Tony Blair's 'I Say Lies' MashUp

Mashup artist Cassetteboy edits the former prime minister-turned-peace-envoy's speech and imagines what Blair was really trying to say

Tony Blair Is Wrong About Islam

By Nathan Lean

There is something crudely colonial about the words of former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who responded to the killing of military drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich by writingin Sunday's Daily Mail that there is a "problem within Islam" and it's high time that governments around the world "put it on the table and be honest about it."

It must be gratifying for Mr. Blair, part of Old Blighty's privileged white elite, to bemoan the miserable state of "those" people. He noted that the "Islamic" brand of extremism is "not the province of a few" and that it's different from other forms of extremism in that it is fundamentally incompatible with pluralistic, open-minded societies.

But, pray tell, what types of extremisms are not incompatible with those things?

Arrogantly, Blair refuses to consider the possibility that the disastrous foreign policies of the West -- a great many of which he and his partner across the Atlantic, George W. Bush, engineered -- might possibly have aggravated tensions in the Middle East and throughout the world leading to occasional acts of violence. That's despite the fact that the Woolwich butcher, the Boston bomber and even Osama bin Laden all insisted that their aggression, though articulated in religious language, was payback for political blunders over the years.

They may have rationalized their acts with violent Scriptures, but there had to be an underlying grievance to rationalize to begin with.

Unsurprisingly, the enduring and deadly conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that Blair championed don't configure in his logic. A recent estimate published Friday in the British journal The Lancet suggested that at least 116,000 Iraqi civilians died between the outbreak of war in 2003 and the draw down of troops in 2011; more than 16,000 are thought to have been killed in Afghanistan since 2007.

But don't be all that concerned about military intervention, says Mr. Blair, before offering this self-righteous gem: Those conflicts were "hard" because "we" allowed failed states to come into being. Oh, the burden of the western white man to lift miserable and incapable nations out of their centuries-long stagnation! Blair forgets, though, that those states he sees as success stories thanks to "our" benevolent intervention are now boiling in turmoil. May marked the deadliest month (1,045 deaths) in Iraq since 2008.

It takes a colonial mindset to ignore statements by your enemies and insist that it's something inside "their" religion -- not "our" military mistakes -- that is really driving "their" animus. And Blair is every bit a 21st century colonizer. Like Arthur James Balfour, the prime minister of Great Britain at the start of the 20th century who justified the colonialism of Egypt as a "civilizing" mission, the "problem" that Mr. Blair describes exists, as he says, "out there." What's worse, part of the solution to eradicating extremism, as he sees it, just requires that "we" educate those good blokes that can't quite see the world as "we" do.

Mr. Blair's comments about Islam in the past have not been tinted with the same ugly shade that characterized his polemic following Woolwich. Surely he must have known that his assessment was off the mark. Many of his sentences began with words of admiration for Muslims and Islam but he managed to mangle his thoughts so badly through the middle that the resulting sentence was half praise, half insult. He resembled a guy who prefaces his unintelligent and derogatory comments about African Americans by saying, "I have black friends, but..."

Damningly, the leader of the English Defence League (EDL), Tommy Robinson, tweetedthat Blair's comments "confirmed" everything the neo-Nazi street gang has said about Islam. Blair retorted that was not the case. But of course he would say that. Who would expect the former British prime minister to find common cause with a skinhead street gang whose violent protests against mosques in Britain have attracted Swastika-wielding hooligans?

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that Muslims commit violence just as followers of every faith do. And that violence should always be condemned and its perpetrators punished. That is unquestionable.

But by suggesting that the "problem" stems from "within Islam," Blair exhibits a deficiency that has longed plagued Western conversations about faith and politics: the inability to separate the religious actor from the religion itself. Islam can't act, only Muslims can. Islam has never blown up a building or chopped up a military drummer or killed Marathon goers. Muslims have done these things. And when they do, we should not assume that they are only animated by the teachings of their holy text or the sermons in their mosque, or by the degree to which they interpret and digest their faith.

Human beings are rarely such one-dimensional creatures.

Most often, there are other reasons for blowback: like decades of colonialism, unjust wars to promote Western interests, support for oil-rich tyrannical regimes, and drone strikes that kill and maim scores of innocent people.

