By the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept....

[johnny9fingers]

Strange, isn't it, that the only person to be rigorously cross-questioned by the Chilcot inquiry is Clare Short, who resigned over being misled about the Iraq invasion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8492526.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/feb/02/clare-short-iraq-war-inquiry

I wonder why Clare is the only witness to the inquiry that has been cross-questioned in such a style? Is it because it's just bad manners to question a former PM in such a fashion? Sir Roderic Lyne's questioning seems particularly....what's the phrase....biased and confrontational. Odd from a chap who, after Eton and Leeds University (because his grades were so bad he couldn't get in anywhere else), went into the Foriegn Office. Mind you, Roderic is very 'stablishment: as I suppose are all the members of the inquiry.

Now I have to declare an interest here. Clare is a distant cousin on my mother's side. (The nationalist Irish yeoman farmer side.) Weirdly, she married a chap, Alex Lyons, who was at the Inner Temple  with one of my godfathers. So there are a number of degrees of connection. Mind you Clare has something like 40 first cousins, so distant cousins must number in the hundreds, if not thousands.

I do hope Clare's testimony actually starts some sort of ball rolling. If the war was illegal, then those responsible for it must stand trial for the deaths of thousands....no, hundreds of thousands. I would love to see Tony Bliar come under the same sort of rigorous cross-questioning that Clare has.

But perhaps with his freedom at stake.

He might then implicate the other folk involved in the decision to go to war illegally: not that they will ever stand trial, being US politicians, and having given themselves retrospective immunity.

In the course of the Chilcot Inquiry, Bliar put up a good show given that he had almost no difficult questions to answer at all. Having heard the nature of Short's evidence, and the fashion in which it has been extracted, I would now be pleased for Bliar to be recalled and questioned at least as thoroughly as Clare has been.

Unlike Bliar, Clare at least left the inquiry with a standing ovation. Bliar left to boos, jeers and catcalls. Perhaps the time has come for him to move to the US to avoid any subsequent actions.

After the first trial of Oscar Wilde, Oscar was advised to run. I'd give the same advice to Bliar right now.

Comments

[felephant.livejournal.com]

Retrospective immunity? Can you explain?

Also, good pun on Blair. I remember when a teenager going on to an internet acronym generator and typing in "Tony Blair" - and got "Try nab oil."

[winterlion.livejournal.com]

The US has declared that prosecuting their president internationally is an act of war (I don't remember details but It was during Bush Jr's reign). Beyond that - afaik - there's no immunity to international prosecution against a US politician.

I like the "Bliar" pun too ;)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Credit where it's due, the pun was originally Victor Lewis Smith's. I tended to use Bleuch or Blur or Blurgh, but I thought given the circumstances....

As for the immunity thang, I'll have to trawl through so much stuff to find it....but I recall a politicartoons page dedicated to it some year or two ago. Wasn't just GWB that was immunised in the bill, I seem to remember Cheney et al were included too.

[ankh156.livejournal.com]

I've been an admirere of Clair for years - decades. Ever since she doggedly tried to outlaw page 3 in fact.

[retrofire.livejournal.com]

I thought they should have asked Blair about his personal gain from the wars. There should have been investigation and questions asked about his current role in arms sales.

It seems to me that Claire Short's rigorous questioning was to make the inquiry look genuine.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Well, the rigorous questioning merely made the inquiry look biased. Biased, that is, against Short, and for Tony Bliar and his policies.

As for Bliar's gain's from ther war, I think it's all part of the ex-Prime Minister package. He been making money hand-over-fist since his resignation.

But I wonder how much good it will do him.

[retrofire.livejournal.com]

Over the years I have done research on the connection between the US and UK and arms sales - as well as the Carlysle Group.

I believe Tony is making money brokering international arms sales these days. After he helped push for war one of the top five corporations in our military industrial complex transferred ownership to the UK. At the time it was clear to me that it was a reward for Tony's cooperation. There was also a transaction with BAE soon after - I would have to look it up because I forget the details.

