Tony Blair closes RSA 2012, denounces WikiLeaks

Former British Prime Minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was RSA's pick to close out their annual security conference in San Francisco, and he took the opportunity to bash WikiLeaks as "disgraceful." Blair took time out from his busy official role of bringing peace to the Middle East to pad his pockets speak for an …

[Anonymous Coward]

re-remembering the past ..

"He also admitted to getting social media wrong. When social media first emerged, he said that politicians saw it as something which would act as a brake on the conventional media"

This is news to me, I would have thought the politicians would have seen blogs as a threat as they couldn't be controlled and spun like the conventional media, but then again Tony does have a talent for re-remembering the past.

"That this House recalls the Prime Minister's assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction capable of being used at 45 minutes' notice; further recalls the Government's contention that these weapons posed an imminent danger to the United Kingdom and its forces"

http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/useful/sp-iraq/

"I've never said that Iraq was about to launch an attack on Britain", Tony Blair

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/838641/posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah we love Tony Bliar.

You see you guys all think he's a failure.

You're seeing it from the wrong perspective.

He has, (as his wife kindly pointed out in the newspapers when she said we should waste money on third world women rather than their men, because women spend their money on food, and men waste it in gambling dens (that need to employ women,)) always worked for his family.

From his perspective he has...

1. Give the pope more power over Northern Ireland,

2. Flooded the country with Polish Catholics,

3. Made absolutely millions for his family,

4. Secured his children's future,

5. Secured the world's oil, and

6. Caused the deaths of over a million Muslims while making it look like it wasn't anything to do with him.

From his perspective...

Stitiched up Britain for the Pope,

Killed millions of Muslims for the Pope,

Earned Millions for his family.

Has now got himself in a job, equivalent, to the captain of the ship which brought in the black death on rats, dictating cross border health regulations.

Whether you like it or not, he has earned his place in his heaven. He will be beatified in a hundred years.

What's not to admire about that? From his perspective he's made a great success. Had he been English and done the same thing to France, everyone would be lauding him. He who dies with the most wins, especially if the last cheque he writes bounces, which I'd be surprised if it didn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pope on a rope

Ian Paisley a regular on El Reg. Who'da thunk it?

[Matt Bryant]

Oh, how I laughed!

Whilst it is amusing, reading at the rantings posted here, I have to ask how many of the UK posters reflexively voted Labour in 1997 and ensured Tony Blair's actions? The man won three General Elections, and I'm betting many of you put a cross on the ballot by the name of your local New Labour candidate without a moment's thought.

How many of the European posters reflexively and unquestioningly voted for some form of socialist government in their own countries? IIRC, there were 36 nations involved in the Mutli-National Force in Iraq, including many European ones. Oh, and those reflexive votes for European socilaist governments also ensured the economic chaos that has ensued. Please don't pretend it is all the bankers' fault, they weren't spending the public money like it was water in Greece.

And how about our Yank posters, how many of you voted for Bill Clinton with the usual and habitual "I can't vote Republican, I must vote Democrat"?

I've said ti before - an electorate usually gets the politicans it deserves. You reap what you sow.

[h4rm0ny]

Re: Oh, how I laughed!

More people voted against Labour than voted for it, in the last General Election that Tony Blair headed up. Labour got a majority of seats.

[Matt Bryant]

Re:Re: Oh, how I laughed!

"More people voted against Labour than voted for it....." Unfortunately, that is how the UK electoral system works. It's not about numbers of votes, it's about number of MPs elected. Some MPs have constituencies with larger numbers of voters than others, but their constituencies carry equal "weight" in Parliament (supposedly). The party with the largest number of seats has the right to form a government, either alone or in co-opration if they don't have a clear majority.

And before you start going on about proportional representation, please look at the mess that has caused in other countries such as Greece, where all the horsetrading has hindered the Greek government in implementing the actions the Germans wanted them to, or how it recently kept the Belgians from forming a government for 541 days!

