).  We had no plan to gain air superiority - normally considered essential for a contested amphibious landing.  We then took a huge gamble in landing under enemy air attack (fortunately the Argentine planes were bombing at low level and in many cases their bombs didn''t arm because the interval between being dropped and hitting the target was too short, and they didn''t work this out during the war).  This cost us many lives when our ships were sunk.  We had no defence against the Argentine''s Exocet missiles (because the Russians didn''t have an equivalent weapon at the time) and were fortunate that the Argentines had very limited stocks and weren''t able to buy any more during the war.

 

The original plan was to land and use helicopters to move our troops across the island for the assault on the Argentine defences around Stanley.  But the helicopters were destroyed when the Atlantic Conveyor was sunk.  So our troops had to slog across the island on foot (which some battalions weren''t able to do because the conditions were so harsh).

The whole thing was a huge gamble which could easily have been lost in any number of ways.  The military call it SNAFU.

 

The thing with Iraq was that the initial conquest went remarkably well.  What was criminal was the assumption that it would be easy to reconstruct the country and put a nice regime in charge.

[morty 0]

The Exocet missiles sold to Argentina by the French....

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

True but given several of the ships in the Argentine navy were sold to them by us, we can''t complain too much !

[morty 0]

[quote user="Its Character Forming"]True but given several of the ships in the Argentine navy were sold to them by us, we can''t complain too much ![/quote]State of the art missiles > some crappy old ships we didn''t want any more.[;)]

[cornish sam 953]

OK, I''ll sit corrected about the Falklands... At least we knew how to work what equipment we did have though...

[morty 0]

[quote user="cornish sam"]OK, I''ll sit corrected about the Falklands... At least we knew how to work what equipment we did have though...[/quote]Eh?

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

& at least with the Falklands we knew that the local population wouldn''t start attacking our troops with RPGs !

[cornish sam 953]

I was just making reference to the fact that the opposition were dropping bombs not realising they were too low for them to arm... I''ll just shut up now...

[morty 0]

[quote user="cornish sam"]I was just making reference to the fact that the opposition were dropping bombs not realising they were too low for them to arm... I''ll just shut up now...[/quote]Ahhhh, got you now[Y]

[TCCANARY 263]

Yesterday it was announced that we are sending some forces to Eastern Europe to worry Putin. The defence minister was on the Today Prog on R4 talking about it and no-one asked him if the troops had all of the equipment they required for the deployment.

No-one ever learns anything.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

Meanwhile it''s been announced that women are going to be allowed into close-combat roles.  They''ve done a review to make sure this can be done without "damaging female soldiers'' health".

 

I don''t know about you, but it seems to me close combat can seriously damage your health, regardless of gender, but there you go.

[paul moy 235]

[quote user="Its Character Forming"]

Meanwhile it''s been announced that women are going to be allowed into close-combat roles.  They''ve done a review to make sure this can be done without "damaging female soldiers'' health".

 I don''t know about you, but it seems to me close combat can seriously damage your health, regardless of gender, but there you go.

[/quote]

There''s a certain religious sect that don''t like fighting women in a war because they don''t go to heaven if killed by one, so this seems quite opportune.  

[paul moy 235]

[quote user="TCCANARY"]Yesterday it was announced that we are sending some forces to Eastern Europe to worry Putin. The defence minister was on the Today Prog on R4 talking about it and no-one asked him if the troops had all of the equipment they required for the deployment.

No-one ever learns anything.[/quote]

No need to learn anything as this is for the NATO Alliance in order to provide training and deterrent.  

[paul moy 235]

Blair likely to be impeached !!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/08/tony-blair-could-be-impeached-and-put-on-trial-in-parliament-ove/

[Thecanaryfan 0]

[quote user="morty"][quote user="Herman "]"The biggest crime was the complete lack of exit plan, maybe he assumed the Americans had that covered?"Sending an under resourced and poorly armed military wasn''t too good either.[/quote]Only military we had Herman.What if he ignored the warnings about WMD''s though? About a country who had shown it was more than happy to deploy nerve gas?We could have been having a whole different inquiry.[/quote]

They were warnings, no facts, we invaded a country and killed civilians. I worked at the MOD at the time and nearly quit my job based on this decision. I wish I had done now.

