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Read this.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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Donations are pouring in to a crowdfunding page launched to help families of soldiers killed in Iraq take legal action against former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The families’ aim to raise £50,000 (US$65,000) was close to being achieved on Tuesday afternoon, when the campaign already boasted more than £44,000.

[...]

The Iraq War Families Campaign Group may have also been responsible for hurrying up the seven-year Chilcot Inquiry when they threatened to sue Sir John Chilcot in 2015.

  RT

Over here, something like that would cost millions.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

John Prescott - Still a Dick

There seems to be no shortage of politicians and other officials who come out against the very thing they supported while they were in power now that it's too late for them to have any effect on the issue.

John Prescott, who was deputy prime minister when Britain went to war with Iraq in 2003, says the invasion by UK and US forces was "illegal".

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, he said he would live with the "catastrophic decision" for the rest of his life.

  BBC

He's going to "live with" it. Millions of victims of it don't get the chance.

He said he now agreed "with great sadness and anger" with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan that the war was illegal.

Whichever way the wind blows.

"My first concern was the way Tony Blair ran Cabinet. We were given too little paper documentation to make decisions," he wrote.

But you made them anyway.

"A day doesn't go by when I don't think of the decision we made to go to war. Of the British troops who gave their lives or suffered injuries for their country. Of the 175,000 civilians who died from the Pandora's Box we opened by removing Saddam Hussein," he went on.

He also expressed his own "fullest apology", especially to the families of British personnel who died.

He has degrees of apology, apparently.

Tony Blair has apologised for mistakes he made but has said he stands by his decision to take the country to war.

Meanwhile Tory MP David Davis said he will submit a motion to hold the former PM in contempt of Parliament over Iraq.

If the motion is accepted, MPs could debate and vote on whether he is guilty of misleading the House of Commons before the summer recess.

And then what? Nothing, if I'm any judge of the way things work.

I was going to criticize Prescott for his timing, but to be fair, he did speak up as early as 2009 when the Chilcot inquiry began. That still was beyond any time that his objection might have made a difference, so I'm going to go ahead and call him an asshat.

In an interview [published December 10, 2009] in the New Statesman the former deputy prime minister says: "I do wonder, looking back now, having the privilege of discussing with Tony [Blair] about all this: how did I then go along [with it]?"

[...]

Prescott recalled witnessing "hair-raising" conversations about Iraq between the then prime minister Blair and George Bush – "because Bush has got his own kind of approach ... It did make you think" – and said of the former US president: "Listen, Bush is crap – you know it, I know it, the party knows it."

He said he had imagined how Blair could have stood up the president: "I've often thought, 'Well, you could have just said 'Sod you ... we're not doing it.'"

  Guardian

And where were you, Mr. Deputy? You could have made a public statement. You could have just said 'I'm resigning in protest.'  And you could have said why.

He said he once told Blair: "You're a bloody Tory."

"Tony is a Christian social democrat," he added. "He wasn't a socialist."

He wasn't even a social democrat. He was "conservative" through and through.

Prescott also discussed the 1994 Labour leadership contest, eventually won by Blair after Gordon Brown stepped aside. "I personally would have supported Gordon. And then Tony would [have] become the obvious successor . . . Gordon was more politically in tune with me."

[...]

He recalled advising Blair to sack Brown, and said of Brown: "Gordon would say, I can't trust [Blair] . . . 'Well for Christ's sake, go then. I don't want to hear impossible moans, because all you're trying to do is persuade me to go one way or another.' "

You just said he was "more politically in tune with" you. You can't even keep your story straight in one interview.

Paddy Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, also came under fire. "[Blair] asked me whether Paddy Ashdown could join the Labour party, and I said, 'If he walks in that door I'm out that door. No discussion.'"

'But go ahead and join that crap Bush in an illegal and immoral war. I'm with you there.'

And then, in 2010, his pendulum swung back to the reality....

Prescott did not think the cabinet should have been shown the detailed advice of the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the conflict. "All I wanted to know, and I think the Cabinet and the prime minister, is is it legal and can you legally justify military intervention? He said yes."

Dismissing as fashionable criticism of Blair, he said: "True leadership is not about having the benefit of hindsight. It is about having the gift of vision, courage and compassion, and I believe that Tony Blair had all those three."

