Tony Blair

[FatCat]

I find it amazing how every single comment about lair descends to 'war criminal' within at most 5 posts.

This is the opinion that has been pushed by the red tops into common parlance for 15 years. Regardless of any element of truth to it, there is a reason that is is pushed, it is to deflect away from the success of the Blair policies for the majority of British people. Because the billionaires don't want that again, they don't want a working NHS, or fairer wages or a slow down of the rich getting richer

Do you share that same amazement with comments about our current PM which usually are abusive from the opening post or shortly thereafter?

similarly no matter what the current pm does well we always resort to the 150k deaths very quickly you yourself calling him a murderer on a few posts the other day. Do we excuse Tony Blair because of the good he did - is that what you are saying? Is Tony Blair not a murderer? You should remove the bias from your posts and apply the same thinking as you do above to the current pm then you might be taken seriously.

 

[WeeGord]

Do you share that same amazement with comments about our current PM which usually are abusive from the opening post or shortly thereafter?

similarly no matter what the current pm does well we always resort to the 150k deaths very quickly you yourself calling him a murderer on a few posts the other day. Do we excuse Tony Blair because of the good he did - is that what you are saying? Is Tony Blair not a murderer? You should remove the bias from your posts and apply the same thinking as you do above to the current pm then you might be taken seriously.

Fatcat I hate to point this out again but you really are a Tory apologist despite your protestations to the contrary; you're a defender of Johnson at all costs so it's somewhat ironic that you're calling someone else out saying they can't be taken seriously because of bias.

 

[LaPennaBianca]

I think people would be happy to weigh up Johnson's good achievements with his bad if he'd done anything half decent.

Vaccines is the only one and that dug him out of a hole he keeps trying to push us back into.

 

[Wiseman_Vaughn]

Back to Blair: I didn't realise that he is only 3 years younger than Jeremy Corbyn.

Could he still have a part to play in domestic politics? A new middle ground party? Who would he take with him - I would imagine that he would have plenty of allies in Labour.

I read somewhere that he is saying that Labour needs to brak up and rebuild itself, possibly appealing to Lib Dems??

Could it be a Cool Brittania revisited? I wonder what Noel is doing these days?

 

[HarryVegas]

Back to Blair: I didn't realise that he is only 3 years younger than Jeremy Corbyn.

Could he still have a part to play in domestic politics? A new middle ground party? Who would he take with him - I would imagine that he would have plenty of allies in Labour.

I read somewhere that he is saying that Labour needs to brak up and rebuild itself, possibly appealing to Lib Dems??

Could it be a Cool Brittania revisited? I wonder what Noel is doing these days?

There's a serious point in there though. He's nothing if not an opportunist and there is a massive gap in British politics for a 'middle ground' party. The Lib Dems have consigned themselves back to minority, Labour are in a warring mess and the Tories are now way to the right to such an extent that reasonable Tories have disowned the leadership.

Interesting times...

 

[Wiseman_Vaughn]

There's a serious point in there though. He's nothing if not an opportunist and there is a massive gap in British politics for a 'middle ground' party. The Lib Dems have consigned themselves back to minority, Labour are in a warring mess and the Tories are now way to the right to such an extent that reasonable Tories have disowned the leadership.

Interesting times...

Haha - I was (sort of) being serious. Maybe not with Uncle Tony at the Helm, but his point about breaking Labour and rebuilding may be the only way forward.

 

[HarryVegas]

Haha - I was (sort of) being serious. Maybe not with Uncle Tony at the Helm, but his point about breaking Labour and rebuilding may be the only way forward.

And he's many things, but dumb isn't one of them.

 

[zzzzz]

There's a serious point in there though. He's nothing if not an opportunist and there is a massive gap in British politics for a 'middle ground' party. The Lib Dems have consigned themselves back to minority, Labour are in a warring mess and the Tories are now way to the right to such an extent that reasonable Tories have disowned the leadership.

Interesting times...

