MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Iraq war: UK, pushed by US sent ill-prepared troops into battle with inadequate plans for the aftermath
The United States pushed the UK into military action in Iraq “too early”, a former British ambassador to the UN has said in the wake of the Chilcot report. The long-awaited report said ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair had overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein - and military action was not a last resort. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesI think that the moral of this story is that when they US pressures its allies to join it in war, it needs to understand that in a democracy if that war goes badly wrong, that decision maker will be held to account, but the US decision maker won't be.
Jul 07th, 2016 - 10:15 am - Link - Report abuse 0I am no fan of labour, but its wrong to pin all this on Tony Blair when parliament voted for it and he was put in an impossible situation. Does anyone remember “Freedom Fries”, when Americans stopped calling them french fries in a rebuke to France for not supporting this war. I guess they would have been calling English muffins another name to.
The US sometimes behaves in a very bullying way with its friends when it wants it own way.
Blair should be held accountable for what he did. Alex Salmond is very correct in what he said yesterday.
Jul 07th, 2016 - 11:49 am - Link - Report abuse 0My interest is the equipment and support to the troops,
Jul 07th, 2016 - 12:52 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I feel if any of them today who condemn the lack of military equipment of yesterday,
and who do this knowing that today we are short of everything just make them look bad,
nothing has changed we are still short of ships missiles protection , planes and all others helicopters , soldiers , equipment ,
are todays politicians hypocrites then.
just a thought right or wrong.
Bushy made him do it.
Jul 07th, 2016 - 05:48 pm - Link - Report abuse 0lol.
@4
Jul 07th, 2016 - 11:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0No, Blair is responsible for his own decisions and so are the MPs who voted in favour of the war. Many other countries had the sense not to get involved.
Blair held his hand up to making a mistake. he now needs to put his hand in his pocket and give reparations to the relatives of those “ fallen ” as he has pocketed ( estimated ) $100 million from his lecture tours.
Jul 08th, 2016 - 08:45 am - Link - Report abuse 0The illegality of the war, was never in doubt not before the invasion, when UN inspector Hans Blix said there was no weapons of mass destruction found, as today, when many years passed without any of those weapons being found.
Jul 08th, 2016 - 01:40 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I remember there was no british participant in this forum that rejected the war. They all said they will be (the WMD) eventually found. None of that happened and then the important thing was the removal of Saddam Hussein for having made crimes against humanity. He was killed without a proper defense, with a quick sentence and many defender lawers being murdered.
It looks that Hussein, the baby of western powers, knew too much.
@7 Liberato
Jul 08th, 2016 - 06:42 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I agree, nothing in the report was at all surprising and it was obviously illegal even at the time.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the commenters here supported the war, but there were and are plenty of people in Britain who were opposed to it. The government went ahead without caring what the people wanted, and both our main parties were in favour so there wasn't much choice.
Of course people supported the war - they'd been TOLD that there WERE WMDs in Iraq.
Jul 09th, 2016 - 11:44 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Iraq, or more importantly Sadman Hussein, somebody with a track record of using toxic gas on his enemies and who wasnt the nicest person in the world, is not somebody who should have been allowed to have WMDs.
Anybody who disagrees with that is an idiot.
That said, it turns out we were all lied to... Frankly Blix opinion carried no real weight as he was UN, the UN are a bunch of numpty puppets... lets not suddenly take what somebody from the UN says as now being gospel because it suits this argument... all of the UN folks were regularly messed around, blocked, lied to and repeatedly prevented from going to see various sites - so them/him saying “there are none” was a SSWAG at very best.
So being told, repeatedly, specifically, “He HAS WMDs” ... we cant tell how we know that, but we're your government, so trust us, its a pretty damn good reason to take the guy out (mind you, they should have done that years earlier in the previous war) ... so that turns out to be a pack of lies.
Turns out they ahd no plan.
Turns out they didnt give the troops what they needed.
Turns out they ahd no idea what to do after wards.
Shoot the lot of them.... I say.
Regardless, Sadman Husseiny?
Very glad that Frak-er and hsi regime is gone and gone and gone.
(Ditto Blair)
Although many had the decency to oppose the Iraq invasion both in the UK and in the USA, the amazing fact remains the leaders of both countries, with legislative support, launched a war against another country; the war was on false pretenses; both countries were ill-prepared after the easier part that consisted in shooting and bombing the hell out of Iraq.