  Guardian

So, not only did he not voice objections, he didn't want to know if any existed.  But, suddenly, now that the wind is blowing against Blair and the war, his "first concern was the way Tony Blair ran Cabinet. We were given too little paper documentation to make decisions."

 And now, he's very, very sorry, and he has to live with that.

No, asshat. You get to live with it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jeremy Corbyn Has a Richard Clarke Moment

LONDON: British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday apologized for the Iraq war on behalf of his Labour Party after former Labour prime minister Tony Blair defended his actions despite a damning inquiry report.

"I now apologize sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq," Corbyn said after meeting families of British soldiers who died.

  Daily Star

Pre-Chilcot Report Statements

John Chilcot, chairman of a British inquiry into the country's role in the Iraq War, said in releasing the report that Britain joined the invasion of Iraq "before the peaceful options had been exhausted," and that preparations for the aftermath were "wholly inadequate."

UK policy was based on "flawed intelligence and assessments," he said. "They were not challenged and they should have been." Hindsight was not necessary to identify the risks of what would happen to the country post-invasion, he said: "The risks... were each explicitly identified before the invasion."

Furthermore, the legal basis for the war was "far from satisfactory," he said.

"The people of Iraq have suffered greatly," he said.

[...]

Speaking ahead of the release of the long-awaited report in London, Chilcot said former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned of the risks of regional instability and the rise of terrorism before the invasion of Iraq, but pressed on regardless. The UK failed to appreciate the complexity of governing Iraq, and did not devote enough forces to the task of securing the country in the wake of the invasion, he said.

Blair's decision to invade Iraq was influenced by his interest in protecting the UK's relationship with the United States, he said.

That relationship "does not require unconditional support where our interests and judgments differ," said Chilcot. The inquiry did not express a view on whether the invasion was legal, he said, arguing that that was a decision for another forum.

[...]

Tony Blair, Britain's leader at the time, says he will respond fully later Wednesday, but still believes "it was better" to topple Iraq's former dictator.

"I will at the same time say why, nonetheless, I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein and why I do not believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world," he said.

He said that the Chilcot report "should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit."

  CNN

And here's an ex-British soldier's take:

1. We already know what happened, Chilcot is just an establishment take on events.

[...]

In recent and coming weeks the real issue – why we went, the deadly deception – will be blurred by references to peripheral issues about the conduct of the war. Let's be clear. Bad equipment, for example, is secondary in the big scheme of things. Nor was the war a "mistake" or "accident". Tripping and falling is an accident, getting drunk and trolling your boss at the Christmas party is a mistake. Iraq was neither. It was calculated and intentional.

[...]

2. Blairism is dead

Iraq exposed Blairism as the art of sounding progressive while being vicious. Whatever the inquiry yields, we also know Blair's legacy has an undead zombie quality. It is dead and yet it keeps on killing, as the recent attacks in place like Iraq, Paris and Brussels prove.

[...]

Like 179 British soldiers, Blair's ideology died fighting for Uncle Sam. Like the equipment in Iraq it was not fit for purpose. It can't be reconditioned. The time has come to say goodbye.

[...]

3. The heroes of the Iraq War were the ones who resisted it

[...]

Just a few examples:

Military Families against War (MFAW). Mums, dads, sisters, brothers who, in many cases, lost loved ones and were wracked with grief. Yet they took on and resisted the establishment over Iraq.

[...]

Stop the War Coalition (STWC). Its leaders and its rank and file. A decade and a half of speaking, organizing, manning lonely stalls in little towns and big cities.

[...]

Jeremy Corbyn. An anti-war hero forged in the movement which opposed Iraq's destruction. [...]  His elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party and the anti-democratic coup currently being conducted against him by Blair's acolytes bear testament both to his foresight and to their failings.

[...]

4. We need a referendum on the Special Relationship which dragged us into Iraq

Throughout the EU Referendum there was barely a mention of the UK's Special Relationship with America, yet it has been infinitely more damaging than EU membership.

[...]

[I] you are honestly committed to inclusiveness and multiculturalism you must fight to isolate any nation which puts rapacious savagery against people of colour at the centre of both domestic and foreign policy.