The Country is crying out for an alternative to the Oxbridge lead political cartel elite that does run and has run things for decades.
It happened in France.

(Yes I know it happened in the States and that didn't go well )

 

[Wiseman_Vaughn]

There appears to be more division internally than between Labour and Tories.

Conservatives will be in power for decades unless something changes.

Sorry, it's the Mail but this is good:

BLAIR

 

[BoroMart]

Do you share that same amazement with comments about our current PM which usually are abusive from the opening post or shortly thereafter?

similarly no matter what the current pm does well we always resort to the 150k deaths very quickly you yourself calling him a murderer on a few posts the other day.

My issues with Boris are multitude but start with his character. He is a habitual liar and shamelessly immoral character. Any man that will have an affair while his wife is having cancer treatment is beyond contempt. That's before you get to his political failings. The 150k deaths are on the back of a policy of 'let the bodies pile high in the streets', he decided to sacrifice people to keep shops open. Not only was that callous, believing money is more important than commoners lives, but it also failed in that it just made the situation worse. There are a thousand points against Boris and nothing of any note that he has actually acheived other than getting people to ride more bikes in London.

Compare that to Blair, his choice of war wasn't one of money, it was to deal with a dangerous despot, a violent murderer. Saddam had proven again and again that he would kill without thought, that he would not change his behaviours and work with the international community. If you righty blame Saddam's failure to work with weapons inspectors as the key factor in that invasion, then he has been responsible for a minimum of 5 armed conflicts. 6 if you take into account his rise to power at the barrel of a gun.

To claim Blair is a murderer is an untruth, yes people died from his decisions, but he didn't intend to kill civilians, he intended to dismantle Saddams blood thirsty regime and rid the world of that monster.

 

[zzzzz]

My issues with Boris are multitude but start with his character. He is a habitual liar and shamelessly immoral character. Any man that will have an affair while his wife is having cancer treatment is beyond contempt. That's before you get to his political failings. The 150k deaths are on the back of a policy of 'let the bodies pile high in the streets', he decided to sacrifice people to keep shops open. Not only was that callous, believing money is more important than commoners lives, but it also failed in that it just made the situation worse. There are a thousand points against Boris and nothing of any note that he has actually acheived other than getting people to ride more bikes in London.

Compare that to Blair, his choice of war wasn't one of money, it was to deal with a dangerous despot, a violent murderer. Saddam had proven again and again that he would kill without thought, that he would not change his behaviours and work with the international community. If you righty blame Saddam's failure to work with weapons inspectors as the key factor in that invasion, then he has been responsible for a minimum of 5 armed conflicts. 6 if you take into account his rise to power at the barrel of a gun.

To claim Blair is a murderer is an untruth, yes people died from his decisions, but he didn't intend to kill civilians, he intended to dismantle Saddams blood thirsty regime and rid the world of that monster.

Point. Missed. Again.

If he took us to war to get rid of Saddam he would be judged on that and the Country would have considered that before we fired a shot.

But he took us to war under false pretenses. He lied. It's as simple as that.

 

[BoroMart]

Anyone remotely interested in the Iraq invasion (I hesitate to call it war when there was only ever one side in it) should listen to David Dimbleby's podcast the Fault Line. It goes into brilliant detail on the politics at play leading up to Iraq. It's unbelievable that the key so-called intelligence for justification was a bloke code named Curveball.

Curveball was an Iraqi leaving in Germany who had been interviewed by German Intelligence and claimed to be an ex-Chemical Engineer. He told the Germans that Saddam had mobile labs with nuclear and biological weapons. Those claims couldn't be confirmed and many suspected they were completely false.

