Iraq

[Paddy Pantsdown]

I get your point on the posters Paddy.
I know the Labour Government are far from perfect...

Correct. Perhaps you would like to start another thread called 'Iraq' to try and convince me why taking the country to a disasterous war on a false premise should be rewarded by re-election. I am not being vindictive about this. When the Tories did very much the same on Suez then the guy responsible took the rap and they could move on, successfully. Whereas now we have a divided nation and much bitterness.

Meanwhile I'm off to Channel 4 at 8pm. Some real political debate with Bremner, Bird & Fortune.

[fishcox]

Well Iraq was going to enter the forum at some time I suppose, and if there is anything which will prevent Labour getting another term, then it will be Iraq.

It may have been a war about oil, and it may even have been an opportunity for Bush to settle an old score, on behalf of his father, but we should not forget that we went to war with cross-party support. We should also not forget the (to date shown to be flawed) information, which suggested that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and that they were ready to be used. This information was presented from a number of sources. We then get into the realms of 'sexed up' dossiers and the like, much of which can neither be proved nor disproved.

In the end, it comes down to a personal decision we must make. If you believe that Blair lied to Parliament, and to us, then that is your decision. I do not know on what basis you make that decision, but there must be something.

Personally, I dont believe he did lie. Why should he ? Why lie, when you know you are going to get found out in the end ? Do you think that he would lie, and then hope to get away with it ? That does not make sense, in this day and age.

I despise war, and I always have done. I see no glory in it, just the suffering it brings, and always has done. The loss of one life through war, is one life too many.

Throughout his tyrannical reign, Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, and the day he was finally toppled, a vast majority of Iraqis celebrated their freedom. Hopefully (and it is a very big hopefully) Iraq can stabilise again, and find peace with democracy. Hopefully (and it is an equally big hopefully) America can also use some of its clout with Israel, which is the root of the problems in the Middle East.

This forum doesnt have the space to go into all the problems we face in this day and age, so please do not start the old argument 'well, if its okay to invade Iraq, then why not North Korea, China etc etc' both of which have equally repressive systems of government. That is the argument which tends to come from those who are vehemently anti war (what - they want more war ??). Please also dont highlight bits of what I have written, I dont like that. If you want to respond, please do so covering all points. I have had this discussion many times over the past 12 months or so, and let me assure you that I have had very little support in my views, but have always shaken hands at the end.

As a footnote, the wisest thing I have heard came from a Salvationist lady I met at the bus stop at the bottom of Westwood Hill, a couple of years ago.

She told me that there was actually nothing wrong with the world, it's some of the people that live in it, which are the problem.

shalom. salam. peace.

[Paddy Pantsdown]

In the end, it comes down to a personal decision we must make. If you believe that Blair lied to Parliament, and to us, then that is your decision. I do not know on what basis you make that decision, but there must be something.

It is the duty of a politician to sometimes lie for his country and I would not damn him necessarily for embarking on an illegal war. Kosovo was technically probably illegal but in the circumstances the overwhelming view of the world it was a justified action.

I read those dossiers. The first reminded me of many marketing submissions I had read. It was clearly bending the evidential statements to supporting a conclusion rather than the other way round. This raised my suspicions. Then came the second. The first section killed it for me. "Iraq is the size of France". Any schoolboy who has studied a world map should know that is untrue. Clearly nobody had properly checked the facts in the document and if this obviously easy to verify fact was wrong how can one have confidence in the rest? (subsequently confirmed by the google 'lift').

I then checked out the Blix statements. He had been provided with details of where the supposed WMDs were stored but could find no trace. Even though the Iraqi's were frustrating Blix's search it was very worrying to him that no trace could be found. Were the Iraqis really that good?

I think that anybody taking a sceptical view of the *published evidence* had to come to the conclusion that there no direct evidence of operational WMD. I am sure Tony Blair was well aware of that when he added "if you knew what I knew..."

Fair enough. I had family connections with Station X and am well aware that smokescreens over intelligence are often necessary and the dossiers may have been just that. I prayed that was true. I assume Jim Dowd believed that too when he echoed the 'no doubt' mantra.

I presume you now accept that there was no "if you knew what I knew...". The consequences of our support of the war has now led onto regrettable (but perhaps justifiable) restrictions on liberty such as ID cards, suspension of habeus corpus etc. This was re-inforced, for me, during a walk down embassy row in Berlin. No police to be seen near most embassies. One to control the the visa queue at the Russian embassy but the British Embassy was hidden behind tank busting defences. Armed police everywhere. Our security services must have problems sleeping at night.

