» Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Butler Report

Asked precisely when the Prime Minister had been informed about the withdrawal of intelligence, the PMOS said that he had dealt with this matter last week. He had nothing further to add. Asked if the Foreign Secretary had told him, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had found out as a result of the Butler Inquiry. He had nothing more to say on the issue.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Search for related news

83 Comments »

  1. I don’t care which island is contaminated with Anthrax; I’m not talking about Anthrax contamination – I’m talking about storing it as you maintain Iraq obviously did before they gave away their WMD to Iran or wherever it is you think those WMD ended up. Different thing entirely.

    Never mind trying to wheadle (I’m not even certain that is a real word…) information out of me – if as you allege you saw a show on Newsnight about Iran receiving military hardware from Iraq, you must at least be able to remember when you saw it. I don’t care what people think of me; so far you are the only person on this thread who has expressed a contrary viewpoint, and you have shown nothing apart from contradictions to back it up. Your case for your original insults about people who criticise their government has been backed up by precisely nothing. So rather than being concerned about what other people may think of me, you should be more concerned with how loose and unfounded your whole argument has been so far.

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 26 Jul 2004 on 3:13 am | Link
  2. Dear Nowonmai,You say it is painful to read some off my longer post`s,have you tried taken an asprin.Don`t take too many as they can give you a bad stomach.You should also go to the optician as you may need glasses.Why not go and lie down in a dark room and calm yourself down it can`t be any good for you to get so excited.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 26 Jul 2004 on 3:19 am | Link
  3. Dear PapaLazzzaru,Firsly I never said I saw it on newsnight.I said I saw it on the television.It was big news at the time.Secondly I never said that Iraq gave it`s W.M.D. to Iran I said it could have given it`s W.M.D. to Iran.BIG DIFFERANCE.As for saying thing`s about those that say there are NO W.M.D. I again ask you for your proof.You don`t have any.You must back up what you say.GIVE ME PROOF.It`s the only QUESTION I WANT an answer to.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 26 Jul 2004 on 3:28 am | Link
  4. I don’t have any PROOF, you know that. But then, I don’t need to produce proof – I didn’t take the country to war. The people who DID take the country to war also have no proof, and lots of people are dead because of the war they based on a complete lack of credible evidence. I’m sure we’ve covered this ground before, but you refuse to consider this viewpoint – there was NO PROOF to back up sending troops into a conflict from which many of them will not return. That is a crime Tony B.Liar is guilty of, not me.

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 26 Jul 2004 on 3:38 am | Link
  5. Well we FINALLY can make progress.You now say you have no PROOF.You must now understand NO ONE HAS.That is the point I have been trying to make.As no one has proof and you go by the fact`s then you have to conclude that there are W.M.D. You say that the people that took the country to war have no PROOF they DON`T need any it`s NEVER been eatablished that there are no W.M.D.You say lot`s of people are dead True but you must also say a lot of people are dead after 9/11 so how many 9/11`s do you want us to put up with.No one can tell the future but for long term stability and the saving of life countries like Iraq must be made free for the people of those countries to take affective action against those that threatening us all.Give those who threatening us no where to hide.You also must know that MANY lives have been saved as saddam can no longer kill so many of his own people as he did before we went to war.He is no longer a threat to people.People also forget he tried to get us to make a super gun which he was going to use against Israel and other`s.What were his intentions there to send over W.M.D!.How many lives were saved by this war in the long term will be FAR FAR HIGHER then if we had left him in power.Just look at the estimates of how many have died as a result of all the thing`s he has done since he came to power in Iraq then come back onto this site and tell me we should not have gone to war.I will then give up on you as a TOTALly lost case.As for some of our M.P.`s you have to understand that some of them will NEVER go to war no matter what the circumstances are.Some may well be honest enough to tell you that.All this is about people saying they would not have gone to war if they had knowing that there were no W.M.D.I am pointing out to them that it cannot be proved there were no W.M.D.So they know want our security to be based on maybe`s or I think.I am saying please go by knowing fact`s.But let`s face the truth,many of them and the press are after Tony Blair and George Bush and as they say hate can blind people.I sit here and now tell you that my family came close to being kill by the I.R.A.a few year`s ago.They tried to blow up some GIANT gas tank`s not far off my house,if that had gone up it would have been like a hydrogen bomb going off.My family would not be here know.If you don`t believe me that`s your problem.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 26 Jul 2004 on 9:59 am | Link
  6. Many of us have been close to being killed some by terrorism, some of us by ignorance and most of us by accident. That is just a ‘time-space’ reality, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time….

