Friday, 22nd January 2010
The Straw man at the Iraq War Inquiry
3:58pm
To judge from the Times today, in his evidenceyesterday to the Chilcot inquiry Jack Straw, who was Foreign Secretary at the time of the Iraq war, had grave doubts about its legality and had gone along with it only reluctantly. Once again, however, the driving media narrative that ‘Blair lied over an illegal war and now he’s in big trouble because everyone has blown the gaff to the Chilcot inquiry’ has wildly misrepresented the substance and significance of what Straw actually said.
From what he told the inquiry, Straw’s concern about the legality of any prospective war in Iraq appears to have centred solely on his belief that ‘regime change’ in itself could never be a legal basis for war but that this was the policy of the Americans:
......the policy of regime change in Iraq was
Thursday, 21st January 2010
The thin blue line of jihad
11:59pm
the Government’s anti-terrorism strategy, warning that it is an ‘affront to British values’ which threatens to trigger ethnic unrest... that ministers were wrong to blame Islam for being the ‘driver’ behind recent terrorist attacks. Far-Right extremists were a more dangerous threat to national security... that Muslims were being ‘stigmatised’ by the Government’s attempts to tackle terrorism, which was adding to ‘hatred’ against entire communities.
...The memorandum warned that Muslims were subjected to 'daily abuse' due to the strategy. 'We must not diminish our British values further by continuing to allow such behaviour and policies to continue unchecked.'
This is an extremely alarming development.
First, a general point. The...
Posts
