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Originally posted by DallasFirefly:
I know which party Blair heads, but frankly he seems more and more like a moderate Tory to me with each passing month. It took Labour 18 years to regain power after the 1979 disaster and this is what they're rewarded with? Blair is both a closet Tory and a liar imo, the sooner Bush's poodle is out of No.10 the better. Can't wait for PM Brown! Speaking of Brown, does anyone think he'll be a better PM than Blair, and more importantly, will he be real Labour or another Tory light?

I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!

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Originally posted by Mercury002:
wait they were in power wernt they i was thinking of new labout in 74 then thatcher came in yeah labour suck, all of the benefits that we experienced first was from the conservative party the only good thing they have done was gordon brown and the monetary policy committee, thats really it.

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Originally posted by SimonWho:
A moderate Tory? The Conservatives never proposed tuition fees or wars of aggression or anti-citizen laws such as those we have now.

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whoever is in number ten would still be trying to pass laws eroding civil liberties because we are too scared of the U.S. economy to stand up for ourselves

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Originally posted by oldenglanddry:
we are too scared of the U.S. economy to stand up for ourselves and too mistrustful of Europe to form a block powerful enough to counter the Americans.

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whoever is in number ten would still be trying to pass laws eroding civil liberties because we are too scared of the U.S. economy to stand up for ourselves
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I don't understand how this follows - can you elaborate on this point?

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public support for war was very high (80+%) before the war and even higher in the immediate aftermath.

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HMG really did believe that Saddam had WMD in which case doing nothing isn't an option either.

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
The Official Secrets act, an act from (I believe) the first world war. If you work for the government in almost any capacity you will have signed a copy. Citizen almost certainly has given his job history. In theory once signed you can't speak about your job at all without home office approval, it's illegal, you can go to jail. Some administrations use it to plug leaks that are politically damaging even if the information being leaked is in the public interest, while other administrations only use it for legitimate national security reasons

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
I don't think you are supposed to reveal that you've signed it without Home Office approval.....

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Originally posted by rue:
No, what you said was this:
public support for war was very high (80+%) before the war.
And in fact it was not.

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Originally posted by DallasFirefly:
At this point Blair's Labour is to the right of the US Democrats, which is a complete reversal of the positions of the two parties from ten years ago. It's a pity when a Tory leader can go to the left of a Labour PM.

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One other thing that Blair did that really pissed me off was forbidding Labour representatives from attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It's been tradition for US Democrats and Labour to attend each others campaign kick offs as a sign of support. Blair didn't want to offend Bush so he put his foot down with Labour MPs who wanted to go to Boston.

I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!

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YOU SAID HMG really did believe that Saddam had WMD in which case doing nothing isn't (wasn't ?) an option either.
I SAID The Downing Street Minutes tell otherwise.

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The only way to overthrow (Saddam's regime) was likely to be by massive military action. (REGIME CHANGE as the basis for war, not WMD)

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. (WMD INTELLIGENCE faulty)

It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. (WMD CAPABILITY poor, at best)

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. (War was based on regime change, for which there was NO LEGAL BASIS)

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Originally posted by DallasFirefly:
That is bizarre, the UK Tories going to our convention I mean. Is the annual Labour Party Conference held in August? I remember that Margaret Thatcher was replaced by Major at a Tory party conference in 1990. It would be good to see Blair go this year.

I wanna be Mr. Baccarin!

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
HMG believed Saddam had WMD. You won't find anything in the memos that says otherwise.

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In total, UNMOVIC carried out, in a little under four months, 731 inspections, covering 411 sites, 88 of which had not been inspected before. It found and, where relevant, supervised the destruction of:
a. The illegally-imported Volga engines, and historic documents on the Iraqi nuclear programme, described above, flowing from leads given by the British Government.
b. Over 70 illegal Al-Samoud 2 missiles and over 50 warheads. When UNMOVIC’s operations were suspended in mid-March 2003, 25 more missiles and nearly 40 warheads remained to be destroyed. (As noted above, British intelligence had led to the discovery of the engines for the missiles.)
c. Two propellant casting chambers capable of producing rocket motors for missiles with ranges greater than 150km.
d. A small number of unfilled chemical munitions (all old).
e. 244.6 kg of declared but expired growth media and 40 vials of expired ‘toxin standards’.
We are surprised that neither policy-makers nor the intelligence community, as the generally negative results of UNMOVIC inspections became increasingly apparent, conducted a formal re-evaluation of the quality of the intelligence and hence of the assessments made on it.
We also noted the limited time given to evaluation of the Iraqi declaration of 7 December. ... work on the declaration was captured in a JIC paper on 18 December, properly described as “An Initial Assessment of Iraq’s WMD Declaration”. Thereafter, despite its importance to the determination of whether Iraq was in further material breach of its disarmament obligations ... the JIC made no further assessment.

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Originally posted by rue:
Geezer2,

"... fact is that the British government, US government, Russian government, hell even Hans Blix all thought Saddam had WMD." (And due to unanimous urgency, war was justified.)

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Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.

PS My policy on links:

Where quotes or information come from generally available sources, I link them. But news sources (and some other types of sources) often revert from being free to being paid-only after a few weeks. And the links only get you a frustrating demand for ransom money. From those sources, especially for items that are years old, I'll supply extended quotes, on the theory that a google on the langauge will find secondary sources. Finally, for general information I will sometimes omit either links or extended quotes.

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