One dead soldier on the street of Woolwich is an absolute tragedy. But it was an avoidable one. While Mr. Blair urged the British government to "be honest" about the threat of Islamic extremists, it is he who should be honest about policies that feeds such fanatics and distorts the threat "within Islam," conflating the politically motivated actions of an extreme minority with the peaceful majority, to justify continued Western aggression in Muslim lands.

MI5 Demolishes Blair's Defence Of The Iraq War

By Andy McSmith
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Courtesy Of "The Independent"

Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that toppling Saddam Hussein helped make Britain safe from terrorists was dramatically undermined by the former head of MI5 yesterday.

Giving evidence to the same inquiry, Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed that there was such a surge of warnings of home-grown terrorist threats after the invasion of Iraq that MI5 asked for – and got – a 100 per cent increase in its budget. Baroness Manningham-Buller, who was director general of MI5 in 2002-07, told the Chilcot panel that MI5 started receiving a "substantially" higher volume of reports that young British Muslims being drawn to al-Qa'ida.

She told the inquiry: "Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam."

She added: "Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before."

Her words are in stark contrast to the claim that Mr Blair made in front of the same inquiry on 29 January. The former prime minister told Sir John Chilcot: "If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are.

"It was better to deal with this threat, to remove him from office, and I do genuinely believe that the world is safer as a result."

But the evidence presented by Lady Manningham-Buller does not just call Mr Blair's credibility into question, it also throws down a challenge to the coalition Government, warned Lord Carlile of Berriew, a Liberal Democrat peer who has acted since 2005 as the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws. He told The Independent: "It's certainly the case that the threat and number of home-grown terrorists – and 'not home-grown' terrorists coming into the UK – increased after the Iraq war.

"This makes life difficult both for the old government, who have criticisms to answer, and for the current Government. It makes their review of current terrorism law a delicate exercise because there is no evidence of any significant reduction in the threat. We are where we were."

Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, added: "I should be astonished if Mr Blair were to return to give further evidence, but questions will remain as to what it was which prompted him to disregard the reservations of officials and their advice. If only Britain had been as well served by its politicians as it was by Eliza Manningham-Buller then we would never have got ourselves into the illegal mess of Iraq."

Lord West, who was counter-terrorism minister in the Home Office under Gordon Brown, told the BBC that he had "no doubt" that the Iraq war increased the threat of terrorism in the UK, which hit the government like a "bow wave" in 2003.

Ken Livingstone, who was Mayor of London at the time of the 7 July bombings, said: "Eliza Manningham-Buller's evidence is a damning indictment of a foreign policy that not only significantly enhanced the risk of terrorist attacks in London but gave al-Qa'ida the opening to operate in Iraq too."

Before 2003, MI5's concern had been the possibility that foreign terrorists would infiltrate the UK. Afterwards, she said: "We realised that the focus was not foreigners. The rising and increasing threat was a threat from British citizens and that was a very different scenario to stopping people coming in. It was what has now become called home-grown."

She added: "We were pretty well swamped – that's possibly an exaggeration – but we were very overburdened with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things that we needed to pursue.

"By 2003 I found it necessary to ask the Prime Minister for a doubling of our budget. This is unheard of, but he and the Treasury and the Chancellor accepted that because I was able to demonstrate the scale of the problem."

The Chilcot panel published a previously classified document which showed that the former MI5 boss was not simply being wise after the event. A year before British troops went into Iraq, she sent the Home Office a memo which – though phrased in official language – demolished the idea that Saddam Hussein's regime represented a credible terrorist threat to the UK.

In a memo to John Gieve, Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, in March 2002, Lady Manningham-Buller told him that Saddam was not likely to use chemical or biological weapons unless "he felt the survival of his regime was in doubt".

The memo went on: "We assess that Iraqi capability to mount attacks in the UK is currently limited."

Lady Manningham-Buller also hinted at tension between Mr Blair's office and MI5 over the dossier that the Prime Minister presented to Parliament in September 2002, to prepare public opinion for the likelihood of war.

"We were asked to put in some low-grade, small intelligence to it and we refused because we didn't think it was reliable," she said.

