Time to hold Bush and Blair to account?

[iain]

The speeches by Bush and Blair which launched the war make interesting reading.

Both make it clear that the primary justification for war is the real threat posed by Iraq's WMDs. I wonder how accurate these seem now, and how accurate they will seem to be in a year or two.

I am also interested to see if Blair will honour his pledge to put Iraqi oil money into a UN trust fund.

Blair's speech (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2870581.stm)
Bush's ultimatum speech (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2859269.stm)

From Blair :
Should terrorists obtain these weapons now being manufactured and traded around the world the carnage they could inflict to our economies, to our security, to world peace would be beyond our most vivid imagination.

My judgement as prime minister is that this threat is real, growing and of an entirely different nature to any conventional threat to our security that Britain has faced before.

...

Our commitment to the post-Saddam humanitarian effort will be total.

We shall help Iraq move towards democracy and put the money from Iraqi oil in a UN trust fund so it benefits Iraq and no-one else.

From Bush
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

...

Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attack and destroyed.

[max]

Iain
V interesting but for any doubters these weapons must exist as we and US provided Saddam with them. I wager that they have been sold onto Russia, China, Germany, Hong Kong or Syria.
Time will tell.:D

I like the front page of the Sun newspaper today, it's a picture of Saddam on the phone with the headline......Hello, is it me you're looking for.....

[richardm]

Well, a lot of people were prepared to give Iraq a looooong time to produce the evidence that he destroyed his WMDs.

It's interesting that a lot of the same people won't even give Bush and Blair a couple of weeks to produce evidence before they start screaming that it was all lies.

[Jon_in_london]

I heard this guy on the radio yesterday saying that 'our troops have been fighting a war there for 3 weeks now and still they havent found and WMD'

I thought he was being sarcastic at first! :eek:

Like, dude, maybe they have been a bit pre-occupied fighting the war!

[iain]

Originally posted by richardm
Well, a lot of people were prepared to give Iraq a looooong time to produce the evidence that he destroyed his WMDs.

It's interesting that a lot of the same people won't even give Bush and Blair a couple of weeks to produce evidence before they start screaming that it was all lies. Fair point. I think that some of the blame for this lies with the pro-war people who shout about every possible WMD find before it turns out not to be significant.

The primary reason for the war was the WMDs, and preventing them falling into the hands of terrorists. It would be pretty stupid of the coalition not to make it a primary objective now to find those WMDs before the terrorists do.

Given the huge amount of intelligence the US claims to have about WMDs in Iraq, they should know where to start looking.

[richardm]

Originally posted by iain
Fair point. I think that some of the blame for this lies with the pro-war people who shout about every possible WMD find before it turns out not to be significant.


I think a fair part of that is down to the fact that we've effectively been called credulous warmongerers for the last 6 months, so naturally there is a tendency to pounce on anything that vindicates the belief.


Given the huge amount of intelligence the US claims to have about WMDs in Iraq, they should know where to start looking.

Should do! But as Jon says, the first priority will have to be to stabilise the area, and then start clearing up the sites. The WMDs aren't going anywhere. It's also worth remembering that a lot of the US intelligence appears to have holes in it - there seem to be a lot more underground bunkers and tunnels than anyone was expecting (or perhaps I just didn't hear about it)

[BillyTK]

Well, whilst the intention of the war may have been to prise Saddam and his (alleged/as yet undiscovered*) WMDs apart, the vindication of Bush and Blair's decisions seems to be the liberation of the Iraqi people. It's a helluva propaganda sleight-of-hand, but kind of a logic that isn't.

So anyway, it might be too early to say if Bush'n'Blair have been vindicated or not, but in the meantime we should be rigorous in our skepticism wrt to their claims, and especially of claims of discoveries of WMDs.

[Mel]

If the coalition governments would start to have hourly news briefs of all the intelligence it gathers people would see this process will take a little time.

Intelligence should also provide full names of their sources so the reporters can conduct in depth interviews with these people and satisfy the public's need to know.

:rolleyes:

[BillyTK]

Originally posted by Mel
If the coalition governments would start to have hourly news briefs of all the intelligence it gathers people would see this process will take a little time.

Intelligence should also provide full names of their sources so the reporters can conduct in depth interviews with these people and satisfy the public's need to know.

:rolleyes:

Carnt trust the media, carnt trust the military. (http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia/story/0,12823,921649,00.html)

Edited to fix tags

[Mel]

I barely trust either. The media & the military have different goals and they use each other to further their own agendas.

[jimmygun]

According to my brother-in-law if the coalition doesn't find these weapons it proves they are warmongering killers. If they do find the weapons they planted them and are warmongering killers.

I guess my b-i-l must be party to the secrecy that goes on in the Bush/Blair governments. He won't share the facts that support his argument with me though.

[NullPointerException]

Too bad they could be hidden in the middle of the desert under mounds of sand in a secret base we wouldn't find if it had underground supply routes.