Saturday 23rd of November 2024
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warmongers and little helpers...

snowjob

A year before the [Iraq] war, the former MI5 chief advised Home Office officials that the direct threat posed by Iraq to the UK was "very limited and containable".

In a newly declassified document, published by the inquiry, Baroness Manningham-Buller told the senior civil servant at the Home Office in March 2002 that there was no evidence that Iraq had any involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

While there were reports of links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, there was no intelligence to suggest meaningful co-operation between the two.

In that letter, she said the possibility Iraq might use terrorist tactics to defend its own territory in the event of an invasion could not be ruled out.

But she stressed Iraqi agents did not have "much capability" to carry out UK attacks, adding her view of this never changed.

In his evidence in January, Tony Blair described Saddam Hussein as a "monster" and said the world was a safer place with him no longer in control of Iraq.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10693001

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Gus: Although ye good Baroness suggested that Rumsfeld created a special intelligence unit inside the Pentagon, I still believe this unit also had its footing or at least some tentacles deep inside the CIA, in order to fabricate evidence against Saddam. At the time, there were at least 14 known intelligence agencies in the US, including the CIA and inside the Pentagon forces... I believe there are now more than 16 such agencies and that some of them are out  of control inside the US itself.

At the time too, in 2002, before joining this Your-Democracy site that was set up in 2005, I was peppering the press with reference to the big con that the US war machine was playing on the rest of the world. I also mentioned the number of satellites (175 in the US secret network + 88 in a private network) used in intelligence gathering on the world especially Iraq. And the only pitiful pictures that Powell came up with in his sad presentation at the United nations was the satellite photographs of clapped out trucks (note: all reference to these pictures and also to much of the presentation dossier has been deleted from the US administration department websites, some still available here), some "dangerous" WMD installations of sorts (that could have been sly grog factories as the invading armies found out) and more trucks with tarps flapping in the hot desert sun... As well I was mentioning that the US was gathering so much satellite intelligence that they did not have the capacity to analyse 5 per cent of it. The French and the Germans were unmoved. They had the same pictures and had come to different conclusions — listening to Blix and also their own agents on the spot...

The Europeans had about 15 spy satellites, the information gathering of which was targeted before having to be sorted, thus the Europeans were getting better intelligence than the US. They would have had the same pictures with less resolution, but would have known there was no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — also from their own operatives in Iraq as the Europeans and the Russians were still trading oil with Saddam, and in Euros and Roubles.

I also mentioned that the UK was sharing Iraq intelligence with the US, but NOT sharing it with the Europeans, although the UK was part of Europe. The Europeans (say French and Germans) knew that the UK was deceitful and then only shared some of their intelligence with the UK.

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Powell relied on satellite images in order to support the claim that Iraq is still producing and hiding chemical weapons. He said, for instance, that some of the images he showed were of the Iraqis "sanitizing" the "Al-Taji chemical munitions storage site" before UN inspectors arrived

Again, it is impossible to tell if the satellite photos displayed by Powell are real, fake, old or new. But even if they are real, current photos of Iraq, they are by themselves of no conclusive value. The New York Times reported that American officials recently gave the UN inspectors satellite photos of "what American analysts said were Iraqi clean-up crews operating at a suspected chemical weapons site." But when the inspectors went to the site, they "concluded that the site was an old ammunition storage area often frequented by Iraqi trucks, and that there was no reason to believe it was involved in weapons activities." ("Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War," The New York Times, 31 January 2003)

...

Powell claimed that Zarqawi (who has now been promoted by the Americans to the status of "The Zarqawi Network," complete with flow charts) was training terrorists in a poison-making camp in northern Iraq. Powell skipped dismissively over a very pertinent fact. Since the 1991 Gulf War, northern Iraq has been out of the control of Saddam Hussein's government.

The United States and United Kingdom have been cruelly bombing the illegally-declared northern and southern "no-fly zones" for twelve years, largely to limit the influence of Iraq's government to the center of the country. Northern Iraq has been ruled by competing Kurdish factions with United States backing. Since the 1991 Gulf War, the CIA has been operating freely in northern Iraq, and the United States recently acknowledged that its special forces are operating in that part of the country. Powell showed what he said was a satellite photo of the "terrorist camp." If the United States knows where such a camp lies, and has forces in the region, why has it not bombed it or attacked it, as it has bombed so many other installations in northern Iraq? An attack on a "terrorist" installation in northern Iraq requires anything but an invasion of the entire country. Furthermore, if the camp even exists, why would the United States give its occupants notice that it knows where it is, rather than just taking it out, as, say, it took out a car load of alleged "terrorists" in Yemen last year? It just doesn't add up.