Evidence: What he said – and what she said


False claims of links between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein

Tony Blair claimed on 21 Jan 2003:

"There is some intelligence evidence about loose links between al-Qa'ida and various people in Iraq... It would not be correct to say there is no evidence whatever of linkages between al-Qa'ida and Iraq."

Foreign Office spokesman claimed on 29 Jan 2003:

"We believe that there have been, and still are, some al-Qa'ida operatives in parts of Iraq controlled by Baghdad. It is hard to imagine that they are there without the knowledge and acquiescence of the Iraqi government."

Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, yesterday:

"There was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA."

Hand-picking flimsy 'intelligence'

Blair, to the Commons 24 Sept 2002:

"It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability..."

Blair, to the Commons 25 Feb 2003:

"The intelligence is clear: He [Saddam] continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression. The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin and ricin. All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death."

Manningham-Buller, yesterday:

"The nature of intelligence – it is a source of information, it is rarely complete, it needs to be assessed, it is fragmentary... We were asked to put in some low-grade, small intelligence to it [the September 2002 dossier] and we refused because we didn't think it was reliable."

Iraq posed no risk to Britain

Blair, to the Commons 10 April 2002:

"Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also."

Manningham-Buller, yesterday:

"We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low... we didn't believe he had the capability to do anything in the UK."

Ministers were told that invading Iraq would increase the threat of terrorism to Britain

Blair, farewell speech at the Labour conference, 26 September 2006:

"This terrorism isn't our fault. We didn't cause it. It's not the consequence of foreign policy."

Manningham-Buller, yesterday:

"It was communicated through the JIC assessments, to which I fed in... I believe they [senior ministers] did read them. If they read them, they can have had no doubt."

The Iraq war made Britain a more dangerous place and allowed al-Qa'ida to gain a hold in Iraq

Blair, 29 Jan 2010:

"If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, I believe we are. The world is safer as a result."

Manningham-Buller, yesterday:

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised a generation of young people who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as an attack on Islam. We [MI5] were pretty well swamped... with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things that we needed to pursue.

"We gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before.

The post-Iraq plots

7/7 bombers - 2005

The bombs detonated on London Underground trains and a bus in July 2005 killed 52 members of the public and injured around 700. Three of the four suicide bombers had been born in Yorkshire; the fourth, born in Jamaica, came to the UK aged five. In his video, one bomber said: "Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities."

London Haymarket/Glasgow Airport attacks – 2007

Bilal Abdulla, a doctor, and Kafeel Ahmed, a PhD engineering student, tried and failed to set off bombs outside a London nightclub on 29 June. The following day they drove a jeep filled with gas canisters into Glasgow Airport. Abdulla's trial heard his involvement was "because of events in Iraq".

Liquid bomb plot – 2006

A terror plot was exposed in which liquid bombs were to be smuggled on to airliners. Many of the men made 'suicide' videos citing British foreign policy. Umar Islam said in his video: "If you think you can go into our land and do what you are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and... think it will not come back on to your doorstep, you have another think coming."

Iraq War Based On UK 'Assumption'

By Europe correspondent Emma Alberici
Posted Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:07am AEDT
Courtesy of ABC News

One of Tony Blair's chief aides has told the Iraq Inquiry that Britain went to war on the "assumption" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair's chief of staff throughout his premiership.

He said Downing Street was in no doubt that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, based more on their instincts about Hussein's past history than on any specific intelligence.

Mr Powell denied any secret deal to go to war had been hatched with the United States in early 2002 at a meeting in Crawford, Texas.

But he revealed that not long after that encounter, Tony Blair had warned then-US president George W Bush of the need to move quickly if it came to military action.

Jack Straw’s Secret Warning To Tony Blair On Iraq

By Michael Smith
January 17, 2010
Courtesy Of The Sunday Times Online

A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.

The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.

It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.

The letter will be a key piece of evidence at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war when it questions Straw this week.

Related Links

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The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: “The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq.”

Straw said Iraq posed no greater threat to the UK than it had done previously. The letter said there was “no credible evidence” linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and that the “threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September”.

Implying Blair was already seeking an excuse for war, it warned of two legal “elephant traps”. It states “regime change per se is no justification for military action” and “the weight of legal advice here is that a fresh [UN] mandate may well be required”.