[lake district canary 4,531]

Intelligence about WMD was the catalyst for Blair.  His instincts had always been to go along with whatever Bush wanted, but to be able to do that, he needed a reason - and that reason was the intelligence about WMD.   That the intelligence was wrong is history, but having got the evidence he needed, he then felt justified to take us in to war. Did he believe that intelligence?  I believe he did and therefore that he can not be judged the way people are doing.   Yes, he was wrong, but it''s easy to forget what those times were like, the uncertainty, the terror, the sheer feeling of wanting to do something to try and fight against tyranny and terror.  Also, people forget that Saddam Hussein deliberately allowed the world to think he had WMD.   Was it Blair''s job to try and work out whether he really had WMD, or was it his intelligence people?   The intelligence came in, Blair was wanting to side with the US anyway and the rest is history. Does that make Blair guilty of anything other than being a leader who had to make decisions based on the situation he saw?  Not in my book.  It was a wrong decision to go to war imo, but not a criminal one.

[Thecanaryfan 0]

[quote user="lake district canary"]Intelligence about WMD was the catalyst for Blair.  His instincts had always been to go along with whatever Bush wanted, but to be able to do that, he needed a reason - and that reason was the intelligence about WMD.   That the intelligence was wrong is history, but having got the evidence he needed, he then felt justified to take us in to war. Did he believe that intelligence?  I believe he did and therefore that he can not be judged the way people are doing.   Yes, he was wrong, but it''s easy to forget what those times were like, the uncertainty, the terror, the sheer feeling of wanting to do something to try and fight against tyranny and terror.  Also, people forget that Saddam Hussein deliberately allowed the world to think he had WMD.   Was it Blair''s job to try and work out whether he really had WMD, or was it his intelligence people?   The intelligence came in, Blair was wanting to side with the US anyway and the rest is history. Does that make Blair guilty of anything other than being a leader who had to make decisions based on the situation he saw?  Not in my book.  It was a wrong decision to go to war imo, but not a criminal one.

[/quote]

Blair says that the world is better off without Saddam drawing breathe. Yes he was a miserable dictator but was killing one man worth killing hundreds of thousand civilians? 

I get that Blair was under immense pressure, and that 9/11 was horrible, but you can only wage war when your enemies pose a serious threat. Iraq does not and never did have the capability to create such weapons.

It was an act of retaliation.

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

[quote user="lake district canary"]Intelligence about WMD was the catalyst for Blair.  His instincts had always been to go along with whatever Bush wanted, but to be able to do that, he needed a reason - and that reason was the intelligence about WMD.   That the intelligence was wrong is history, but having got the evidence he needed, he then felt justified to take us in to war. Did he believe that intelligence?  I believe he did and therefore that he can not be judged the way people are doing.   Yes, he was wrong, but it''s easy to forget what those times were like, the uncertainty, the terror, the sheer feeling of wanting to do something to try and fight against tyranny and terror.  Also, people forget that Saddam Hussein deliberately allowed the world to think he had WMD.   Was it Blair''s job to try and work out whether he really had WMD, or was it his intelligence people?   The intelligence came in, Blair was wanting to side with the US anyway and the rest is history. Does that make Blair guilty of anything other than being a leader who had to make decisions based on the situation he saw?  Not in my book.  It was a wrong decision to go to war imo, but not a criminal one.

[/quote]

This history is wrong. The UN had weapons inspectors on the ground who were in the process of discovering what the Itaqis were telling them was true. - that they didn''t now have any WMD. The head of the UN team said it would only take a few more months to be certain that Iraq was clear of WMD.

But that didn''t suit the Bush agenda. The last thing he wanted to hear was that there was no WMD reason for going to war.

Whether there was some kind of Freudian motivation, to do with his father not having carried on to topple Saddam, doesn''t really matter. He was determined to have a war.

As is pretty obvious from what we know now from phone conversations between him and Blair. Hence his decision to effectively ignore the UN and all that second resolution stuff and start it before the UN inspectors could thwart him.

[Mello Yello 2,291]

If you continually repeat an untruth often enough......You actually and eventually, end up believing it......

Campbell, Straw, Goldsmith, Falconer and a ''few'' others. Really do need to take a good long hard look at themselves......

RIP Dr David Kelly.......and all the many Innocents.....