The like of d*ck Cheney and Rumsfeld took those claims and pressed their case for war. The Americans were going in regardless of what Blair did. He was almost swept along by it all.

agreed, we've got to remember that Saddam was consistently and persistently goading the UN, the US, and neighbouring states. His country had been under UN embargos, but he had found routes to sell oil. He and his regime leaders were still doing quite well, his people were suffering badly though. Saddam could have reformed, looked for inward investment, worked with other countries. But he refused, this wasn't some pride as such. It was all about money. His stupid war with Iran, which was to ensure the survival of his own power had financially ruined Iraq. That's why he invaded Kuwait. Iraq owed them money, and the Kuwaiti's were rich. So he invaded to try and wipe the debt and take the oil. Everything in that region can return back to his war with Iran. Of course the yanks helped him with weapons and intelligence in that war.

 

[BoroMart]

Point. Missed. Again.

If he took us to war to get rid of Saddam he would be judged on that and the Country would have considered that before we fired a shot.

But he took us to war under false pretenses. He lied. It's as simple as that.

Not sure why you need the arrogance of 'point missed. Again'. Particularly when I was responding to someone else not you, and that point FatCat made was nothing to do with 'he lied'.

...and as I stated if the issue is lying then Boris is the king of lies and should be judged far worse.

Yes, the supposed existence of WMDs were part of the case, but that wasn't the only official point in why we invaded. It was that Saddam had proven he had them in the past and had used them in the past, was refusing to allow weapons inspectors to do their job, and was sabre rattling that he would use them against us. The non-existence of WMDs is real, but, the rest of the case for invasion is entirely true.

 

[JackG]

Labour's loss was International Rescue's gain (did someone pull a few strings for him?).

That was his payoff for Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islanders

 

[zzzzz]

...and as I stated if the issue is lying then Boris is the king of lies and should be judged far worse.

Boris is, I agree, a serial liar.
But if you think Boris's lies are worse than what Blair did......... well that's just plain daft.

 

[WeeGord]

Boris is, I agree, a serial liar.
But if you think Boris's lies are worse than what Blair did......... well that's just plain daft.

Worse? Time will tell, but he already has (or should have) thousands of deaths on his conscience. To compare Johnson and Blair you need to look at their overall records and on that record Johnson isn't fit to lick Blair's shoes.

 

[zzzzz]

Worse? Time will tell,

Come back and start a thread about Boris when you know.
This thread is about Tony Blair

 

[WeeGord]

Come back and start a thread about Boris when you know.
This thread is about Tony Blair

But I was responding the the message where you were talking about Johnson?

 

[Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret]

It was already violence and misery, there is an opportunity cost of not taking action in lives. If you didn't want us to go in, you are saying you are comfortable with Saddam gassing his own citizens, starting wars with neighbours, and hanging people that didn't like him or have the same religion as him. You are happy to give a green light to more of the same.


That started long before Blair, it's the natural outcome of neo-conservatism which had run for 20 years before blair and 12 after him

He wasn't gassing anyone at the time. He was neutered. Far more people died in Iraq and around the world because of blairs appalling actions than would have had Saddam stayed in power.

Given what you say I take it you want us to invade numerous countries around the world. Spread democracy equality and happyness with a load of bombs and a warm gun. Where should we start? China? Egypt? Myanmar? Otherwise you are happy with the situation there?

Blair and labour did nothing about the housing crisis. Thatcher started it. Blair accelerated it. Just like he did with outsourcing to companies like capita which we are now seeing the culmination of under johnson. He was great for some people. Not great for others though.

Everything Blair do: good. Everything Tory do: bad. Tribal thinking. Good Vs evil.

 

[BoroMart]

He wasn't gassing anyone at the time. He was neutered. Far more people died in Iraq and around the world because of blairs appalling actions than would have had Saddam stayed in power.

Just because at that moment he wasn't gassing anyone didn't mean he was never going to again. The murder of citizens never stopped.

There is simply no way at all you can claim that far more people did because of Blairs decision to invade. First the US would have gone in alone anyway, secondly it is impossible to know what Saddam's next violent and desperate actions would be. I've asked on this thread and before, and no one has been up to an honest answer, so I'll try again, how do violent sociopathic dictators react to a groundswell movement for democracy (like the arab spring)?

If you aren't going to answer, I'll tell you, they use extreme violent and murder