11/07/04

Getting Away With Murder

Tony Blair Responsible For Deaths A church minister has denounced Tony Blair and George Bush at the funeral of a Scottish soldier who died in a roadside explosion in Iraq.

It is undoubtedly true that Blair and Bush are both responsible for the deaths and mutilations of thousands of people - including many of their own countrymen - and that their various justifications for their actions of warfare were mostly bogus.

And they are also now having to spend billions of our dollars trying to pick up the pieces.

How do these two politicians sleep at night? - given that they have inflicted such enormous misery upon so many thousands of others.

Would you sleep at night having hurt and killed so many people unnecessarily?

Would you not be racked with guilt and shame - even though you acted upon what you thought was the best available evidence?

Would you not hang your head, retire from office, apologise profusely, and do your best to do something to make amends?

This is what decent people would do.

But Bush and Blair have already forgotten the permanent harm that they have done to so many people.

It means nothing to them.

It troubles them not a jot.

They are concerned only about remaining in high office and then furthering their careers and their incomes.

Bush and Blair have killed and maimed thousands of people.

And the fact that they might have been misled by the intelligence services does not absolve them from their responsibility to get things right.

The buck has to stop with them.

Who else is there?

And they should be forced to take responsibility for what has happened.

These men are in charge of the intelligence services.

As government leaders, it is their job to ensure that their government departments - and this includes the intelligence services - are doing their own jobs properly.

And if they fail to do this - for whatever reason - then they have not been doing their jobs properly.

And in this case, thousands of people have been seriously hurt or killed as a result of their failure to do their jobs properly.

It is an outrage and an affront to all of us that these two arrogant, uncaring self-serving men are allowed to remain in office.

Indeed, decent men would have resigned.

But, on the contrary, look at this ...

Intelligence Failures Were Responsible For Iraq War A devastating critique of the US intelligence failings that led to the Iraq war sparked a row in Washington last night and set the scene for Britain’s own report into its security agencies next week.

... Tony Blair is actually proposing to make John Scarlett - the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee - the head of MI6!

He is actually intending to promote to the very top of MI6 one the men most responsible for the UK's intelligence failures!

How much more dishonourable, more unaccountable and more corrupt can these officials be allowed to become?

When are they going to be made accountable for their failures and for the monumental tragedies that they have caused as a result of them?

They are, literally, being allowed to get away with murder.

And Tony Blair is undoubtedly wishing to promote John Scarlett as some kind of reward - presumably, for protecting him in some way.

+ Two former intelligence officers have cast doubts over Tony Blair's use of evidence about the threat posed by Iraq to justify going to war.

Coincidentally, just as I was writing the above piece, news came from the BBC that Tony Blair had, in fact, been thinking about resigning some time ago, but that he had been persuaded to stay on by cabinet colleagues.

There are two things worth noting about this.

1. The timing of this apparent revelation. 

Why has it occurred now?

Well. It has occurred now because over the next few days there is going to be a report published which seems likely to damn much of Tony Blair's behaviour with regard to the Iraq war.

And he wants to paint himself as a good guy who was thinking of resigning all along.

2. Organisms!

Notice that his cabinet colleagues do not want him to resign because it might affect negatively the organism of which they are a part i.e. the governing Labour Party.

These people are not concerned about honour, or incompetence, or the deaths of thousands of people, they are concerned for themselves.

Oh Angry Harry.

What on Earth do you expect?

These people are only human beings.

Of course they are going to be mostly concerned for themselves and for their party leader.

It is only 'natural'!

Yes. That's exactly right.

And this is why it is such a problem for all of us.

These people are, indeed, concerned mostly for themselves.

And the problem is that they are exerting far too much power over the rest of us in their never-ending (but 'natural') quest to look after their own interests.