    The GWB TB – WMD debate is about honesty and what people like us who will never know the inner workings of a politician’s mind make out of the externally visible signs.

    We and the USA gave Iraq WMD during the Iran/Iraq war – that is why some people chose to ignore Hanz Blix and say that they believed that Iraq still had WMD. I use the believe word advisedly here because most of what we debate on this site is the result of us believing something written by somebody else.

    For my part I believe that both TB and GWB were stupid in not being intelligent enough to ask the simple questions that most people were asking at the time before the war – about the integrity of the information on which they were basing decisions. They say that they didn’t ask those questions and that that absolves them of any guilt, but, for me, it also confirms their stupidity.

    What I or anyone else believes is interesting but not open to ‘proof’, it can only be debated on the sources from which we derived those beliefs. Without ‘sources’ to support a debate we express only an opinion and must accept that ‘sourced’ arguments are stronger than un-sourced.

    Me – I believe in God – would I debate this belief? No, why? Because the existence of God cannot be proved.

    George – you have the right to your beliefs you have the right to place faith in your beliefs but you need to accept that there is a gulf of difference between a belief and a fact.

    Anyone in this thread is free to tell me that God doesn’t exist – I’m sure they will 😉 but I don’t care 🙂
    Anyone is free to tell me that GWB and TB were right but I don’t care 🙂
    From all that I think I know, from all that I have read that I believe to be true, from all that I see in the body language of GWB and TB [and here I have extensive analytical experience] I believe that they are stupid, or liars, or both.
    {grammatically I know I shouldn’t have used successive ‘or’s but I’m making a point}
    No amount of CAPITAL LETTERS {shouting} is going to change my beliefs 😉

    Have a good week

    Comment by Roger Huffadine — 26 Jul 2004 on 10:54 am | Link
  7. The issue, as with all of them, is one of lack of evidence.

    For example: Pakistan, through its lack of proper policy and control, has been directly responsible for nuclear technology and secrets being sold to North Korea, Iran, and Libya. The penalty for Pakistan? None; it is a nuclear nation, already at the brink of co-destruction with India. The diplomats and the press gave them a fat lip, and that was it.

    Pakistan has actively passed on the secrets that everyone claims Iraq *could* have done – however, as it turns out, Iraq had nothing to give; the control regime put in place was, after all, enough to do what needed to be done.

    For example: A wide range of countries have actually been used to assist Al-Qaida in terrorist activities; amongst those are Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan. Actions taken? Vary.

    Iraq? Nothing. No connection. No sympathetic audience for Al-Qaida, and an anti-religious grip on the country by a Saddam who held control with an iron fist.

    The argument made by many is that the war on terror shouldn’t have been fought in Iraq; that Iraq has never had, and until our intervention, would likely have never been, a party to the terrorism we witness today.

    Our actions have changed that fact. We destabilized the region, in the hopes of getting something more stable later; that gamble has yet to pay out, the dice have not yet stopped rolling.

    However: To pretend that the war on Iraq was a clear and definite "good idea" is fallacy; governments generally do not act on the ‘greater good’, they act on national interests.

    What is clear now, because of the evidence that doesn’t exist, is that the criteria of ‘national interests’ has not been met. This wasn’t even the much-touted-by-America "preemptive counterstrike", whereby the defensive act takes place before the offensive one by one’s opponent, has proven entirely worthless and baseless.

