NY Honours list

BoroFur said:
I might be slightly emotional after seeing pals in hospital after being blown up, or standing on the tarmac every week watching coffins draped in Union flag flown home, or the fact I missed my sons first birthday and had to Skype wearing a helmet as the mortar alarms went off.
fair enough, there might not be the concrete evidence he lied but it’s fair to say he made a huge error of judgement. Big enough to tarnish him and prevent him receiving the highest honour
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Happy with Blair being honoured, overall he's been the best PM we've had since I've been alive, by a country mile.

I don't see many people whinging about Blair in any other sense other than the war in Iraq, so lets just concentrate on that, assuming that's the only thing to defend and most other things were good (better than the Tory alternatives before and after).

In hindsight, going to war in Iraq may not have been the ideal choice, but unfortunately we don't get the benefit of hindsight, at the time decisions are made. We were relying on US "intelligence" (and we are always in their pocket), which was being ran by a Republican President with his hand on the trigger since 9/11. But to be fair, UK intelligence even largely backed them up from 2001 - early 2003. Was Saddam making chemical weapons and nukes in 2003? Probably not. Had he made and used them before? Yes. Was he in 2002? Possibly. Would he let the inspectors in to check, with free reign? No. Did he disarm? No. Was it a it of a touchy time as far as the middle east goes? Extremely.

The way I see it there were around 10 good reasons to get Saddam out/ disarm them, and around 8 of them turned out right, and a couple unproven until it was too late. Did it drag on far too long, certainly.

But the choice above was for parliament, needed public support, and like always we were in the USA's pocket, which is a massive factor (when they supported it even more than us).

The sentence above is largely why I class this as irrelevant for putting this at Blair's feet, as he offered the vote to parliament (which any Labour PM would have done), and parliament voted for it by 412-149, and only 38% of the public were against it.

Loads of Tories try and use this as a stick to beat labour/ Blair with, but how many Tory MP's voted against it? 2, yes that's correct, only TWO. Only 84 Labour MP's voted against it. 254 Labour were for it, and 146 Tories were (but labour had a 167 seat majority back then). It's only fair to criticise it, if you (or the party you support) would have chose the opposite at the time.

I think Blair was unfortunate that this landed at his door, but had it landed at any other UK PM's door, and even more so any Tory PM's door then they would have been all for it too.
 
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Andy_W said:
Happy with Blair being honoured, overall he's been the best PM we've had since I've been alive, by a country mile.

I don't see many people whinging about Blair in any other sense other than the war in Iraq, so lets just concentrate on that.

In hindsight, going to war in Iraq may not have been the ideal choice, but unfortunately we don't get the benefit of hindsight. We were relying on US "intelligence" (and we are always in their pocket), which was being ran by a Republican President with his hand on the trigger since 9/11. But to be fair, UK intelligence even largely backed them up from 2001 - early 2003. Was Saddam making chemical weapons and nukes in 2003? Probably not. Had he made and used them before? Yes. Was he in 2002? Possibly. Would he let the inspectors in to check, with free reign? No. Did he disarm? No. Was it a it of a touchy time as far as the middle east goes? Extremely.

The way I see it there were around 10 good reasons to get Saddam out/ disarm them, and around 8 of them turned out right, and a couple unproven until it was too late. Did it drag on far too long, certainly.

But the choice above was for parliament, needed public support, and like always we were in the USA's pocket, which is a massive factor (when they supported it even more than us).

The sentence above is largely why I class this as irrelevant for putting this at Blair's feet, as he offered the vote to parliament (which any Labour PM would have done), and parliament voted for it by 412-149, and only 38% of the public were against it.

Loads of Tories try and use this as a stick to beat labour/ Blair with, but how many Tory MP's voted against it? 2, yes that's correct, only TWO. Only 84 Labour MP's voted against it. 254 Labour were for it, and 146 Tories were (but labour had a 167 seat majority back then). It's only fair to criticise it, if you (or the party you support) would have chose the opposite at the time.