If you want to deal with a really progressive question you must look to the US, forget Brexit and fight for an Amerexit in legal, political, military and economic terms.

  Joe Glenton @ IBTimes

And, the view from the Iraqi man memorialized in the pictures of Saddam's statue being torn down:

Kadhim Sharif al-Jabouri, had once repaired the Hussein family's motorcycles, but was also imprisoned by Hussein after falling out of favor. He says that 14 or 15 members of his family were executed by Hussein's regime.

In an interview aired Tuesday by the BBC, more than 13 years after the invasion, Jabouri speaks of his longing for the relative peace of the years before it.

[...]

Jabouri has long since left Baghdad, which he found to be too unsafe for his family. He now lives in Beirut, along with more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, Syria and Palestine, who have added incredible stress to Lebanon's public infrastructure and services.

[...]

After the American invasion, he says, things got worse every year. "There was corruption, infighting, killing, looting. Saddam killed people, but it was nothing like this current government," he said. "Saddam is gone, but in his place there are 1,000 Saddams."

And that government was instituted by the invading coalition. For them, Jabouri had these words: "Bush and Blair are liars. They destroyed Iraq and took us back to zero, and took us back to the Middle Ages or earlier. If I was a criminal, I would kill them with my bare hands."

  WaPo

Corbyn Coup to Protect Blair?

Alex Salmond [former Scottish First Minister] has appeared to suggest the internal Labour party coup against Jeremy Corbyn is connected with the publication of the long-awaited Chilcot report into the Iraq war.

[...]

“I had a conversation on exactly this point with veteran Labour firebrand Dennis Skinner. He answered in one word ‘Iraq’. The Skinner line is that the coup was timed to avoid Corbyn calling for Blair’s head next Wednesday from the despatch box. Indeed many would say that when Corbyn stated that he would be prepared to see a former Labour Prime Minister tried for war crimes then he sealed his fate as leader of the Labour party.”

[...]

“[Blair] seemed puzzled as to why Jeremy Corbyn thinks he is a war criminal, why people don't like him,” he added. “The reason is 179 British war dead, 150,000 immediate dead from the Iraq conflict, the Middle East in flames, the world faced with an existential crisis on terrorism - these are just some of the reasons perhaps he should understand why people don't hold him in the highest regard.”

“We are waiting to see Chilcot producing the evidence, which we believe is there, which will allow action to be taken.”

“One way or another there are many MPs, and this is not a party political thing, this is across the political parties, who are absolutely determined that account has to be held to,” he continued.

“[They believe] that you cannot have a situation where this country blunders into an illegal war with the appalling consequences and at the end of the day there isn't a reckoning. There has to be a judicial or political reckoning for that.”

  UK Independent

I, for one, will be well and truly surprised if there is any reckoning at all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Did You Expect? Justice?

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court will examine the Chilcot report for evidence of abuse and torture by British soldiers but have already ruled out putting Tony Blair on trial for war crimes, The Telegraph can disclose.

The decision has outraged families of troops killed in Iraq who blame Mr Blair for engineering the war.

Sir John Chilcot’s report will finally be published on Wednesday and is expected to strongly criticise Mr Blair’s role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

[I]n an official statement to the Telegraph, the International Criminal Court (ICC) said its prosecutors would comb through the 2.3 million word report for evidence of war crimes committed by British troops but that decision to go to war remained outside its remit.

It means individual soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes but not Mr Blair.

  Telegraph

So, as usual, the grunts who do the bidding pay the price while the dicks at the top who make the decisions and give the orders go free. The game is rigged, and the rigging is tight.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 7/3:

One Reason Corporate Press and High Politicos Want to Ruin Corbyn

The Chilcot Inquiry into [the Iraq war] will be released on 6 July this year after years of analysing evidence about how the Government acted in the run-up to and during the conflict.

During the Labour leadership election [current Labour head Jeremy] Corbyn said he was convinced the Iraq War was illegal and that anyone who had committed a crime should be put on trial.

“If [Tony Blair has] committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who's committed a war crime should be [charged],” he said.

[...]

The statement comes amid reports in the Sunday Times that Mr Blair, as well as former foreign secretary Jack Straw, are set to be “savaged” in the Chilcot Report.

[...]