[Graham Marsden]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

@Matt Bryant: "before you start going on about proportional representation, please look at the mess that has caused in other countries such as Greece" etc etc etc

Ah, the same old arguments that were trotted out when we *DID* have a chance to change a broken electoral system and which were refuted time and again, yet, due to large amounts of money spent on a campaign of FUD and lies ("Vote No to AV or the baby dies") we ended up with an electorate that were confused or scared into sticking with FPTP.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

".... Ah, the same old arguments that were trotted out when we *DID* have a chance to change a broken electoral system...." Yes, because the "broken" system has been looked at before and recognised as not perfect, but no-one has come up with a solution that is good enough to persuade the general populance it is better. Hence we have old arguments. If AV cannot stand up to "old arguments" then it is simply not good enough either.

Let's say someone is wearing sandals and want to wade across a stream. They worry their feet are going to get wet. They have already considered wearing ballet pumps but reckon cloth will not be waterproof, hence their feet will still get wet. You propose trainers, flash sports ones, because you think they are really cool! But the wader points out they will be no more waterproof than sandals or ballet pumps. You don't think to suggest Wellies beacuse, in your mind, flash trainers are the ultimate footwear, all due to the advertising, so you simply lambast them for using "the same old arguments" in rejecting your trainers. You whine on and on about how your trainers are just SOOOOO cool, that you were cheated, etc, etc, and you insist that the wearer muct have been "scared" into not taking your trainers. The fact that the wader simply made a smart decision eludes you because you think THE TRAINERS ARE SO COOOOOOOOOL!!!! In short, the failure is yours, not the general public's.

Just because a system is imperfect, it does not mean replacing it with the trend au jour is going to be a better solution.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

You coming out as a Blair supporter then MB? I mean, surely you were in favour of the War on Terror in Iraq? I doubt, somehow, you were part of the million-strong anti-war march.

Wouldn't suprise me if you were a supporter of Blair/Bush, but it's a bit of a blunt instrument for trolling, isn't it?

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"You coming out as a Blair supporter then MB?...." No, merely pointing out the amusing way the same people that greeted Blair as some great liberator from the Tories are now the same people moaning the hardest about his "achievements". Oh, but I was in favour of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Everything aside, Matt, for a moment, may I ask you a question in all seriousness?

When the war in Iraq/Afghanistan kicked off, I, like many, was in favour of the "direct action". Several of my friends were soldiers and their enthusiasm for the fight swept me along, as well as the rhetoric from many of our leaders. 7/7, initially at least, galvanised my opinion.

It wasn't until some time later that I changed my mind and "swapped camps", based on the arguments presented to me and the evidence I uncovered for myself.

Why do you support the action taken in Iraq?

I'm not taking the piss here, I'd genuinely like to know your opinion.

FTR, I was never a Blair fan, nor am I a Cameron fan, and I don't rate the Lib Dems either....

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"....Why do you support the action taken in Iraq?....." And here we go off on another sidetrack away from the topic in hand. I thought you lot were so hot on Manning and his freedom? Evdiently not.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Nice evasion. Not.

Not prepared to answer the question? No suprises there. Only a moron would still be in favour of the Iraq war.

Again, you are woefully unaware of my position on Manning. He should be treated humanely and given a fair trial, not tortured and then put in a show-trial to appease the redneck right-wing of the yankee public.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"Nice evasion. Not....." Er, yes it was! And I sense another one coming soon!

".....not tortured....." Bingo! We're back to more pathetic whining that Manning was "tortured". That has been so debunked it is soon to be in the next edition of the Oxford Dictionary as an example under "deluded".

"....fair trial....put in a show-trial...." Please explain how it is a "show trial"? It seems he has fair recourse, he has a legal team which seem unemcumbered from spouting any male bovine manure they like about the Corp, and it's all being done openly and in the public eye. In short, your statement is again just more complete cobblers.

Please go back to IndyMedia or whatever other handwringer site you crawled over here from. This is a techies' site, we have brains, we can actually think for ourselves, and we're not going to swallow your mindless drivel just because you tell us to.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Another sidetrack?

err....so what does Manning have to do with anything in this article or thread then? Or, indeed, how does it relate to the question I asked you, which, I believe has relevance to the discussion of the career of Tony B.Liar?

Elucidate please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

I get the feeling we need an additional icon, of an erect penis with the owner's hand wrapped around it.

[Graham Marsden]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Matt Bryant: "If AV cannot stand up to "old arguments" then it is simply not good enough either."

Oh good grief, Matt. It wasn't about the arguments, it was about the amount of money that the "Say No" campaign (backed by the Tories) could put into straw man advertising ("If you vote for AV this soldier won't get a bullet proof vest") and other ridiculous nonsense such as that contained in your second paragraph.

