I know from personal experience that Jeremy Greenstock is an unusually kind person. It was interesting to watch his evidence this morning, and I am particularly pleased that Sky gave us two hours of it uninterrupted.
Jeremy’s contention that the Iraq war was legal but not legitimate is an interesting attempt at nuance. I don’t buy it, but it illustrates that he was plainly very uncomfortable about the whole thing. I am not sure that even now he has really come to the terms with the fact that all he was involved in was a charade. Bush and Blair had decided to invade at Crawford, a full year before Jeremy’s painstaking crafting of fig leaf resolutions and attempts at consensus building. As Greenstock conceded, the military timetable had been decided and the diplomacy had to try to run ahead. When it stumbled, the invasion carried on regardless. Greenstock was ridden over.
I thought Jeremy’s attempts to convince himself rather than us that Britian’s “commitment to the diplomatic route” won friends and helped to build a consensus after the invasion, was a rather pathetic (in the true meaning) attempt to explain away his own futility.
There was one hilarious abandonment of logic when Jeremy said that he believed Iraq did have WMD, but they are still hidden. He offered two attempts at evidence for this. One was that they had a concealment committee. Well, if so, somone on the committee would have leaked post-invasion. The second was that some fighters had been buried in the sands, and revealed when the wind blew away the sand. He offered that as evidence that weapons can be concealed in the desert sands. Actually, Jeremy, it is evidence that they can’t.
But what was entirely plain is that Greenstock is much more sceptical of the Iraq War than the committee who were questioning him. The packing of the committee with confirmed war supporters (Greenstock at one point made what I believe was a sly dig about committee member Rod Lyne’s role at the time in question) makes the whole exercise futile, not least by limiting witnesses to answering non-sceptical questions. There was a priceless moment when Gilbert invited Greenstock to agree that the French and Russians only opposed the war from national and personal interests, and Greenstock declined to do so.
Nobody expects the Spanish Extradition !
I rmemebr well that BBC was telling with glee that war agasint iraq had been decided between tony bastard blair and bush and what needs to be done is simply to sell that war to the rest of the world-and that repeort was in july 2002.
BBc was rooting for this charade and was very smug-as can be expected from a prime spy organisation(that is BBc for you) working for the enlgish race.
very good point avatar singh, the BBC seems to be always getting away with their propaganda channels, regardless whether its the Falklands, Gulf war or the Iraq war.
They are egging us on to send our sons into service, making sure that none of the MP’s gets asked any questions as to their sons reaqdying themselves for conflict. They are the one’s who make uip words, leave out importan bits and shilly shally around the political parties, showing their Dependence(not Independence)by talking up the political agenbda of whoever is the next incumbend to power.
Sack the lot and privatise the BBC, after you have split off the world service, I’m sure they could find their own funding from somewhere and could easily run their own show.
@Ingo
Your haiku does have 17 syllables, but as I understand it, they are supposed to be grouped in the pattern 5-7-5 syllables in three respective lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku).
So, if I may, I might modify your work of art a bit, to read:
Envoy Greenstock speaks
Like rain falling off a duck
It honestly seems
PS. You could have ‘As’ beginning the second line instead of ‘Like’ if you wish, to avoid the diphthong.
PPS. Or ‘H.E.’ instead of ‘Envoy’ in the first line – but to be honest, I would allow the diphthongs and keep it as it is.
“privatise the BBC”
It already is, has been 100% since the Gilligan affair. Might as well hand it over to this abhorrence of humanity and be done with it…
http://tinyurl.com/ydjv79c
Oh, honour, it seems
Has been buried alive
Under, so much blood
very kind of you chaps, thank you for the lesson, it was my first attempt. Will try again and get in touch with my inner ‘dip thong’.
Only question is, how deep do you dip this thong? (;-)
Let us take Iraq
So much it has to give us
Ask questions later
@ Vromsky
Thanks for the link…the ‘Further Last Words of Dutch Schultz’ was very interesting.
So….is Tony_Opmoc an exercise in PSYOPS designed to discourage and demoralize…or are its (his?) inputs an ‘art form’ cleverly disguised as complete and utter crap?
“So….is Tony_Opmoc an exercise in PSYOPS designed to discourage and demoralize”
I don’t think so. Tony has written some exceedingly intelligent and useful posts here. But he has also made references to Speckled Hen, and it appears to me that the later in the evening that Tony posts, the more likely it is that Speckled Hen comes into the picture. But of course I could be very wrong, and will be more than happy if Tony chooses to correct me. I know he posts in at least one other location that I read online.
@ Writerman: only 6 syllables in line 2, you need 7. Maybe ‘totally buried’ instead of ‘buried alive’?
@MJ: 10/10, manifests the deplorable mentality of invasion for selfish reasons so well, maybe it ought to be a song!
@ingo: a diphthong is the sound where two half-vowels are joined together, like the ‘ow’ in ‘down’, so it’s not a pure vowel like the ‘a’ in like ‘gas’.
Questions to be asked
Answers to be given but
No blame to accrue
Verbal jousts even
Words appear in glossy print
But nothing changes
Come the day and come
the hour, the blood spilled for oil
Will be forgotten
@ at November 30, 2009 12:41 AM
That’s impressive stuff from someone too modest to sign a name. I salute your talent nevertheless!
@lwtc247 12:27
My responses would be NNNN and NQ, the last being a very faintly optimistic ‘not quite’. The inevitable flood of whitewash will convince a few more people that the game as presently played is not worth the candle. I find it impossible to believe that growing public awareness of corruption and actual criminality in government will have no consequences.
It will certainly kindle a little more heat under the wish for separation in Scotland – perhaps the dissolution of the Union is the most damaging blow that could be struck against the present gangsters-in-charge (as someone has called them – on this blog, I think) and certainly the most plausibly achievable.
