Chilcott

[Zhivago]

It's certainly not identical. Syria has a tiny amount of gas.

It's the corridor of the pipeline from either Iran/Qatar. Hence the term 'Pipeline wars'.

No, that's an over-simplification. Two routes were proposed for a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey. The first was via Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, and alternative was through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.

Assad refused the route through Syria, allegedly to protect Russian interests. As far as I know, the suggestion that Qatar fomented the uprising in Syria stems from one single analyst. However, most people seem to think that the objective by the CIA is to foment permanent unrest in the region and it's difficult to see how that is conducive to building and operating a gas pipeline.

Whatever the truth is, it is far from identical to what you describe as the Iraq situation.

Iran and Qatar have access to the same giant gas field. It's about rate of extraction, pipelines are necessary because you need to extract the gas somewhere, having a pipeline means you can extract more in any given period. The field is finite, so whoever extracts gas at a faster rate profits the most. Therefore it's a zero sum game - the aim is to have a pipeline extract gas from the field while your competitor(s) can't.

[kk67]

If voting changed anything, they'd ban it. Them or us.

I think perhaps I'll call it quits at this point, I suspect we both view the others comments as witless, and it just seems a pointless exchange.

There's a another facile attempt at democracy when the whips swap a pairing.

[kk67]

It's the corridor of the pipeline from either Iran/Qatar. Hence the term 'Pipeline wars'.

No, that's an over-simplification. Two routes were proposed for a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey. The first was via Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, and alternative was through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.

Assad refused the route through Syria, allegedly to protect Russian interests. As far as I know, the suggestion that Qatar fomented the uprising in Syria stems from one single analyst. However, most people seem to think that the objective by the CIA is to foment permanent unrest in the region and it's difficult to see how that is conducive to building and operating a gas pipeline.

Whatever the truth is, it is far from identical to what you describe as the Iraq situation.

Iran and Qatar have access to the same giant gas field. It's about rate of extraction, pipelines are necessary because you need to extract the gas somewhere, having a pipeline means you can extract more in any given period. The field is finite, so whoever extracts gas at a faster rate profits the most. Therefore it's a zero sum game - the aim is to have a pipeline extract gas from the field while your competitor(s) can't.

Is it the same gasfield..?. I didn't think they could rob from each other.
Unlike the Cyprus/Israel fields.

When the Turks and the Israeli's combine, with US support, to wipe Cyprus off the map then maybe some of you knuts will finally realize it was all about the oil and the gas.

[Zhivago]

No, that's an over-simplification. Two routes were proposed for a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey. The first was via Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, and alternative was through Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.

Assad refused the route through Syria, allegedly to protect Russian interests. As far as I know, the suggestion that Qatar fomented the uprising in Syria stems from one single analyst. However, most people seem to think that the objective by the CIA is to foment permanent unrest in the region and it's difficult to see how that is conducive to building and operating a gas pipeline.

Whatever the truth is, it is far from identical to what you describe as the Iraq situation.

Iran and Qatar have access to the same giant gas field. It's about rate of extraction, pipelines are necessary because you need to extract the gas somewhere, having a pipeline means you can extract more in any given period. The field is finite, so whoever extracts gas at a faster rate profits the most. Therefore it's a zero sum game - the aim is to have a pipeline extract gas from the field while your competitor(s) can't.

Is it the same gasfield..?. I don't think they can rob from each other.
Unlike the Cyprus/Israel fields.

It is - South Pars / North Dome gas field.

"However, since the field is a common field and the reservoir is highly homogenous, the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country may vary from this technical assessment which only considers the static data and does not include rate of gas migration. So, it is better to say that the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country would be a factor of cumulative gas production by each of them."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Par ... ld_geology

[Len]

He should be facing the same fate as Saddam.

Cameron or Blair? or both, alongside most front-benchers from both's terms in office?