If you really wanted to summarize the situation accurately you could have said "Let's say someone is wearing sandals and want to wade across a stream. We could have given them a choice between the sandals and ballet pumps, stiletto heels, trainers, slippers, wellington boots, flip-flops, waders, army boots etc etc, but if we did that, they might actually realise that there *are* better options."

Instead, they, like you, offer a false dichotomy of "well it's either sandals or trainers" and use that to set up a straw man argument showing how bad the "only available" alternative is.

The only bit you did get right is that "it does not mean replacing it with the trend au jour is going to be a better solution", but you miss the point that it was never an open and free choice in the first place.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Besides the fact this has nothing to do with Tony Blair, it is amusing to hear another "we woz cheated" whine from the Left!

".....It wasn't about the arguments, it was about the amount of money that the "Say No" campaign (backed by the Tories) could put into straw man advertising...." IIRC, Labour were anti-AV too, but that's beside the point. You're now insisting that not only were all us voters scared out of voting for AV, you also insist that BIG MONEY was intent on keeping us scared. Subscribe to many conspiracy theories, by chance? In fact, I saw MORE of the pro-AV advertising than the anti-AV, was that all given for free? I doubt it. Please just accept the simple fact that your arguments weren't strong enough to convince the populance.

"....We could have given them a choice between the sandals and ballet pumps, stiletto heels, trainers, slippers, wellington boots, flip-flops, waders, army boots...." And that was half the problem with AV - none of the AV supporters seemed able to push a coherent message, you spent half the time arguing amongst yourselves as to which footwear you actually did think was best. That made it very easy for the anti-AV campaign to defeat you lot, especially as some of the options thrown into the ring by the pro-AV crowd looked just like self-serving idiocy.

"....but you miss the point that it was never an open and free choice in the first place." Would you like some cheese with that whine? You got a referendum, you lost because the people did not see value in the choice you presented. End of story. Now shut-up, grow up, and accept it.

[Graham Marsden]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Ah, once again the Matt Bryant movable goalposts are back out of storage, not to mention irrelevant personal attacks.

No, Matt, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories and trying to denigrate my arguments like that just shows the paucity of yours.

The fact is that when one side in an argument can (like you repeatedly try to do) move the goalposts and change the argument to irrelevancies instead of dealing with the actual issue that we should have had a discussion into *all* the options available *before* any referendum was ever held, we were given a false choice and straw man arguments (another one was the claim that AV was somehow not "one person one vote") then it's not a case of "an electorate usually gets the politicans it deserves. You reap what you sow", but those who follow the Golden Rule ("He who has the gold makes the rules") decide what we reap from what they sow.

Once again I'll let you get the last word because there's no point in trying to have a sensible discussion with you.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

".....just shows the paucity of yours...." I don't need to repeat my arguments, for two reasons:

1. It is up to you to present some form of argument for AV, which you have not, you have simply whined about how supposedly unfair the process was.

2. We won! < Cue smug laughter!

[h4rm0ny]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"whine from the Left!" ???

Why on Earth do you suppose that anyone who wanted AV is on the "Left" ? Labour were against it, the Conservatives were against it. I'm considered right-wing on many issues and I supported AV. You're constructing odd strawmen images of your critics. Some sort of Divide and Conquer principle trying to turn it into a Right-Left division and garner some support? Sorry - your preconceptions are misplaced. Also, calling someone's post a "whine" is just a cheap way of trying to dismiss what they say. Argument by analogy, as you do by immediately resorting to talk about traininers vs. wellies, is the real flaw. Unless you can explain how wellies are closely analoguous to the existing system and trainers are closely analoguous to AV other than just because you say one is better than the other.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

h4rm0ny has you bang to rights there, MB.

To reinforce his point, and the weakness of your "argument" (I struggle to call your point of view an argument, as it implies reason and you lack that, really.) I shall point out that I am generally "left wing" (Neo-Socialist) and I wasn't really in favour of AV either; it was a watered down version of PR and I'm not even certain that PR itself would be a good idea.

In the end I settled for FPTP, as it's better the devil we know, and the argument from the AV camp was not cohesive or clear enough.

