Sir Keir Starmer

BoroMart said:
You simply miss the point. Somewhere between 15-45k died as part of the invasion. A mix of military and civilian. Of course these people would have died regardless, maybe more as the American's had decided to go in anyway.

There are many, spurious quotes for figures (of between 400k-1mill) claiming people that have died in the last 17 years are in fact all due to that invasion. The efficacy of such numbers is varied to say the least. Of course it's a tragedy, but the nation of Iraq was already a continuing tragedy long before either gulf war, a tragedy made by Saddam.

The reality is that under Saddam 1.1mill people died from his vanity war with Iran, 60k+ died directly from the first gulf war he instigated, 220k in the kurdish uprisings (a direct result of us NOT removing him from power first time), plus an estimated 250k+ murdered by his regime. That's about 1.7m.

So the question is, given his proven murderous history, how many people would have died over the last 17 years if we didn't go in? The 1.7m figure I've given is just the direct deaths related to Saddams war mongering and should be compared to the 45k figure from the second gulf war.

We can all play your game of adding those secondary deaths; so add on the secondary deaths from a broken economy due to his corrupt dictatorship, suicide from people that couldn't take the oppression, violence from stoking sectarianism and hate, murder from a vicious police state etc, the numbers would be off the chart if he was still there.

I don't like Bush, he's an idiot, and certainly the Bush family profiteering via Halliburton makes my stomach crawl, but his Dad should have toppled Saddam first time. The deaths while he was in power, and after his death are all effectively related to Saddams behaviour, he broke the country, and is the prime culpable figure for all those deaths.
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This reads like a Whitehouse press release. I give people credit for intelligence.
This is an excuse to put our troops in the firing line based on a spurious dossier [which has been proven totally false] - sent to war on a pack of lies.
The truth is Bush and Blair wanted the oil in Iraq, but more importantly wanted to reinforce their strategic position in the Middle East.
They had Syria and Iran also in their sights, but it hasnt worked out as the Americans figured.
The British still bomb Yemen by proxy: sending arms manufactured in Britain, then flown to Saudi Arabia via Akrotiri on to Riyadh.
The Saudi tyrants and genocidal dictators are murdering innocent women and children in Yemen, using British made arms.
If you need confirmation, check the bflight logs online of the planes flying that route during the 11 weeks of lock-down.

Im afraid your world view is one of blind adherence to the American world view and bears no proximity to reallity.
 
Boromart, whilst I don't neccesarily disagree with your posts they do ignore a couple of sailent points.

Firstly if Iraq had no oil neither the Americans nor the British would have been there, it was dressed up as something it never was. Blair did lie to both parliament and the electorate.

There was never a resolution from the UN to go to war, it was argued to death at the time, but it was at best a corruption of the existing resolution.

It doesn't really matter that the yanks would have killed folks without us, we played our part. Though a mate in the forces at the time did say that the british troops were left going door to door as we had recent experience of urban warfare from N Ireland. So that probably did save lives, bot htroops and civillians.

Finally, and this is probabaly, for me, the most important fact, there was no post war plan.
 
BoroMart said:
They might, and that's understandable. But you can say that about any war, it's politicians that send our sons, brothers, husbands to war, and there have been many wars which were unnecessary. I wonder how many people blame Thatcher for sending their kids off to die defending a rock and some penguins, just so that she could look tough and win her next election. The reality is that some wars are just, Saddam should have been removed earlier.
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If you dont understand history then you are doomed to repeat it.
 
BoroMart said:
You simply miss the point. Somewhere between 15-45k died as part of the invasion. A mix of military and civilian. Of course these people would have died regardless, maybe more as the American's had decided to go in anyway.

There are many, spurious quotes for figures (of between 400k-1mill) claiming people that have died in the last 17 years are in fact all due to that invasion. The efficacy of such numbers is varied to say the least. Of course it's a tragedy, but the nation of Iraq was already a continuing tragedy long before either gulf war, a tragedy made by Saddam.

The reality is that under Saddam 1.1mill people died from his vanity war with Iran, 60k+ died directly from the first gulf war he instigated, 220k in the kurdish uprisings (a direct result of us NOT removing him from power first time), plus an estimated 250k+ murdered by his regime. That's about 1.7m.

So the question is, given his proven murderous history, how many people would have died over the last 17 years if we didn't go in? The 1.7m figure I've given is just the direct deaths related to Saddams war mongering and should be compared to the 45k figure from the second gulf war.

