9/11-complot of *-->niet<--*? #06 [NWS]

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Op vrijdag 25 augustus 2006 01:41 schreef atmosphere1 het volgende:
Wij Nederlanders zijn gemiddled genomen nogal pro- amerikaans ,en denken dat Amerika nog een echte bondgenoot is .

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Op vrijdag 25 augustus 2006 20:01 schreef klez het volgende:
of ie ze had ten tijde van de Amerikaanse aanval is twijfelachtig maar dat betekent helemaal niet dat de Amerikaanse regering dat wist en opzettelijk gelogen heeft. Er waren verschillende wapeninspecteurs van de VN die tot op de dag van de aanval dachten dat ze in het ootje werden genomen door Saddam. Dat de meeste het nu achteraf allemaal beter denken te weten nemen we maar met een fikse korrel zout.

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Op zaterdag 26 augustus 2006 09:37 schreef klez het volgende:

Dat zal best. En die moet je dan maar geloven?

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BUITENLAND
donderdag 28 april 2005 09:24
Irak achtervolgt Blair in Britse verkiezingen
De oorlog in Irak blijft de Britse premier Tony Blair achtervolgen. De oppositie zegt bewijs te hebben dat Blair bewust heeft gelogen, om de inval in Irak te rechtvaardigen. Gezien de krappe voorsprong van Blair op zijn Conservatieve opponent Michael Howard, zou deze beschuldiging doorslaggevend kunnen zijn bij de Britse verkiezingen van 5 mei.

Een procureur-generaal zou Blair kort voor de inval in Irak hebben geschreven dat hij zich zorgen maakte over de legitimiteit ervan. Maar tien dagen later kreeg het parlement een advies, waarin stond dat de oorlog volkomen legaal was. Van de juridische twijfels was niets meer terug te vinden.

Het oorspronkelijke advies van de procureur-generaal is woensdag uitgelekt en in handen gekomen van de Britse oppositie. Ook de Britse nieuwszender BBC zegt het document onder ogen te hebben gehad.

De oppositiepartijen beschuldigen de regering van Blair ervan het onafhankelijke advies van de procureur-generaal beïnvloed te hebben, zodat het uiteindelijke rapport over Irak positief zou zijn. De 'Lib Dems', de Liberaal Democraten, stellen dat zijn nooit zouden hebben ingestemd met de inval als zij van deze twijfels zouden hebben geweten.

Ontkent
Blair ontkent alle beschuldigingen. 'Ik heb nooit gelogen en ben ook niet van plan dat ooit te doen,' zei de premier in een reactie. Ook de procureur-generaal om wie het allemaal te doen is, Lord Goldsmith, zegt dat de beschuldigingen volkomen uit de lucht zijn gegrepen.

Om de schade zoveel mogelijk te beperken verschenen binnen enkele uren na de onthulling minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Jack Straw en minister Gordon Brown van Financiën op de Britse televisie met een officiële reactie.

Blair probeert er alles aan te doen om Irak buiten de campagne te houden. Veel Britten waren tegen de inval (lees ook Britse verkiezingen: Blair krijgt steun Clinton).

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Eenderde Britse kiezers twijfelt nog
Veel Britten wisten gisteren, een dag voor de verkiezingen nog niet op wie ze gaan stemmen. Ze zijn ervan overtuigd dat de huidige premier Tony Blair heeft gelogen over de oorlog in Irak, maar kunnen zich ook niet vinden in de Conservatieve Michael Howard. Blair is bang dat apathie en proteststemmen zijn partij de overwinning kosten.

Volgens een Brits onderzoeksbureau weet 36 procent van de Britse kiezers nog niet op wie ze gaan stemmen. Veruit de meeste 'zwevende' kiezers zouden voormalige aanhangers van Labour zijn. Blair reist de laatste dag voor de verkiezingen langs de kiesdistricten die Labour dreigt te verliezen.
Blair reist langs de kiesdistricten die Labour dreigt te verliezen
Blair op campagne

Hoewel Labour in alle opiniepeilingen op een comfortabele voorsprong staat (kijk voor de laatste stand op de BBC-poll), kan een lage opkomst morgen funest zijn voor de partij. Het misnoegen over de oorlog in Irak en de aanloop ernaartoe kan Labour-stemmers doen besluiten thuis te blijven of op de Liberale Democraten te stemmen, de enige grote partij die tegen de oorlog was.