Please, bring your next deluded assumption about how your fellow commentators think. We'll be waiting for the laughs.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

""whine from the Left!" ???" Take it up with Bernie, he was the one that insisted it was all a Tory / Big Money conspiracy. I was just enjoying the fun of mocking his insecurities.

"....Unless you can explain how wellies are closely analoguous to the existing system and trainers are closely analoguous to AV...." Blimey, it wasn't that hard to follow, was it? The whole point of that was to show that Bernie couldn't see that his offering was unacceptable to the general public, he assumed we'd all been "scared" out of chosing AV. Just like the person pushing trainers, Bernie is so convinced about AV but he is just unable to convince anyone else, so he has to assume he was somehow tricked rather than admit his belief in the perfection of AV is flawed. It's a bit like those guys in nightclubs that get rejected by a girl and therefore have to insist she's a lesbian, becuase they just can't accept the fact that they're not good looking enough to interest her.

I apologise for using an analogy that was obviously far too complex for the pro-AVers to follow. Maybe The Reg can add a feature to allow the uploading of diagrams to help them. Ones in crayon.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Personally, I am more inclined to listen to the opinion of Amnesty International who condemned the treatment of Manning OUTRIGHT as torture, than the opinion of those inflicting the torture, but this is old ground and we've trodden it before. Also, yet another stupid sidestep by you avoiding the subject.

"""whine from the Left!" ???" Take it up with Bernie, he was the one that insisted it was all a Tory / Big Money conspiracy. I was just enjoying the fun of mocking his insecurities."

Please show me where I said that? I think you've got the wrong poster. More proof that the only dialogue you understand is the one going on in your own (wrong) head.

You're not even a very good troll, are you?

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"Personally, I am more inclined to listen to the opinion of Amnesty International...." I guess you're only inclined to listen to anyone that chimes with your limited POV, especially professional whiners like AI. Unfortunately, anyone with any legal power completely disagrees with you and AI, hence the complete failure of legal moves to get Manning's treatment branded "torture".

Apologies, Bernie, it was actually your fellow whiner Graham Marsden that accused the Tories of "scaring" us all out of voting for AV:

".....It wasn't about the arguments, it was about the amount of money that the "Say No" campaign (backed by the Tories)....." Posted 5th March, 18:42.

Please forgive me for confusing the two of you, it must be down to the vacuuous nature of your bleatings being so similar and strikingly unoriginal, presumably because you both over-grazed on the same astroturf.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Apology accepted.

I'm done arguing with you now. It's clear that you are just a troll, or mentally deficient in some way, as no one in their right mind could think any of the following:

* War in Iraq is good.

* It's reasonable that the USA redefined the word torture

* US foreign policy is perfectly justified.

* The right to question the orders of a superior is a fallacy

* AV/PR is a bad idea entirely

* Tony Blair was a good guy

* The Tories are good guys

* State secrecy is perfectly fine, in all cases.

* The treatment of Bradley Manning is ok

* Julian Assange should be raped, then shot.

* No one else, anywhere on these forums, has any intelligence and only you're right.

These are all opinions you've spouted. You are clearly delusional and sociopathic.

Go find some help.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"....I'm done arguing with you now....." What, is it time for your after-milk nap?

".....no one in their right mind...." Interesting that you are so closed minded that you cannot perceive that someone else could have a different POV without being mentally challenged. Personally, I think that says plenty about the limits of your intellectual capabilities.

".....War in Iraq is good...." No, war is never good, but it is often necessay. You may come to understand that when you grow up. Until then, I'll just laugh at the rest of the frothing, trend-du-jour, ranting points you listed.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

" ...you are so closed minded that you cannot perceive that someone else could have a different POV..."

I didn't have to look very far to see you saying the same thing, Matt. What's good for the gander and all:

"...it must be down to the vacuuous nature of your bleatings being so similar and strikingly unoriginal, presumably because you both over-grazed on the same astroturf..."

You go on to say that war is sometimes neccessary; I agree. Can you tell us why you believe the war in Iraq was neccessary?

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

".....I didn't have to look very far to see you saying the same thing...." Actually. we're totally different - I show up the holes in your arguments, you just post bleatings.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"Can you tell us why you believe the war in Iraq was neccessary?"

It seems you can't, or won't, answer my question. I suspect that's because you know that it is entirely unreasonable to attempt to defend your point of view on the subject as the war in Iraq had no moral justification at all.

