Blair keeps digging

Tony Blair really is a piece of work. Sensing that no one bought Tuesday's laughable attempt to justify the Iraq war, he expanded on his views in an interview with the BBC.

"The intelligence that we had was intelligence that I believe any sensible or reasonable prime minister would have said there is a clear WMD threat here."

Really? Then why did the sensible and reasonable prime ministers of Germany and France look at the exact same intelligence and conclude the opposite? Why did Robin Cook, Blair's own foreign minister at the time, conclude the opposite as well? If their conclusion that Iraq had no WMDs was so unreasonable, why did it turn out to be true?

His henchman, current Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, laid it on just as thick:

"There is no occupation. The US, the UK and other countries' forces can only be in Iraq at the request of the Iraqi government. It is their call. If they ask us to leave, we leave."

True, American and British forces are there at the request of the Iraqi government - the same Iraqi government that was handpicked by the US. They requested our presence the same way the Vichy government of France requested German forces in their country in 1940.

Unfortunately Blair's Labour party has continued their imitation of a flock of brainless sheep. Labour is in a good position to retain power: the opposition Conservative party also supported the Iraq war, and the smaller Liberal Democrat party is not taken seriously by many Britons. Labour would be in an even better position if they replaced Blair with a more honest leader. But they have convinced themselves they are stuck with him.
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Tony Blair continues to lie; Labour party continues to bend over and take it

In his keynote speech at his party's annual conference, British Prime Minister Tony Blair at long last acknowledged that evidence about Saddam Hussein having actual weapons of mass destruction was wrong.

"The problem is I can apologise for the information being wrong but I can never apologise, sincerely at least, for removing Saddam."

Apparently he is also unwilling to apologize for ignoring the many people in the British intelligence services, the UN inspection team, and his own government - including his own foreign minister - who told him that information was wrong before he took his country to war. He also did not apologize for exaggerating, and in some cases actually forging, the evidence in presentations to Parliament. Blair would like his country to believe that he made an honest mistake and is the best man to deal with the consequences of that mistake. The truth is that his decision to join the United States in war with Iraq was neither honest nor a mistake. It was a deliberate policy of lying his country into a war in order to steal natural resources. If the Labour Party, with Tony Blair as its leader, is elected to power for a third term the United Kingdom can look forward to more unnecessary wars and more dead soldiers.

Leaked British government papers from 2002 show that Tony Blair, like George W. Bush, was warned of the specific problems now being faced in Iraq but did little to prepare for them.

The Daily Telegraph published leaked papers suggesting the prime minister was warned in 2002 that an invasion could lead to instability.

According to the Telegraph, the documents show [Foreign Secretary Jack] Straw warned Mr Blair over a year before the invasion that no-one had a clear idea what would follow it.

Mr Straw reportedly wrote: "No-one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no-one has this habit or experience."

One letter from foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, reportedly warned of a "real risk" that the US had underestimated these difficulties.

Another document, compiled by the Cabinet Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat, allegedly warned "nation-building over many years" and "a substantial international security force" would be needed.

Mr Blair was told British officials believed President Bush wanted to complete his father's "unfinished business" in a "grudge match" against Saddam, the Telegraph said.

Iraq war is not a liberal vs. conservative issue

Much of the negative email I get accuses me of running a "liberal" website with a "liberal" bias. I certainly take no offense at being called "liberal", and if I were writing about health care or gay rights I could understand why readers would call this a liberal site (and if I were writing about tax policy or gun control they would call me a moderate; if I were writing about drug policy they would call me a libertarian). But on this issue, George W. Bush's war in Iraq and it's detrimental effect on the war against Islamist terrorists, I do not present a liberal or conservative point of view. This is about good foreign policy vs. bad foreign policy; good military planning vs. bad military planning; the right way to fight internationl terrorism vs. the wrong way. There is nothing "liberal" or "conservative" about 1029 Americans dying in a war we didn't need to fight.

