{"id":6,"date":"2003-07-16T21:43:57","date_gmt":"2003-07-16T21:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/2003\/07\/16\/iraq-fiasco\/"},"modified":"2006-03-11T21:52:19","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T21:52:19","slug":"iraq-fiasco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/2003\/07\/16\/iraq-fiasco\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq fiasco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I didn&#8217;t want to go to war. I don&#8217;t know anyone in the UK who did. So  you&#8217;ll be glad to learn that it seems our press is finally waking up to the fact  that people this side of the pond are more than a little hacked-off that Blair &#038;  his cronies have continually lied their heads off about Iraq &#8211; conning us into a  war that no one except the criminally insane wanted in the first place&#8230; <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424011\">   http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424011<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of course, Tony Blair is an anagram of &#8216;liar by ton&#8217; &#8211; a fact I discovered  when I stumbled across a site full of unflattering Blair\/Bush anagrams.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.anagramgenius.com\/archive\/george24.html\">   http:\/\/www.anagramgenius.com\/archive\/george24.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hmmm&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, according to former (&#038; slightly senile) BBC American correspondent  Alistair Cook, in his 15 minute slot on BBC World service entitled &#8216;Letter From  America&#8217;, Blair is held in great esteem in the US. Is this true? Bollocks I say!  Blair may be more intelligent than Bush  not difficult let&#8217;s face it &#8211; but he  is just as dishonest! Take it from me, Blair &#038; his buddies are as bent as a nine  pound note!<\/p>\n<p>Worse than Thatcher &#8211; the woman who proved that mad-cow-disease could indeed  be transferred to humans &#8211; Blair has serious delusions of grandeur as he  contemplates his place in history. Originally, he thought this would be achieved  by taking UK into the Euro currency (quite a good idea IMHO). Instead he got us  mixed up in this Iraq fiasco. In fact Blair has led the UK into five wars since  his election in 1997 &#8211; Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan &#038; Iraq. But it&#8217;s a war  of a different kind I find particularly intriguing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>One of Blair&#8217;s most senior, yet unelected spin doctors, a shadowy character  called Alistair Campbell, recently launched a vicious verbal &#038; written attack of  the BBC for daring to suggest that the first Iraq Dossier was &#8216;sexed up&#8217;.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Iraq\/Story\/0,2763,986854,00.html\">   http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/Iraq\/Story\/0,2763,986854,00.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bad move IMHO because &#8216;Aunty Beeb&#8217; is still quite highly regarded here. Even  our seemingly gullible electorate, when given the choice of &#8216;who do you trust,  Blair or Beeb&#8217;, only a total moron would choose that grinning shyster. Even if  Blair were more honest than Jesus Christ, we Brits would think twice before  buying a second-hand car from a bloke who smiles so much!<\/p>\n<p>Not that our poker-faced &#038; stammering Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw ranks  much higher in our affections. He has finally admitted that the second Iraq  Dossier &#8211; the one that was plagiarised from a 10 year old PHD student&#8217;s thesis  posted on the internet same document that Colin Powel told the UN was an  exquisite piece of work was, and I quote, &#8216;a complete Horlicks&#8217;. Of course,  our last Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook resigned over Iraq before hostilities  began because he didn&#8217;t believe his Government&#8217;s pro-war hype. Nevertheless,  despite the &#8216;dodgy dossier&#8217; &#038; the diminishing credibility of the first  waste-of-paper, the &#8216;Man of Straw&#8217; still insists the Niger plutonium bullshit is  actually true. However he fails to produce any real evidence to support this  view.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424034\">   http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424034<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Or to be more precise, the flimsy evidence he does offer is at least 12 years  old!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424543\">   http:\/\/news.independent.co.uk\/uk\/politics\/story.jsp?story=424543<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Looks like the Niger plutonium thing is starting to give the Aussie PM John  Howard a bit of a headache too!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/pm\/content\/2003\/s900341.htm\">   http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/pm\/content\/2003\/s900341.htm<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And I&#8217;m really glad to see that Bush is finally coming under a bit of fire at  home.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.votetoimpeach.org\/\">http:\/\/www.votetoimpeach.org\/<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthout.org\/docs_03\/070103F.shtml\">   http:\/\/www.truthout.org\/docs_03\/070103F.shtml<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What took the Democrats so long? Perhaps it may take a few honest Republicans  to join the fight too? Presumably there are some? Seems to me that impeachment  is too good for Bush. Prison seems more appropriate! IMHO the &#8216;high crime&#8217; of  starting an illegal war really deserves a custodial sentence. Perhaps Bush could  be sentenced to share a 2-metre-square, open-air cage with Blair for a while;  somewhere &#8216;nice &#038; sunny&#8217; like Guantanamo? Actually, we&#8217;d settle for Blair doing  a spell at &#8216;Her Majesty&#8217;s pleasure&#8217; in one of our crumbling, overcrowded &#038;  inhumane ruins that he has allowed to fill-to-the-brim &#038; decay due to lack of  funds. Ah well, one can dream.<\/p>\n<p>Talking of grotesque, flagrant abuses of power, I wonder if there&#8217;s any  truth in this, from the Canadian-based Global Research website?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/globalresearch.ca\/articles\/MCG307A.html\">   http:\/\/globalresearch.ca\/articles\/MCG307A.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well that&#8217;s enough depressing stuff for now. My  message to the &#8216;real&#8217;  Americans is, keep up the protests. Be as big  a pain-in-the-ass as you can! It seems to me that the true American heroes are  the ones who stand up against injustice &#038; wrongdoing &#8211; not those who &#8216;just  follow orders&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>I am constantly meeting people who, IMHO, unfairly regard USA as a nation of  &#8216;gun-slinging warmongers&#8217; and\/or &#8216;corporate fraudsters. This is largely thanks  to the actions of that monkey-faced moron in the White House &#038; the shady bunch  of &#8216;neocon&#8217; loonies that pull his strings. Yet, despite growing misgivings about  the Iraq war in the UK press, even in the Murdoch-owned sector, our mainstream  media still shows very little of the &#8216;real&#8217; America &#038; what people of principle    are about.<\/p>\n<p>Like Saddam and his mates, Bush and his cronies now have a deck of cards  produced in their honour. Dubbed the &#8216;Worlds Least Wanted&#8217;, I thought this was quite an amusing idea&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvnewslies.org\/html\/the_loaded_deck.html\">   http:\/\/www.tvnewslies.org\/html\/the_loaded_deck.html<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In fact the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tvnewslies.org\/\">http:\/\/www.tvnewslies.org<\/a>  site provides a thoroughly splendid resource for those of us who are less than  happy with our leaders. Might even reduce my Guinness consumption for a few days  &#038; send them a few quid.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, this isn&#8217;t exactly news so you have probably  heard it before but I found this quote from  Herman Goering on the  &#8216;Resource Center for Non Violence&#8217; website quite thought provoking&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rcnv.org\/rcnv\/archives\/hermangoeringrecruiting.htm\">   http:\/\/www.rcnv.org\/rcnv\/archives\/hermangoeringrecruiting.htm<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t want to go to war. I don&#8217;t know anyone in the UK who did. So you&#8217;ll be glad to learn that it seems our press is finally waking up to the fact that people this side of the pond are more than a little hacked-off that Blair &#038; his cronies have continually lied &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/2003\/07\/16\/iraq-fiasco\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Iraq fiasco&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grumble","category-information","category-weblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garfnet.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}