Oh, and by the way, did you see yesterdays news?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un?newsfeed=true

"The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning..."

"In his opening letter to the US government on December 30 2010, Mendez said that the prolonged period of isolated confinment was believed to have been imposed "in an effort to coerce him into 'cooperation' with the authorities, allegedly for the purpose of persuading him to implicate others."

So, the UN condemns the treatment of Bradley Manning as torture after a 14 month investigation that your precious USMC refused to cooperate with.

Only rednecks think it wasn't torture now.

Game Over.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Oh dear. I was trying to save you further embarrassment as I predict you will simply trot out more well-worn, debunked, handwringer froth in response to anything to do with the Iraq War. I saw the removal of Saddam Hussein from power as both necessary to reduce the chances of a major Mid East war (along the lines of another invasion of Kuwait), to protect the minorities in Iraq (such as the Kurds and the Southern Marsh Arabs) from further persecution, and to bring Saddam to trial for his crimes. Are you contending that Saddam was whiter than white and had no crimes to answer to?

".....Oh, and by the way, did you see yesterdays news?...." The Guardian is not a paper I would recommend to anyone, it's the exact political opposite (and equally as brow-beating) as the Daily Mail that you and your fellow bleaters so happily ridicule, whilst ignoring the paucity of real reporting in the sources you choose to read. The Guardian's falling out with A$$nut, after being quite happy to originally work with him on stolen US documents, is simply an example of their hilariously inept "journalism".

".....UN special rapporteur on torture .... Mendez...." Ah yes, Juan Mendez of Human Rights Watch fame. An institution criticised for its focus on bashing Israel at every opportunity, whilst largely ignoring real issues such as Kashmir, and whose members like posing with Nazi war memorobilia. I'm not surprised the totally corrupt UN Human Rights Council, infamous for electing such well known oppressors of human rights as Iran to its ranks, whilst ignoring human rights violations committed by council member states, should choose a representative with such a bias against the US military. Am I surprised Juan Mendez is wasting time and money pushing the Manning "torture" rot? Nope. Am I surprised that you don't have a clue to the political leanings of the people you quote? Nope again.

".....Only rednecks think it wasn't torture now....." Only a faux intellectual bigot would tar a group of people with such an assertion. I happen to know some very clever "rednecks", one of whom has a very senior position in hp, a job no doubt way above your paygrade and requiring far more intelligence than you can muster. That is if you do have a job even. I'm beginning to think that unlikely.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Oh, am I sensing annoyance from you, Matthew?

"Are you contending that Saddam was whiter than white and had no crimes to answer to?"

No, but I will contend that no one gave that as the reason Iraq was to be invaded. It wasn't even mentioned in the so-called "dodgy dossier"; the very secret reasons (if you believe it) that we went to war at all, instead we were fed BS about "45 minutes for Iraq to launch WMDs at us" and "Saddam supports Al Qaeda". If liberation of the an oppressed people HAD been the reason I would probably still be applauding it as a "moral war". If it had been, perhaps we'd now be doing the same in Saudi, Somalia, Uganda, Iran, North Korea, Syria... ('Merica! World Police! We're not after your oil, no sirree, we just want you to be free!)

But it wasn't, and I think we all know that now.

Anyway, its the same US that propped Saddam into power and the same US that sold him the chemical agents he used on the marsh-arabs (as a test in preperation for war on Iran, which served US interests perfectly.)

Let's move along for the baby-troll, shall we?

Ok, so let's assume that the Guardian is lying completely. Unlikely, as its not the Mail, but let's pretend for the kiddies....

....how about CNN or ABC? How about Glen Greenwald?

http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

...Maybe you'd like to check Reuters? The BBC? Al-Jazeera?

Or...let's read the report from the UN itself! Here you go.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2012/03/12/A_HRC_19_61_Add.4_EFSonly-2.pdf

So, I think thats the evidence presented that the Guardian wasn't making it all up, so I can dispose of your "you can't trust 'em" argument. There's an awful of lot of international groups and governments now coming to the conclusion that the US is actually pretty nasty when you get down to its core, whilst the good 'ole boys are sitting there, wrapped in flags and crosses and saying "it ain't so" over and over to make sure that they (and foolish people like you) continue to believe that they are all liberty, justice and mom's apple pie. Wakey! They aren't!