Put them all in a pen and get the mountain to pick one out a day

[kk67]

Iran and Qatar have access to the same giant gas field. It's about rate of extraction, pipelines are necessary because you need to extract the gas somewhere, having a pipeline means you can extract more in any given period. The field is finite, so whoever extracts gas at a faster rate profits the most. Therefore it's a zero sum game - the aim is to have a pipeline extract gas from the field while your competitor(s) can't.

Is it the same gasfield..?. I don't think they can rob from each other.
Unlike the Cyprus/Israel fields.

It is - South Pars / North Dome gas field.

"However, since the field is a common field and the reservoir is highly homogenous, the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country may vary from this technical assessment which only considers the static data and does not include rate of gas migration. So, it is better to say that the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country would be a factor of cumulative gas production by each of them."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Par ... ld_geology

I went to a N.London school that had a 60% Jewish intake........so I don't want to seem anti-Semitic.
But that is corporate speak for a w*nk without a foreskin. Maybe it's just my paranoia, but I do worry that if by genitally mutilating our young boys, we might be pushing them further down the psychopathic spectrum.
I'm just mentioning it as a possibility.

[Zhivago]

Is it the same gasfield..?. I don't think they can rob from each other.
Unlike the Cyprus/Israel fields.

It is - South Pars / North Dome gas field.

"However, since the field is a common field and the reservoir is highly homogenous, the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country may vary from this technical assessment which only considers the static data and does not include rate of gas migration. So, it is better to say that the ultimate recoverable reserves of each country would be a factor of cumulative gas production by each of them."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Par ... ld_geology

I went to a N.London school that had a 60% Jewish intake........so I don't want to seem anti-Semitic.
But that is corporate speak for a w*nk without a foreskin.

??

[kk67]

??

It legally, deliberately says nothing.

[Zhivago]

??

It legally, deliberately says nothing.

Nonsense.

[kk67]

??

It legally, deliberately says nothing.

Nonsense.

Circumcision or the oil....?
None of us can claim to be entirely objective in the circumcision realm. Except maybe the Guys that went through it ?...as adults.

[rowan]

Adding to the frustration is the ICC’s 14-year history in which it has prosecuted Africans exclusively, though the West has escalated its military interventions in the Middle East and Israel has conducted two bombing campaigns on Gazans.

“The court has transformed itself into a political instrument targeting Africa and Africans,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at an African Union summit in 2013.

[kk67]

In 2001 the Pentagon was eager to invade Iraq. They were diving up the returns even then.

You have no idea about the extent of how scum these people are. UG is totally correct.

[Lizard]

I would almost prefer it if governments didn't need to find a politically acceptable, "legal" pre-text for war. As others have pointed out, historically the national economic interest was a perfectly valid reason to send out a gunboat.

Of course its all about money.

Can anyone logically distinguish the repressive, oil-fed, heavily-armed Ba'athist regime from the House of Saud. (Apart from the fact that Saudi actually does sponsor violent Islamic extremists)?

[rowan]

The the repressive, oil-fed, heavily-armed Ba'athist regim that America and Britain were wholeheartedly supporting during its war on Iran, you mean? They even supplied the materials for the chemical weapons they later claimed to be looking for

[Lizard]

Yep. That one.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

Yep. That one.

I thought you'd been quite clear on the one you meant.

[WaspInWales]

Prescott on Chilcot:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36756878

Knives are being sharpened. This is good right?

Or perhaps two/three jags is just trying to deflect any potential blame heading his way?

[Which Tyler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36746453

How Tony Blair came to be so unpopular

No British prime minister in modern times has experienced a plunge in fortune like Tony Blair's.

Cheered to the echo as he left the Commons chamber for the last time as prime minister in 2007, after 10 years of largely untroubled dominance, the tragedy of Iraq quickly ensnared him so completely that by this summer he admitted he would be a liability in the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. The old Blair magic had turned to sand.

But it had once seemed like magic. A parliamentary majority in 1997 of proportions that no-one in politics could remember, and along with it a feeling that like Margaret Thatcher, whom he'd watched in amazement as a young MP in the 1980s, he had set a national mood that made a permanent break with the past.

