Chilcot, Iraq, Blair and Bush

I find it hard to believe Tony Blair's statement made post Chilcot. I will cite the following to evidence my puzzlement of his position.

General Wesley Clark (now retired) was a four star General in the USA military. I have no idea the status of a four star General, however I assume it is senior. I would also add, I have never met the General and have no idea of his agenda, truthfulness, state of mind or otherwise. I am simply recounting claims he has made on You Tube;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw

and in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, reported in 2007.

In both he claims that he was aware of plans contained in a Pentagon document within two weeks of 9/11 to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Lybia, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran.

Amy Goodman asked; 'Did you see a reply on what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq – the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?'

This is an extract of what General Clark replied,

“About ten days after 9/11 I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me. One of the Generals called me in. He said, 'sir you've got to come in and talk to me a second.' 'We've made the decision were going to war with Iraq.' This was on or about 20^th September. I said, ' We are going to war with Iraq. Why?' He said, ' I don't know, I guess they don't know what else to do.' I said, 'well did they find some information connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda?' No, No, ' he said, 'there's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq. I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down Governments. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.'

A few weeks later we were bombing in Afghanistan and I went back to see him. I asked if we were still going to war with Iraq. He said, ' it is worse than that and he picked up a memo that had just come from the Secretary of Defence's office, that day. He did not show me the document but said it described how we, USA, were going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off with Iran. I asked if the document was classified and he said it was. He did not show me it. We met up a year or so ago and he reminded me that I was not shown the document.”

The Amy Goodman interview is a lot longer and can be accessed on the internet.

US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfawitz and Vice President Dick Cheney were all close the President and if they were aware of such plans, then I suggest that the President would have been equally aware.

It was not as if all this was not public knowledge. In the Sunday Herald, 10 July 2016, Ron McKay has a seriously good article on Chilcot and Blair. In that article he refers to a Dr Malcolm McIntosh who claims to have been present at a conference in New York a few months after the Twin Towers attacks and listened to General Wesley Clark tell of plans to attack the seven countries referred to earlier.

My puzzlement begins with the mainstream media and their avoidance of making a big deal of Clark's claims. Are they operating to an establishment agenda? Not all I may add, but certainly some and would include the BBC in the latter.

In terms of Blair. If there were USA war plans in place so soon after 9/11 and President Bush knew of them and if Blair was so close to Bush and intent of being with him all the way, how the fuck did he not know of USA's intentions of waging war all over the middle east. Either he did or he did not. If he was aware, then it is my opinion he did lie to Parliament. The USA plans did not care one jot whether or not WMD's existed, they were going to war right reason or none. The lie was simply to beef up the myth to get us, British Parliament and people, off his back.

On the other hand, if he did not know of the USA's war plans and President Bush did not let him into the secret, one has to ask, what the fuck were his intelligence services doing? It seems General Wesley Clark was telling all and sundry. So was Blair just a patsy getting played along by his big friend Bush like a puppet?, A pliable British Prime Minister who would go along with anything the USA said, just to keep in with them?

I think the latter is more worrying than the former.

Clinton and Emails

The FBI announcement this week that former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton will not face criminal charges related to her private email server scandal, I would opine evidenced that the rule of law in the United States of America has been perhaps mortally wounded.

The announcement of the FBI admitted what most Americans already suspected; Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official government business endangered the lives of the American people.The FBI Director also made clear that Hillary Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling our nation’s top secrets. He also noted that “no reasonable person” would believe it to be “appropriate or acceptable” to place emails containing said secrets on a private server. The announcement made it clear that Hillary Clinton lied to the American people about the classified nature of the emails, as the FBI spokesman admitted that at least 110 emails were classified at the time they originated, not after the fact, as the Clinton camp has repeatedly claimed.

On top of that, he also revealed that Clinton had deleted work-related emails from her private server before turning it over to the FBI, again in direct contradiction of claims her campaign has made to the contrary. As if that weren’t enough, he also confirmed the likely possibility that Clinton’s private email server had been hacked by foreign government intelligence services, meaning USA's nation’s rivals were likely in possession of critical state secrets that could potentially be used against the interests of the USA.

Lastly, but certainly not least, he also admitted that anyone else caught in a similar situation and circumstances would most likely be punished to the full extent of the law.

Based on the FBI inquiry and subsequent statement it would be reasonable to conclude that the subject of the inquiry is a corrupt, incompetent and untrustworthy person.

So it seems that in the USA, although I guess not just there, laws only apply to those on the other side of the tracks and not the politically connected elite or perhaps if you can afford a lawyer.

It might be reasonable to suggest that the decision to do nothing could be seen as blow to the rule of law and provides further evidence to support those who have absolutely no faith in the system of law and order nor for that matter politics.