And then you present some comedy gold...

"Only a faux intellectual bigot would tar a group of people with such an assertion."

Really?! I'm not sure I even need to answer this, but if I did it would merely to Copy/Paste some choice examples of you doing this over and over. I doubt I'd even need to leave this topic to do so, so I shan't waste my time. Your hypocricy amazes me, and many others here, but I don't think anyone is suprised by it anymore. Just for you though, I shall change "redneck" to "rednecks with particularly low intelligence" to clarify. Or, if you prefer, "Only a poorly educated bucket of slugs would...etc. etc.". I do, however, applaud the way you got a straw-man AND an ad hominem attack into the same sentence, that takes a small measure of skill.

Move along, nothing to see here....oh wait...one more ad hominem non-sequitor to deal with.

"a job no doubt way above your paygrade and requiring far more intelligence than you can muster. That is if you do have a job even. I'm beginning to think that unlikely."

A VP or something then? Or some kind of director? Yeah, that'd be above my pay-grade, true enough. I am not going to give details of what I do due to certain security directives and so forth that I have to abide by in my nice, well paid role working for the nation. That is, unfortunately, as far as I can take a discussion about what I do.

Trollface, 'cos one of us should wear it proudly.

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"Oh, am I sensing annoyance from you, Matthew?...." No, that's simply a mixture of boredom and resignation, both prompted by your predictable frothing.

".....No, but I will contend that no one gave that as the reason Iraq was to be invaded...." And there we have another major failure, both in political understanding and simple reading comprehension. In political understanding, you failed to grasp that the Allies needed a legal argument to go to war, hence the WMD angle to show how Saddam was infringing on UN Resolution 1441. If you had asked me to justify the the Allied arguments around WMDs and Res 1441 then you could just bleat that standard, anti-War whines and still come across as vageuly on-topic.

"....US that sold him the chemical agents...." I think you'll find that the majority of Saddam's chemical agents, along with a lot of his high-tech coms, bunkers and other war material came from Europe, especially Germany and France. His chemical precursors came from many countries, only a tiny fraction coming from the US. Wikipedia has the following (and even a echo-chamber bigot like you should be able to find Wikipedia):

".....The know-how and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained by Saddam's regime from foreign firms. The largest suppliers of precursors for chemical weapons production were in Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and West Germany (1,027 tons). One Indian company, Exomet Plastics (now part of EPC Industrie Ltd.) sent 2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. The Kim Al-Khaleej firm, located in Singapore and affiliated to United Arab Emirates, supplied more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas precursors and production equipment to Iraq...."

All you are doing is displaying the fact that you have done zero original research, just swallowed the anti-US soundbites fed to you.

But what you actually asked was what reasons did I have for supporting the Iraq War, so it is a failure on your part to immediately trot out the very worn, standard, anti-War boilerplate. Did I expect you to do any original thinking and actually consider my points and maybe make counters? No, your lack of original thinking has been self-evident from your first post. You don't even deserve a trollface.

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

Good research on the origin of the Sarin used on the marsh-arabs, I concede that point.

I'd say we could continue debating all this until Nibiru turns up, but I think we've cleared the thread of all other commentards and the landlord of inevitability is flashing the lights of last orders at us.

Beer? I'll get the coats...

[Matt Bryant]

Re: Re: Re:Oh, how I laughed!

"....Beer?..." Ah, if only we could solve all the World's troubles over a pint.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Oh, how I laughed!

Yes I voted for the twat in '97. Haven't voted Labour since and never will again. My Dad saw right through him, but I didn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's got nothing to hide...

...then what's he worried about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this parasite...

....dead yet?

Pity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has the twat managed to start a war in Iran yet?

[Lord Of the Flies]

This imbecile needs to be in Jail for crimes against humanity. Shame on RSA, No wonder they are going downhill fast.

[bobbles31]

In the privacy debate I love the "politicians need to be able to speak freely" argument. I have never yet seen a member of the press retort with "surely elected representatives should be made to stand by their opinions and decisions in a public forum", after all then we might get a level of honesty from our politicians that the 30 million odd disinterested voters seem to expect but never get.

Rather than the public having suspicions about meetings where agenda item 1 is tank movements agenda item 2 is how to hide the tank movements from the public and any other business is who's corporate sponsor is going to get what oil contract in Iraq.