    This was Regime Change. Illegal within the UN charter, expressly prohibited by the governments of the world because It Might Be Them Next. In diplomacy, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say, and arguments about it slide right down the slippery slope into complete and total anarchy.

    So.

    The burden of proof relies on those who make the first strike. The first strike was made on Iraq, not by Iraq, and against the wishes of the UN inspectors, who had already clearly stated that the grounds for war did not exist.

    Meanwhile, the West, through actions completely disconnected from Al-Qaida, have created strong imagery which can be used by the enemy they weren’t bothering to try to defeat by implementing Regime Change in Iraq; that imagery can then be used by the ‘real’ enemy, sponsored terrorism, to usher even more people into martyrdom – our actions outside of the terrorist threat’s scope reinforce the terrorists’ arguments that the West is interested in regime change and overlaying its culture over the rest of the world.

    They painted the West out as a set of cowboy clowns in costume; our response was to go out, spend billions on fake red noses, paint, large shoes, and polka-dot outfits, and dress up as them. In came the gunslingers, out went the regime, and we became the image that Al-Qaida had already been using to recruit; we became our own worst enemy.

    It’s hard to see how that meets the national interest.

    Comment by Gregory Block — 26 Jul 2004 on 11:12 am | Link
  8. I was always led to understand that "ignorance is no plea in Law"
    That being so it seems that TB took us to war illegally.

    Comment by Roger Huffadine — 26 Jul 2004 on 11:32 am | Link
  9. The eloquent expansions by Uncarved & Roger are of course much appreciated and informative to those who don’t already understand this issue; however, I fear that to some (or ONE!) this is all so much more pure speculation, completely lacking in actual PROOF! Time will tell if the penny has dropped…

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 26 Jul 2004 on 4:31 pm | Link
  10. Dear Roger,Thank`s for your reply.I am asking Roger how people can say there are no W.M.D.I just want to find out this fact and cannot find it anywhere.All I have heard are M.P.`s saying there are "no W.M.D.well not many left" and there are "no W.M.D."and then not telling me how they know that. What does that tell me,it tells me they don`t know.All I am asking for is for just one person to prove there are none and no one can do that.People say expert`s say it`s unlikely there are W.M.D. Unlikely mean`s they don`t know.All I do know is that W.M.D.existed at the end of the Iraq/Iran war and people tell me that somewhere from then to now they no longer exist.I say great.But when I ask how do you know that I get nothing to explain how this happened.Is it to much to ask for someone to explain.All these people come on to this site and say this and that. I am not asking for this and that.I am asking for one single thing how do you know W.M.D.no longer exist.I don`t want to know about the right and wrong`s of the war I have my own thought`s on this.Can anyone tell me the answer to my question as none that have been on this site can.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 26 Jul 2004 on 7:14 pm | Link
  11. George, we’ve been banging this nail for a while now; I have to say with your last reply that your tune seems to have changed from "evidence of no WMD = WMD exist" to "evidence of no WMD COULD mean WMD do not exist but this has yet to be proven".

    Agreed. 100% correct. And this is what we have been saying all along. Your original premise was that Bliar and Brush have proven conclusively that they DO exist, not DID exist. Wrong. We ALL know that they DID exist.

    SO. If we start from there.

    We know they DID exist.
    We also know that Iraq used SOME against Iran and also his own people.
    We ALSO know that UNSCOM weapons inspectors disposed of SOME.
    We ALSO know that SOME facilities were bombed out of existence.
    We also KNOW that Iraq disposed of SOME themselves, under supervision of UNSCOM & others (this is documented, you’d probably be able to find it fairly easy – I don’t have time at the minute to provide links).
    We also KNOW for a certain time Iraq was unable to produce or buy more – again, weapons inspections and the close attentions of half the world’s intelligence agencies. This lasted from 91 – 98-98. Even after this time until weapons inspectors were allowed back in at the end of 2002, naturally the attentions of the same intelligence agencies were firmly focused on Iraq.

