POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN THE TELEGRAPH
"How should we respond to his warning? Ignore it because he made mistakes in Iraq and therefore nothing he says can be trusted? His analysis of Iran is based on far more reliable information than was available about Saddam's Iraq."
Sorry, but this piece is not just incorrect, it seems to me to be dishonest.
Made mistakes in Iraq?
How is that anything but dishonest? There were no mistakes, there was only a long and twisted and deliberate effort to deceive, and Blair works hard at it still.
You did not have to be a senior member of a government before the Iraq invasion to know that Bush, and his hopeless acolyte, Blair, were not telling the truth.
The facts were there for a critical mind to sort before the invasion. Solid information from past and current weapons inspectors, leaks from foreign intelligence, the testimony of an émigré Iraqi nuclear scientist, and the views of some heads of state - there was a mountain of legitimate information out there to put the lie to George and Tony.
And there was just the basic history at the time: context is always critical for understanding any situation. The first Bush’s invasion decimated Iraq, much more so than we were ever told, and then we had a decade of bombing, plotting, blockades, and the starvation of Iraqi children.
During all that extended horror, the phony right-wing think tanks in the United States never stopped the lobbying and speeches and publishing papers for the overthrow of Hussein, the very people George Junior hung around with and later made advisors in his criminal government.
His analysis of Iran is based on far more reliable information than was available about Saddam's Iraq?
How can you write that with a straight face? First, Blair’s access to information can only be less than it was. Two, the general understanding of what is happening in Iran is demonstrably bad, less because Iran is a closed society – it is not – but Israel and its apologists and lobbyists conduct a non-stop crusade of misunderstanding, black information, and blind pressure. Newspapers like the Telegraph cooperate in this effort with editorials like this one.
We have already been told by the best intelligence available in the world that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Moreover, many of Iran’s efforts to defuse the situation created by blind international pressure, as its efforts at an agreement with Brazil, point in the opposite direction of Israel’s claims. But even if they had one, they are a threat to no one. Modern Iran has attacked no one, quite unlike Israel which has attacked every neighbor that it has, some more than once.
Last, no country in the world has a record more packed with deception in nuclear matters than Israel. We know Israel has on the order of 150 warheads. We know it has several delivery systems for these weapons. We know that its nuclear weapons plant at Dimona is not open to any inspection. We know that it is not a signatory to non-proliferation while Iran is. We know that Israel lied, stole, and deceived for decades to get its weapons. We know it cooperated with apartheid South Africa, assisting them with their nuclear weapons, against all international agreements and law.
And last, we know Israel has worked for decades to make itself into a geopolitical miniature of the United States, one that strives to control events for at least a thousand miles outside its borders (whatever those are). Efforts to threaten Iran are only the latest phase of this.
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Blair has been so well paid for his criminal cooperation with Bush, it should be embarrassing. Every gift that it is in the power of the American establishment to grant, including various sinecures, has been granted.
America pays its servants well. You only have to look back at its long history of its various satraps, which includes everything from secret salaries from the CIA to various honors.
Blair even got a "peace" prize of a million dollars. Imagine, a mass killer given a peace prize?
But this prize was the gift of an Israeli foundation, so the confusion between war and peace is perhaps understandable.
Blair is an almost contemptible individual, having helped destroy a society for nothing, lied almost every day of his term of office, served the only certified moron ever to be an American president, and now enjoying unearned wealth like a Middle Eastern potentate.
His word on anything, including religion, is simply worthless.
