A friend asked me to post this:

Why we went to war in Iraq:

the BBC moderators have referred this comment so I have asked my friend to post it here instead.)

In light of the Government being ordered to publish the minutes of their cabinet meeting discussing the decision to go to war in Iraq, the BBC's Nick Robinson posted a blog here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/01/cabinet_minutes.html

My reply to post number 50 is as follows:

@ 50.

50. At 08:53am on 28 Jan 2009, rahere wrote:

Whilst a lot of people on here do not do any real research, I did know who Craig Murray is and I have read much of his work.

Here is a long brain dump, from the top of my head, I apologise for the length of this, but it needs to be written. Please read on...

I also researched UN inspectors, looked up interviews and reports (in the public domain) from intelligence operatives on the ground, from Politicians, bankers, reporters, independent bloggers and NGO's and other actors involved directly and indirectly in the search for WMD.

Oh, I did the vast majority of this extensive research PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq and could only ever come to the conclusion that the invasion was illegal in international law sans a specific resolution authorising force... The existing UN resolutions gave no time-limit, nor automacity to military action. Whilst the inspectors on the ground where getting full co-operation from the Iraq regime (and the inspector's themselves stated many times that they were) and they only had a few months to go, then there was NO legitimacy in launching the invasion.

The French NEVER said that they would veto a second resolution "no matter what". That was another Blair lie. The French said that "SO LONG AS INSPECTORS ARE STILL WORKING IN IRAQ then they would veto a second resolution no matter what" I think that was a reasonable policy.

The UN inspectors were repeatedly given co-ordinates of places where the US/UK intelligence agencies "knew for a fact" (high level confidence) that WMD's, their pre-cursors, programmes, parts or parts thereof would definitely be located. EVERY time there was nothing there. It could be a lab, that had been sealed and not accessed for 13 years, the locks rusted shut. Or it could be a pile of rubble that used to be a factory, or even just a pile of sand. (which would be meticulously excavated to reveal that it was just a pile of sand).

It turned out most of this information was NOT coming from intelligence services at all, but was coming from the whitehouse Iraq group, or the Office of special plans or Rockingham or other agencies outside of the intelligence network that were created to cherry-pick existing intelligence or invent new intelligence that was "fixed around the policy" of invasion, no matter what. The real intelligence services were repeatedly leaking to the media that they could not verify ANY of the claims that where coming in about WMD in Iraq. But each agency was played off against the other. MI6 could not verify the data but were told that CIA could. Meanwhile the CIA could not but were told that the Russian's could, The Russians couldn't but were assured that the Italians could etc etc etc. America was using Chalibi's group of criminals to disseminate false information and feeding all of the different agencies lies.

In spite of these agency games, every single claim of evidence pointing to Iraq's growing stockpile of WMD was empty, and proven false before the invasion.

They could NOT let the inspector's finish the inspections though. Why? Well, the inspectors would have concluded that Iraq had no WMD, then there could not "legally" be an invasion.

The invasion was illegally launched on the back of deliberate lies. The fact that the UK and USA were still pushing the yellowcake from Africa lie after it had been publicly debunked by Hans Blix as a deliberate forgery proves that they were lying and they knew that they were lying. Why else continue to tell what was a known lie? They merely said that they had "more sources" for the story than one forged and then debunked memo. Well it turns out that, that was a lie too.

Why was this not exposed as the blatant lies that it was at the time?

Actually, It was. It was screamed from the rooftops at the time, but ONLY by people in the blogosphere.

These people were written off by the criminally servile mainstream media as wild conspiracy nuts. I wonder why? Could that be because it was all, in reality, an actual, real, live, wild conspiracy? It was, but it was a true one nonetheless.

The media were criminally subservient supine servants to the elite criminals pulling the strings of the neo-con push to war.

I believe that if they had been able to get Tony Blair to debate this issue with Hans Blix, or even Scott Ritter (one of the most eminent experts on Iraq's WMD and one of the inspection chiefs) on prime-time TV on the day before the war vote, then the UK would not have gone to war. The BBC did interview Scott Ritter, at 3:30 AM on talkback, weeks earlier.

Blair was given prime-time to regurgitate repeated lies, un-challenged in any meaningful way.

He lied about the Iraqis throwing out the inspectors in 1998. (The Americans withdrew them) He lied about the properties of the alleged WMD allegedly in Iraq's possession. He was never even asked if the "unaccounted for stocks" would even still be viable as weapons.

It turned out (again, known at the time) that the only stocks that were unaccounted for were due to accounting errors between Iraqis and the UN and the UN and Governments of member states.

Way back at the end of Gulf war 1, Saddam was ordered to disarm. He refused. he made life difficult for the inspectors and he hid stuff. The UN inspection teams found everything he was hiding because of the sophisticated forensic techniques and tools at their disposal. Including the paper-trails from all the supply chain, inside and outside of Iraq. Because of this initial difficulty from Saddam, the UN knew it could not trust him fully, so they decided to "estimate" what the THEORETICAL maximum capacity of Iraq's WMD manufacturing capability was. in other words, They estimated how much stuff Iraq's weapons factories and labs could produce.

