Would Bush have invaded Iraq without the UK going along with it?

[NNN0LHI]

Poll question: Would Bush have invaded Iraq without the UK going along with it?

[indictrichardperle]

1. he had Exxon, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Israel and Micronesia

he didnt need Britain.

[never cry wolf]

2. No doubt

The PNAC policy papers didn't mention Britain. As a matter of fact I am sure some of em wish Britain hadn't joined in, now they have to share the spoils.

[Jacobin]

3. I didn't think he would at the time without Britain.

I didn't think Blair would go along with it. I thought that if Blair wasn't allowed to go that Smirk wouldn't do it.

However, in hindsight, I don't think anyone or anything would have kept Rumfilled, Perle, Cheney and Wolfowitz from this "glorious" adventure.

[AP]

6. And who benefits and who loses because the UK is in there.

I guarantee you the average Iraqi is happy the US isn't in there all alone, and the average European and the average Brit now stands a better chance of not having their economies completely sabotaged by the US.

So remind me again why we think Blair is a traitor in the battle against fascism?

[Hubert Flottz]

4. Bush's only hope is to keep a war going on!

He would invade California if he thought he could pull it off and buy votes!

[Booberdawg]

5. I think Bush would have gone to war without

the resolution from congress!

[PurityOfEssence]

7. They wanted it SO badly...

...they couldn't turn back. When did they pass the point of no return? September 11, 2001. They'd have probably done it anyway, but once they had the bestest little excuse any little murderous tyrant could ever ask for, it was just a matter of timing. The timing was dependent upon snuffing out Afghanistan quickly and then slipping it in right before the '02 election so there would be no meaningful dissent.

Daddy revenge, PNAC world domination, Israel hawk appeasement and good old-fashioned supermassivegreed.

[AP]

8. They had it planned in the fall of 1991.

Nothing was going to stop them. The key now is to outmanouver them. That's what's motivating Blair.

[NNN0LHI]

9. I believe Blair had already given his assurance of cooperation by then

Without those assurances I am not convinced that Junior would have tried to pull it off.

Don

[AP]

14. Blair gave Bush assurances in 91? When Thatcher was PM?

Uh, no.

Tell me why Blair almost immediately called an early election when Bush became President.

Don't know. I'll tell you. It's because he knew that Bush was going to begin a project to sabotage his government and he wanted to make sure that he could get reelected before somethign happened which would make it harder for him to get reelected (and that thing happened -- Iraq), and he wanted to make sure that he wouldn't have to run again until after 2004 when there was a chance there'd be another Dem running the show in the US and the sabotage effort would be over.

Is that the way pals act towards each other? Is that what happens between poodles and master who give assurances to each other? Nope.

[NNN0LHI]

16. My error. When I seen '91 my brain was thinking '01.

Its early. Still on my first cup of coffee.

Don

[T_i_B]

17. Get your facts right before you post.

Thatcher was ousted in October 1990 and John Major took us into the 1991 Gulf war. This was all back in the days when Blair was not even a senior member of Kinnock's shadow cabinet.

Since by accident or design you can't even get such basic facts about Brisih politics right I will have to ask that you provide hard evidence, supported by links before you start off with you wide-eyed conspiacy theorizing that only ever serves to pass the buck away from your beloved poodle boy. It has become virtually impossible to belive anything that you spout about UK politics AP.

[NNN0LHI]

18. .

[AP]

19. I was off by one year. Man. I knew somebody who worked on

Major's first campaign and I was measuring from the timing of a conversation I had with him and placed Major's election in late 1991. It's harder to remember when there's no set election year, no?

Yeah, so I guess I don't know my facts about British politics. It's amusing that this is the only way you seem to be able to deal with me. You're so worried about my credibility. Why don't you just address the arguments? Oh, that's harder for you isn't it? So attack away on the credibility of an ANONYMOUS INTERNET POSTER. Don't you see, when you're an anonymous internet poster, you have almost nothing vested in credibilty? Credibility is a paper tiger here. I could attack yours, but why bother? My only credibility is the predictive power of my arguments and the set of facts I rely upon. And if you really think that being off by 10 or 11 months on the start of Major's term undermines my credibility, then, mostly, that's a sad statement about the strength of your arguments. One thing I predicted months ago when people like you started attacking Blair was that you were going to see the Tories catch back up with Labour after being pushed down to third part status. People like you said it was OK to attack Blair because that would never happen, and it did. If there were an election today the Tories would probably take back control of the government. Now you're changing the argument, I notice. Now people like you are saying that competition is good for politics (which I generally agree with), and you're implying that it would be OK if the Tories won again. Yeah, it would be great for Britain if you turned the clock back to pre-1997, the good old days, when competition in politics produced unfettered Tory hegemony which decimated the working class, and there was no middle class to speak of.