Today I present for you some points of view that come from people who could in no way be called "liberal". One is a colonel in the British army, one is a senior CIA officer, and two are Republicans in the US Senate.

Let's start with the CIA:

Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.

The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

"There has been no systematic effort to groom Al Qaeda expertise" among C.I.A. officers since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the letter, written by Michael F. Scheuer, the former chief of the agency's bin Laden unit and the author of a best-selling book that is critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror.

Mr. Scheuer's book is Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. You might want to give it a read.

On the other side of the pond, a British colonel who led troops in Iraq claims, as I have, that there appeared to be no plan for what to do after the invasion.

A British Army officer who won praise for a rousing speech to troops in Iraq has accused the US and UK of failing to plan for after the war. Colonel Tim Collins, who has now left the Army, said they should have given more thought to what would happen after Saddam Hussein was deposed.

Col Collins told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that in hindsight he had questioned the coalition's motivation for attacking Iraq when preparations for the aftermath were not made.

"There was very little preparation or thought for what would follow on after the invasion itself," he said.

"Nature abhors a vacuum and so do politics. If you knock something down you must be prepared to put something in its place or live with the consequences."

He said the evidence pointed towards the invasion being a "cynical war" inevitable to vent anger on Saddam Hussein's regime, with no regard to the consequences for Iraqis.

"In which case it's a form of common assault," he said.

His criticism of planning echoes the findings of a new parliamentary report. The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee says planning for the post-war period in Iraq was not well thought out, leaving British troops with much to do.

Finally, we turn to two Republican Senators.

Two leading Republican legislators yesterday attacked the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, in one of the strongest indictments of the administration's Iraq policy from members of President Bush's party.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony from State Department officials seeking to divert almost 20 percent of the $18.4 billion in US reconstruction funds to security operations instead of public works projects and economic development.

But the hearing quickly became a forum for attacking what the Republican committee chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, referred to as the "dancing-in-the-street crowd" that wrongly predicted that Iraqis would be celebrating after the fall of Saddam Hussein a year and a half ago. He said the same White House officials have repeatedly failed to make necessary course changes.

Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, addressing two of the State Department's point men on Iraq, said the pace of reconstruction has been ''beyond pitiful. It's embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous."

"You don't win the hearts and minds of the people at the end of a barrel of a gun," Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran, said.

As for the original architects of the Iraq war, he added: "Maybe we ought to have a hearing with the inventors of this, have them come back up, all these smart guys that got us in there and said, 'Don't worry.' "

I could write a whole column about why the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are so poorly defined as to be almost meaningless, but suffice it to say that when people resort to name-calling it is because they have no rational arguments to make. And so it is with defenders of Bush's war in Iraq and abandonment of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Bush's defenders have no defense, so they resort to accusations of liberalism, lack of patriotism, or, as happened to me at an anti-war rally recently, shoving giant crosses in our faces. The comedian Bill Maher said recently that Bush's strategy is to make us feel good without actually doing anything. While that might be what I look for in a chiropractor, it's not a good quality in a president.

Cox wants Congressional investigation of CBS for reporting the news

Representative Chris Cox (R-California) is calling for a Congressional investigation into CBS News's report last week on George Bush's National Guard service (or lack thereof). Cox is concerned that some of the documents shown by CBS might be forged, although no substantial evidence to that effect has come forth. He has asked Representative Fred Upton, chair of the House Energy Committee's subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, to "commence a subcommittee investigation into the continued use by CBS News of apparently forged documents concerning the service record of President George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election." (Boston Globe: GOP lawmaker calls for congressional investigation of CBS for Bush Guard service story)

Some Americans might find it troubling that a Congressman would want to investigate a news organization because he doesn't like their reporting. But I say "bring it on". While Cox is investigating forged documents, he should expand his investigation to include the forged documents President Bush used to convince us we needed to invade Iraq. Let's all contact Representative Cox and urge him to do so!

Representative Christopher Cox
2402 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5611
Fax: (202) 225-9177
email: christopher.cox@mail.house.gov
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