Onderzoek
Blair zei vandaag dat er geen onderzoek komt naar de legaliteit van de inval in Irak. Hij deed dat in een interview met Channel 4. De premier ligt zwaar onder vuur sinds vorige week bekend werd dat procureur-generaal Lord Goldsmith voorafgaand aan de inval in Irak twijfels had over de legitimiteit ervan (lees de volledige brief van de procureur-generaal) (lees ook Irak achtervolgt Blair in Britse verkiezingen).

Verscheidene kandidaten voeren campagne tegen de oorlog in Irak, onder wie de vader van een omgekomen militair. Het Britse ministerie van Defensie maakte maandagochtend de dood van een Britse militair in Irak bekend, de 87ste. Blair hamert erop dat de kiezers niet naar het verleden moeten kijken, maar naar de toekomst.

De kans is volgens de opiniepeilers klein dat Labour uit de regering wordt verdreven. Wanneer de zwevende kiezers hun heil bij andere partijen zoeken, kan dat wel betekenen dat Labour geen absolute meerderheid in het Lagerhuis meer heeft en een coalitie moet sluiten met een andere partij.

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Blair hit by new leak of secret war plan
Michael Smith
A SECRET document from the heart of government reveals today that Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification.

The Downing Street minutes, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, detail one of the most important meetings ahead of the invasion.

It was chaired by the prime minister and attended by his inner circle. The document reveals Blair backed “regime change” by force from the outset, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, that such action could be illegal.

The minutes, published by The Sunday Times today, begins with the warning: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. The paper should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know.” It records a meeting in July 2002, attended by military and intelligence chiefs, at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam.

“If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” said Blair. He added that the key issues were “whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work”.

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran”.

Straw suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would “help with the legal justification”. Blair is recorded as saying that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”.

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

The papers, the second sensitive leak close to the election, appear to be an attempt by disaffected Whitehall insiders to attack Blair’s integrity. They are likely to fuel claims he misled the country on Iraq.

One reason for the secrecy is that the minutes record discussion of US plans for invasion; another is that at the time Blair had given no indication that plans were so advanced.

He had not revealed to MPs or the public that in April 2002 he had told Bush “the UK would support US military action to bring about regime change”, as recorded in the Foreign Office briefing paper. Both before and after the July meeting Blair insisted in public no decision had been made.

The July meeting was later mentioned by Lord Butler in his report on the use of intelligence on WMD as a “key stage” in the road to war; but its details have never been revealed until now.

The minutes show Goldsmith warned Blair eight months before war started on March 19, 2003 that finding legal justification would be “difficult”. The attorney-general only ruled unambiguously war was lawful a few days before the war started after Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, demanded unequivocal written confirmation.

Boyce was never shown Goldsmith’s more equivocal advice to Blair of March 7, 2003, and says today ministers failed to give him protection from prosecution at the International Criminal Court. “I have always been troubled by the ICC,” he says, adding that if British servicemen are put on trial, ministers should be “brought into the frame as well”. Asked if that should include Blair and Goldsmith, he tells The Observer: “Too bloody right.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the leaked minute showed Blair had “agreed to an illegal regime change with the Bush administration. It set out to create the justification for going to war. It was to be war by any means.”

Downing Street claimed the document contained “nothing new”.

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British Intelligence Warned of Iraq War
Blair Was Told of White House's Determination to Use Military Against Hussein

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 13, 2005; Page A18

Seven months before the invasion of Iraq, the head of British foreign intelligence reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that President Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein by military action and warned that in Washington intelligence was "being fixed around the policy," according to notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting with Blair at No. 10 Downing Street.