Then, after Bill Clinton had welcomed him on to the world stage, came George W Bush.

The Chilcot report lays out the consequences of that relationship - the "whatever" memo of support to the president in 2002 will surely stand as its emblem - and catalogues Blair's journey to the assault on Baghdad and his inability to control, perhaps even to influence, the chaos that followed.

Why?

I watched him in Chicago in April 1999 talking about a new world order in a now-famous speech, a rookie prime minister - in office for less than two years - making the case for liberal interventionism against despotic regimes as if he were a veteran statesman.

He was buoyed by a natural self-confidence, and something more at that particular moment - the belief that he had succeeded in persuading an American president to commit ground troops in the Balkans, against the weight of congressional and public opinion, to get rid of the last of the satellite Soviet dinosaurs, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.


That deal with Clinton was the making of his relationship with Bush.

When the Twin Towers came down nine months after Bush entered the White House, Blair's words were the most powerful that Americans heard from abroad - eloquent, and from the heart.

Most of them knew little of him but, by the time he went to Washington for private conversations in the days after 9/11, he had already started to take on heroic status. And some of those with him on that day marked a decisive change in his demeanour and belief after talking with Bush, alone in the Blue Room of the White House.

The conviction that the world had changed irrevocably was one that would always torment him, and it fed a habit when talking about world affairs - in contrast, intriguingly, with his attitude at home - to talk about black and white, good and evil.

In parts of the Bush White House, that was a gift from the gods. Vice-President Dick Cheney was the leader of those whose eyes had never turned from Iraq, and the most determined of those who called themselves neo-conservatives.

They saw the 1990-91 Gulf War as unfinished business, and could hardly believe their luck in having a Labour prime minister who was willing to join a war coalition. It was in effect to give powerful cover to an administration struggling for international support - with Blair setting aside the concerns of many of his officials (including some who saw the "whatever" memo before it was sent to the White House and were horrified by its tone, and the implicit promise of unconditional support).


Such was Blair's confidence at that time - greatly bolstered by the Tories' leadership travails and the consequent weakness of the parliamentary opposition - that no-one could hold him back. His instinct for "sofa government" had full reign, and the relationship with Washington after 9/11 was so strong that a near-inevitable course was set.

Gordon Brown, his iron chancellor, absorbed himself in the economy and declined to intervene strongly in foreign affairs. In the Foreign Office itself, Jack Straw shared his own worries in many hours of phone calls with his American counterpart, Gen Colin Powell.

But Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a weak secretary of state - not trusted by the ideologues who were pressing the president towards a confrontation with Saddam, and outside the White House inner core.


We now know, from Chilcot, what the consequences were. Fragmentary and thin intelligence was used to feed certainty, not to spread doubt; Blair's formidable political command meant that some officials became courtiers; there was too little appetite to question the assumptions that were driving policy. In short, the fabled Whitehall machine didn't do its work.

Alastair Campbell, director of communications, was having video conference calls with the White House every afternoon. Blair and Bush were talking regularly, so intimately and informally that some officials who saw the transcripts afterwards had to work hard to decipher precisely what each of them had meant in their exchanges.

This is not to say that Blair was determined on war, come what may. He wasn't. Along with his hope - however far-fetched - that Saddam might be persuaded to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors, he argued well into the spring of 2003 for a second UN resolution to authorise war if necessary. It was meant to give everyone more time.

But the Americans were on a fast track, and in the end Blair's commitment to Bush was too strong. He came to believe that scepticism would be a kind of betrayal - a surrender to the policy of appeasement that he'd warned against in Chicago in 1999.

Since he believed absolutely in the existence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - mistakenly - he convinced himself that too much delay would be a display of weakness. No-one could change his mind.

Although he defended his judgements after Chilcot was published, he knows well how great the cost has been. In Iraq, and for him.

