Iraq Inquiry – The Smoking Gun Moment 156


This is the moment when Jonathan Powell admitted that Downing St was set on war irrespective of whether Saddam had WMD or not. This admission contradicted all the carefully constructed lies of key war criminals David Manning, Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell himself.

The implications of this passage could not be more stark. The aim was war. Whether or not Iraq had WMD was irrelevant. There was no interest in knowing the truth about WMD. Indeed to know the truth would be negative.

A ten year old could understand the crucial importance of what Powell said here. But the hand picked committee of pro-war cronies failed completely to pick up on it.

SIR RODERIC LYNE: I mean, Sir David Manning and

8 Sir Jeremy Greenstock both said, but differently, that

9 they would have liked to have had more time, but you

10 don’t agree with that?

11 MR JONATHAN POWELL: No, we asked for more time repeatedly

12 from January onwards of the President, and we got more

13 time in each case. Eventually, by the time we got to

14 midMarch, he wasn’t going to give us more time and the

15 French veto knocked any chance

16 SIR RODERIC LYNE: He wasn’t going to give us more time. If

17 we had had more time, if the inspectors had had longer,

18 there had been longer to build up the picture and you

19 had continued these extraordinary diplomatic efforts

20 that you described, would there not have been a chance,

21 at that stage, of actually gathering the international

22 support that we had not managed to gather by then?

23 MR JONATHAN POWELL: No. I mean, if you think about it,

24 Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. We were

25 wrong. The intelligence was wrong. So, no matter how

82

1 long you had carried the inspections on, they weren’t

2 going to find anything, and, from what we know of

3 Saddam, it is extremely unlikely that he would have

4 cooperated. So we would have been in exactly the same

5 situation for months and months and months. There would

6 have been no discovery of weapons of mass destruction,

7 but 8

SIR RODERIC LYNE: But one way or the other they might have

9 built up a more convincing picture, if they had had more

10 time.

11 MR JONATHAN POWELL: A convincing picture of what?

12 SIR RODERIC LYNE: Well, a picture to convince the people

13 who weren’t not convinced by our arguments in March.

14 MR JONATHAN POWELL: But if there weren’t weapons of mass

15 destruction, we wouldn’t have been able you are

16 asking me in retrospect, “Would we have had more time?”

17 The answer is more time would have achieved nothing.

18 SIR RODERIC LYNE: Thank you very much.


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156 thoughts on “Iraq Inquiry – The Smoking Gun Moment

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  • tony_opmoc

    technicolour,

    I was talking about cultural displacement and cited 4 examples. I could well have argued, that the people of Oldham were the most welcoming in the World.

    I don’t need to take lessons in morality from you, when you have quiet clearly demonstrated your own tribal prejudices and bias.

    Try coming out of your box and being objective.

    Tony

  • technicolour

    You were talking about ‘cultural displacement’? Pull the other one. You were equating the experience of ‘indigenous’ (white) people in Oldham (and three other examples) with the experiences of Native Americans and aborigines who, may I remind you, were murdered in vast numbers. Not to mention equating the arrival of darker skinned people in the UK to the arrival of the Nazis.

    Give it up. Time for a rethink, or another alias.

  • technicolour

    Well, Mark, your comment was beautiful and made me smile. I’m not trying to tell Roderick off.

  • technicolour

    Sorry, ‘outburst’? Which ‘outburst’? Please, reproduce it.

    Am I ‘at peace with pro-Zionism’? What does that mean? I thought we had agreed that the word ‘Zionism’ contained many shades of meaning. Are you the same Mark Golding?

    ‘Having read the protocols’? What?

  • technicolour

    Oh, I see. ‘advocated a Jewish state for all its citizens’. Very clever. Sorry, thought you were acting in good faith, and therefore did not submit you to linguistic scrutiny. My mistake.

    I refer you back to the definition of ‘Liberal Zionism’: “advocating among other things the need for Palestinian statehood in order to form a more democratic society in Israel, affirming the free market, and calling for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel.”

  • technicolour

    Roderick, by the way, I am often way off topic myself, so no telling off intended, as I’m sure you know. Sorry we can’t meet up for that pint.

