UK’s investigation into Iraq invasion is ‘example of what we could do with political courage’, says codirector of Iraq Veterans against the War
snip But the response to Chilcot, which supported allegations that the invasion helped spawn terrorist groups like Islamic State, was muted in the US. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a prominent not-for-profit group, did not have a comment on the report.
9 July 2016 - Following the devastating British inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, American veterans and their families have warned that the US is liable to repeat the mistakes without a similarly comprehensive investigation.The UK’s Chilcot inquiry was released on Wednesday, and while it is no secret in the US that the invasion was a failure, nothing so damning as the 2.6m-word British inquiry has been released by an independent US government body.
“The Chilcot report is an example of what we could do if there was any kind of political courage to reckon with the after-effects of the global war on terror that we were pushed into,” said Matt Howard, who was deployed to Iraq twice while serving in the marine corps.
Congressional reports have shown that the US invasion was based on faulty intelligence, but none were as crushing as Chilcot, which provoked the mother of a British soldier killed in the war to declare former British prime minister Tony Blair the “world’s worst terrorist”.
The inquiry found that President George W Bush and his aides exaggerated intelligence to make a case for invading Iraq, and that planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam were “wholly inadequate”.
“The fact that we haven’t done a report like that – and there haven’t been any moves to do that – makes it a whole hell of a lot more likely that we are going to go right down the same road and make the same mistakes we did less than 13 years ago,” said Howard. read more>>>
Accountability in America for policies supported and followed, especially by those who needed to and willingly did rubber stamped the wants for the policies 'Done In All Our Names', what's that!!
The Country ran, even before the Bush admin left office, from any and all 'accountability', 'Done In Our Names'!! Left everything done on the table, except the illegal torture and secret very costly in many ways CIA prisons disbanded policies not by the people but by the incoming Obama administration, then quickly started attacking that new administration for the continued use of!!
The extremely rapid abandoning of the Missions and those sent to Accomplish after 9/11 gave rapid spread and rise of the al Qaeda ideologies blowback, especially helped by the equally rapid and rising hatreds by extremists, so called, christians in America, meme's, books, FOX speak and even slanderous blasphemy movies of not the extremist Muslims but the whole of Islam, and done in 'gods' name!! Which gave rise to, most would label even more extremist and unstable, ISIL Deadly Extremism, replacing al Qaeda!!
'Chilcot gives us a lot of threads to pursue and those threads make a powerful rope to catch him'
8 July 2016 - The families of soldiers killed in Iraq have vowed to sue Tony Blair for “every penny”.
The former prime minister could face a civil lawsuit over allegations the abused his power to take the country to war following the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday.
Sir John Chilcot concluded that Mr Blair had overstated the case for military action in March 2003 as there was “no imminent threat” posed by Saddam Hussein and it was not the “last resort”.
He also said the planning for the post-war clean up was “inadequate” and said there was not strong enough evidence to suggest Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
He stopped short of declaring the war illegal but a source close to the families told the Daily Telegraph said the report provided legal grounds for the lawsuit.
The source said: “It gives us a lot of threads to pursue and those threads make a powerful rope to catch him”. read more>>>
27 November 2009 - Blair and a deal signed in blood: PM and Bush had secret plan to topple Saddam, says envoy But there was a 'sea change' in attitude after the atrocities, with former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice targeting Iraq on the very day of the outrage.He said: 'On 9/11 itself I had a telephone conversation and I said, "Who do you think did it?" She said, "There's no doubt it was an Al Qaeda operation".'At the end of the conversation she said, "We're just looking at the possibility that there could be any link to Saddam Hussein".' >>>
Some took up art, others went in to academia, while quite a few took highly paid consultancy jobs
7 July 2016 - George Bush’s vice president and alter ego was one of the hardliners who pushed him into invading Iraq. Since 2009, he has constantly turned up on television as a critic of Barack Obama.
In May, he was one of the first Republican grandees to declare his support for Donald Trump. read more>>>
The Cheney and surrounding friends, both in and out of government but especially in, continued doing what they did during the whole Bush administration, laughing and patting each other on the backs, and continue doing so, as they watched the continued cha ching ringing up their offshore wealth wall street wealth vaults, knowing their names would rarely, if ever, be mentioned in the history books including that about, the extremely quick abandoning of the missions and those sent after 9/11, the two wars, OEF and OIF. That would all be bared on the GW Bush shoulders, though he doesn't worry either, in his eyes he's finally a success, as measured by wealth, just look at the trump types, especially in daddy's eyes. No more trying to live up to family standards set and collapsing a number of endeavors only to have daddy and friends of bail him out and prop him back up, he's still reaping from the policies they followed. And with two huge tax cuts to boot, with plenty more coming and with more added perks since because they're a part of them 'job creators' as their wealth builds!!
The co-conspirators, the republican rubber stamping congresses with their full support FOX speak base, have continually sought to scrub reality from history in many ways while also using a favorite, attack a Clinton, this time, again, costing tax payers dearly, as to Bengazi and e-mails. Keeping it going, even after rulings on and nothing from them, to deflect!
They actually got a gift with the killings of two more black americans and then five police officers shot and killed in Dallas. While once again the initial killings that apparently set up the Dallas bundy farm style sniper attack cheered on by republican supporters who then came out with bluelivesmatter, not to them as the bundy militia was targeting law enforcement even at the bird sanctuary recently, the NRA went silent especially as to the legal carry and registered and doing what a law abiding gun owner should, informing a police officer who had stopped them for a traffic violation so a deadly incident wouldn't arrise, it did and with a child in the car watching it all, gun first pointed at then multiple shots fired into car and gun owner!!
The story of how the UK got embroiled in the conflict looks a little different following the publication of the Chilcot report
9 July 2016 - Tuesday 2 April 2002 was a warm spring day, the first after the Easter weekend. The country was coming to terms with the death of the Queen Mother, a young singer called Gareth Gates had shot to No 1 and Admiral Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was heading to Buckinghamshire for a meeting with the prime minister at Chequers.
A submariner in his early career, colleagues thought Boyce rather prickly, a trait cabinet minister Clare Short attributed to the long periods he had spent underwater.
Certainly, his summons to see Tony Blair seemed to have left him a little nonplussed. British forces were already deployed in Afghanistan, which was his priority. And though he had heard talk in the press and around Whitehall about a shift in interest towards Iraq, he wasn’t one for gossip or small talk.
Blair, however, wanted to chat about Saddam Hussein. “I guess my presence at Chequers on that particular occasion was simply … if there were questions coming up about what could be done militarily; what was our capability should we be asked to do something,” Boyce explained to the Chilcot inquiry.
If there had been a significant hardening of thinking in Downing Street, Boyce appeared to have left Chequers none the wiser. As far as he was concerned, attacking Iraq just wasn’t on the cards. read more>>>
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