    Therefore this leaves us with a period of time between 1998 and 2003 when Iraq COULD conceivably have obtained or produced more. However, bearing in mind that in order to BUY WMD this would mean going to another country; therefore, although our HUMINT was poor in Iraq, this does not mean that we would not have gotten wind of such attempts via other parties – bear in mind the serpentine and often unlikely links between intelligence people. It is HIGHLY unlikely that the relatively primitive training of the Iraqi "spies", for want of a better, more all-encompassing name, would have allowed them to keep such transactions completely hidden from the rest of the world. In short, I think we can all rest assured that had Iraq actually MANAGED to buy WMD from elsewhere, one way or another someone would have gotten wind of it.

    So, discounting for the sake of argument the possibility that Iraq managed to buy WMD from someone else, the only remaining possibility is that they managed to produce more themselves.

    We KNOW that Iraq WANTED to produce more. We KNOW that they TRIED to produce more.

    BUT.

    And this is the whole point.

    What we DON’T know is whether they succeeded. We’ve already conceded that HUMINT was limited and unreliable. We’ve also conceded that there is a period of roughly 5 years when they COULD have succeeded. We know from the US that the CIA have since admitted that most of its intelligence based on HUMINT was about 5 years out of date.

    So here we are now. We’ve conceded that Iraq COULD have produced WMD between 1998 and 2003. We also know that prior to the US election in 2000 which Brush won (rightly or wrongly) Tony Bliar fully agreed with Bill Clinton that containment was working and there was no need for military action. We also KNOW that at the same time, the Project for a New American Century, a thinktank composed of the likes of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and so on, advocated a stronger stance on Iraq. This was for a myriad of reasons, not one of which was related to WMD. of course, WMD was a convenient excuse for military action, but it wasn’t the REASON. These were (are) a mixture of personal, political and financial considerations which I won’t get into because it would take forever.

    We also KNOW that prior to 9/11 George Brush was already considering military action against Iraq. This again is documented, and even though the 9/11 Commission (in the same way as numerous enquiries on this side of the pond) refused to directly attribute blame or criticism, their conclusions are nontheless damning, in what they don’t say as well as what they do. If you’d followed it as closely as I did, you’d also know that testimony by US government witnesses was as unconvincing and evasive as it was over here. Compared with the forthright honesty of most of the other witnesses it was pretty pathetic to behold. You can call them anti-Government if you want, you can say they all had an agenda if you want, but the simple facts are that, as Uncarved Block & Roger said above you don’t need to be an expert on human nature to spot self-serving evasion or forthright honesty.

    We now also know that after 9/11, Tony Bliar changed his previous stance from agreeing with Bill Clinton on the success of containment, to agreeing with George Brush that containment wasn’t working and military action was the only option left. We know all about the dodgy dossiers and the circumstances and shenanigans surrounding them. We know that before publication, the dossier was fully comprehensive in that it qualified every point with such caveats as necessary; ie. "Saddam is interested in procuring WMD, he may even have succeeded, BUT we don’t know for certain because HUMINT is limited and we can’t confirm this". We also know that after publication the dossier read "Saddam has WMD and he can use them within 45 minutes".

    We KNOW this is not true. We know it 150%. We have already established that the intelligence on Iraq was limited and was suitably qualified in such a way that NO-ONE who read it could conclude that Iraq HAD SUCCEEDED IN PROCURING WMD.

    And again, this is the crux of the problem. We are supposed to be a democracy, allied to another democracy across the pond. Part of being a liberal democracy is that you follow the rules as laid down, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. We know the UN is not perfect; we know in a lot of cases it is a waste of time. In the same way we know our own justice system is often badly flawed. However, we still all have to obey the law as laid down.

