BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX -- THE KOOL-AID TABLE
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS PREPPING FOR HIS LATEST FILM. IN THIS 1, HE'LL PLAY A BUSTY CO-ED WHO GOES ALL THE WAY BUT IS ONLY AN AVERAGE STUDENT.
TO PREPARE FOR THE ROLE, HE'S BEEN GOING ALL THE WAY ON WALL STREET AND HANDING OUT GRADES TO HIMSELF.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
For the first time since his spring 2007 exit as British Prime Minister, Tony Blair has become big news and dominated the world news cycle over the weekend due to his BBC interview with Fern Britton. Sunday, KPFA's The KPFA Evening News reported on the issue.Anthony Fest: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he would have sent British forces into the 2003 invasion into Iraq even knowing that Iraq did not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction. Blair's remarks came in a BBC interview pre-recorded for broadcast today. Blair was prime minister from 1997 to 2007 and was President George W. Bush's staunchest international ally in the Iraq invasion. In the buildup to the invasion, Bush and Blair claimed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons but after the invasion, no such weapons were found. Blair's response. Tony Blair: We've got to accept that that that intelligence turned out to be wrong. On the other hand, I think it's then important not to go to the other extreme and say, 'Well this is someone who was basically not a danger and not a source of instability in the region. Because I believe that he was. And personally, I think, there would always have been a time when you had to deal with him. Anthony Fest: Also in the BBC interview, Blair spoke of the more democratic government in Iraq today and said of Hussein "I can't really think that we'd be better with him and his two sons still in charge." The British government is conducting an investigation of the country's entry into the Iraq War. The probe is being led by retired civil servant John Chilcot and is known as the Chilcot Inquiry. Chilcot's committee began conducting interviews late last month and expects to hear from Blair early next year. But a British newspaper reported today that portions of Blair's testimony to the committee will be conducted in secret. The committee's mission is fact finding only. It does not have prosecutorial powers.On the BBC, Blair declared it didn't matter, "I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat." Henry Chu (Los Angeles Times) observed, "It was a startling admission from the onetime British leader, who was President Bush's staunchest ally in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Blair's comments were immediately denounced by critics who accused him of using false pretenses to drag Britain into an unpopular war that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of allied troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians." Andrew Gilligan (Telegraph of London) pointed out, "Mr Blair's statement that he wanted rid of Saddam all along, and would simply have 'deploy[ed] different arguments' to do so in the absence of WMD, is his clearest admission to date that the famous weapons were indeed a pretext. His belief that a war on Iraq would have been necessary even without WMD is both significant -- and highly questionable." Stephen Jones (Epoch Times) reports, "Tony Blair's admission that Britain would have still taken part in the Iraq war -- even if it knew that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), has sparked calls that Blair stand trial for war crimes." BBC provides reactions from the UK Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, and the former deputy prime minister, John Prescott. Ainsworth doesn't want to 'guess' but there's no guessing needed. Support for the Iraq War in England fell to 26% if the WMD 'cover' was inaccurate. What Ainsworth and Prescott muddy up, Mike Brecher makes clear in a letter to the Guardian:Boxed in by years of the insistent drip of truth on the dynamic behind his decision to invade Iraq, Tony Blair has finally conceded that he would have removed Saddam even if there had been no evidence of WMD. It seems, then, that we went to war because Blair is under the misapprehension that British general elections give the winner a mandate to make international law on the fly, and to be the world's policeman, judge, jury and jailer. Or perhaps he believes that if Robert Mugabe, say, had considered Britain to be a destabilising influence a few years back, he would have been fully entitled to remove Blair and his cabinet by force. So generous of Blair to "sympathise" with those unsophisticates who thought and think he made a mistake.Mark Hennessy (Irish Times) quotes the then-UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix declaring of Blair's statement, "It gives a strong impression of a lack of sincerity. The war was sold on the weapons of mass destruction [claim], and now you feel, or hear that it was only a question of 'deployment of arguments', as he said. It sounds a bit like a fig leaf that was held up, and if the fig leaf had not been there, then they would have tried to put another fig leaf there." In response to Blair's statements, the Scottish National Party released the following:The SNP have rounded on Labour over attempts to re-write history over Iraq, and stepped up calls for Gordon Brown to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry and explain whether he would have still bankrolled the illegal war had he know there was no WMD in Iraq. The demands come as former Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted the weapons of mass destruction were not the point of the war -- contradicting repeated claims he made in parliament and in public as prime minister. SNP Westminster leader and Defence spokesperson Angus Robertson MP also said the current and former prime ministers must give evidence in public -- after reports today (Sunday) that the Chilcot inquiry would hear Mr Blair's crucial testimony behind closed doors.Mr Robertson said:"Tony Blair's comments are a shameful admission from a shameful man. He may now cut a rather pathetic figure, but the people who aided and abetted him in pursuing an illegal war are still in government, and tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of people are dead as a result of his duplicity. Alex Salmond and the SNP Westminster group played a leading role in seeking