"Military action was now seen as inevitable," said the notes, summarizing a report by Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, British intelligence, who had just returned from consultations in Washington along with other senior British officials. Dearlove went on, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke with his country's intelligence chief about seven months before the Iraq invasion. Blair was advised that the threat from Saddam Hussein might have been overstated.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke with his country's intelligence chief about seven months before the Iraq invasion. Blair was advised that the threat from Saddam Hussein might have been overstated. (Pool Photo By Adrian Dennis)

"The case was thin," summarized the notes taken by a British national security aide at the meeting. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

The notes were first disclosed last week by the Sunday Times of London, triggering criticism of Blair on the eve of the May 5 British parliamentary elections that he had decided to support an invasion of Iraq well before informing the public of his views.

The notes of the Blair meeting, attended by the prime minister's senior national security team, also disclose for the first time that Britain's intelligence boss believed that Bush had decided to go to war in mid-2002, and that he believed U.S. policymakers were trying to use the limited intelligence they had to make the Iraqi leader appear to be a bigger threat than was supported by known facts.

Although critics of the Iraq war have accused Bush and his top aides of misusing what has since been shown as limited intelligence in the prewar period, Bush's critics have been unsuccessful in getting an investigation of that matter.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has dropped its previous plan to review how U.S. policymakers used Iraq intelligence, and the president's commission on intelligence did not look into the subject because it was not authorized to do so by its charter, Laurence H. Silberman, the co-chairman, told reporters last month.

The British Butler Commission, which last year reviewed that country's intelligence performance on Iraq, also studied how that material was used by the Blair government. The panel concluded that Blair's speeches and a published dossier on Iraq used language that left "the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence than was the case," according to the Butler report.

It described the July 23 meeting as coming at a "key stage" in preparation for taking action against Iraq but described it primarily as a session at which Blair favored reengagement of U.N. inspectors against a background of intelligence that Hussein would not accept them unless "the threat of military action were real."

During the July 2002 time frame, Bush was working to build support in the United States for a war against Hussein, while a U.S. base in Qatar was being expanded and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was trying to get Turkey to assist in potential military action against the Iraqi leader.

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington said he would not comment on the substance of the document.

Blair's senior advisers at the July 2002 session decided they would prepare an "ultimatum" for Iraq to permit U.N. inspectors to return, despite being told that Bush's National Security Council, then headed by Condoleezza Rice, "had no patience with the U.N. route," according to the notes. "The prime minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

Although Dearlove reported that the NSC had "no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record," the Blair team soon set in motion preparation of the public dossier on Iraq, which was published in late September 2002.

Another piece of the British memo has relevance now, as the United States battles an insurgency that some say was exacerbated by faulty planning for the post-invasion period. "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action," the notes say, without attributing that directly to Dearlove.

The "U.S. has already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime," the British defense secretary reported, according to the notes. Although no final decision had been made, "he thought the most likely timing in U.S. minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the U.S. congressional elections."

As it finally worked out, the Bush administration's public campaign for supporting a possible invasion of Iraq began the next month, in late August, with speeches by Vice President Cheney, followed by a late October vote in Congress to grant the president authority to use force if necessary. Later in October, the British and the Americans introduced their resolution on Iraq in the U.N. Security Council and it passed in early November, shortly after the Nov. 2 elections.

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Op zaterdag 26 augustus 2006 10:26 schreef klez het volgende:

[..]

Dat is zeker waar. Maar we gaan nou toch niet alleen de Amerikanen verwijten er dubbele agenda's op na te houden? Zeker als dat het afzetten van dictators oplevert?
Ik ben het met je eens dat het niet iets is wat te vaak moet gebeuren. Het is voor mij echter een gegeven dat het "good cop, bad cop" voorlopig een noodzakelijk onderdeel van de Westerse politiek naar de idioten in het Midden-Oosten moet zijn.
Of je moet zeggen: "we trekken onze handen er helemaal vanaf". Itt wat sommigen denken zul je maar heel weinig Arabieren vinden (behalve de echt middeleeuwse types) die daar vóór zijn.
Maar goed, als het gezeik aanhoud en er echt een alternatief voor olie komt, dan kan dat altijd nog natuurlijk. Dan zullen de Arabieren verbijsterd achterblijven in hun zandbak.