The prime minister who showed patience and ingenuity in Northern Ireland, subtlety in Europe, and who was notably suspicious of an ideological approach to domestic affairs, become a true believer. There was an element of naivete in his approach to the hard-liners around Bush - confessing, for example, that he didn't really know what a neo-conservative was.

I once heard Hillary Clinton in a private moment expressing astonishment at his lack of doubt, using a withering American phrase popularised after the Jonestown mass suicide. "What's happened to Tony," she asked. "He's started drinking the Kool Aid."

She meant that he had abandoned all caution and every sliver of scepticism. And he had. Although it would be foolish to suggest that he didn't understand the cost of war, nor give it deep thought, his loyalty to Bush had become so strong after 9/11 that it trumped everything else.

The result was the invasion of 2003. The American timetable was set, and Blair couldn't change it. Or at least believed that he couldn't.

One lingering question remains, and will lie unanswered. Could Blair have exercised decisive restraint if he had threatened to withdraw his support? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would have been contemptuous, but what of the American people?

There are some people who believe that he underestimated his own significance at that time. A public signal of real alarm from America's principal ally, a figure hugely popular in the United States, might have had more impact than even he believed.

We can't know. We do know that he had become determined to show no sign of weakness, and it was costly. Great conviction; not enough doubt.

Think of one day, a few months after the war began. Blair addressed both houses of Congress in Washington and got more than a dozen standing ovations. Heady stuff.


A few hours later, flying over the Pacific, he was told of a melancholy event at home. Dr David Kelly, a weapons expert at the Ministry of Defence, had been found dead, two days after giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee about his doubts over weapons of mass destruction.

Two separate events. One tragedy.

Iraq has come to dominate the Blair legacy to such an extent that many of his notable achievements - the Good Friday agreement, devolution to Scotland and Wales, the minimum wage and a number of social reforms are doomed to shelter under its shadow.

Historians in the future will be able to restore some balance to the record (and to assess whether some classic Blair reforms, like the Private Finance Initiative and student loans and NHS reorganisation, have stood the test of time), but not yet.

His tragedy is that the progressive figure he wanted to be - the first prime minister born after World War Two, who gave the Labour Party a new appeal to the generation dubbed "the millennials" - will be obscured by his most momentous decision.

All his party's current travails tend to be interpreted against that background, as if it is still essentially an argument about him. He will have to wait for that to change, and it may take some time.

[Curry Puff]

I thought Chilcott's summary of the report was a very effective, subtle, accurate and razor sharp evisceration of Blair, who looked near to collapse at the end of his own session, perhaps stunned by the significance of what had been leveled at him.
Surely this is, or should be, a simple issue.
Did Blair lie and deceive , I think the report concludes that he did, but if you wish to go with Blair and accept that he acted in good spirit then he must be dammed as a fool, incompetent and unfit for office, . How could anyone in their right mind believe that Iraq had WMD; the country had been the focus of extreme levels of surveillance by the US, Israel and god knows who else, Blix reported nothing to be found.
Blair is done either way, just a question of who and when.

[rowan]

The media seems just a little too eager to pin all this on Blair. Even his former partners in crime, such as John Precott, are turning on him now. They must think we have very short memories. This was a crime of the British establishment, not just one man acting alone, and I've already mentioned that Blair (like Bush) was actually re-elected after committing this horrific crime. It wasn't about ignorance either. The whole world knew the invasion was illegal and destined to have catastrophic consequences, and that's why millions of people marched against it all around the world. Americans might be able use ignorance as an excuse, because they are far away and completely dumbed down and distracted by the brainwashing effects of the mass media and pointless entertainment industries. They thought they could change the heinous Bush for a suave African-American and everything would be hunky-dory again; that the world would immediately forget the million or so killed in Iraq and regard the US as noble 'leader of the free world' once again. Meanwhile America and Britain have since played a central role in wreaking similar havoc in Libya, previously one of the most prosperous nations in Africa, and are currently waging a clandestine war against Assad in Syria. So nothing's changed, and nothing will change unless it is recognized that the disastrous invasion of Iraq was not brought about by two men, but by two evil establishments and two jingoistic societies raised on a bunch of crap about 'fighting the good war.' Meanwhile, refugees from these wars will continue to flood into Europe and elsewhere, and disenfranchised and radicalized individuals will continue to carry out acts of terrorism - which the media will indiscriminately blame on ISIS, and multitudes of rednecks will blame on Islam. That's the world America and Britain chose to create in 2003.

