Blair in Chilcot Land

It's a joke. Endless circular arguments and inverted reality. All that incense has obviously liquified any adult intelligence he ever had.
Nice is nicer than nasty, he reveals. And Saddam was nasty. And (get this) nasty people with nasty weapons are nastier than nice people with nice weapons. And 9/11 was the perfect excuse for a war to secure oil prices. 'We had to deal with' Iraq because of 9/11. 'And how were you going to do that?' 'By dealing with it'...
Essentially, Blair took advantage of American panic after 9/11 to look like a Bigshot, end of story.
In a 'connected world' invasions and bombings are fine, he says, on the mere suspicion of attack. So by that logic, Iran had better organise its centrifuges as soon as possible. Then it will be as safe as Israel. And be able to atttack its neighbours with impunity, or even attack the US if it feels it is under threat. The American Way.
The 'connected world' means, in reality, oil prices. Any moral justification is neglible compared with the threat Saddam posed to the cost of energy, which he could control with the turn of a tap. If only Blair would admit that, as Alan Greenspan eventually did, it would be possible to have a shred of respect for him. But wars mustn't be about money, even though they all are.
And so Blair will always be remembered as the murdering liar of Iraq, not the saviour of Kosovo, or the PM whose government introduced the minimum wage and the Freedom of Information Act.

Stuff Their Rifle Barrels With Gold

At last a glimmer of common sense. But too little and far too late.
Instead of the orginal disastrous invasion, which was lost on the day it was launched, it would have been simpler and quicker and far less bloody to simply have cashed in one or two Tomahawk missiles, minted small denomination gold coins, and parachuted them in family-size portions all over the country.
The creaking economy of the Taliban state would have collapsed overnight, as would any power they had over the peasantry. As would the opium industry. By instantly inflating the middle classes, and giving them instant access to capital, the religious solution to poverty would not have been necessary or attractive any more.
The Al Jazeerah report mentions a paltry billion dollars. When the invasion began, promises were made for a total renovation of Afghanistan. It was to be the ultimate reality makeover show. All lies, of course.

Wootton Bassett War-Worship

When the Facebook fascists of Wooton Bassett care as much about the innocent victims as they say they do about their killers, they might be qualified to call themselves British.
Until then, they are just glorifying war and enticing more British teenagers to their deaths. And naturally, for each vainglorious unemployed Brit they kill, several more Afghani women and children will die first. That's war. I wish they would find out a bit more about it before seeking to turn this country into a police state where freedom to demonstrate is totally eliminated, and the crimes of the armed forces are suppressed.
The deaths of Afghani civilians are just as worthy of memorial as those of their killers. And as Wootton Bassett seems to be the place to get maximum publicity, that's where this week's demonstration should happen. The deaths of Afghani civilians are just as worthy of memorial as
those of their killers. And as Wootton Bassett seems to be the place to get maximum publicity, that's where this week's demonstration should happen.
The process of exploiting this war for political purposes (and the tourism helps too, ask the local Rotary Club) was perfected in Wooton Bassett, so for its citizens to whinge about the venue for an anti-war demonstration is rich. In fact it is very revealing. It is an insistence that the death of a British soldier is worth more than the death of an Afghani civilian, which means their lives are held to be worth more too. The lives of the Afghans we are ostensibly fighting for are negligible. We don't even talk about how many die. That is why this demo is essential, and couldn't be held anywhere else, and why talk of disrupting it is symptomatic of the inherent fascism of people who idolise the military and their power of summary death.
The fact that it took an extremist group to bother is no condemnation of them, in fact it is a sad comment on the fact that expressions of common humanity with those we are meant to be fighting for has been crushed by the war-mania of the media and its willing, death-worshipping suckers.