32 posts
Tony Blair says something that’s true!
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Well what did his critics expect? An admission that he’d got Iraq terribly wrong? Blair breaking down in tears and begging forgiveness from Rose Gentle? A confession that he’d personally sexed up the dodgy dossier and/or grabbed Lord Gol...
A failure of strategy in Iraq
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I have already reported in an earlier blog entry on the Chilcot inquiry about flaws that emerged in the strategy of using the threat of invasion to press Saddam Hussein to disarm, principally that the military forces deployed to back up this threat c...
Tony Blair the scapegoat
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The UK has been in frenetic anticipation this week of Tony Blair’s testimony Friday in front of the Iraq War show trial, er I mean, inquiry. The British media has been baying for a dramatic crescendo to the three week grilling of former cabinet off...
Jack Straw at the Chilcot enquiry: a blunt instrument
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Jack Straw’s evidence at the Chilcot enquiry into the Iraq war yesterday, and the discussion that it led to of deadlines and resolutions, tells an interesting and important story about the conduct of international relations and the problems that it...
The Dutch role in Iraq
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After chipping away for nearly a year, the committee Davids presented this morning in The...
The Disarming Mr Blix
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Ahead of the UK’s Iraq Inquiry, ex Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix spoke in Brussels at an event organised by the European Policy Centre and presented his thoughts on the Iraq war and nuclear disarmament. He said that the early ’90R...
On the Justification of the Iraq War – In Memory of Robin Cook
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I was a big fan of Robin Cook and decided to watch again his resignation speech when Tony Blair revealed that he thought the Iraq War was justified even if there were no WMD (obviously there weren’t any). Blair seems to have completely lost tou...
Human Rights in Iraq
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Today I attended an event on human rights in Iraq at the FCO, and gave an interview afterwards to the Pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat (in Arabic). The UK works closely with Iraqis and civil society organisations on human rights issues, not l...
E questo significa esportare democrazia?
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Recentemente l’ex Primo Ministro Britannico, il Labusrista Tony Blair, ha ammesso in una intervista televisiva che il conflitto iraqeno era inevitabile a causa della minaccia costante costituita da saddam Hussein, e che avrebbe comunque invaso...
Iraq: the Glorious Resistance strikes again
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The following is a statement from the Executive Committee of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers. The Executive Committee of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers mourns the murder of Majiid Karim an executive member of the GFIW As a continua...
McCain on Obama's AfPak Metrics
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Senator John McCain finds Obama's metrics for evaluating progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan too vague, writes Foreign Policy: "It's just not the level of detail that we had hoped for," said McCain. "We need more substance ... we're...
Iraq – Second Afghanistan
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Some time ago I said that the celebration with the trumpets of the sovereignty of Iraq (with the notice of withdrawal of U.S. troops) seems to me a bad joke. Beyond the purely political statements of Prime Minister Malik, Iraqi authorities are un...
American Success in Iraq Shuts Europe Up
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"If someone had said two years ago that the US would have largely withdrawn its forces from Iraqi cities by now, he would have been called naive," writes German journalist Christoph Suess. Europeans did not believe that the Iraqis would be...
Opportunities in Iraq
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As security improves across Iraq, the business opportunities are growing. Iraq has the potential to become a major force in the regional economy in the way that it once was before Saddam drove the country into the ground. Iraq's opportunity is...
Europe Does Not Care about Iraq
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The Kansas City Star published the fascinating eight-part series A Good Exit: Leaving Iraq by Matt Schofield, who travelled to Baghdad, Berlin, Istanbul, Leavenworth and Washington. Matt was kind enough to seek my expertise as well. In fact, the arti...
Glasgow Makes Iraqis Proud
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I have just come from meeting six families of formerly locally engaged FCO staff in Iraq, who have taken up the resettlement scheme and come to live in the UK. Over 200 have done so in total. Over 540 have chosen the financial package and staye...
Declan Ganley and Iraq from the vaults
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If you have not bought T. Christian Miller's Blood Money you should. It features some information on Declan Ganley in Iraq. It does however give a great deal of info on Jack Shaw who was Ganley and Don Di Marino's pal in Iraq. More on Ganley and Ira...
Iraq: Bellwether of the Middle East
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The announcement by the British "Mesopotamia Petroleum Company" of the first joint venture with the Iraqi oil ministry may have brought home the history, but it also demonstrated how divisions over the Iraq war in the West have obscured the...
Iraq: bipartisan
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The Democrats won two elections in America - in 2006 and 2008 - on the strength of their ardent opposition to continuing the Iraq war, which the governing Republican party had championed and botched. That Barack Obama's plans to end 'combat' operatio...
Fundamental change of mission
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Baghdad was a good place to mark President Obama's announcements on Iraq troop withdrawal. His announcement follows the same agreed pattern as that adopted by the UK: withdrawal of combat troops to fundamentally change the mission to one of tra...
Elections in Iraq
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The report in the Sunday Telegraph of a vital and vibrant downtown Basra is a good reminder that Iraq remains an important part of Middle East developments. The prospect of electoral power is concentrating the minds of Shia and Sunni parti...
Britain to leave Iraq (in shame?), increase troops to Afghanistan
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In an anticipated move, Gordon Brown announced that the remaining 4,100 UK troops will leave Iraq by the end of July. Mr. Brown is quoted by the BBC:I feel that the task that we set out to do is being done and that's why we can take a decision...
News from the New World - First in foreign policy: the withdrawal from Iraq and reinforced presence in Afghanistan
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O+7, Tuesday eveningObama’s declared plan for withdrawal from Iraq will be the first ,urgent and huge foreign political job for the new President. And they are preparing it already in the transition team.But it will be linked to a reinforced pr...
15 soldiers
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"Next week, Turkey's Parliament is scheduled to vote on a proposal to extend for another year a mandate giving its military authorization for cross-border operations against Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq. The current authority which e...
Georgians: We Helped you in Iraq, now Help us!
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The Georgian government is recalling its 2,000 troops serving in Iraq to confront the threat at home, reports The Times: We helped in Iraq - now help us, beg Georgians As Russia forces its neighbour to retreat from South Ossetia, the people of Gori...
Germany's Federal Minister of Economics Visited Baghdad
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Do we have to apologize to The Wall Street Journal for not covering this? The most remarkable aspect about the German economics minister's trip to Baghdad Saturday [July 13, 2008] was how unremarkable it was. The "surprise visit" by Michael Glos to I...
More Combat Deaths in Afghanistan Than in Iraq
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The Associated Press: American and allied combat deaths in Afghanistan in May passed the monthly toll in Iraq for the first time. Defense Secretary Robert Gates used the statistical comparison to dramatize his point to NATO defense ministers that the...
What can be expected of Europe in Iraq?
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Editor's note by Nanne: The following entry was written by Migeru, an editor of the progressive community blog 'The European Tribune'. It is a scenario on the chances for European action on Iraq, based upon the principles of 'human rights' and 'ridin...
Hope in Iraq
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This is the theme of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's speech to the first international compact review conference on Iraq. All Iraq's economic and political partners are here. The progress on security - from 1500 attacks a week to less than 300 - i...