[Sandydragon]

I think you have a point.

Many of the newspaper editors who are now calling for Blair's head were encouraging him in the run up to the invasion.

Chilcott also makes the following points which are pretty damning:
The Cabinet didn't oppose the preparations for war. Why not. Why didn't they look at the planning in more detail, and the justification? Did they think that the war would be the end of Blair so all they had to do was keep silent for him to be ousted? Were they scared of him? The Cabinet collectively failed (not withstanding individuals who resigned).
Parliament failed to scrutinize properly. Blairs salesman like pitch helped sway opinion, yet why weren't the plans scrutinized more thoroughly?
The lack of post invasion planning was a disgrace. Anyone who has been to Iraq can point to that. Making redundant hundreds of thousands of Iraqi police and soldiers; what did the administrators think would happen?

However, the most intriguing thing for me is the intelligence process. Dearlove became too close to Blair. I think Dearlove was fully aware that Blair wanted a justification for invading Iraq, and as such he set out to get it. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, SIS's mission was a bit undefined and that is always dangerous when the government wants to save money. To keep your funding, you need to stay relevant, so for SIS fining proof of WMDs became an obsession. Thus when they found some 'intelligence' it seemed like all their Christmases had come at one, and so they didn't check it as thoroughly as they should. This was presented as fact to HMG and not publicly recanted until after the invasion.

I don't doubt that Blair et al were looking for an excuse, any excuse to invade. Saddam did himself no favors by destroying his stocks of WMD in secret. It was obvious that he had WMDs in the 1980s, less obvious that they had been destroyed. It is easy to construct an argument based on the size of the country to explain why the UN inspectors found nothing. Suddenly an apparent top level source is claiming that WMDs existed - its manna from heaven if you want confirmation of your beliefs. An objective view of the evidence would have probably dismissed the report, but neither London or Washington were being objective.

Blair did a huge amount to bring this war to fruition, so I have absolutely no problem with him being the target of score or even legal proceedings if that is possible. Yet to focus the attention on him is to miss the other top level players who were equally culpable.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

In defence of the newspaper editors (now that's a phrase I don't use often) they didn't have the full facts and knew that they didn't. They were still trusting Tony that there was some evidence, although some clearly would have been happy for HMG to set regime change as their goal and hang the consequences.

[Zhivago]

In defence of the newspaper editors (now that's a phrase I don't use often) they didn't have the full facts and knew that they didn't. They were still trusting Tony that there was some evidence, although some clearly would have been happy for HMG to set regime change as their goal and hang the consequences.

Some are indefensible.

[Vengeful Glutton]

I don't think Blair's a war monger/criminal. He probably genuinely believed it was Jus ad Bellum. What a pity he didn't recognise (or chose to ignore) the "make the world England" bellicosity of the JIC (and of course the MIC, who for different reasons would have lobbied for war).

Wolfowitz and his fellow Straussians in the white house were a greater threat to stability in the ME.

[morepork]

I don't think Blair's a war monger/criminal. He probably genuinely believed it was Jus ad Bellum. What a pity he didn't recognise (or chose to ignore) the "make the world England" bellicosity of the JIC (and of course the MIC, who for different reasons would have lobbied for war).

Wolfowitz and his fellow Straussians in the white house were a greater threat to stability in the ME.

Then he is a special needs fuckhead and should be banned from making any public statement regarding (or money from) any geopolitical issues. Ever.