Blair Knew US Had No Post-War Plan for Iraq By Nicholas Watt The Observer UK
Sunday 17 June 2007
PM committed troops despite chaos fears.
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
'Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,' Mandelson tells The Observer's chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.
'But I remember him saying at the time: "Look, you know, I can't do everything. That's chiefly America's responsibility, not ours."' Mandelson then criticises his friend: 'Well, I'm afraid that, as we now see, wasn't good enough.'.
Opponents of the war, who have long claimed that the Pentagon planned a short, sharp offensive to overthrow Saddam Hussein with little thought of the consequences, claimed last night that the programme vindicated their criticisms. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, told The Observer: 'These frank admissions that the Prime Minister was aware of the inadequacies of the preparations for post-conflict Iraq are a devastating indictment.'
Blair's most senior foreign affairs adviser at the time of the war makes clear that Blair was 'exercised' on the exact issue raised by the war's opponents. Sir David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to Washington, says: 'It's hard to know exactly what happened over the post-war planning. I can only say that I remember the PM raising this many months before the war began. He was very exercised about it.'
Sunday 17 June 2007
PM committed troops despite chaos fears.
Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
'Obviously more attention should have been paid to what happened after, to the planning and what we would do once Saddam had been toppled,' Mandelson tells The Observer's chief political commentator, Andrew Rawnsley, who presents the documentary.
'But I remember him saying at the time: "Look, you know, I can't do everything. That's chiefly America's responsibility, not ours."' Mandelson then criticises his friend: 'Well, I'm afraid that, as we now see, wasn't good enough.'.
Opponents of the war, who have long claimed that the Pentagon planned a short, sharp offensive to overthrow Saddam Hussein with little thought of the consequences, claimed last night that the programme vindicated their criticisms. Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, told The Observer: 'These frank admissions that the Prime Minister was aware of the inadequacies of the preparations for post-conflict Iraq are a devastating indictment.'
Blair's most senior foreign affairs adviser at the time of the war makes clear that Blair was 'exercised' on the exact issue raised by the war's opponents. Sir David Manning, now Britain's ambassador to Washington, says: 'It's hard to know exactly what happened over the post-war planning. I can only say that I remember the PM raising this many months before the war began. He was very exercised about it.'
Lees verder: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2104984,00.html Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/061707B.shtml
En ook onze eigen premier Balkenende had ja gezegd voordat hij wist waar hij ja op had gezegd. Het zijn met name mensen die zelf geen oorlog hoeven voeren die graag anderen zo snel mogelijk een oorlog in sturen. Ze willen groter lijken dan ze zijn.
En nu heeft president Srakozy van Franrijk voorgesteld om de mislukte premier van het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Tony Blair, wegens zijn onschatbare verdiensten president van de EU te maken. En zo helpt men elkaar de brug over en aan banen.
2 opmerkingen:
In zijn onthullende boek 'Armed Madhouse' heeft onderzoeksjournalist Greg Palast het verhaal rond de Irak-planning. Er bestonden twee Amerikaanse plannen voor Irak, een van het State Department en een van het Pentagon. Het Pentagon wist met name door toedoen van de ervaren bureacratische invechter Rumsfeld met de bal aan de haal te gaan. Voor na de overwinning wilden de neoconservatieve planners van het Pentagon een extreem vrije-markt economie realiseren, een soort Chili aan de Tigris. Jerry Bremer, de Amerikaanse pro-consul van Irak, heeft een hele trits decreten afgekondigd bedoeld om de extreme vrije marktprincipes vast te verankeren, zodanig dat de Irakezen zelf ze niet (op legale wijze) konden terugdraaien.
Opnieuw was het Naomi Klein die dit alles als eerste (voor zover ik weet) beschreef in een onthullend artikel: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197
Die vrij markt plannen zijn overigens een ramp gebleken. Palast beschrijft hoe Irakese boeren hun bestaan weggevaagd zagen doordat rijke landen hun landbouwoverschotten dumpten in Irak (alle invoerrechten waren afgeschaft).
Dus: er was wel degelijk planning. Maar Irak moest een vrije markt paradepaardje worden, precies zoals Chili onder Pinochet. Mischien is dit oude koek voor je, Stan, maar ik vond dit deel van het verhaal totaal ontbreken in het Observer-stuk.
Groet!
De inval in Irak werd eigenlijk al aangekondigd in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" uit 2000 van de neo-conservatieve denktank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Wiens leden o.a. waren/zijn: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Lewis Libby, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle en R. James Woolsey. Zo geschreven, zo gedaan, toen die clan aan de macht kwam.
Enkele topics:
- "This report proceeds from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces."
- "The true cost of not meeting our defense requirements will be a lessened capacity for American global leadership and, ultimately, the loss of a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity."
- It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership"
- It calls for the US to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as a "core mission."
- "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations."
- "Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests as Iraq has."
- "New methods of attack - electronic, 'non-lethal', biological - will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
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