  • tony_opmoc

    technicolour,

    Whilst you are far more intelligent, subtle and linguistically competent than some other posters on here, your true colour’s shine through.

    You see you try your hardest to hide them and succeed most of the time.

    However, for any poster who dares raise any criticism of your tribal bias, you use the standard personal attack dog technique together with a deliberate misinterpretion of the meaning of what was said.

    You accuse others of using exactly the same techniques that you do.

    I’m convinced you know full well, the real origins of one hell of a lot of evil.

    What you don’t seem to realise is that the innocent, do not go into repetitive aggressive defence of their tribe, because they have done nothing wrong to defend.

    Such, continual repetetive defence clearly demonstrates the guilt you are trying to hide.

    Tony

  • technicolour

    Dear Tony, I have nothing to hide. I think you need to rethink your analogies, at the very least. I would very much like an answer to my question about the real problems in Oldham.

  • tony_opmoc

    technicolour,

    I have almost no experience of Oldham in well over 30 years.

    If you have nothing to hide, I would love to hear from you with regards to what you were doing in the North-West Frontier Province?

    Were you there as a tourist, a hippy on a pilgrimage to discover the meaning of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, an aid worker, a soldier, or a member of an Intelligence Agency?

    “technicolor: “asoba: point of order: I was in the NWFP/Afghanistan. The USA directly funded Hekmatyar.”

    Thanks. Okay, I can certainly go a long with that.

    That sounds very intrepid of you. When were you there?

    Posted by: angrysoba at January 18, 2010 1:38 PM”

    You never answered the question

    Tony

  • technicolour

    Mmm, and why should I tell you, now, at this stage,’Tony’? Reply to my previous points please, first:

    “and tony-opmoc, how you can unblushingly equate what happened to the Native American Indians and the aborigines with what has happened to the ‘indigenous’ people of Oldham is extraordinary. Were the people of Oldham massacred? Were they deliberately infected with small pox? Have I missed something?”

    oh, and this one:

    “So, to recap, the people with darker skins living in areas of the North and London are

    a) Carrying out genocide, as was committed against the ‘indigenous peoples’ of North America and Australia

    b) The equivalent of the Nazis.”

    Go for it. Apologies are fine.

  • tony_opmoc

    I am quoting your own words directly (well copied and pasted by angrysoba), and asking for you to expand on them, as you say you have nothing to hide.

    Yet you obfuscate, and ask me to answer, your total misrepresentation of what I said?

    I am not going to answer for something I didn’t say.

    I am merely asking you to expand on something you did say.

    Or have you indeed something to hide?

    Tony

  • technicolour

    Look, I understand the anguish of poor people faced with foreclosure and slow starvation. I have seen and talked to people on council estates in Blackburn. It is all wrong. But the ‘wrong’ is not in people’s skin colour; it’s in the division and lack of warmth. Nick Griffin is getting rich off of it, don’t you understand?

  • technicolour

    Anyway. I was in the NWFP/Afghanistan in 1990, angrysoba, sorry for having missed your question there. Thank you so much, Tony for pointing out that I did.

  • tony_opmoc

    technicolour,

    I virtually lived in a Council Estate in Bradford for a year, 10 years before you were in NWFP/Afghanistan – what exactly were you doing there?????

    I can assure you that the “anguish of poor people faced with foreclosure and slow starvation” and “division and lack of warmth” was not an issue then, and almost certainly is not now.

    So I guess it was either the CIA or Mossad.

    If it had been MI6 your choice of words and knowledge of Northern England would be different.

    But how come you flew all the way to Blackburn to support Craig Murray’s election campaign or did you make that bit up?

    Tony

  • technicolour

    You posted that before, Tony.

    I’m quite prepared to believe you’re acting in good faith, but could you just refute your allegations that suggest:

    a) You equate the arrival of Pakistanis and Indians in the UK with a Nazi invasion.

    b) Their arrival is carrying out genocide, as was committed against the ‘indigenous peoples’ of North America and Australia

    Thank you.

  • technciolour

    By the way, Tone, you missed out ‘working for an NGO’ as one of your reasons for being in the NWFP/Afghanistan region at that time. Very suspicious, oh yes.