I think Blair was unfortunate that this landed at his door, but had it landed at any other UK PM's door, and even more so any Tory PM's door then they would have been all for it too.
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Tories just as bad for voting for an unjust invasion which using the word you've used hindsight, has caused immeasurable suffering and destruction in the region.
 
Randy said:
Tories just as bad for voting for an unjust invasion which using the word you've used hindsight, has caused immeasurable suffering and destruction in the region.
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Pretty much every party voted for it, and most of the public supported it, at the time. Of course that opinion has changed, but that tends to happen when people want to disassociate themselves with what they and the public wanted at the time, if it turned out not to be the ideal decision (same is happening with brexit etc).

I don't know if you've ever been to many places over there but it wasn't a nice place to be under Saddam's regime, ask the Iranians, Iraqi's, Kuwaiti's etc. There's plenty of other nutters from other nations nearby which have made things worse also, it's just a very messed up area. We were naïve in thinking we could fix it so quickly.

Economically Iraq is seemingly doing much better now, after Saddam put them into a hole, what that means on the ground though, who knows, it wasn't nice in 2003-2005 though, that's for sure.
 
It's the inference that Saddam Hussein should have been allowed to carry on with genocide that shocks me.
No other power in that region was prepared to put an end to it.
He gassed up to 5,000 Kurds in the Halabja massacre which was officially defined by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people in Iraq.
There's plenty of gruesome images I can put up of dead women, children and babies resulting from that massacre but out of respect to others I won't do. I think that would trump a Jeff Stelling rant from years ago.
 
Andy_W said:
Pretty much every party voted for it, and most of the public supported it, at the time. Of course that opinion has changed, but that tends to happen when people want to disassociate themselves with what they and the public wanted at the time, if it turned out not to be the ideal decision (same is happening with brexit etc).

I don't know if you've ever been to many places over there but it wasn't a nice place to be under Saddam's regime, ask the Iranians, Iraqi's, Kuwaiti's etc. There's plenty of other nutters from other nations nearby which have made things worse also, it's just a very messed up area. We were naïve in thinking we could fix it so quickly.

Economically Iraq is seemingly doing much better now, after Saddam put them into a hole, what that means on the ground though, who knows, it wasn't nice in 2003-2005 though, that's for sure.
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I completely agree it had its issues when Sadamn was around, the gas attacks and cleansing etc. He was right to be removed, tried and punished. These atrocities have multiplied ten fold since his capture, handover and execution. Probably exasperated by his death. A lose lose situation we should never have been a part of and maybe some families would still be celebrating this time of year with their sons, daughters, husband's, wives, brothers and sisters.
 
Randy said:
I completely agree it had its issues when Sadamn was around, the gas attacks and cleansing etc. He was right to be removed, tried and punished. These atrocities have multiplied ten fold since his capture, handover and execution. Probably exasperated by his death. A lose lose situation we should never have been a part of and maybe some families would still be celebrating this time of year with their sons, daughters, husband's, wives, brothers and sisters.
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What's your take on Afghanistan? The British Army received a right kicking at times in Helmand Province. Was it justified that British Soldiers were killed there?
 
Nero said:
What's your take on Afghanistan? The British Army received a right kicking at times in Helmand Province. Was it justified that British Soldiers were killed there?
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We shouldn't have been in Afghanistan either.
 
Disillusioned with the whole thing really.
Always thought of it as a great honour deserving of respect.
But a quick Google search reveals
Robert Mugabe.
Benito Mussolini.
Jimmy Saville.
Rolf Harris
All Knights of the realm.
Not to mention several corrupt businessmen.
And if Charles had not been born we could one day be expecting the great and the good to be accepting a knighthood from king Andrew?
Not for me.
More respect for those who have refused it.
 
Randy said:
I completely agree it had its issues when Sadamn was around, the gas attacks and cleansing etc. He was right to be removed, tried and punished.
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That's completely at odds with what you have said previously and since.

Do you not understand?

Nobody else was going to remove him therefore he would NEVER be tried and punished.

And to describe his gassing of babies as 'issues' is pathetic quite frankly.
 
BoroFur said:
That's completely at odds with what you have said previously and since.