Now I don't mind putting my life at risk for a good cause. My parents did it willingly in WW2. But 'cross-party' support never did extend to cross country. War I presume most people agree should be the last resort. Here it never was.

The affair is so messy. The conseqences to the good of this country and maybe 100,000 dead and mostly innocent Iraqis is surely of a different order to all the good Gordon Brown can claim in improving education, health etc in the last government and the next.

I'm not an 'Islington chatterer'. I'm a Lewisham West voter with a problem on May 5th.

[fishcox]

hi again paddy

my point about the cross-party support was, if you will not vote labour, because of the war, then who can you vote for ? voting for an independent, standing on an anti war platform for instance, whilst possibly keeping your conscience clear, is a waste of time. you will get an mp who is against the war and, er, that's it.

i dont know where the 'islington chatterer' bit came from, and to be honest, i dont understand it. i have some good friends who live in islington, all normal people.

thanks for your views, but please, again, dont highlight bits of my message. i know what i typed, as i can read back through the thread, as can others.

peace

[Paddy Pantsdown]

Sorry Fishcox about the highlighting but you left me in a dilemma.

You mistakenly jumped to conclusions about me being pacifist or having a problem with Tony's truefullness. I thought I had laid those to rest. So I don't disagree with most of your other points.

It is an issue of the consequences of this government making a very bad judgement call over Iraq if you judge the outcome by the justification. Also still being in denial or am I imagining things?

At least you can be confident that a pacifist candidate will not get my vote. I'm still in a pickle of what to do and I'm sure I'm not alone.

[fishcox]

i see your point.

there is no easy answer. abstention means you lose any direct say you have in our democratic process, a vote for one of the smaller parties means potentially splitting the vote, giving the Tories a back door in, and a direct vote for the Tories means taking us back to the dark ages (in my opinion anyway).

from what i have read, i understand that tony blair is already looking at ways of involving the libdems in the next government, something that i would welcome, as i think they have much to offer. they also have some decent mp's - simon hughes, for one, was my mother-in-laws mp, when she lived in bermondsey, and i cannot sing his praises high enough.

for the sake of the country, vote labour.

[Paddy Pantsdown]

I think we probably agree our current democratic process is inadequate in these situations.

Not that I'm taken with the LibDem STV alternative where the consequences are fuzzy to most voters. I always like the French method with the run-off the following week if no candidate has 50%. I could see myself vote LibDem first time around and Labour if the runoff was against the Tory. But if it ended as LibDem v Labour that would be really interesting. Who would the Tories & UKIP vote for?

Of course it failed to achieve its purpose in the last French Presidential election but only because the Socialists could not get their act together. Perhaps that was justice in a way. Forcing them to vote Chirac to keep out Le Pen will concentrate minds next time round.

Hey Lewip - what is the UKIP policy on this

[Lewkip]

Our 2005 manifesto is due out soon and there might be accompanying opinions offered by the party in general on the war in Iraq. I cannot say at this time.

Speaking for myself, as much as I think we have gained plenty from the special relationship with America, the Iraq war was not one of its better feats. I can recall Tony Blair's frantic efforts to get the UN to pass the crucial second resolution without success as America had its own agenda.
And to be honest with you, there was no way a second one would have been passed. The justification to invade would have been better defined had one been there. But there you go.

I am still very suspicious of the handling of the intelligence dossier material. Some of the findings were worded inelegantly with conditional clauses and it appears that they were stripped out to offer a more blunt but more dubious picture of the case for war.

Then there is the matter of the Goldsmith opinion to justify the case for invasion that was, depending on who you speak to, either some mere nine paragraphs long or something more substantial. The refusal to have this published is not making Tony Blair look good.

And without wanting to appear sensationalist (and I am aware of your feelings about my EU posts!), I am also troubled by the paramedics who attended to poor old Dr Kelly, and comment on the lack of spilt blood commensurate with his published injuries.

It is a rotten old business (although war is sometimes necessary), and I wonder why Tony didn't take the line of one of his predecessors, Harold Wilson, and kept us well out of it as we did with Vietnam.

[fishcox]

With the past two days bringing Iraq back into the political arena, I thought it was interesting to see Michael Howard admitting to the public that he would have invaded Iraq anyway, just to remove Saddam (UN resolution or not).

His admittance to this can only be due to the fact that if he does (God forbid) ever become the Prime Minister, then he wont have incurred the wrath of one G W Bush, and find himself without an ally in America, as well as in Europe.

And I thought Hague was the political chancer - the man who even used the bus lane on the M4, and its abolishment, in the hope of winning a few more votes.