So, bottom line, notwithstanding an 11 month mistake, I stand by my predictions and my arguments, and I'm not worried one bit about my credibility.

By the way, have you read End of the America Era yet? If you do, I think you'll understand why it's so important for Bush to sabotage the EU and get Blair and Labour out of power in the UK.

[T_i_B]

29. And the award for hypocrite of the year goes to AP.

I knew somebody who worked on Major's first campaign and I was measuring from the timing of a conversation I had with him and placed Major's election in late 1991. It's harder to remember when there's no set election year, no?

That excuse is quite frankly pathetic. A quick internet search should present the info so quickly that such slip-ups cannot really be excused, particularly when coming from somebody who claims to know about the UK political scene. If you can't be bothered to check out such basic facts then why should we take any of your ludicrous posts to be the truth? You claim that "My only credibility is the predictive power of my arguments and the set of facts I rely upon" but it would seem that the facts that you rely on to back up your unconvincing arguments are dubious in the extreme.

What get's me is that you impugne Gilligan for his reporting when you are guilty of far worse than that yourself. I'm not claiming that Gilligan is 100% in the right (he's not) but any criticism of his infamous story by yourself must be seen as a bit of a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

If I went around making the sort of wild claims that you do without any evidence on DU my fellow DUers would kick my arse. They would be quite right to do so as well. I don't see why it should be one rule for the Blairites, one rule for the rest.

[AP]

34. You get so angry at me.

I'm sorry. I'm just giving my opinion (and I think I support it pretty well -- let others be the judge). If you'd prefer this to be an echo chamber of illogical, mad speculation, then I guess I'm playing the spoiler. But, rather than anger, why don't you just state your opinion and try to support it with fact and history, and we'll let the dear readers judge whose theories are the best.

Oh, and we can let time be the judge of our predictive abilities.

On the count of a resurgent Tory party, I called that one. I believe you said they'd never stage a comeback.

[AP]

20. Another thing...

I think it's funny that you're complaining about my facts to an audience which has so little understanding of British politics that they think Blair was coordinating with GHWB in 1991.

Sometimes it seems to me that for your arguments to have weight you rely on people to not know what's going on in the UK, which is why you get so worked up over me. I probably kind of disrupt your ability to present this fantasy version of British politics which depends on an ignorant audience.

[ComerPerro]

10. Oh hell yeah

And, by the looks of things, he would have gotten to Baghdad just as easily.

[T_i_B]

11. I voted yes

But quite frankly it matters not either way. What Blair did was inexcusable. I cannot give any support whatsoever to any politician who lies on such a grand scale in order to drum up support for an illegal, immoral and totally unjustified war. Here's a good article about how British interests have been shafted by Blair's appeasement and capitulation to the PNAC.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1020621,00.html

Diplomatically, the gains of many decades have been frittered away by our blind obedience to the American administration's wars. Huge numbers of people view the British prime minister as Bush's poodle, and see Britain as no more than the errand boy for the American neo-conservatives. What price British influence in the world if Albion has no influence with its American godfather?

For that is the case. We have next to no influence with the US administration. If we did, we would surely have demanded some quid pro quo for our loyal support to America in its military adventives. Perhaps some flexibility would have been forthcoming on the Kyoto protocol or on America's development of nuclear weapons. Not a chance. We continue to cravenly support all things American-inspired, whether missile defence or a distorting World Trade Organisation. In return, the prime minister receives plaudits from Congress delivered in a manner reminiscent of Beijing's Great Hall of the People. As America's love affair with Tony Blair blossoms, the world - and the UK's place within it -becomes less stable.

What an ignominious way we have begun the 21st century - as a satrapy of the new American world order. Old friends despair as old rivals mock this once-proud nation. No longer is it able to hold its head up as a free-thinking, sovereign state.

We are now viewed as a rather ignoble island, subservient to the world's superpower, and incapable of committing itself to its natural home within Europe. The irony of our position is that, as we further alienate our friends, including those in America who look for constructive criticism rather than sycophancy, so we reinforce the prejudices of our enemies. Thus do nations dwindle into insignificance and irrelevance.