We can all play your game of adding those secondary deaths; so add on the secondary deaths from a broken economy due to his corrupt dictatorship, suicide from people that couldn't take the oppression, violence from stoking sectarianism and hate, murder from a vicious police state etc, the numbers would be off the chart if he was still there.

I don't like Bush, he's an idiot, and certainly the Bush family profiteering via Halliburton makes my stomach crawl, but his Dad should have toppled Saddam first time. The deaths while he was in power, and after his death are all effectively related to Saddams behaviour, he broke the country, and is the prime culpable figure for all those deaths.
Click to expand...

Just wow.. others have said more than I need to. I really hope you do some reading about Iraq because you're beyond naive and to ignore the impact it's had on the middle East as it is today just eurgh.
 
r00fie1 said:
This reads like a Whitehouse press release. I give people credit for intelligence.
This is an excuse to put our troops in the firing line based on a spurious dossier [which has been proven totally false] - sent to war on a pack of lies.
The truth is Bush and Blair wanted the oil in Iraq, but more importantly wanted to reinforce their strategic position in the Middle East.
They had Syria and Iran also in their sights, but it hasnt worked out as the Americans figured.
The British still bomb Yemen by proxy: sending arms manufactured in Britain, then flown to Saudi Arabia via Akrotiri on to Riyadh.
The Saudi tyrants and genocidal dictators are murdering innocent women and children in Yemen, using British made arms.
If you need confirmation, check the bflight logs online of the planes flying that route during the 11 weeks of lock-down.

Im afraid your world view is one of blind adherence to the American world view and bears no proximity to reallity.
Click to expand...
All wars are ultimately about natural resources. Even those wars that use religion as an excuse.
 
RandySavage said:
Come again?
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Apologies, but I took it you were making some bland statement about "war"?
I may be wrong, but when asked who, close to them, is volunteering to sacrifice themselves in a far away country - its always interesting to hear their answer.
Its like George Galloway, when in Parliament - he asked his fellow MPs, how many of their sons and daughters were involved in the bloody battles in Iraq:
None replied, because they advocated wars for others to fight.
 
zorro_mfc said:
The founder of the Labour grassroots campaign group Momentum, Jon Lansman, has announced he will step down as its chairman next month.
Mr Lansman, a close ally of ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said it was time to "hand over to a new leadership."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52694053

👍🏻 The last nail in the cult of Corbyn within the Labour Party
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Jon Lansman is a pillar of the establishment, whose subtle twists and turns buried his supposed leader and then stepped away.
I wouldnt trust him with the steam off my tea. A dangerous "friend".
Would be interested in whose pay he is in?
 
r00fie1 said:
Apologies, but I took it you were making some bland statement about "war"?
I may be wrong, but when asked who, close to them, is volunteering to sacrifice themselves in a far away country - its always interesting to hear their answer.
Its like George Galloway, when in Parliament - he asked his fellow MPs, how many of their sons and daughters were involved in the bloody battles in Iraq:
None replied, because they advocated wars for others to fight.
Click to expand...
Dad served in northern Ireland, brother over in Afghanistan, friend's dad was a cloud pusher in the first gulf war.
 
Back onto subject (well, sort of), haven't trawled all the way through this to see if I'm repeating something (in which case, apologies) but read this wee beaut on social meeja earlier:

"Surely the Viz boys must now have a new character - Kier Starmer, Donkey Farmer."

Made me snort anyway... ;)
 
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r00fie1 said:
This reads like a Whitehouse press release. I give people credit for intelligence.
This is an excuse to put our troops in the firing line based on a spurious dossier [which has been proven totally false] - sent to war on a pack of lies.
The truth is Bush and Blair wanted the oil in Iraq, but more importantly wanted to reinforce their strategic position in the Middle East.
They had Syria and Iran also in their sights, but it hasnt worked out as the Americans figured.
The British still bomb Yemen by proxy: sending arms manufactured in Britain, then flown to Saudi Arabia via Akrotiri on to Riyadh.
The Saudi tyrants and genocidal dictators are murdering innocent women and children in Yemen, using British made arms.
If you need confirmation, check the bflight logs online of the planes flying that route during the 11 weeks of lock-down.