  • tony_opmoc

    I didn’t make such allegations, that was merely your misinterpretation of what I said.

    Now will you answer the question.

    What were you doing in NWFP/Afghanistan in 1997 and who were you working for and what were your objectives.

    You did say you have nothing to hide, and you might as well tell the truth, because (a) I don’t really give a toss, and (b) probably nobody else does either.

    Tony

  • technicolour

    Well, you know, I don’t care where you’ve been either. It’s not remotely relevant to this discussion, so I don’t know why you raised it. Still, Tony, before I reply to your disinterested question, could you confirm that:

    a) You equate the arrival of Pakistanis and Indians in the UK with a Nazi invasion.

    b) Their arrival is having the same impact on ‘indigenous’ people as the genocides committed against the ‘indigenous peoples’ of North America and Australia.

    Or not. Thanks.

  • tony_opmoc

    a) I don’t equate the arrival of Pakistanis and Indians in the UK with a Nazi invasion.

    b) I don’t think their arrival is having the same impact on ‘indigenous’ people as the genocides committed against the ‘indigenous peoples’ of North America and Australia.

    c) I don’t normally drink alcohol on Thursday evenings and on Friday not until after 5pm

    Now will you answer the question.

    If you had been in Afghanistan in 2007, then you would have been there at the same time as someone I know, and he is not a soldier, tourist, hippy and he doesn’t work for an intelligence agency.

    Your reluctance to answer, seems to demonstrate you have something to hide.

    I would of course understand if you were a black skinned Muslim, because you’d be worried about the SWAT team coming round.

    There is no way the guy I know would have got away with what he did in 2007, if he had looked like Osama Bin Laden. As he looks like an American Marine he was O.K., but judging from his photos and the reaction he got when he returned to the UK rather upset.

    Tony

  • Anonymous

    “However, I can fully appreciate how many indigenous people feel when their local community is totally overwhelmed, by a completely different culture, without them having any means whatsoever to protect themselves from such invasion.

    It has happenned to the indigenous Native American, and the indigenous Native Aborigini, and the indigenous Native Oldhamer.”

    “White people were the largest ethnic group in Oldham, making up around 84.4 % of the Borough’s population.”

    2001 census http://www.oldham.gov.uk/ethnic-groups-in-oldham.pdf

  • tony_opmoc

    The statistics belie the reality. Its neither the fault of the immigrants who were encouraged in their thousands to move to Oldham, only to find the work was no longer there (as it had in fact moved to India and China), nor the indigenous. The real problem is mass unemployment, together with an almost total lack of integration. This happenned exceedingly quickly. Up until the end of the 70’s Oldham was over 99% white. Now entire areas are totally asian – and virtual no-go areas for whites.

    http://www.oldhamadvertiser.co.uk/news/s/1050513_our_primary_concern

    Extract

    Our primary concern

    Exclusive by Stuart Greer

    May 21, 2008

    STARTLING new figures reveal that Oldham appears to be moving backwards in its efforts to improve community cohesion among the borough’s youngest citizens.

    The statistics obtained by the Advertiser show that more local primary schools than ever are now divided along racial lines ?” with a total of seven schools made up entirely of children from ethnic backgrounds, and many more dominated by pupils of either white or Asian heritage.

    It means thousands of children are growing up having little contact with children from different ethnic backgrounds. The figures re-ignite the debate about what needs to be done to reverse racial division in our community ?” a key cause of previous unrest.

    David Ritchie’s 2002 report into past disturbances found that in 17 borough primary schools ethnic minority children made up 80 per cent of pupils ?” and in 13 of these it was at least 90 per cent.

    In six secondary schools, ethnic minority children accounted for less than five per cent of the school population, while in two others they were mainly youngsters from ethnic backgrounds.

    Today, primary schools including Alexandra Park, Burnley Brow, Horton Mill Infant, Nursery and Junior, Westwood, Greenhill Primary, Werneth Infant and Nursery and St Hilda’s C.E do not have a single white pupil on the roll.

    Secondary schools continue to slide towards monoculturalism with, as one example, 98.5 per cent of Grange’s pupils from Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Indian heritage ?” in the 80s this figure was around 10 per cent.”

    Tony

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