As the fall turns into winter here on California’s north coast, another nasty-nugget from the lie-archives of the Iraqi war — according to a leaked memo, in public, Tony Blair was a seeker of peace, in private he was in war-cahoots with George W at least a year before the invasion.
Ironic considering the GOP-inflamed fantasy — from the Daily Mail:
The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.
As Clinton is again scheduled to testify Thursday on Benghazi, Republicans are in the midst of a nasty, idiotic shit-fit about George W being president at the time of the 9/11 attacks without an immigration policy.
(Illustration: George and Tony at Camp David, February 2001, found here).
Last week, a feud of the dumb-ass erupted between The Donald and Jeb! over incompetence — of Jeb!’s brother, George W.
A nutshell-storyboard via NPR:
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” he told Bloomberg.
When the questioner said he couldn’t blame Bush for terrorist attacks, Trump responded this way: “He was president, OK? … Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
And then, it all blew up on Twitter.
Jeb Bush lashed out, calling Trump “pathetic.”
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Trump shot back with a version of the elementary school barb, “I know you are, but what am I?”
“No… you’re pathetic,” Trump tweeted.
Jeb! can’t take that shit without a retort: ‘“Does anybody actually blame my brother for what happened on 9/11?” Bush said on CNN’s State of the Union. “They’re totally marginal … It calls into question Mr Trump’s credibility as commander-in-chief.”‘
And ‘marginal’ equals facts and reality — from that interesting, detailed ‘anybody actually blame‘ link above (the NY Times):
Yet, the White House failed to take significant action.
Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic.
On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews.
The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else.
Absolutely crazy.
And on to the newest flip on the real-reality behind the horrific invasion of Iraq — lies upon lies.
Even in the UK — further from the Daily Mail‘s reporting on the memos:
The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the President by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a sceptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction – when none existed.
In return, the President would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’.
The damning memo, from Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.
In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the President: ‘The UK will follow our lead
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A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favour of the war.
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The Powell document, headed ‘Secret… Memorandum for the President’, lifts the lid on how Blair and Bush secretly plotted the war behind closed doors at Crawford.
Powell says to Bush: ‘He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause,’ adding that Blair has the presentational skills to ‘make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace’.
Five months after the summit, Downing Street produced the notorious ‘45 minutes from doom’ dossier on Saddam Hussein’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction.
After Saddam was toppled, the dossier’s claims were exposed as bogus.
Nowhere in the memo is a diplomatic route suggested as the preferred option.
This shit could change the UK’s so-called investigation into the reality behind the run-up to the Iraqi war, the Chilcot Inquiry, which still hasn’t released its findings — this latest lie could maybe alter the outcome.
Via the Guardian:
Alex Salmond, the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman and Scotland’s former first minister, said “the net was now closing” around Blair and added to concern over Chilcot’s conduct.
“The memo contradicts claims from Mr Blair that all that time he had been seeking diplomatic ways to avoid an invasion. It also adds weight to the evidence given by Sir Christopher Meyer, the former UK ambassador to the United States – to the Chilcot inquiry – that the military timetable and preparation for invasion took precedence over any diplomacy and specifically over the timetable for the weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix,” Salmond said.
“The Chilcot inquiry has still to be published and these revelations will need to be looked at very seriously.
“The inquiry was demanded because people wanted answers, yet six years and £10m later we still have nothing – and the evidence against Blair is piling up.’’
As The Donald pointed out (via CNN):
“The fact is we had the worst attack in the history of our country during his reign. Jeb (Bush) said we were safe during his reign. That wasn’t true,” Trump said.
“And I’m not blaming anybody and I’m not blaming George Bush, although if you look at his three primary agencies, they hated each other, they weren’t talking … And a good leader would’ve made sure that they would get along and talk and lots of other things happen.”
Crazy when Trump’s near-about correct — a poodle from a cow’s ear…