[AP]

15. Subservient to the US for going into Iraq, or subservient if they didnae?

If you want to see subservience to America, then the UK should pull out and let the US be in total control of the spigot that fuels economic development in Europe and Russia. Let the US create chaos at will in the ME, and let them turn the spigot on when it suits America and let America turn it off when it suits America. THEN you'll see some real subservience.

[Capt_Nemo]

21. AP, the foundations of the US economy are in very shaky ground

the minute european investment would stop flowing to the US, the
american economy would colapse. It is europe that has control of
the spigot, the blackmail comes solely from the only trump card
the americans have: the military.
Get your facts straight. Read Emmanuel Todd's "Apres l'Empire".

[AP]

22. Read End of The American Era

Oil is the fuel of economic development. Russia is getting its act together (finally) and stands to expand rapidly over the next 50 years. Europe is eliminating many of the irrationalities from its economy which have been holding it back.

Clinton saw economic competition between Europe and the US as a good thing, so long as it was limited to economic competition. He saw that a fair economic competition on a level playing field can create more economic wealth for more people, and that the only way to do that was through liberal social policies (leveling the playing field, allowing everyone to contribute and compete, and providing a good social safety net actually encouraged people to take chances which were even more rewarding personally and socially). So Clinton and Blair and Schroeder, and all the other third way liberals worked together towards this end.

Republicans see the world as one of potential conflict. Either they want conflict or they honestly believe that rising European and Russian and Asian economic strength will result in an impoverished, powerless America open to military attack (they don't believe, like Clinton and Blair believed, that all boats are lifted by a rising tide). So, Europe is strong now (more European companies are buying foreign companies, and the UK's GDP is growing at a pretty good clip despite weakness in the US, which is usually the country which determines the direction all other economies go). However, you're wrong if you think Europe is on top right now. And you're wrong if you think that much of what Bush is doing has nothig to do with trying to intefere with direction Europe and Russian and Asia are headed.

And you're right about the military. But you know what, it's working. They're destabilizing the ME, and the threats of war are decimating Korea's economy. Oh, they're also using regressive taxation to generate a lot of money with which to bribe foreigners into doing things which help Republican foreign policy.

[Capt_Nemo]

24. That's where you and I differ

I don't think the "military strike fits all" aproach is working
at all.
Already we are seeing the signs of the strains this puts on the
military AND on the economy. And this just to keep up the occupation
of Iraq.
You see, the Iraq war hasn't ended yet. What ended was the conquest
phase. The occupation phase is now on and nobody knows when it'll
end... In Afghanistan it lasted from 79 to 89 (the conquest phase was
even shorter than Iraq's, but I'll give to that the fact that Iraq
was a bigger country).
As long as it continues that way there will not be enough ground
forces for other Iraq type adventure, unless the Pentagon wants to
risk a military disaster... but I´ve already seen stranger things.

[AP]

25. Chaos might be the plan in Iraq.

So long as the ME is unstable, Russia and Europe won't have a reliable source of energy to fuel their economic development. This is why Blair wants to accelarate quickly to the UN stage; this is why Blair went in person to Iraq so quickly - he was trying to create that, 'OK let's get to the next stage' mood.

And you underestimate the power of threats and talk, too. Look what happened in South Korea. Korea was going full steam ahead in the 90s. Bush talks up the N.Korea issue, and capital flowed out of Korea really really fast. Carlyle opens an office and starts buying equity at bargain basement prices. Bush will inevitably calm things down there, and American interests will have a bigger chunk of economic control, which will allow them to control one of the spigots for Asian development (which they've displayed that they already control, with the Korea and anti-China talk).

Europe couldn't have done that. Europe wouldn't have done that (but maybe Europe does other evil things, maybe not, I don't know).

Bottom line, I'm have a hard time getting a grip on what you're arguing. I know you think America is done for, economically speaking. I say, yeah, that's where it's headed under Bush (whereas, under Clinton, the US seemed to be trying to work out a win-win plan for the end of US hegemony). But I definitely think the US has a lot of chaos planned to delay the inevitable backslide, and I definitely think they're working out an exit plan which keeps certain Americans (Carlyle directors, specifically) in shoes -- really, really expensive shoes -- so that the Bush twins can continue to frolic on the beaches of the Cote d'Azure.

If the US is of such little consequence right now, what the hell are they doing in the ME so freely trying to ruin/control the economies of China, Russia, India and Europe?