to impeach Tony Blair, and these latest remarks underline the rightness of that cause. "Tony Blair was clearly set on war with or without weapons of mass destruction, and Gordon Brown bankrolled it -- now both men must give evidence in public. Tony Blair is on record time after time saying that the war was not about regime change, and now he is trying to change the entire basis for the war to cover up the fact that we were dragged into an illegal adventure on a false pretence. "Gordon Brown must explain whether he would still have bankrolled the war had he known there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As Chancellor, he wrote the cheques for the disastrous war in Iraq. "And it would be unacceptable if evidence was not taken in public -- especially after Tony Blair's astonishing chatshow attempt to re-write history. Both men should appear side by side when they give evidence, so that we can get to the truth behind the biggest foreign policy disaster in modern times. "This inquiry will be judged on the answers that it provides, and these fundamental questions must be addressed." Note:1. Details of Tony Blair's admission can be found here:2. Reports that Tony Blair will give evidence in private can be found here:3. Quotes from Tony Blair saying the Iraq war was not about regime change:Hansard - 24 Sept 2002 : Column 17: "Regime change in Iraq would be a wonderful thing. That is not the purpose of our action; our purpose is to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction…"Interview with Radio Monte Carlo - 29 January 2003: "So far as our objective, it is disarmament, not regime change – that is our objective. Now I happen to believe the regime of Saddam is a very brutal and repressive regime, I think it does enormous damage to the Iraqi people... so I have got no doubt Saddam is very bad for Iraq, but on the other hand I have got no doubt either that the purpose of our challenge from the United Nations is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, it is not regime change."PM statement on Iraq - 25 February 2003: "I detest his regime. But even now he can save it by complying with the UN's demand. Even now, we are prepared to go the extra step to achieve disarmament peacefully."Hansard - 18 Mar 2003 : Column 772: "I have never put the justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in resolution 1441 - that is our legal base."Jeff Sparrow (Australia's ABC observes), "As a result of choices made by George Bush and Tony Blair --and, yes, by John Howard -- hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - perhaps as many as a million -- are now dead. Millions of people have been become refugees; a generation across the Middle East has learned see representatives of the West as gun-toting occupiers. We will be dealing with the consequences for decades to come." That's Australia. Little Megan Tady of the laughable Free Press (slogan: "We WHORED for Barack because we thought we had a backdoor deal.") wants you to say no to "mega-media mergers" but, Megs, in your dualistic, yes/no world, we're left with what? The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times (Meggers wrote her bad article for the last one)? Well, goodness golly Meg, Tony Blair entered the news cycle on Saturday and yet not one of Panhandle Media's three big print outlets managed to say one damn word Saturday, Sunday or Monday. About the Iraq War. The war they grandstanded on for how many years? Get a real job, Meg, and then we'll take you seriously. Tony Blair reveals he would have launched the illegal war regardless and The Nation's offering . . . a synopsis of Oprah. Put a twit in charge and all you have left is Twitter. The Nation will inform and save the nation by offering . . . recaps of Oprah episodes. [Credit where it's due, The Huffington Post has repeatedly covered this topic in the last two days including this piece by Ben Cohen] In the real world, where Tony Blair's remarks are news, the former UK Direcotr of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald wrote a column for the Times of London in which he noted:
The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister's mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn't trouble her on the way to a confident conclusion that Mr Blair's fundamental flaw was his sycophancy towards power. Perhaps this seems odd in a man who drank so much of that mind-altering brew at home. But Washington turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him. In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that "hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right". But this is a narcissist's defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death. "Yo, Blair", perhaps, was his truest measure.
Andrew Sparrow offers "'Sycophant' Tony Blair used deceit to justify Iraq war, says former DPP" (Guardian), "Macdonald's comments about Blair's decision to go to war are more critical than anything that has been said so far by any of the senior civil servants who worked in Whitehall when Blair was prime minister. Macdonald was DPP from 2003 until 2008 and he now practises law from Matrix Chambers, where Blair's barrister wife, Cherie, is also based." Kate Loveys (Daily Mail) explains, "The Iraq Inquiry has already heard evidence that Mr Blair was told days before the invasion that Saddam Hussein might no longer have access to WMD. The issue of what the former prime minister knew about Iraq's WMD arsenal was expected to form a key part of the inquiry." Loveys goes on to note that Blair will give 'secret' testimony to the Iraq Inquiry "under the guise of 'national security' concerns." Alsumaria reports, "'Stop the War' British Organization considered Blair's admissions as war crimes. Attacking any country in aim to change its regime is an illegal aggression by virtue of the International Law, the NGO said in a statement."
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Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Spirit of Barack"
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Truest statement of the week
Truest statement of the week II
A note to our readers
Editorial: He's the world's War Hawk now
TV: When the guests call the shots
Those Wacky Ethics of Greg Mitchell
Every picture tells a story
NPR keeps selling the wars (Ava and C.I.)
Roundtable
Iraq
Not So Fast Jeff Cohen (Ava and C.I.)
TV notes
Highlights
"The greedy diva"
"THIS JUST IN! DIVA HOLIDAY!"