The Chilcot Inquiry's 2.6 million word report has been in production since 2009, when it was launched by former prime minister Gordon Brown.

[...]

The Daily Telegraph newspaper says a Labour spokesperson confirmed over the weekend that Mr Corbyn stands by his views and will not row back from them.

  UK Independent

I don't see it happening, but it would certainly be a start at justice.

The source added that the harshest criticism will be reserved for the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “It will be absolutely brutal for [Mr] Straw,” they told the Sunday Times. “The build-up to war is very crucial. It will damage the reputations of a number of people, Richard Dearlove as well as Tony Blair and others. But there is a second half. The report will say that we really did make a mess of the aftermath.”

“We sent in inexperienced people. People were put in positions where they couldn’t succeed. We didn’t quite know what we were doing.

  UK Independent

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Give It a Rest, Tony

Speaking to Sky News, [ex-primeminister Tony] Blair said: “It has got vast implications economically and politically. The prime minister has got a huge task in trying to bring people together. There is no point in hiding it, for me this is a very very sad day.”

Blair praised Cameron for not immediately invoking article 50, as Corbyn demanded. “We really need to think our way through this. What’s important now to stabilise our situation,” Blair said.

  Guardian

Not even David Cameron is listening to Tony any longer. He's announced he's going to resign. Apparently he doesn't feel up to the huge task.

Boos greeted leave campaigner Boris Johnson as he left his London home this morning.

Johnson, who is the favourite to succeed David Cameron as prime minister, said little to waiting reporters.

Instead he got into a cab to drive to Vote Leave headquarters.

A crowd gathered outside the former London mayor’s house throughout the morning, with expectations that he might announce running for prime minister following Cameron’s resignation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Burn It

The Mail on Sunday quotes an unnamed senior No 10 figure saying that the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, presented a 13-page legal opinion on 7 March 2003 that suggested the war could be challenged under international law because of the lack of UN backing.

The paper’s source says: “There was pandemonium. The date when war was expected to start was already in the diary, and here was Goldsmith saying it could be challenged under international law. They said ‘burn it, destroy it’ and got to work on the [attorney general].”

A spokesperson for the former prime minister said that to Blair’s knowledge the reports were “nonsense”. “No one ever said that in his presence and in any event it would be quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy any such document,” they said.

  Guardian

Really? Are they made of cryptonite or something?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Summing It Up

Rumours of the death of the political left have been exaggerated. [Newly elected Labour Party leader Jeremy] Corbyn, like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and the Scottish National Party, is an immune response from a sick and suffering body politic trying to fight off a chronic infection that threatens to swallow hope for ever. There is a crisis in representative democracy in the west and it was established well before the stock-market collapse of 2008. The old centre left is at odds with its electorate because it decided for itself the limits of what was politically possible a decade ago.

[…]

Corbyn bucks that trend, terrifying a political class that chose power over principles long ago without once asking itself whether power without principles is worth having.

[…]

Across Europe and the United States, [...] professional politicians of the centre left have one idea about what politics should look like and the people they claim to represent increasingly have another. Certain politicians have not properly understood the definition of “representative” democracy.

  New Statesman

I think one of the most telling indicators that all major [Western] political parties are the same has been the fact that Tony Blair ever headed the Labour Party in the first place.

We shall see what becomes of Jeremy Corbyn.

A Little Help from Her Friends

Of course Rupert Murdoch is not on trial for his news agency's phone hacking crimes, but one of his chief executives, Rebekah Brooks, is. And somebody decided it was time to bring another name into the mix: Tony Blair. 

According to emails between Brooks and James Murdoch, once the hacking scandal came to light, Tony advised Brooks (by phone - surely the NSA will have the call data) to chill and take sleeping pills, to launch their own investigation of themselves which would, of course, have the aim to clear them of wrongdoing (it always works for government), and to use him as an advisor, but keep that on the hush-hush.

Oops to that last part.

Blocking UK Iraq War Inquiry

The US and Britain are trying to block the inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

[...]

It was set up in 2009. It was supposed to report in 2011. It is now being pushed back to at least the middle of next year and might be pushed back even further than that.

[...]

It makes you wonder exactly what is in these conversations between Bush and Blair. There must be quite a lot to hide for them to be so worried about them being released.

[...]