Here is proof that Tony is brokering deals:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/10/qinetiq-blair-carlyle-cx_po_0210autofacescan10.html

Here is a description of a new part time job of his:
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who left office last June, has taken up a part-time job with a Wall Street bank on an estimated $1 million salary.

JP Morgan Chase did not say how much Blair will make in the part-time position.

Blair will work with JP Morgan Chase, a firm with assets of $1.5 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. He will advise the bank on global political and strategic issues, a company statement said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/01/10/us.blair/

No one is asking Tony about arms sales and his personal profit from them - or how rushing into war launched his career as an international arms broker.

I would have to go digging but I could give you plenty of evidence that proves my position if you would be inclined to read it. Tony is not our poodle - we have always been complicit.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Interesting about the Qinetic stuff, though Tony sold off an awful lot more than just arms manufacturers. Trains, planes, and automobiles, anyone? PPP (Public Private Partnership) gave away assets at a cut price to banks and fund managers all over the UK, the US, and European spheres.
Hardly surprising then that JP Morgan Chase employed him.

I'd like to see the gen on his arms brokering before I commented thereon. One wouldn't want to accuse someone of something they could wriggle out of now, would one?

some thoughts on the subject

[retrofire.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the privitisation of Qinetic but that it took place through the Carlyle Group.

Forgive the following for being out of order and incomplete - but it suggests the role of Carlyle Group and connection to Blair and world leaders. It also suggests the importance of arms sales to the UK and your government's history of involvement in ethically questionable arms sales.

I think the the first two links represent a peculilar irony.

BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince

But Bandar was instrumental in Al Yamama

More on Al-Yamamah Arms Deal

Margaret Thatcher had her questionable arms deals and so did John Major.

The Arms-to-Iraq affair concerned the uncovering of the government-endorsed sale of arms by British companies to Iraq, then under the rule of Saddam Hussein. The scandal contributed to the growing dissatisfaction with the Conservative government of John Major and may have contributed to the electoral landslide for Tony Blair's Labour Party at the 1997 general election.

John Majors peddling arms to Africa

John Major was appointed European Chairman of The Carlyle Group in 2001.

Here's a Dutch documentary telling about the Carlyle Group.

Exposed: The Carlyle Group

United Defense Industries was a United States defense contractor (the fifth largest in the United States) which was sold (through the Carlyle Group) in 2005 to the UK's BAE Systems.

George H.W. Bush was a consultant to Carlyle Group.

Mr Blair has become a particular favourite with the Washington-based Carlyle Group. Next month he will address a conference of its European investors in Paris about "geopolitics". He addressed a similar conference for Carlyle in Dubai in February.

Total UK Arms Sales - 2007 - £5,474m

Re: some thoughts on the subject

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain that the Carlyle Group isn't a bit of a red herring here.

The UK has always been one of the main exporters of Arms and Munitions. From BSA (Birmingham Small Arms - an engineering group that went on to build motorcycles) through Vickers (Tanks, Rolls Royce engines etc) and BAe, we've sold guns, bombs, planes, tanks, and ships to one and all.

If they could pay.

Arms to Iraq and the BAe scandals are all part of the package. When VIPs needed kickbacks to guarantee contracts we'd happily pay in order that the folk involved bought our stuff rather than yours or the French manufacturers. If our bribes were bigger or better placed than the US's or the French equivalents, then we did the deal.

Business is business, after all, even when it's the arms business.

The Carlyle Group appears to be, if you like, the new Masons of the late 20th Century. All ills are ascribed to it. As a marketplace to launder Saudi money, or drugs money, or arms sales money or whatever, I can see it having some sort of despicable function.

When Roops or Lachlan or James becomes the leader of it, then I'll get really scared. GHWB had so many disagreements with GWB on foreign policy I doubt that the Carlyle Group had very much to do with Iraq War II, except perhaps by its members profiting on the quasi-military contract. I imagine Blackwater (or whatever its called now) has or had a representative somewhere in Carlyle, for example.

I remain uncertain about all this. Will delve a bit deeper before I have a proper opinion.