Monday, November 08, 2004

Differences in democracy...

Would anyone in US politics have the bravery to follow suit?

political comment...

The text of the draft motion reads:

"That a select committee of not more than 13 members be appointed to investigate and to report to the house on the conduct of the Prime Minister in relation to the war against Iraq and to consider;

"(a) the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group that in March 2003 Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and had been essentially free of them since the mid-1990s;
"(b) the Prime Minister's acknowledgement that he was wrong when he asserted that Iraq was then in possession of chemical or biological weapons or was then engaged in active efforts to develop nuclear weapons or was thereby a current or serious threat to the UK national interest or that possession of WMD then enabled Iraq to inflict real damage upon the region and the stability of the world;

"(c) the opinion of the Secretary-General of the United Nations that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful;

"(d) whether there exist sufficient grounds to impeach the Rt Hon Tony Blair on charges of gross misconduct in his advocacy of the case for war against Iraq and in his conduct of policy in connection with that war.

"That the committee shall within 48 days of its appointment report to this house such resolutions, articles of impeachment or other recommendations as it shall think fit."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sure, the WMD thing was astupid basis for war (especially since we just had to wait for Iraq to fire at another plane patroling the no fly zone and then attacked "in retaliation"). There is another side to it.
As part of the surrender after the first Gulf War, Iraq had to prove that it had gotten rid of its weapons. Just saying that they didn't have them anymore really wasn't the point. They should have made a better show of disarming.
The equivalent is this:
1) Go menace your neighbor with a gun.
2) When the police show up and tell you to throw out your weapon and surrender, say you don't have a weapon.
3) Walk out with your hands in your pockets and tell the police that you're behaving well and have no weapons.

The likely result of this scenario is that the police will capture and beat you till you know better (if they don't just blow your head off with their own firearms).

Keep in mind, I'm not defending the way the US (with the UK and a few others) went into this war. It a been a blatant exercise in cranial sodomosis so far. I'm just saying the reasons for going to war were spoken by the same morons who've been screwing up the war. (When you've got access to the resources of one the greatest industrial powers in the world, extraordinary reserves of natural resourecs, and a huge population of well-fed, well educated people, how hard do you have to try to screw up a war?)

LibertyBob