    But we didn’t. We and the Americans decided that Saddam Hussein, who for a long time was useful to us, had to go. We know that regime change is an illegal justification for war under international law as laid down. Our governments also know that. But they were determined to go their way, for whatever reasons. And of course they didn’t want the accusations of being undemocratic that would naturally follow if we went to war for the purposes of regime change. Well, when I say that, I mean we in the UK – the US have gotten so arrogant that they now care nothing at all for international law because there is no-one willing to challenge them hard enough. Hence the publication of the dodgy dossier and Tony Bliar’s repeatedly nauseating pleas for people to trust him.

    And now we arrive… The point is, Bliar KNEW, as we all KNOW, that NONE of us KNOW if Iraq had WMD or not. The CHANCES were good that he did not; we know Iraq was bankrupt and struggling for friends throughout the world. This of course was all down to the fact that Saddam was a megalomaniac who cared for one thing and one thing only; himself. But that’s beside the point. As I said, Blair KNEW that NO-ONE could say for certain whether or not Iraq had WMD. But he said HE knew. He stated unequivocally that Iraq had WMD and would use them. He said the reason he knew was that he had intelligence which was so secret no-one, not even the intelligence services themselves, could see it apart from himself and selected cronies. Even now, after various committees have listed various things that should not have been used as justification, he still insists that they are wrong and he was right, because he still has this ace up his sleeve, this nugget of super-secret information which, unfortunately and to his dying regret, Prime Ministerial privelege prevents him sharing.

    Please! Don’t say you are so naive as to actually believe that (rhetorical question?!

    The questions Bliar needs to answer right now, if he were to deserve an apology (and of course that would depend on the veracity of his anwers) are;

    1. Why now? Why suddenly change your tune from Clintons to Bushs, when there was no credible evidence that the threat had increased?
    2. Who took all the caveats out of the dossier and why?
    3. Did you do a deal with Bush, and if so when and why?
    4. If the war was such an honourable course of action, how come at least one of your own kids is not at least training for a role in the military?

    There are others, of course, and I wouldn’t profess for a second to know all the questions or the answers to them. But the problem because of his course of action and refusal to account for it afterwards, as has been said countless times recently, is that his trust is now dimished to a point where the majority of the country does not trust him at all. If he can lie so readily about Iraq, what else is he lying about, or has lied about in the past? And is our dimished standing around the world really worth the price in blood which has been paid so far and continues to be paid as we debate?

    (Capitals are for emphasis only; I’m NOT SHOUTING…!)

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 26 Jul 2004 on 9:12 pm | Link
  12. Once again you are off onto other thing`s that I am not asking about.I still want someone to give me the proof that W.M.D.do not exist.Until anyone does they do exist.There is no evidence to the contrary.Don`t you understand that.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 26 Jul 2004 on 11:45 pm | Link
  13. I wasn’t off onto other things; I was trying to qualify what to me and others on this thread is a perfectly simple argument. There is no evidence that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist; does that mean it exists beyond a doubt?

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Jul 2004 on 1:02 am | Link
  14. Your at it again unbelievable.We know W.M.D.did exist.We have never knowing if the Loch Ness Monster exist.We know W.M.D.still exist because there has never been any evidence to the countrary. You told me last night you had no proof that W.M.D.do not exist.Tomorrow you will be telling me that fairies may exist at the bottom of your garden.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 27 Jul 2004 on 3:54 am | Link
  15. No, once again you’re wrong; we have NO EVIDENCE that the Loch Ness Monster has never existed. We SUSPECT it is all a fabrication, but we have no proof…

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Jul 2004 on 4:44 am | Link
  16. You first have to established something existed before you can say it no longer exist.Your premise is that you have to disprove somthing does not exist before proving it did.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 27 Jul 2004 on 10:54 am | Link
  17. We don’t know they existed after weapons inspectors disposed of the last they found. Same logic.

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Jul 2004 on 11:08 am | Link
  18. George, do you believe that dinosaurs are still roaming the earth? Where do you think that the dodos are hiding? Have all the neanderthals gone on holiday somewhere?