Jul 10th, 2016 - 02:51 am - Link - Report abuse 0This is a powerful reminder how greed (remember Halliburton et al?) during this sad episode is often the real drive behind the stories told so people happily go sacrifice life and limb, or their mental health for obscure purposes.
@10 Enrique Massot
Jul 10th, 2016 - 11:27 am - Link - Report abuse 0I thought at the time the motive was greed but if so it was misplaced. I can't see how the US has got any benefit from the war that would begin to cover the enormous cost. Even less so the UK and other US allies that got involved.
I'm more inclined now to believe it was hubris, especially in Blair's case. I think he really believed they could build a new, democratic Iraq, that would conveniently be a western ally. And he thought they could do it without spending more on the military, without suffering too many casualties, and without spending lots of time and money reconstructing Iraq afterwards.
They seem to think democracy is a magic wand that will fix all of a country's problems.
#11 Demon Tree
Jul 11th, 2016 - 11:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You are right: The US as a country did not get any benefit from the war--it provided the human element and is still paying the price of the war including the dead, maimed and PTSD-scarred personnel.
But private companies got juicy contracts that cost taxpayers $138 billion in a decade. As a result, the whole war business resulted in a massive transfer of public resources to private interests.
Interesting details about the role of private contractors--the largest in any war so far--was reported in US Politics & Policy.
Not sure what led Blair to follow Bush in such a fiasco.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0.html#axzz4E91I7a5M
DemonTree, i agree there were several campaings in the US and Europe and most of the world against the invasion of Iraq like we've never seen. The protest in Rome alone involved around three million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.
Jul 12th, 2016 - 12:21 am - Link - Report abuse 0Nevertheless, Bush Junior was and is a dumbass, almost illiterate and i dont think he could have even finish highschool without daddy's intervention. (And no offend, we in Argentina have had much worse dumbass than Bush). Having said that, his cabinet would have prevented him to make a war without winning cash or oil as a reward, believe me!!. So it was not about the WMD, It was not about a conexion with al qaeda. IT WAS ABOUT OIL!!!!!.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/
I dont really like CNN, i consider it one of the most conservative news agencies and one of the big sponsors of the war at the time. But if they recognize it was about oil, there is no better sources to draw the picture.
I would add, that not only the western biggest oil companies were benefited for the war, but the USA and British government too, that have another puppet government running a rich in natural resources nation and the military industry, having the USA alone almost 700 billions in spending for weapons that are not fired, bombs that are not exploded.
No matter if you look at it as a private benefit or governmental benefit. Either way both wins. May be the oil prices should have taken to U$S 500 the barril if the US did not invaded. Or may be when the oil prices eventually exploded to U$S 100 the barril, the USA was the owner of the oil fields earning billons, who knows?. Why exist these wars in the first place?. Remember the USA was reluctant to declare war to hitler until they were atacked in Pearl Harbor. Do i doubt thet declare war outside of its self interest.
@13 Liberato
Jul 12th, 2016 - 11:13 pm - Link - Report abuse 0We 'only' had a million people at the protest in London, but it was still the biggest ever in Britain. I don't think they expected so many people, it took forever to get round and all the speakers had finished by the time I got to the park at the end, and I had to rush to catch the coach back.
It did no good though, Blair went ahead anyway and a majority of MPs voted for the war.
Your article is very depressing, I'm surprised CNN would admit that oil was a motive for the war. It was still a stupid thing to do as well as wrong, the USA and UK should have learned from what happened in Iran not to mess with the Middle East, it just causes more problems later.
@12 Enrique Massot
I can't see your link, it's behind a paywall. Did any British companies benefit from the war?
#14 DemonTree
Jul 13th, 2016 - 06:34 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The article is headlined: Contractors reap $138bn from Iraq war
Try googling the headline or this link:
https://next.ft.com/content/7f435f04-8c05-11e2-b001-00144feabdc0
The article shows in detail how companies such as KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, that used to be ran by Dick Cheney, got $40 billion in contracts related to the Iraq war.
When you think of it, if a person ends another human being's life, he or she spends years behind bars. But be a president, cause death and suffering to hundreds of thousands--and when you are done you go home with a fat pension for life.
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