Anent dipthongs in haikus, you’ll be losing your Scottish audience, AbuRene – we don’t dipthongise. There’s an interesting note at the start of one of the Oxford dictionaries (can’t remember which) on pronunciation. ‘Awe’, ‘or’ and ‘oar’ all sound the same in English (it says) except in Scotland, where they are all distinctly different.
@ Vronsky
Thanks for the lesson in Oor Wullie’s English – though I would have thought that ‘ou’ in ‘Mousa Broch’ would be pretty much a diphthong. As I see, Scottish English might not include all the diphthonga used South of the border (and I’m happy to take your word on the examples you give), they do exist, although they might sound a bit different from their English counterparts. The ones in the haikus might be examples, such as the Scottish ‘like’, ‘jousts’ and possibly ‘envoy’ as well.
@tomy_opmoc
thinkorbeeaten.blogspot.com
Thanks for that link. Great stuff.
Audrey Kurth Cronin
Ziobitch on Start The Week:
Arab violence!
@ anno
I listened to Start the Week, but I didn’t hear any statements from Cronin supporting Israeli occupation of the West bank, or apartheid-like laws, or the blockage of Gaza. Which ‘Zionist’ statements from her interview were you referring to?
Abu Rene
She repeatedly accused Arabs of violence at each and every given opportunity to give her opinion.
Which I thought was a bit rich coming from the senior advisor to a country that recently has invaded two sovereign nations illegally and caused the deaths of millions. In Iraq five million refugees have been given amnesties by the Iraqi government but refused to return to a country controlled by Shi’a.
In Afghanistan, after the carpet bombing in 2003, 3 million fled to refugee camps in Pakistan, and a lot has happened since then.
Everyboby knew that if USUK invaded Iraq chaos would descend on that country. That’s what the present enquiry is discussing now. There is nothing I can do about that because we live in a cover-up tradition, but please let me challenge rabid, racist, Islamophobic accusations from a Zionist, US spokesperson.
Abu Rene
Do you think that Zionism is a limited,local affair between the citizens of Israel and Palestine?
Please google the Zionist websites and read their discussions about the actions their evil cause must take to further their interests in the world.
Inflammatory accusations would not be tolerated from Muslims on the BBC, so why do they permit Zionists to promote their evil agenda in prime air-time? Can you tell me please?
@anno
Zionism, as I understand it, was and is an attempt to create and maintain a Jewish state in Palestine. I have no particular interest in Zionist websites, but those I have looked at seem to be encouraging ‘aliya’ or Jewish emigration to Israel.
You still haven’t said what ‘Zionist’ statements were made by Cronin. Which ‘inflammatory accusations’ were you referring to?
Abe Rene: correction – Zionism was an an attempt to create and maintain a Jewish state. Herzl, the founder of Zionism, originally proposed Kenya. The push for Palestine came later.
Even in the 30s and 40s Zionist leaders where happy to discuss with Hitler his proposal of Madagascar.
“Aliya” is of course one of the subtler forms of Israeli aggression. The rules of eligibilty for Israeli citizen are so broad and loose they lead to an influx of immigrants so massive the country cannot accommodate them. This of course becomes a pretext for ever-increasing illegal land-grabs of Palestinian territory.
Re “I think people like Oliver Kamm and John Rentoul were desperate to see Blair elected as President of Europe not because they felt he would achieve anything but because it might have provided him some protection from prosecution.” – Babor (above)
George Monbiot has interestingly suggested the opposite may be the case:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/10/26/arresting-blair/
Abu Rene
Please listen again to the programme and count the times that Audrey Kurth Cronin made the accusation of Arab violence. Iraq has now passed a law permitting foreigners to buy and own land in Iraq. I have pointed out several times on this website that Zionists have been buying land in Iraq in order to expand into that country. This land grabbing at knock down wartime prices, especially near oil-rich Kirkuk has now been made legal.
Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq against his senior diplomatic advisors is currently in the spotlight and this is the topic of this blog. It is outrageous that his cause should be assisted by the BBC inviting aggressively racist Zionist shills to influence the general public into thinking that there could possibly be an excuse for invading another sovereign country on the who;;y untruthful and outrageously racist pretext that the race of that country was prone to violence.
UK, US and Israel have been the principal perpetrators of violence in this century and no amount of BBC sponsored racism can disguise that fact. What a horrible way to start the week after a lovely Eid holiday.
@anno
Just took your advice and listened to Cronin’s interview again, this time listening carefully for anything that sounded like ‘Arab terror’:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr
(the first 10 minutes or so)
She never mentioned ‘Arab terror’ once! Terrorism in general, yes; Al-Qaeda lots of times, but there was no generalized racist anti-Arab statements or support for Israeli settlements etc. In fact she made a point that Craig has made before: the danger of treating ‘Al Qaeda’ as a single entity such that its importance becomes exaggerated. I think I might get her book if it becomes available in a cheap edition!
Did I say anything about ‘terror’ Mr Rene ?
@anno – indeed not, the word you used was ‘violence’; my apologies for the inaccurate citation. So, I went back and listened to the extract again.
At the very beginning there’s one mention of ‘violence’ in the Middle East triggered by political failure and religious rifts at the beginning, before Cronin is actually brought in.
The rest is as I said – she’s essentially an academic, no evidence of Zionist axe-grinding.
@ MJ
Thanks for the historical pointer about the connection between Zionism and Africa. This wiki article(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl) indicates that Herzl’s original idea was for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but that Kenya was on offer from 1903 till 1905 when the Zionists confirmed their preference for Palestine. Madagascar may have been favoured (by antisemites) in the late 1930s, but Tel Aviv was a thriving city by then, so we may doubt whether that would have worked.