http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36724704
Told you so :p
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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36724704
Told you so :p
No, I told you so :DQuote:
Originally Posted by earthJoker
Can we settle on 'we told them so' ?
Ok, we told them so.
Highlights:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...chilcot-report
Not sure what, if anything, the UK will learn from the findings of this report. It seems fair to say that Blair's conduct was a model of RB-ian leadership in the matter of the Iraq war and the UK's current and future leaders seem to have similar styles. Not sure if we can hope for better leaders in the US either.
Does anyone think there will be any legal action taken based on the report?
Generally valid lessons, but this one:
What's that based on? It sure as hell would have damaged ties with the US. I don't know what "fundamental" or "lasting" means in the context of international relations (made up terms as far as I'm concerned), but making this kind of a claim is indefensible.Quote:
Chilcot rejects the view that the UK would have lost diplomatic influence if it had refused to join the war. “Blair was right to weigh the possible consequences for the wider alliance with the US very carefully,” the report says. But it adds: “If the UK had refused to join the US in the war it would not have led to a fundamental or lasting change in the UK’s relationship with the US.”
Rather confused by the legality portion. How would it not have been legal? Is it suggesting that Tony Blair could not authorize war according to UK law? That would seem rather odd and you'd think we would of heard something about that during the course of the war. Last time I checked the Brits were a sovereign nation, so unless that changed somewhere how could the war be illegal?Quote:
Originally Posted by earthJoker
The report elaborates that “The UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interest or judgments differ.” I believe it also mentions past disagreements such as the Vietnam War and Suez. Not sure that either of those cases are applicable to the Iraq War and to Dubya & Co. Would be interesting to see if he elaborates on this in the report, but, at the same time, I dunno if this is the most important aspect of the report even if his claim isn't substantiated.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Let's assume that refusal to join--or, more likely, playing a different role in the war--would have incurred a diplomatic cost. How great would the cost have been? How great would it have had to be to change the findings of the inquiry to a substantial extent?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ory-tony-blairQuote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
I think it's pretty clear that many British politicians, like most politicians in most civilized countries, believe themselves to be bound by international law at least to some extent.
Last I checked, Suez did significantly weaken US-UK ties. Not sure about Vietnam, though I don't recall Americans praising a special relationship with Britain at the time. This isn't a case of an honest disagreement; it's a case of US desperately needing British diplomatic (and to a lesser extent, military) support for an issue that was viewed as being of utmost importance in the US. A failure to support the US would have devastated US-UK relations. The British probably could have gotten away with contributing far fewer troops, but the report is talking about British support for the war rather than that aspect of it.
I have no idea how great the cost would be. There would certainly be a large immediate cost, but it's hard if not impossible to determine how high or whether that would extend to the long-term. But I'm not the one making huge claims. Claims of that magnitude demand evidence of the same magnitude, and that seems to be entirely absent. Do we have interviews with key British and US officials from that time period corroborating this claim? That's the least I'd expect.
The UN might ban "aggression", but no one's been prosecuted for that since the Nazis. And we know they weren't really prosecuted for aggression. Furthermore, since the Security Council gets to decide what aggression is (and not some court), it's pretty clearly a political question much more than a legal one. A political question that could only be answered a certain way given the British veto at the Security Council.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
International Law only exists if a country willingly abides by it. In effect it has no real teeth. Laws don't exist in a practical sense when they can't be enforced. The UN security council is about the closest thing we would get to enforcing international law. Without enforcement it doesn't exist. In any event NO ONE needs to gain permission from the UN to start a conflict, it is silly to pretend otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
I supported the war and still do think it was right to remove Hussein. However it was done dreadfully. The shocking thing for me yesterday was not learning that the decision to act had been taken in 2001 after 9/11 (that was obvious) but that there was such little operational planning especially for what would happen afterwards.
Instead we get a year and a half of PR planning to try and build support for the war, without bothering to think what would be done next in some areas until only a week before bombing starts. Blair was terribly obsessed with PR at the best of times but going to war is deadly serious not the best of times. Having taken the decision to risk people's lives, we could and should have had 18 months of planning as well as purchasing all necessary equipment etc instead we get Alastair Campbell and a terrible dereliction of duty then a last minute panic.
Shameful.
Are you referring to me here and if so I'm not sure what you mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
That's all nice and everything but that wasn't the stated goal.Quote:
Originally Posted by RandBlade
There were a lot of stated goals, and that was certainly one of them. One of the ways that Bush managed to get so much support for the war is by emphasizing different reasons for the war to different audiences.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
Reason may have been the wrong word here. Saddam had been there for years and want exactly doing anything new or worse that warranted an invasion. The alleged WMD program (the infamous mushroom cloud) was the reason to actually invade. And the 'legal' reason, too.