Over time this estimate became a fixed actual real amount of weapons according to enemies of Iraq. They never existed in reality.

So the unaccounted for weapons did NOT exist and never ever did exist at all.

BUT, what if they did? would they still be viable? To my knowledge, the media never asked Blair to back up his claims by asking him about the shelf life of these weapons. most of which had a shelf life (if kept in perfect refrigerated conditions) of months. Some only of a few weeks. So even if these non-existent weapons were still to be found, they would have been rendered inert by the laws of physics and chemistry.

So we went to war over non-existent out of date and harmless weapons? No, we went to war for a number of reasons, NONE of them legal.

The real reasons (for there were more than one) I discovered were (in no particular order)

1. Regime change.
2. Bush Juniour's revenge against Saddam's threat to Bush Senior.
3. Saddam selling oil in Euro's instead of Dollars, weakening the petrodollar and risking economic collapse for the US.
4. The oil itself.
5. To remove a risk to Israel.
6. To liberate specific artefacts from the museum in Baghdad and destroy Babylon.
7. Strategic advantage over Iran (getting troops in all the countries surrounding Iran)
8. To send a strong message to Libya, Syria and the "axis of evil" countries

Whilst several of those reasons are understandable and reasonable, (and resulted in Libya changing course) none of them were lawful reasons to invade a sovereign nation.

Tony Blair is a war criminal and should be put on trial in the Hague.

Back for a one-off post

*UPDATED*

The BBC are claiming that they cannot help the reputable and politically neutral charities with their appeal because helping impartial charities appealing for aid to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe would breach their own impartiality.

WHAT THE FUCK? Helping impartial humanitarian reputable charities risks impartiality?

Oh really and how the FUCK do you work that out then? eh????

The BBC has aired appeals by the Disaster Emergency Committee many times before to help the victims of politically inspired crisis'. By politically inspired, I mean victims of war, and victims of Governments or rebel forces that cause people to live in drought infected areas and any other disaster that is instigated by human means, as opposed to natural disasters like earthquakes or floods etc...

Well, the BBC aired the appeal for the Former Yugoslavia (a political crisis) in 1994:


The BBC aired the appeal for Rwanda (a political crisis) in 1994:


The BBC aired the appeal for Kosovo (a political crisis) in 1999:


The BBC aired the appeal for the Sudan (a political crisis) in 2004:


The BBC aired an appeal for the Congo (a political crisis) in 1998:


So why would the BBC NOT air the latest appeal to help the innocent victims in Gaza?

Has the BBC ever refused to air an appeal of this sort before?

Well, yes, actually, it has. The BBC refused to air an appeal for the victims of Lebanon after the last Israeli incursion there.

Notice a pattern here?

The BBC has only ever refused to show a charitable appeal by impartial charities if it is to alleviate the suffering of the victims of Israeli aggression and disproportionate violence. That is the ONLY time the BBC refuses to help these impartial charities.

Why would the BBC refuse to help the victims of Israeli aggression?

Marcus Agius Senior Independent Director

Agius has been a non-executive Director of Barclays since 1 September 2006, and succeeded Matthew Barrett as Chairman from 1 January 2007. He was previously chairman of the London branch of investment bank Lazard and non-executive chairman of BAA Limited.

Born into a Jewish family, Agius is married to Katherine (born 1949), daughter of Edmund de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family of England, with two children, and has a close involvement with the Rothschild family estate, Exbury Gardens in Hampshire.

That could be a reason? They have Zionist Jews at the very highest level of the corporation. Their political bias shows loud and clear that the BBC has failed to behave in an impartial manner in this sordid and disgusting episode.

In refusing this appeal, the BBC are colluding with the war-criminals of Israel and exasperating the disaster in Gaza and by taking this decision, the BBC are going to ensure that more people die as a result of war-crimes than would otherwise be the case. IN reality, the BBC are aiding and abetting war crimes. (As they did in failing to report the Blair and Bush Governments lies about Iraq's WMD, but merely acting in supine acquiescence to parrot blatantly inaccurate propaganda as fact).

It is only the bravery of some BBC journalists and the fury that they feel at their employers that has ensured massive publicity for this Gaza cause. Had the leadership of the BBC had their way, then there would have been no publicity for this cause at all.

These brave journalists, going against the stated BBC policy, (but in reality acting in the spirit of it 100%) are mitigating those deaths and they should be rewarded for it.

Without further ado, please follow the link to the disaster emergency committee website and donate all you can:

Here is the video that the BBC and SKY TV did not want you to see. I can see why now too. The scale of the destruction of civilian areas is nothing short of collective punishment and is therefore a war-crime. The BBC and SKY are aiding and abetting war criminals.

Here's the video: