Tony Blair’s Iraq war and dead soldiers’ families

This video says about itself:

11 November 2014

Tony Blair’s secret contract with a Saudi oil company has been revealed as details have emerged that the ex-Prime Minister received £41,000 a month and two percent commission on any successful deals that he helped broker.

Tony Blair Associates (TBA) signed the contract with PetroSaudi to help find them new sources of investment and to promote the company to political leaders, policymakers and others deemed important in advancing PetroSaudi’s overall international strategy. We look at the apparent conflict of interest, in this Lip News clip with Elliot Hill and Mark Sovel.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Blair should pay for copy of Chilcot’s £767 report

Saturday 4th June 2016

TONY BLAIR should pay to provide the relatives of British soldiers who died in the Iraq war with a £767 hard copy of the Chilcot report, families of the dead said yesterday.

Rose Gentle, who was visiting the grave of her son Fusilier Gordon Gentle, said the former PM has enough money to afford the cost.

And Roger Bacon, whose son Major Matthew Bacon was killed in Iraq in 2005, said Mr Blair, “with all his millions,” should pay.

Ms Gentle and Mr Bacon spoke out after it emerged that full hard copies of the 2.6 million word, 12-volume report will cost £767 and will not be provided to the families free of charge.

They are invited to attend inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot’s statement when the report is published on July 6, before which they will be able to read an embargoed copy and will be given a free executive summary.

But Glasgow resident Ms Gentle, whose son was killed in a bomb attack in Basra in 2004 aged 19, said families should receive a free hard copy as well.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Blair‘s pants on fire yet again

Saturday 28th May 2016

With the blanket coverage afforded to the ongoing hokey-cokey shenanigans by every media outlet in the country, it was going to take something special to penetrate the fog of disinformation, ambiguity and downright falsehood that have become a daily fact of life in recent months.

As ever, cometh the hour cometh the man. Step forward Anthony Lynton Blair Esq who, if this week is anything to go by, appears to be running out of rocks to hide under.

Maybe he thought that with his erstwhile chum Murdoch rehitched it was safe to show his face again after his ill-advised alleged dalliance with Wendi Deng.

Or maybe he assumed that, with the majority of the country engaged in the EU imbroglio, he could slip under the radar like a stealth bomber.

More likely it was just that the G7 confab was taking place in Japan and his monstrous ego couldn’t handle the fact that he was not invited.

Whatever his reasoning, which as we have had frequent cause to rue bears only a tenuous link to reality at the best of times, it was proven as faulty as a dodgy dossier.

Yes that’s right, not content with having been given a heads-up on the contents of the Chilcot report — via the so-called Maxwellisation process — allowing him to prepare a defence against criticism this week, the war criminal extraordinaire went even further and got his response in first — a whole month before the report is even scheduled to be published.

We all know that the inquiry report will be strongly critical of Blair and his lackey former foreign secretary Jack Straw. If it didn’t it would be the biggest whitewash since the cliffs of Dover last got a touch up.

Or the Butler report…

Most of us didn’t need a multi-million-pound six-year inquiry to tell us who was to blame for the slaughter of over a million people in the blatantly illegal invasion.

He has boasted about it enough after all.

Now, many people preparing to get excoriated by a public inquiry would either keep a low profile, like Straw, or throw themselves on the mercy of the public.

But that is hardly Blair’s style. As with his political idol and role model Thatcher, the psychopath is not for turning.

Instead he did what he always does, larded on the fake sincerity, appearing to make a mea culpa while in actual fact doing nothing of the kind.

Despite his much professed religious fervour sackcloth and ashes were never his style, more Savile Row suits and Aston Martins.

Thus is was this week that he “admitted” that he “underestimated profoundly” the chaos his imperialist adventurism would bring to Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.

Hmm, curious when everyone else knew exactly what would happen and two million people marched to tell him exactly that.

There’s a difference between “underestimating” and simply not caring.

Speaking in Westminster, Blair ducked questions on the inquiry’s findings, but said: “For sure we underestimated profoundly the forces that were at work in the region and would take advantage of change once you topple the regime. That is the lesson. The lesson is not complicated.”

No, it isn’t. But he obviously still hasn’t learnt it because in the next breath he called for British troops to join a ground war against Islamic State [ISIS].

Because that’s never backfired before has it?

“To be honest,” he said — no laughing at the back there — “my understanding of the Middle East is a lot deeper now than it was when I was prime minister, quite frankly.”

Well I should bloody hope so. You were peace envoy to the region for God knows how many years during all of which time your “understanding” amounted to little more than doing what Israel says or else, like repeatedly calling for the bombing of Iran, for example.

But then came the clinker: “We are not being honest with our public if we are saying it is possible to defeat these people [Isis] without making the commitment to defeat them and do what it takes to defeat them.”

How dare you, you snivelling hypocrite!

First of all, what’s with this phoney paternalism? “We are not being honest.”

In case it has escaped your attention Tony, you have had no say in the running of this country since 2007 when you jumped before you could be pushed, leaving the unfortunate Gordon Brown to pick up the pieces. Then you swanned off to line your pockets by shilling for any despotic regime with enough cash.

Torturers, murderers, human rights abusers, you haven’t exactly been fussy as long as the cheque doesn’t bounce.

And then there’s the equally troublesome “Our public…”

You lost the right to refer to it as OUR public when you lied through your teeth to Parliament and the nation about the justification for the slaughter of over a million people.

Incidentally, a YouGov poll commissioned this week found that around 53 per cent of the population said they would never forgive Blair for his deceit in taking the nation to war, with only 8 per cent thinking he did nothing wrong.

Would that be the public you’re talking about, you murdering scumbag?

During the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 Blair infamously said he felt “the hand of history” on his shoulder.

If there was any justice in this world it would be the hand of the International Criminal Court whose grip he was feeling.