Do you not understand?

Nobody else was going to remove him therefore he would NEVER be tried and punished.

And to describe his gassing of babies as 'issues' is pathetic quite frankly.
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How is it? How was Iraq a British problem? How was Afghanistan a British problem? Oh what's the common trend here? That's right bending to the will of the yanks and their shoot first ask questions later mantra which has existed ever since the 1800's.

Pathetic? You want to go there? Who was it who tried him and punished him? Certainly wasn't the British, hell it's wasn't even the Yankee World Police either. Pathetic? If Blair was a paid up member of the Conservatives you'd be throwing rocks at his face but because he was a red tie wearing leader of the country at the time he gets a free pass from you. Blinded.

Nobody else was going to remove him? How could you possibly know that? See above, who tried him and punished him. Why haven't the yanks and us removed Xi from power? His country is currently committing acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Or Mr Kim Jong Un who every autumn and winter takes food out of the North Korean's mouths and kills anyone who disagrees with him. Putin, nobody has made a move to remove him from power even though he's consistently threatening to invade other countries and just recently one of his too advisors threatened to point nuclear weapons in the direction of mainland Europe. Is it because the Americans have absolutely nothing to gain from removing those three people? Or is it because those three countries in question are actually more than capable of fighting back?
 
Randy said:
Pathetic? You want to go there? Who was it who tried him and punished him? Certainly wasn't the British, hell it's wasn't even the Yankee World Police either.
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Randy said:
Nobody else was going to remove him? How could you possibly know that? See above, who tried him and punished him.
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I'll stick to the issue originally discussed. Unless you also want to blame Blair for the world's failure to deal with North Korea, China and Russia?

Your knowledge of how Saddam was tried and who by is spectacularly deficient. He was an evil dictator yet you think that somehow he was going to be removed by the people of Iraq through democratic, free and open elections?

He was tried by the Iraqi Interim Government for genocide and crimes against humanity. The interim government was forned by the coalition as a caretaker government until a new constitution was drafted.
 
Randy said:
I completely agree it had its issues when Sadamn was around, the gas attacks and cleansing etc. He was right to be removed, tried and punished. These atrocities have multiplied ten fold since his capture, handover and execution. Probably exasperated by his death. A lose lose situation we should never have been a part of and maybe some families would still be celebrating this time of year with their sons, daughters, husband's, wives, brothers and sisters.
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It's hard to know what people on the ground are saying, as the reporting isn't exactly going to be unbiased and hard to know from our far right media, who are well against Blair etc. I don't think there's been any chemical weapons used since he went, GDP is up, population has nearly doubled, oil production doubled etc, so there is some positive signs.

Saddam was doing some very dodgy crap during the conflict in 2003, some of which goes well against the Geneva convention. Also, prior to it, when he was meant to be disarming he was wrapping jets and tanks in cellophane and burying them, testing using fighter jets as "crop dusters", deep cleaning manufacturing plants, letting inspectors into the places they didn't want to go, not letting them into places they did want to go, putting red crosses on military buildings, putting troop operating stations in schools (along with kids, not instead of), launching jets to the Kuwait border, then on day 1 he launched scuds at UK/ USA bases in Kuwait etc. He had to go, but we went about it the wrong way in hindsight, but even if we didn't go then, the USA would have went in anyway.

I don't think we should blame how the Middle East has been since Iraq and Afgan totally on the 2000's wars, I'm not saying they've got much better, but those places have always been bad news, and as one idiot goes, another takes their place. I think the hope was we could replace the idiots with someone better but now the hope is that the idiots become a bit more "tame" I suppose, and there's signs they're doing that (slightly).

To be fair, everyone I know who went over there thought they were doing the right thing at the time, and most don't regret it based on the info available at the time, and what we achieved by getting rid of Saddam and OBL etc. In hindsight things could have been done a bit different, but all it would have been is a delay, nothing was going to stop the USA from going, and us from following them. Of course there is massive regret by those who lost colleagues, mates and families etc, but pretty much most I knew from 2003-2005 actually wanted to go, as mad as that sounds.
 
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