    They all existed and no-one can prove that they do not still exist. Most people believe the available evidence and conclude that dinosaurs, dodos and neaderthals are all extinct. But, as there is no PROOF, that will clearly not be good enough for you George.

    So, George, are you going to accept that your reasoning is faulty and agree that it makes sense to believe that there were no WMDs in Iraq at the start of the war? Or are you going to give me directions to ‘the land that time forgot’?

    Comment by Uncarved Block — 27 Jul 2004 on 2:14 pm | Link
  19. Got you with that one.Time and time again you make assumption that are knowingly wrong.I will give you two you have just made.Firstly.Dinosaurs still do exist there descendents are all around us they are called birds.Neanderthals never died out.There is a bit off them in you and me.When modern man came out of Afirca and moved into Europe he pushed Neanderthal man more and more further north and yes bredding took place between modern man and Neanderthal women and vice versa.I only say this as your education is sadly lacking.And yes I can prove that W.M.D.existed before the Iraq war they were used in the Iraq/Iran war.As for dodos again you are wrong it is all documented from the ships log that they were all killed and further expedition`s confirmed this fact.They could not fly and were easy prey for the sailor`s with there club`s,and they only existed on one Island in the Indian ocean (whose name escape`s me at the moment).They have never been seen anywhere else Earth (so far)lol.By the way your premise is a good one BUT only in the field of theoretical physics. Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 27 Jul 2004 on 5:16 pm | Link
  20. "And yes I can prove that W.M.D.existed before the Iraq war they were used in the Iraq/Iran war"

    Go on then, prove it. Don’t tell me they were used in the Iran/Iraq war – PROVE it.

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Jul 2004 on 7:12 pm | Link
  21. This is getting boring, anyhow it was the means and ability to deliver, and not the existence of WMD’s that was really in doubt.

    Comment by Colonel Mad — 27 Jul 2004 on 7:39 pm | Link
  22. Re: The Iraqi Airforce.

    For the record, george dutton is right about the Iraqi Airforce. Iraqi planes flew to Iran during the First Gulf War, as a last ditch attempt to avoid then being destroyed by bombing. I remember it being in the the news at the time. The intention was that Iraq would be able to regain it’s airforce after the war had finished. This wasn’t the case; 137 planes were flown to Iran, and after the war the Iranian government declined to return them.

    I got this by googling on "gulf war iraqi air force iran"

    <a href="http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0071.shtml">http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0071.shtml</a&gt;

    However, as far as I can see this has no connection with current debates on WMD.

    Comment by square peg — 27 Jul 2004 on 8:16 pm | Link
  23. "As for dodos again you are wrong it is all documented from the ships log that they were all killed and further expedition`s confirmed this fact… They have never been seen anywhere else Earth (so far)lol."

    Isn’t this a good parallel with Iraqi WMD? They were recorded as being destroyed after the Gulf War and further inspections have confirmed this fact. They have never been found anywhere in Iraq.

    To me this looks like sound reasoning for assuming something doesn’t exist.

    Comment by square peg — 27 Jul 2004 on 8:21 pm | Link
  24. Thanks for that, Peg; glad SOMEONE can back up arguments. However, I’d like to point out that George’s premise was that Iraq GAVE her planes to Iran, not that there was any kind of arragnement to get them back. But, apologies to George – even if he was slightly off track. See, I’m man enough to apologise when I am proved wrong.

    The Colonel is correct too; it IS getting boring. Unfortunately George Dutton refuses to accept that his own logic is flawed, and therefore the argument will drag on because I think it’s important that people do realise the truth.