[T_i_B]

31. Thanks to Betchel, Britain has no influence over the oil anyway

As the article I posted shows, Britain has no influence over events anyway. Blair has sold the country down the river here and we are getting nothing in return. Far better to stick with our allies in the EU who do have the capacity to listen, unlike the US junta.

Sorry, but your argument is so flawed it beggars belief. If we are to follow your logic for becoming a Bush client state then we would also be concluding that Neville Chamberlain should have sent the troops into the Sudetenland on Hitler's behalf. :grr: Now that is not a position that I, nor anybody else with a half decent grasp of right & wrong can support. NOT IN OUR NAME

[AP]

33. You REALLY think pulling out of Iraq would make the UK more

impervious to the influences of American foreign policy?

If the UK pulls out of Iraq, you can flush any remote hope of having control of the future of the European economy down the Armitage Shanks. If the UK pulled out of Iraq, the line that leads to Economic morass and then the EU flying into pieces gets shorter. Perhaps, the crisis it would cause would force Europe to redouble its effort to form a union impervious to the whims of Republican US presidents. But there's a route to that end which causes a lot less misery -- it's the one the Labour Party is pursuing.

It's sad to me that liberals in Britian aren't more proud of their Labour Party and don't realize that they're stalwarts against fascism in battle much bigger than the one in Iraq.

[T_i_B]

35. Yes

And like I keep saying, Blair and his like are nothing more than appeasers on an even greater scale than Chamberlain, more often than not because they are facists themselves. If you want to smash the neo-cons then it is time to stand up and fight against what they stand for.

[AP]

37. So you're advocating an armed battle between the forces of Europe

and the US army. I think that's about the only way to stop these neocons. Take it to the streets in the US and put some armies pointing out on the border of the next country the US wants to go into.

Now, how do you think that's going to turn out? It makes me sick to my stomach to imagine how that would turn out. I think I've heard from your side that the measure of evilness in Iraq is the number of people who die. How many people would die if Blair turned his army on the US?

And if you want to talk appeasement to fascism, I think pulling out would be the worst appeasement. Refusing to participate and allowing the US to have its way isn't 'standing up', it's standing down.

Five years from now, with the US creating more chaos at every turn in the ME, and European economies are in turmoil because the US controls the spigot and needs to stop progress and development in Europe, people will turn to labour and say, why'd you pull out? Why didn't you push for peace and UN involvement when you could? Why did you not stay relevant and involved when you had the opportunity? Neville Chamberlin could rest in peace, because Brits would have a new politician upon whom they could heap the scorn reaped from their economic misery.

[jmcgowanjm]

12. the UK didn't go along with Bush

Blair did.
That in MHO is why Campbell/Hoon/Blair's
in so much hot water now.

And why the neocons wish they
hadn't become joined at the hip
with Blair.

Nasty stuff.

[AlinPA]

13. Note: Halliburton, Cheney's firm, had +26M$ profit in q3 2003

in 2002 they had -498M$ profit. They needed that.

[kskiska]

23. I remember that at one point it appeared that the UK

was not going to go along because they couldn't get the UN resolution and Rummy dismissed them out of hand, saying that we were going anyway, too bad for them. Rummy had to eat crow, though, when Tony went along anyway.

[roberthall10]

26. Yes, He Is That Reckless and Dumb

Given the imperatives of staging a cable TV military pageant for his rube supporters and his complete arrogance and ignorance, he would surely have gone ahead.

[samsingh]

27. the entire military

would have to be in Iraq - making up the difference in the UK forces there.

[AP]

28. The British are in one place, Basra, right?

Granted, it seems to be strategically significant (it's down river from Baghdad), which is probably why the British picked it. However, if the British troops weren't participating, and presuming the US had a manpower problem, they probably would have simply carpetbombed the place, making occupation irrelevant. No?

[Cocoa]

30. Blair thought so

I thought he was open about it, he knew it was going to happen and he wanted the U.K. to be in on the fun.

[CanuckAmok]

32. He even would have invaded without...

...Congresional support and a single American supporter. He would have invaded with home-made armor, a chamberpot on his head and a 26 year old horse to ride.

The man is certifiable, and Iraq is his windmill-monster.

Of course, something would have been 'more important' on Invasion Day... God forbid he should ever fight his own battles.

[dudeness]

36. rummy said as much..

when it looked like Blair was bogged down in the UN security council the US was going alone...make no mistake the UK hangs off the US coat tails..