The letter went on to question the very objective of military action. Straw warned Blair: “We have also to answer the big question — what will this action achieve? There seems to be a larger hole in this than on anything.”

Straw said there was “no certainty that the replacement regime will be better” than that of Saddam Hussein.

Despite this warning a year ahead of the war, the planning by Blair and other coalition leaders for the aftermath of war was dismal. Iraq descended into bloody chaos that cost more lives than the war itself.

Straw later wrote a further secret memo in early 2003 again doubting that the case for war had been made.

The release of Straw’s letter will pile further pressure on Blair ahead of the former prime minister giving evidence to the inquiry sometime between January 25 and February 5.

The issue of the war remains highly sensitive among the public. A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend shows that 52% of people believe Blair deliberately misled the country over the war. Almost one in four — 23% — think he should be tried as a war criminal.

The inquiry burst into life last week during tense questioning of Alastair Campbell. Blair’s former communications director rejected evidence from Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador in Washington, that Blair agreed to regime change at the Crawford summit. Campbell claimed the agreement came later in a series of private letters to Bush.

Philippe Sands QC, an expert on the legality of the war, said: “Mr Campbell sought to persuade Chilcot that there was no early decision [on war]: the Straw letter is plainly inconsistent with Mr Campbell’s narrative.”

In addition, a Cabinet Office briefing paper, previously leaked to The Sunday Times, contradicts Campbell’s evidence.

The briefing paper states: “When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.”

The YouGov poll shows that 49% of people believe Campbell did not tell the truth about the Iraq war at the time and is still not telling the truth, while 31% think he told the truth as he saw it at the time.

Other witnesses appearing before the Chilcot inquiry next week include Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and Geoff Hoon, the former defence secretary. Hoon is expected to be asked about his contribution to a war cabinet meeting in July 2002.

The minutes of the meeting were leaked to The Sunday Times in May 2005 and have since become widely known as “the Downing Street memo”. It recorded that “military action was now seen as inevitable in Washington” and that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.

The memo also refers to Hoon saying that “spikes of activity” had already begun. These were attacks on Iraqi military installations in preparation for the ground invasion. The RAF took part in them.

Additional reporting: Richard Woods

Britain Rejected Regime Change As Illegal

Iraq Inquiry In 2001

British officials discussed toppling Saddam Hussein in 2001 but rejected a policy of “regime change” as illegal under international law, the Iraq war inquiry has heard.

By James Kirkup and Gordon Rayner
Published: 4:48PM GMT 24 Nov 2009
Courtesy Of The Telegraph

On its opening day of public hearings, Sir John Chilcot’s public inquiry into the invasion heard that British diplomats heard the “drumbeat” of war emanating from Washington even before the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The inquiry into the war, which cost 179 lives, opened yesterday with a promise from Sir John, a former Whitehall mandarin, to "get to the heart of what happened" and "not shy away" from criticising anyone who made mistakes.

The first day of the inquiry in central London was attended by several relatives of service personnel killed in Iraq. Outside, a small number of protesters gathered, several with fake blood on their hands accusing Tony Blair, the former prime minister of war crimes.

Inside, the inquiry’s questioning focussed on British policy towards Iraq in 2001, the year George W Bush became US president.

Sir William Patey, head of Middle East policy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at the time, told the inquiry that he wrote a briefing paper on the options for Iraqi policy.

“We had at the end the regime-change option,” he said, “We dismissed that at the time as having no basis in law.”

Sir William said that the UK knew that some in the new US administration wanted to topple Saddam. "We were aware of the drum beats from Washington. Our policy was to stay away from that," he said.

The inquiry heard that in 2001, the settled view of the UK government was that attacking Iraq would have been illegal under international law.

Sir Peter Ricketts, then the political director at the FCO, told the inquiry: "We quite clearly distanced our self from regime change. It was clear that was something there would not be any legal base for."

The diplomats’ evidence will focus attention on the decisions that led Mr Blair to change Britain’s policy and support the military action that removed Saddam in 2003.

Sir Peter, who also chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee, said that only weeks after the September 11 attacks, US officials began to discuss “phase two of the war on terrorism,” shifting their attention from Afghanistan to Iraq.

“We heard people in Washington suggesting that there might be some link between Saddam and [Osama] Bin Laden.” he said. “We began to get that sort of voice early on.”