    Earlier Goerge accused me, and others, of having an "agenda" and of "not liking Tony Bliar". Again, by using his own logic against him, he too obviously has an agenda – he is obviously a fan of Tony Bliar and refuses to consider that he could be wrong. Not necessarily IS wrong, but COULD be. We have all conceded parts of the argument in order to iron out the main principle, and to me it seems fairly clear cut. The lack of evidence that something does not exist DOES NOT MEAN it exists, as Uncarved Block pointed out. But I fear I am wasting my time again; I can anticipate George’s reply almost word for word. Once again he will accuse us all of having missed the point and of not understanding that we are all wrong.

    So once again, to use George’s own logic against him, there is no proof WMD existed after (I think) 1996 when the weapons inspectors got rid of the last batch that they had found. If that’s the case, like the dinosaurs, they become a point of argument; you either BELIEVE they did or not – but you can’t prove it either way. So if George carries on insisting that because we have no evidence that Iraq destroyed all it’s remaining WMD then they are definitely there, then I will spend the rest of the week looking carefully for dinosaurs and dodos.

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 27 Jul 2004 on 8:30 pm | Link
  25. LOL.There must have been someone like you at Troy.No there are no greek soldiers,look the beach it`s empty.We can`t find any greek soldiers there all gone.You stupid stupid person.No I`m not going to look into the wooden horse,how can the greek`s get enough soldiers in there to hurt us.You stupid stupid person go away while I and people like me with far superior intellects pull this wooden horse into the city. We all know what happened to the Trojen`s. I also see no apology to me on your learning that Iraq did hand it`s jet fighter`s to Iran or are you going to tell square peg you don`t believe him as well.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 27 Jul 2004 on 11:08 pm | Link
  26. Dear Square peg,Problem with your reasoning is that we don`t know how much W.M.D.saddam had!.We don`t know if the weapon inspector`s found it all.It would seem to me that saddam would have chuck them out long before they found it all which is what he did.He was hardly going to chuck them out after they had found all he had.There were not that many weapon inspector`s and Iraq is about the size of france.To follow the reasoning that further inspection turned up nothing is true but there again they would not have found many jet fighter`s he had giving them away to Iran.What else might he have giving away and to whom. What I am trying to highlight is the fact that no one can say there are no W.M.D.because no one know`s. Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 27 Jul 2004 on 11:58 pm | Link
  27. You’re ‘avin’ a giraff, aincha George?!?! I’ve just cottoned on – this is a deliberate wind-up, innit me awld sossage?!

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 28 Jul 2004 on 12:59 am | Link
  28. Dear Square peg,I should have told you that searching for a bird that run`s about on the ground on a small Island is nothing like a parallel to searching for W.M.D.in a country the size of France and could be buried to a great depth.That is if they are in that country!.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 28 Jul 2004 on 3:52 am | Link
  29. Well, if it wasn’t a wind up, it’s adding weight to the argument that democracy is rubbish. Imagine someone like Dutton (I assume it usually has a capital) being allowed to vote! You all battled bravely there against the forces of gross stupidity.

    Comment by Lodjer — 30 Jul 2004 on 9:26 am | Link
  30. Dear Lodjer, You say"adding weight to the argument that democracy is rubbish"I am glad you did not have to live in Iraq you would then find out what our democracy really is or do you think saddam`s is the one you like best!!!.You should also understand that when people have lost a debate they alway`s get personal.What you are saying to the world is george dutton has no right to say the thing`s he does,so where is your version of democracy in that!!!.Well it say`s a lot about the person you are.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 30 Jul 2004 on 12:50 pm | Link
  31. Oh, I quite agree. And I wouldn’t want to comment on the politics, I am simply a utilitarian at heart.

    Comment by Lodjer — 30 Jul 2004 on 12:54 pm | Link
  32. I’ve got to compliment you in one way, George – your complete lack of understanding (worrying enough in itself) in this issue is matched only by your sheer stubbornness and stamina in arguing that black is white!

    Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 30 Jul 2004 on 2:01 pm | Link
  33. It is if you dye it.Which is what some try to do.Signed,george dutton.

    Comment by george dutton — 30 Jul 2004 on 3:29 pm | Link

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