travelerjim wrote:When #43 entered the Iraq War it was based upon best intelligence available from the NSA and CIA and our Military leaders
Apart from the fact that the statement above is untrue, rather than add this to the Trump thread, a new one. There's a highly revealing interview on the BBC website this morning with Sir John Chilcott, who conducted the 7-year Inquiry into the British government's actions during the lead up to the Gulf War.
Tony Blair was not "straight with the nation" about his decisions in the run up to the Iraq War, the chairman of the inquiry into the war has told the BBC.
Speaking for the first time since publishing his report a year ago, Sir John Chilcot discussed why he thinks the former PM made those decisions.
He said the evidence Mr Blair gave the inquiry was "emotionally truthful" but he relied on beliefs rather than facts.
A reminder that -
The inquiry concluded that Mr Blair overstated the threat posed by Iraq leader Saddam Hussein and the invasion was not the "last resort" action presented to Parliament, when it backed the action, and the public . . . Asked if the former prime minister had been as straight as he could have been with the country and the inquiry, Sir John told the BBC: "Any prime minister taking a country into war has got to be straight with the nation and carry it, so far as possible, with him or her. I don't believe that was the case in the Iraq instance."
He went on: "Tony Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything. Advocacy for my position, 'my Blair position'."
He said the former Labour leader gave the case for war based on his own assessment of the circumstances, saying Mr Blair made the case "pinning it on my belief, not on the fact, what the assessed intelligence said."
Not mentioned in the interview is the comment made his his autobiography by Britain's Ambassador to Washington at the time Blair took over as Prime Minster. Effectively this was
"I want you to get up Bush's ass and stay there!"
Sir John also talked at length about Mr Blair's relationship with the US president in the build-up to the war.
"Tony Blair made much of, at various points, the need to exert influence on American policy making," he said.
"To do that he said in terms at one point, 'I have to accept their strategic objective, regime change, in order to exert influence.' For what purpose? To get them to alter their policy? Of course not. So in effect it was a passive strategy. Just go along."
Commenting on the documentation revealed when the Iraq Inquiry was published, Sir John revealed that his first response on reading a note sent by Mr Blair to Mr Bush in 2002 in which he told him 'I shall be with you whatever', was "you mustn't say that".
His reaction was: "You're giving away far too much. You're making a binding commitment by one sovereign government to another which you can't fulfil. You're not in a position to fulfil it. I mean he didn't even know the legal position at that point" . . .
Asked if the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Bush was appropriate, Sir John says the former prime minister was running "coercive diplomacy" that clashed with the settled position of the government.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40510540