Officials suggested that it was the September 11 attacks and the events that followed had ultimately shifted the British view.

In 2001, Britain and the US were committed to a policy of containing Saddam, through economic sanctions, restricting his oil sales through the oil-for-food programme, and the imposition of no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq.

The diplomats told the inquiry that the containment policy was failing in 2001, but it could have remained viable if the United Nations had agreed to new "smart sanctions" on Saddam and the return of UN weapons inspectors.

The September attacks changed that, Sir Peter said. "I think if 9/11 had not happened, we would have remained convinced that a strengthened sanctions regime, tightened, narrowed, was the right way to go and we would have continued to push to get weapons inspectors back in.”

Simon Webb, the former policy chief at the Ministry of Defence, told the inquiry that the September attacks increased Britain’s concerns about the possibility of terrorist groups obtained weapons of mass destruction from a regime like Saddam’s.

After the attacks, he said, “the focus didn’t shift to regime change, the focus shifted to

WMD. In order to order to deal with the WMD problem in Iraq, you would probably end up having to push Saddam out. That was the sequence of events. It wasn’t hopping straight to regime change.”

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Blair Told Saddam Had No Chemical Weapons 10 Days Before Invasion

By Doireann Ronayne and Alex Stevenson
Wednesday, 25, Nov 2009 04:51
Courtesy Of Politics UK

Tony Blair received intelligence that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons had been dismantled just days before the invasion of Iraq, it has been revealed.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Sir William Ehrman, director general of defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office from 2002 to 2004, said: "On March 10th we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn't yet ordered their re-assembly and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."

Ten days later the invasion of Iraq began.

Meanwhile, the inquiry heard that evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq was "pretty sparse".

Tim Dowse, head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office from 2001 to 2003, told Sir John Chilcot's committee he agreed that a "particular mindset" about Iraq had been adopted and that more care could have been taken with the intelligence received.

But he pressed that while most WMD were built for defence, Saddam's intention "with his history of aggression" was clearly offensive.

Sir William emphasised that other Middle Eastern countries posed a greater threat than Iraq.

"In 2001 Libya and Iran were ahead of Iraq in terms of being more threatening about WMD," he said.

Sir William confirmed that contact between Iraq and al-Qaida existed but said Saddam was not "in any way responsible" for the September 11th 2001 terror attacks against New York.

The Iraqi dictator's government supported Palestinian terrorist groups and the MEK terror group directed against Iran, however.

Mr Dowse said Saddam Hussein's government had contacts with al-Qaida but Iraq and the terrorist organisation were not "natural allies".

He also argued the infamous 45-minute deployment claim for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "didn't seem out of line".

It had taken on an "iconic status" because of media reports, Mr Dowse argued.

Committee member Lawrence Freedman concluded the 45-minute claim had got "lost in translation" because the public understood it referred to nuclear weapons, not chemical battlefield weapons.

On the French proposal for a different type of inspection, Mr Dowse said that this would have been a "hiatus" and had little confidence it would have produced a different outcome.

"The liar was telling the truth," Sir John concluded on the actual findings of weapons in Iraq.

Ballistic missiles – that have a range well beyond 150km – were found, while chemical munitions were also discovered in small numbers in the south of Iraq. The chemical weapons appeared to be left over from the 1991 Gulf war, however.

"What we had was a 20,000 piece jigsaw, of which 15,000 pieces had been hidden," Mr Dowse said.

He was concerned that ministers should not declare success too rapidly on the discovery of weapons. Sir Roderic Lyne questioned whether the prime minister's statement in September 2004 that the Iraq Survey Group "had already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" corresponded to that advice.

Mr Dowse replied that he had not advised Mr Blair, before Sir William defended the response of the UK government.

"We removed the long-term threat to Iraq by the action that was taken. We disrupted but did not remove the Al Quaeda threat in Afghanistan and we removed the treat to Iran through diplomatic action and an agreement to suspend enrichment activities," he said.

The chair concluded by observing the lack of WMDs found in Iraq was a "rather embarrassing outcome” for the government.

Tomorrow Sir Christopher Mayer – UK ambassador to Washington in 2003 - will speak at the inquiry on US foreign policy priorities and US decision-making.