Tony Blair has admitted in his interviews with David Aaronovitch for the BBC's Blair Years, that George Bush offered to keep Britain out of the Iraq war before it began. Blair turned it down.
Can somebody in government please at last explain what this was all really honestly about? Clearly it was not to help the US because they did not need it, and said so. Blair was providing political cover for Bush, in a show of a coalition which didn't really exist.
Why? What did Britain get from taking this blood price from Iraqis and paying it from our own troops? What national interest was served? Was it oil as many say? Other theories say that US neocons had the security of Israel in mind. Was that in Blair's thoughts? If it was about the security of our country, was that served by inserting ourselves into Al-Qaeda's declared war against the US?
I commend this article by Linda Colley who ponders why Britain's connection with the EU is routinely questioned, but there is no equivalent debate about our relationship with the US:
Schoolchildren in the United States are still taught that London's decision to keep 10,000 troops in the colonies after 1763 was one of the precipitants of the American revolution. Yet, according to the available statistics, over 10,500 US military personnel were stationed in the UK as late as 2005, a higher total than in any other European state, barring Germany and Italy, both defeated in the second world war. In all, well over 1.3 million US personnel have been stationed here since 1950, without - so far as I know - any consultation of the electorate.
It is not the exact number of these troops, however, but what they represent that is significant - namely London's postwar position of considerable clientage to Washington in terms of foreign policy and much else.
To refer to these subjects is to invite accusations of anti-Americanism. But I am not anti-American. I have worked in the US for 20 years. My point is not American power, but rather the double standard that characterises so much British political discourse. Sections of the media and members of both major parties have been all too eager to bang the autonomy drum when it comes to Europe. But there is a marked unwillingness to analyse the challenges to British independence from US influence; and those touching on the subject are swiftly denounced.
So you keep excluding Joe. As long as you keep doing this, your constituency will remain small. The Establishment does not have to do anything to prevent your growth because you do their job for them.
- The exact sentiments of Nazis and Stalinists.
Unless I follow the exact orders of the government of the day, along with their herd of brainwashed fanatics, I'll remain unpopular - unlike yourself George, who craves popularity and who craves to be seen supporting the government of the day, with your arm in the air saluting the Glorious Leader and the glorious flag!
Someone called Ted put up a reasonable comment to which Osama.... No insults, no attacks on the man’s dignity, knowledge or intelligence.
- Really George, so why not follow this example yourself?
Ted and yourself have a lot in common George, as you both think prison rape is ok, although you prefer using the CIA's own Orwellian term of 'extraordinary rendition'. Just like the Nazi Gestapo refered to their nefarious activities as 'administrative detention' and the like, so the same goes for the American and Israeli gestapo of today.
Maybe if I didn't use the term 'extraordinary rendition' and didn't mention British Government war crimes, I'd be more popular?
George prefers to discuss what he considers as my crimes, rather than the crimes of the Glorious American Government. Obviously, there is something wrong with me, in the eyes of George, rather than something wrong with the genocidal US Government. Something so wrong with myself that it takes precedence over discussing the vast genocides that took place in South East Asia in the 1960s through to the 1970s, and beyond.
If this wasn't bad enough,
about the same time as the US genocides in SE Asia were being committed, a Scottish Miners Union leader was carrying out unspeakable crimes and horrors up and down the working men's clubs of Scotland, and beyond!
Compared to the crimes of Scottish Miners Union Leaders and myself, as well as Prof Chomsky, the genocides of the US government pale in comparison according to George, I'm sure you'll all agree.
Posted by: joe90 | 15 December 2007 at 10:45 PM