Besides, we do business with regimes no better than Saddam, rather than invade those.
The "legal" reason was one of many. And Bush argued that Hussein should have been removed a long time ago, so the timing issue doesn't apply here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
That's simply not true. The only regime worse than Hussein in terms of violence perpetrated against their own people was North Korea. There were (and are) a handful of more authoritarian regimes, but none them use violence to the same scale. Assad is obviously approaching that same level today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I'm not disputing this, I'm saying that's one of the things they were referring to with "legality" and it was viewed in the same way by the people who made the decisions in question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
It's a silly accusation given that aggression is defined by the Security Council, in which the UK has a veto.
Afaict the question of legality centered, in the minds of the people making the decisions about the upcoming war, around whether or not Hussein was in breach of his treaty obligations and violating any relevant UN resolutions as well as on whether or not a new UN resolution was required to authorize the war. No more, no less. They ultimately decided that he was in breach of his obligations and that no further resolutions were needed. The process through which they determined this was criticized in the report, not the conclusion itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
The article I linked to provides a small amount of this information. For more information on the views of one of the people involved, the attorney general at the time, see:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/apr/24/uk.iraq
and
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...ection2005.uk1
The matter was also discussed in cabinet meetings, eg:
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/...search=Cabinet
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/...ns-extract.pdf
For further details we'll have to look at the relevant part of the report. I wasn't there, I didn't make the decisions, so my role in this is only to read whatever bits interest me and learn more about what happened and how.
I agree that the legal case for attacking Hussein on the basis of those UN resolutions was an incredibly weak one. That says nothing about the question of aggression though. And the opposite of having a legal basis is not having a legal basis, not necessarily illegality.
Yeah, the report doesn't seem to add anything new to the question of whether or not the war was illegal wrt the ban on wars of aggression, so even if The Guardian is right about the report leading to renewed accusations along those lines nothing is likely to come of it as long as the system is set up in such a way that the accused get to be both judge and jury, and certainly not this long after the fact. There are guidelines for determining whether or not something should be considered to be an act of aggression that is in violation of the UN charter but obv. these are guidelines that are in no way binding and can be ignored arbitrarily, at will.
I guess in theory someone might be able to get an advisory opinion/judgement from the ICJ but if it hasn't happened yet I don't see why it would happen now. It wouldn't change anything either. I guess it would be interesting to learn, in retrospect, whether or not the war would have been deemed an unacceptable act of aggression in violation at least of the spirit of the UN charter.
In the future it will be interesting to see if the UK will be party to the amended Rome statute. My guess is that the UK will continue to do everything it can to avoid being bound by any prohibition on wars of aggression.
What does the ICC have to do with the question of aggression?
Edit: just saw that there is an amendment to that effect. What a great way to delegitimize the ICC and ICJ at the same time.
I guess there is a statute of limitations on chemical warefare? :0 How about the fact it was a state sponsor of terror? He was a horrible monster that led a brutal regime. WMD was 'a' reason, the smoking run to get the public behind it but there were several.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
This is a real walk down memory lane...
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/9/12123022...ource=facebook
Wonder how long-lived this renewed interest will be.
It's already becoming passé here. I think the fact that everyone has responded basically "yeah knew that already" while so much fresh interesting stuff is happening makes it hard to keep interest.
A little tragic, but maybe they'll be able to look back on this the next time their leaders ponder going to war and call for more scrutiny. Or not #Trump2016
Trump has called for war? I thought Trump's shtick was isolationism?
Yes, the Iraq war was wrong. It was based on false intelligence. And who was using that false intelligence to get other nations to become part of a "coalition"? The US.
That makes the UK (and other coalition members) mistrust the US, with good reason. It's the same kind of political alliance bullshit that kept the Viet Nam war going on, long after it should have ended.
And yet we expect the greatest military nation would admit going to war in Iraq was wrong....when we can't even admit *or agree* that going to war in Viet Nam was wrong? :rolleyes:
It was in the middle of the Cold War, there were plenty of good reasons for Vietnam.
And even more bad ones.
Are you seriously trying to defend the Iraq War by citing the Viet Nam War?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Bullshit. We have our own intelligence services, we don't just blindly take on faith what the Americans provide us. We cooperate with the USA through Five Eyes and other agreements but have our own Security Service (MI5) as well as the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Defence Intelligence (DI) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) all working under the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). It is our own JIC that has come under the brunt of scrutiny and criticism from all our reviews.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
I think over here our own security services were a lot more cautious about the 'evidence' for wmds and warned out wasn't reliable, which was suppressed either in the ministry of foreign affairs or by the government itself.
I think this report also states that your government exaggerated the already flawed intelligence, too.
Though not dishonestly which is somewhat surprising.