Terror Bomb in London

[Sharkith]

To be fair the only thing Blair has really backed Bush on is the war on terror, Blair has been trying hard to get Bush to agree with him on the Kyoto agreement and improving aid to Africa.

Blair is a good guy really, he just made a mistake backing the yanks on the war on terror. I think his speach about Iraq at the last elections on election night and the speeches he made last Thursday have made a lot of his doubters wake up to realise that he is actually a pretty decent caring person and a strong leader.

like I said the Iraq decision is a complete mystery to me. Why did he ruin what is essentially one of the best leaderships this country has ever had by doing something like that? It is very depressing. I agree he is a top class politician and he does care. He is also trying to curtail Bush and in fact he has wrung some concessions out of the Americans - despite the facts that they are not able to move very far on climate etc just now.

Blair is a decent guy he gets upset when his government struggles to change things. But on the one big issue - Iraq I am at a complete loss. It can only look like a modern day crusade to me.

[Sharkith]

[quote="Xest"]I'm not sure you can really look at it like that, you can just as easily define them not wanting us in Iraq as them wanting Iraq to exist without us occupying it ]

Well you see we don't know do we? Because we are only second guessing what they want. That is why an articulated political agenda would be a start. It is seriously depressing because 1,000's more will die.

[Xest]

I think tbh larger scale global terrorism will kill itself in the end, the media are helping push it along - I'm not sure if you've noticed but they seem to be fixated on showing pictures of a lot of non-white Brits almost as if to say "Look you killed a ton of your own kind" to stir hatred for the terrorists even amongst those who the terrorist are supposedly fighting for. For every terrorist action that is committed in the western world it becomes ever harder to commit another like terrorist attack, for example, have you seen or heard of many, if any plane hijacks since 9/11?

The only real worry is whether terrorists will commit an atrocity with a nuclear, chemical or biological device in the meantime - that's the biggest issue, if it weren't for that then terrorism is something that in the grand scheme of things isn't too bad. After all natural tragedies cause far more loss of life than bombings and such - look at the tsunami, think how many die of AIDs and starvation in Africa each day - it dwarfs terrorist actions right now and always has, even with World War I, I can't remember exact figures but around 15 million died in the war, a tragedy for sure, one that we're often reminded about, however everyone ignores the 70 million that died to a flu pandemic afterwards in 1918.

The real worry is if the death tolls from terrorism even come anywhere close to the death tolls from natural disasters and disease pandemics.

[Mojo]

You mean bush is the best leader the UK has ever had ]/Ankh[/B]

Untrue, like Xest said he backed bush on the war on terror but this was not done blindly. Blair would not have done it if there was nothing in it for the British I assure you

[Ankh Morpork]

Untrue, like Xest said he backed bush on the war on terror but this was not done blindly. Blair would not have done it if there was nothing in it for the British I assure you

It was totally done blindly since they had no proof what so ever of mass destruction weapons or terrorists. I mean, for a land to follow into war surely they should require hard evidence before risking the lifes of their soldiers?

/Ankh

[Mojo]

like I said the Iraq decision is a complete mystery to me.

I can think of a dozen reasons why he might have, but we will never know for sure because that kinda of thing doesn't get talked about. But having seen Blair operate over the last few years i am pretty confident that he had his reaons and thet we as a nation gained somehow, but i also confident that we won't be told how

[Xest]

It was totally done blindly since they had no proof what so ever of mass destruction weapons or terrorists. I mean, for a land to follow into war surely they should require hard evidence before risking the lifes of their soldiers?

/Ankh

No there's a difference, they thought they did have proof, they were misled by intelligence agencies - whether that was intentional on the intelligence agencies behalf or not we don't know.

If you read my post above about how terrorism will only become a major worry if it increases in scale you can begin to understand the reasoning behind wanting to disarm Iraq if it did have WMDs, if there are nations willing to supply terrorists with such dangerous weapons as Iraq under Saddam's regime would have been then they need to be disarmed, period.

If Tony Blair was told that Iraq arming terrorists with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons was a real and potent threat and hence why he decided to go to war I think he made the right choice.

What actually went wrong was the intelligence provided, it misled either Tony or intelligence leaders to beleive a threat that didn't really exist existed, as Tony does certainly care about politics and the welfare of the country I'd be inclined to beleive that it wasn't him that lied about the WMDs - I'd say it was whoever was informing him that lied, or at least got it wrong and it's hard to blame Tony for that - he has to have faith in the departments that feed him information else there's no point in them existing. What does need to be rectified is that they were able to supply false intelligence - that kind of intelligence should only be passed on to leaders like Tony blair if it can be almost 100% proven as true.

[Ankh Morpork]

No there's a difference, they thought they did have proof, they were misled by intelligence agencies - whether that was intentional on the intelligence agencies behalf or not we don't know.

If you read my post above about how terrorism will only become a major worry if it increases in scale you can begin to understand the reasoning behind wanting to disarm Iraq if it did have WMDs, if there are nations willing to supply terrorists with such dangerous weapons as Iraq under Saddam's regime would have been then they need to be disarmed, period.

If Tony Blair was told that Iraq arming terrorists with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons was a real and potent threat and hence why he decided to go to war I think he made the right choice.

What actually went wrong was the intelligence provided, it misled either Tony or intelligence leaders to beleive a threat that didn't really exist existed, as Tony does certainly care about politics and the welfare of the country I'd be inclined to beleive that it wasn't him that lied about the WMDs - I'd say it was whoever was informing him that lied, or at least got it wrong and it's hard to blame Tony for that - he has to have faith in the departments that feed him information else there's no point in them existing. What does need to be rectified is that they were able to supply false intelligence - that kind of intelligence should only be passed on to leaders like Tony blair if it can be almost 100% proven as true.

I dont think he did the right thing. I mean, Uk got their own intelligence agency and surely they should double check information before deciding. Especially since it was about starting a war where innocent people would get involved. As you said, it's hard to blame Tony for it but as he is the leader he is the one to blame anyway. Nobody should be stupid enough to belive that a land that had embargo on them for years and have already been in one war which they kind of lost (I say kind of cos the war was as you know never ended) to be a threat to the world peace. Everyone knows that the biggest threat to the world peace is Korea AND the united states (you may claim they are the good guys, but I don't agree anymore...a couple of years ago I might have agreed partially but not anymore)

But the yanks arent that happy atm btw since china is starting to stabilize and especially not after they bought those russian made torpedoes which are impossible to stop when fired (bad news for the U.S pacific fleet).

Anyway, im starting to drift away from the main subject again so ill stay passive for abit in this discussion

/Ankh

[Mojo]

It was totally done blindly since they had no proof what so ever of mass destruction weapons or terrorists. I mean, for a land to follow into war surely they should require hard evidence before risking the lifes of their soldiers?

/Ankh

Just because you or I don't know the "real reasons" as to why things kicked off it doesn't mean that they went in blindly. Your assuming that someone smart and savvy enough to make it to the top Job in the UK went to war cos his mate asked him to. Do you really really think give Tony Blair's track record he would do that?. The WMD was crap we all know that, and it's odd that you and other people keep focusing on it, yes we know its crap, it was so weak it's a joke, so ask your self why they really went in rather than the resson they told us.

Get of that rather popular and over loaded bandwagon of yours come up with something new!

[Xest]

I don't think you really can blame Tony personally for his intelligence departments failings - he can't be expected to keep an eye on everyone to make sure they're doing their jobs right as far as I'm concerned he does his job well, it's just all to often other people he depends on let him down as they appear to have done in the Iraq case.