Im afraid your world view is one of blind adherence to the American world view and bears no proximity to reallity.
Click to expand...
Not at all, if you read my posts fully you would see that I said the Bush Halliburton link turned my stomach. I'm aware that some powerful american's in particular have profiteered from the wars, that doesn't negate ANY of what I posted though. My post is a little more balanced and pragmatic about the reality of the war. Saddam made a scenario where he was vilified for one of the worst cases of human rights abuses since the Nazi's. Without that, there would have been no war and Bush/Blair and others wouldn't have been able to profiteer from it. I'm also very aware of the yemen bombing, this isn't news to me or many others.

Not everyone lives in an extremist headspace, with viewpoints that can't understand complex multi-layered, pull-push factors, some of us can see there that blame and guilt is in lots of directions, and that some people even started with good intentions before it all went pop in Iraq. But thanks for the 'Whitehouse press release feedback', maybe I'm in the wrong job.
 
Laughing said:
Boromart, whilst I don't neccesarily disagree with your posts they do ignore a couple of sailent points.

Firstly if Iraq had no oil neither the Americans nor the British would have been there, it was dressed up as something it never was. Blair did lie to both parliament and the electorate.

There was never a resolution from the UN to go to war, it was argued to death at the time, but it was at best a corruption of the existing resolution.

It doesn't really matter that the yanks would have killed folks without us, we played our part. Though a mate in the forces at the time did say that the british troops were left going door to door as we had recent experience of urban warfare from N Ireland. So that probably did save lives, bot htroops and civillians.

Finally, and this is probabaly, for me, the most important fact, there was no post war plan.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with any of that. What I disagree with is the rhetoric that Blair has the blood of a million on his hands. Did he make mistakes, absolutely, did he go against the wishes of many of the public, yes, did it destabilise the middle-east, maybe, but it was already heading that way. War was going to happen, people were being slaughtered anyway, and it would have continued. The rhetoric that Blair killed a million people is simply that, rhetoric. It was a PR disaster, but Saddam was a psychopath and his regime were murderous. It is used as a way of belittling the left, but it is very important to recognise that the Tory MPs supported action too.

I totally agree about the post war plan being the biggest issue. The biggest problem is getting a new leader that isn't seen as a puppet of the west. That tactic has failed before.

What was the exact lie that Blair told to parliament and the public, the exact words?
 
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BoroMart said:
Not at all, if you read my posts fully you would see that I said the Bush Halliburton link turned my stomach. I'm aware that some powerful american's in particular have profiteered from the wars, that doesn't negate ANY of what I posted though. My post is a little more balanced and pragmatic about the reality of the war. Saddam made a scenario where he was vilified for one of the worst cases of human rights abuses since the Nazi's. Without that, there would have been no war and Bush/Blair and others wouldn't have been able to profiteer from it. I'm also very aware of the yemen bombing, this isn't news to me or many others.

Not everyone lives in an extremist headspace, with viewpoints that can't understand complex multi-layered, pull-push factors, some of us can see there that blame and guilt is in lots of directions, and that some people even started with good intentions before it all went pop in Iraq. But thanks for the 'Whitehouse press release feedback', maybe I'm in the wrong job.
Click to expand...

Israeli Apartheid is funded and supported by the West - torturing and murdering Palestinians in cold blood.
It imprisons children without trial and places Palestinians in "administrative detention" indefinitely.
It steals Palestinian land and daily demolishes their homes - using JCB manufactured bull-dozers.
It aggressively attacks neighbouring countries and possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The racist apartheid regime continues to perpetuate the worst human rights abuses with impunity - because it is strategic to the middle east plan.

Look beyond the headlines.
If you get the opportunity - go and visit the West Bank for yourself.
 
BoroMart said:
I don't disagree with any of that. What I disagree with is the rhetoric that Blair has the blood of a million on his hands. Did he make mistakes, absolutely, did he go against the wishes of many of the public, yes, did it destabilise the middle-east, maybe, but it was already heading that way. War was going to happen, people were being slaughtered anyway, and it would have continued. The rhetoric that Blair killed a million people is simply that, rhetoric. It was a PR disaster, but Saddam was a psychopath and his regime were murderous. It is used as a way of belittling the left, but it is very important to recognise that the Tory MPs supported action too.

I totally agree about the post war plan being the biggest issue. The biggest problem is getting a new leader that isn't seen as a puppet of the west. That tactic has failed before.

What was the exact lie that Blair told to parliament and the public, the exact words?
Click to expand...
You can access Hansard online.
 
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