How early did they agree to the war? What were the conditions of it? Because if this was agreed when many people believe, in the spring of 2002, it means that all the effort to produce a dossier, all the pressure for the second resolution at the UN, were a charade because Tony Blair already knew that he was going to go to war.

[...]

What people are worried about is that there is maybe lots of evidence here for war crimes, for an agreement for a war over regime change, which of course is illegal under international law.

  RT

I’d say all the other evidence points to exactly that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Americans Should Follow the UK Example. But We Won't.

More than a fifth - 22 percent - of Britons polled by YouGov this month said they believed Blair should be tried as a war criminal for his role in the conflict, which was preceded by massive anti-war demonstrations in London and other cities.

Fifty-three percent said the invasion was wrong, while half said Blair, a key international ally of US President George W Bush, had deliberately misled the British people over the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.

Blair's schedule these days is a closely guarded secret to avoid ambushes by the protesters who stalk his public appearances armed with eggs, shoes and banners reading: "BLIAR". Even his testimony at last year's phone-hacking inquiry was interrupted by an intruder shouting, "This man is a war criminal!"

  alJazeera

I wish I could say, “It couldn't happen to a more deserving person.”

Blair may start thinking about taking up residence on whatever property he may own in South America. There are a number of people over here who don't lose a moment's sleep over it (although they do have property in South America), including Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld....

It was only as David Cronin saw Tony Blair and his entourage striding towards him that he finally plucked up the courage to go through with his plan to attempt to arrest the former British prime minister over his role in the invasion of Iraq and claim a bounty on his head.

[...]

Cronin [...] is one of four people to have claimed a reward from an online campaign, Arrest Blair which offers a share of a bounty pot for each attempted arrest.

[...]

Cronin, who donated his $4,200 bounty to a Gaza-based charity, said he was moved to act not just by Iraq but also in protest at Blair's appointment as Middle East envoy for the Quartet of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia.

"It's a complete joke that a guy who had helped to start two wars in the wider Middle East region is now swanning around posing as a peace envoy," Cronin said.

Yes, it is. We live in a joke world. And the joke's on us.

Moves to hold Blair accountable are also gaining momentum in Scotland, where some campaigners believe he could be tried under the country's separate legal system.

Margo MacDonald, an independent member of the Scottish parliament, told Al Jazeera that she planned to table a motion on Wednesday calling for Scottish law to be amended to make illegal "the waging of aggressive war with the intention of regime change", specifically so that Blair could be brought to trial.

"Theoretically, we believe he could face a court in Scotland," MacDonald told Al Jazeera. "We are simply adding to the pressure."

In an article published in last weekend's Sunday Herald newspaper, Alex Salmond, the leader of the ruling Scottish National Party, appeared to lend weight to MacDonald's cause, writing: "The illegal invasion and war in Iraq is a disgrace without parallel in modern times, the shame of which will echo down the ages for Blair and all of those who were complicit in sending young men and women to risk their lives on the basis of a gigantic fraud."

Good luck.

A Call for Trials of War Criminals

A longtime critic of the Iraq war, [Archbishop Desmond Tutu] pulled out of a South African conference on leadership last week because Blair, who was paid 2m rand (£150,000) for his time, was attending. It is understood that Tutu had agreed to speak without a fee.

[...]

Tutu has called for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled before the international criminal court in The Hague and delivered a damning critique of the physical and moral devastation caused by the Iraq war.

Tutu, a Nobel peace prize winner and hero of the anti-apartheid movement, accuses the former British and US leaders of lying about weapons of mass destruction and says the invasion left the world more destabilised and divided "than any other conflict in history".

[...]

In a statement, Blair strongly contested Tutu's views and said Iraq was now a more prosperous country than it had been under Saddam Hussein. "I have a great respect for Archbishop Tutu's fight against apartheid – where we were on the same side of the argument – but to repeat the old canard that we lied about the intelligence is completely wrong as every single independent analysis of the evidence has shown."
  UK Guardian

Really? Do you think he believes that? Is he delusional, or just lying some more?

"I would also point out that despite the problems, Iraq today has an economy three times or more in size, with the child mortality rate cut by a third of what it was.”

Fewer childen dying and a better economy after years of harsh sanctions are lifted. There's an accomplishment.