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Closing his speech, Powell sought to "remind" the Security Council that Saddam has been a horrible monster for more than two decades. He cited Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurds in 1988 as "one of the twentieth century's most horrible atrocities." He forget to mention, however, that at the time the United States, which was supporting Saddam in his war with Iran, instructed its diplomats to implicate Iran. Powell also forgot to mention that among the long history of cooperation between the United States and Saddam Hussein's Iraq were the several meetings that once and future Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held with Saddam at the request of President Reagan, one of them on the same day that Iraq was reported to be using chemical weapons against Iran.

Nor did Powell point out that the same sort of satellite evidence that he now uses to indict Iraq was once gladly handed over to Saddam by the United States to help Iraq deafeat Iran. And in claiming that there is not a frightening disease in the pharmacology that Iraq is not capable of creating, Powell forgot to mention that the seed stock to make anthrax, E. Coli, botulism and other biological agents was exported to Iraq from a company based near Washington, DC, called the American Type Culture Collection, under contracts approved by the United States Goverment in the 1980s. These sales continued even after Iraq was reported to have used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians. (see Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2000, p.39)

Powell also sought to "remind" the Security Council about Iraq's horrible human rights record. He failed to explain, however, when the United States found its conscience on this matter which never troubled it in all the years that it was allied with Saddam. Such naked cynicism may yet fool some in an American public whose knowledge of history is notoriously shallow, and whose mass media scarcely dare challenge any administration's foreign policy, but it will not fool anyone else.

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Howard and his troops were up to their necks in the deception. And this included ABBOTT and many of the cronies still lurking in ABBOTT's shadow cabinet. Blair, Bush and Howard AND THEIR LITTLE HELPERS were and are war criminals under the charter of the United nations... And Howard conned the Labor Party to support the troops...

Our own Richard Butler probably under Rattus instruction was doing his bit to froth up the war:

On June 3 and 4, 1998, Richard Butler, the head of the U.N. special commission searching for Iraq's weapons, provided a confidential intelligence briefing to the Security Council designed to convince member states that Iraq had developed an elaborate deception to conceal its banned weapons. The presentation included a Russian gyroscope -- equipment used to guide a Scud missile -- obtained by U.N. divers in the Tigris River and satellite imagery of Iraqi vehicles purportedly fleeing a facility moments before the U.N. arrived. U.N. inspectors said that one satellite image showing a cluster of trucks outside a government office was probably agents from the Iraqi intelligence branch, Mukhabarat, clearing some sensitive documents before the U.N. could find them. Alain Dejammet, France's U.N. ambassador at the time, said it "could have been mothers picking up their children from kindergarten." The French diplomat also dismissed another photo showing an Iraqi convoy racing ahead of the U.N. inspectors to another site. "It could have been a truckers' picnic."

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Gus: I would suggest that some people in the Liberal Party leadeship knew that the war on Iraq was a con job. I include our own "Aussie Tony" ABBOTT in this deception.

dead, buried, cremated... but still kicking...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/21/2959546.htm

Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey has rejected Labor's claims that the Coalition would have to change industrial relations laws to honour a $25 million savings pledge announced yesterday.

The Opposition has been under sustained fire from the Government over its industrial relations policy since Opposition Leader Tony Abbott sent out mixed messages on the topic on Monday.

Yesterday Mr Abbott announced that a Coalition government would save $25m by letting the Australian Electoral Commission recover the cost of running ballots for unions.

The Coalition says this can be done by changing the Electoral Act, but the Government insists that is not possible.

Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson says Mr Abbott would have to change a section of the Fair Work laws to implement the policy.

"One day he makes a promise not to change Labor's industrial relations laws, not one word," he said.

"The next day he breaks that promise. It just shows that Tony Abbott cannot be trusted."

Dr Emerson says it is a backflip on Mr Abbott's written promise.

"Tony Abbott's guarantee isn't worth the scrap of paper he gave it on," he said.

"If he can't be trusted to keep a commitment for 24 hours, he can't be trusted not to take Australia back to the worst aspects of WorkChoices."

tony's rubbery rebate...

Abbott blows figures on rebate plan: Labor

 

The Federal Government says Tony Abbott's pledge to increase and expand the Education Tax Rebate (ETR) will cost almost double what the Opposition has estimated.

