July 02, 2005
Tony! Toni! Tone!
Take a look at these two men.
The man on the right is considered, by the vast majority of the World's population, the very embodiment of evil-on-Earth. In reality, though, he's more cyborg than man; he's incapable of eating pretzels and watching teevee at the same time; he doesn't comb his hair before Press Conferences; he's wacked out on anti-depressants, in order to "control his erratic behavior"; he's probably less involved in policy-formulation than was Ronald Reagan -- he's only really permitted to chop wood at his ranch, or spew on about god now and then. A pretty pitiful figure, really: you almost have to feel sorry for the guy. Almost.
The man on the left, however, apparently suffers no such debilitations. And yet his public statements are more less identical to those of his "good friend". Rather than feeling sorry for him, then, we can only feel the most profound and utter contempt.
I thought it right that we went back into the international community and said, "No, we are going to draw a line in the sand here," and the country to do it with was Iraq, because they were in breach of UN resolutions going back many years."
One would think that, knowing what we now know, Bush and Blair would, when trotting out this particular lie, throw in a "to the best of our knowledge" to help wash down the medicine. But, just as with the "Saddam didn't let the inspectors in" argument, Bush and Blair continue to employ the "Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions" lie in the (presumably, and so-far correct) assumption that they'll not be called upon it.
But this lie is especially insidious coming from Tony "I have never told a lie" Blair as (even though the "sanctions will be there until the end of time" policy was driven by Clinton and Albright, with Blair a willing accomplice) Blair was well aware as far back as the fading days of UNSCOM -- not to mention during the run-up to the 2003 invasion -- that Iraq had by then been more less completely disarmed, and that the sanctions were being kept in place owing only to political chicanery.
After Sept. 11, I took the view if these people can ever get hold of nuclear, chemical, or biological capability they'd probably use it because they don't care if they kill. People who kill 3,000 people don't care if they kill 30,000 or 300,000 people ... The balance of risk for me changed.
Ergo, we must "draw a line in the sand here".
Not with the United States, which Blair was aware was planning to use Depleted Uranium and Cluster Bombs in Iraq (as it had previously done in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan) -- and was presumably aware of the United States' intent to use Napalm in Iraq, though the UK government now claims to have had the wool pulled over its eyes concerning this last. Blair must surely have also been aware that the United States, having, with Blair's aid, during the '90s allowed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to die, didn't "care" how many more Iraqis it would kill. (And even if he hadn't been aware at the time, for him to use the argument to-day, 100,000-and-counting Iraqi civilians later, is astonishingly disingenous. Okay, well, it'd be astonishing coming from anyone other than Blair.)
Not with Pakistan or Israel, two fundamentalist states in flagrant violation of the NPT. Not with Russia, which for some time during the 1990s couldn't even account for all of its nukes.
No, we'll start with Iraq, even though we know that Saddam and Osama are bitter rivals and that Iraq is the most secular state in the region. And, oh yeah, that Iraq doesn't have any WMD to give to "these people".
By the way, shouldn't Blair have concluded that the "balance of risk" would have been lessened by the events of September 11th? That the likelihood of being caught flat-footed a second time is vanishingly small? Sure, if "these people" are able to get hold of and employ WMD, they'll probably do so, resulting in an even more catastrophic event than was September 11th -- but that was also true before September 11th, and the fact of September 11th didn't make it any more or less likely that they'd be able to do so. (Of course, if Bush and Blair had been truly interested in not only lessening, but even eliminating the "balance of risk", they might have addressed the -- legitimate -- grievances of the bin Laden-ites, rather than pouring salt in the wounds. But let's not put the cart before the horse, shall we?)
Speaking of "astonishing", here's Blair's response to the Downing Street Memo:
I am a bit astonished at how this has received such coverage in the U.S. because the fact is after the memo was done we went to the United Nations.
In other words, he doesn't dispute the memo's authenticity. But he also appears not to have read it, because it explicitly states that the case for war would have to be made by hook or by crook, as the basis for war was weak-to-non-existent. Even worse, Blair must take us all for complete and total slobbering idiots (maybe because of having spent so much time hanging out with G.W.): does he really expect us to not recall that he and Bush went to war after having failed to gain approval from the United Nations?
I mean, what the fuck? Is he saying that if I go ask my local sheriff if it's okay to blow up my neighbours, and the sheriff tells me that I may not do so, that my having asked makes it okay for me to do so anyway? Sure, at least he's not arguing that it's not only okay, but also proves that the sheriff's office needs to be "reformed". But, again, we expect that sort of reaction from the nitwits comprising the Bush Administration. For someone of Blair's supposed intellect to use this argument is fairly remarkable.
But, what else is he gonna do? Tell the truth? Admit that he was wrong? Apologise for his role in facilitating the mass slaughter in Iraq? Bring the British troops home? Nah, homey don't fuck around with those games.
Posted by Eddie Tews at July 2, 2005 02:52 PM
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