"There Was NO Smoking Gun"

[kpete]

(Fucking war criminals)


Iraq war build-up 'left us scrabbling for smoking gun' says ex-UK ambassador

• Sir Christopher Meyer says plans to invade Iraq did not give time for weapons inspectors
• Meyer: 'not clear if Blair signed in blood' for invasion at George Bush's Texas ranch

.........

The military timetable for an invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not give time for UN weapons inspectors in the country to do their job, the former British ambassador to Washington told the Iraq inquiry in London today.

Sir Christopher Meyer said the "unforgiving nature" of the build-up after American forces had been told to prepare for war meant that "we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun".

He added: "It was another way of saying 'it's not that Saddam has to prove that he's innocent, we've now bloody well got to try and prove he's guilty.' And we – the Americans, the British – have never really recovered from that because of course there was no smoking gun."

more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/26/bush-administration-911-iraq-inquiry
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/26/808255/-Ex-Brit-Ambassador:-Bush-Rushed-To-War-With-No-Smoking-Gun

Crucial meeting

Sir Christopher said the UK believed it was "pointless" to resist US plans for regime change in Iraq a full year before the invasion and speculated that the path to war was set at a meeting between the two leaders at President Bush's Texas ranch in April 2002.
more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/politics/8380139.stm

[johnhoover70]

1. Hopefully...

...this fact comes out in the Khalid Sheik Mohammad trial in NYC.

[Sinti]

3. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[Sinti]

2. They didn't want the 'smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud'

prosecute them for crimes against humanity. If you don't you are inviting others to wage aggressive war, because obviously they can do it and suffer no consequences. Does it only count if they wage aggressive war on a European state? Put them on trial, the nation you save may be your own.

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Old news. Time to move on.

:sarcasm:

[RufusTFirefly]

5. And don't forget the anthrax

Excerpt from the same Guardian article

Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein.

How convenient that it stepped up efforts to take us to war.

[kenny blankenship]

6. Do these people know they sound like 3 year olds???

"the UK believed it was "pointless" to resist US plans for regime change "

Hey Lord Haw-haw, it's really very simple - all you had to do was just speak aloud what everybody could then see: "the inspectors haven't been allowed time to complete their job, the US is sending them on wild goose chases to waste their time and then trying to rush them out, the evidence that would warrant military action is NOT in hand, and it's clear from its deployment of vast numbers of men and material that the US leadership has ALREADY decided on war for some ulterior reason."

Plenty of other countries had made their opposition clear enough. YOU LOT were in a better position to know than every one else what a fraud Bushkrieg was. It's far from pointless to resist. It's essential. WE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOUR COMPLICITY TO GIVE US COVER. Or if we had begun the war, we wouldn't have been able to carry through with the multiyear destruction of Iraq once the mythical WMDs failed to materialize. We would have had to give in to international opinion earlier. Bush probably would have lost in 2004. He might even be awaiting trial in Milosevic's old cell at The Hague. But NO! You had to join us in our war crimes adventure. And you're making excuses for it still.

What did the CIA have on you to make you so supine? Pictures of you with some Eton boys?

[spanone]

7. it was an international criminal conspiracy...