The Opposition Leader today announced that if the Coalition was elected it would increase and expand rebates for parents under Family Tax Benefit A.

Mr Abbott says the plan would cost $760 million over the forward estimates.

But Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan says this is a "serious economic error".

"Even based on conservative assumptions, the announced increase and expansion in the ETR would cost significantly more than the amount estimated by Mr Abbott," he said in a statement.

"If 10 per cent more families claim the rebate, and on average parents receive an additional $125 per primary school child and $375 per secondary school child, the real costs of Mr Abbott's policy is closer to $1.4 billion over the forward estimates.

"Mr Abbott's costings do not take into account any increase in the number of parents claiming the rebate, or parents more fully utilising their entitlement by increasing the range of expenses they can claim."

Mr Swan says Mr Abbott has now blown his budget.

yet another "aussie tony" ....

Yes Gus .... couldn't lie straight in bed.

from Crikey .....

Back from the dead? Coalition ballot proposal goes far beyond WorkChoices

Crikey intern Nikki Bricknell and Bernard Keane write:

BERNARD KEANE ON THE FEDERAL ELECTION 2010, TONY ABBOTT, WORKCHOICES

Tony Abbott has stumbled into yet another WorkChoices problem with his commitment yesterday to save $25.4 million by forcing unions to pay the cost of ballots.

The proposal goes far beyond the draconian requirement of WorkChoices, which required all ballots for industrial action to be conducted by secret ballot -- but with unions only paying 20% of the "reasonable costs" of the ballot. Under the Abbott proposal, unions would have to bear the full cost of conducting protected secret ballots.

Secret ballots for industrial action were long a goal of Coalition IR policy. By forcing unions to conduct secret ballots, WorkChoices ostensibly aimed at ensuring there was no intimidation of union members who may not have wanted to take strike action. However, even the Howard government declined to impose on unions the expense of organising, running and counting a secret ballot involving possibly hundreds or thousands of trade union members. Section 109ZH of the Workplace Relations Act 2005 required that unions only meet 20% of the "reasonable cost" of secret ballots, with the Australian Electoral Commission picking up the rest, or the Commonwealth picking up the rest if an authorised authority other than the AEC conducted the ballot. In 2008-09, the AEC conducted nearly 230 industrial action ballots.

The Rudd government kept the requirement for secret ballots for protected industrial action, but removed the 20% cost requirement. The issue of liability for costs of often-expensive secret ballots is covered in the Fair Work Act, s.464(2), which says:

'The Commonwealth is liable for the costs incurred by the Australian Electoral Commission in relation to the protected action ballot, whether or not the ballot is completed.'

The Daily Telegraph this morning seized on the contradiction between the imposition of full costs on unions and Abbott's repeated insistence, complete with signed statement, that the Fair Work Act would not be changed in the first term of a Coalition Government.

In response to the story, Eric Abetz, Joe Hockey and finally Tony Abbott all claimed that the imposition of full costs on unions could be done without amending this section of the Fair Work Act. Instead, they claim, the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 can be amended to address the issue.

Section 7B of the Electoral Act says:

'Unless otherwise provided by or under this Act or another Act, reasonable fees may be charged for goods or services supplied under section 7A.'

Section 7A allows the AEC to enter into contracts to supply services such as running elections to outside parties. Conceivably, s.7B could be amended to override the Fair Work Act without amending the latter, but difference is purely legalistic -- in effect s.464(2) of the Fair Work Act would have been repealed, even if the repeal was done in another Act.

As if it would help his case, Abbott declared this morning that his advice had come from Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis "one of Australia's finest lawyers". Undoubtedly, Brandis holds the view that he is in the top rank of Australian jurisprudence; whether that view is widely shared is another question.

In any event, the Coalition proposal announced yesterday is, in effect, five times worse than Workchoices, which at least kept union liability down to 20%. Strictly speaking, Abbott won't be reintroducing any elements of WorkChoices - he'll be going much, much further. 

What would the Liberals be without their Corporations.

Even before the Murdoch media led the assassination of PM Kevin Rudd, the Corporations must have decided that - either Rudd would surrender to their demands or they would crucify him in an election.  He refused and only because his Government by law, had made a decision which was the centerpiece of a budget plan to improve the future of all Australians.

That was considered by Murdoch as blatantly impudent - without media controlled permission?

The Murdochracy has exceeded its charter in that they have overstepped the margin between acceptable journalism and that which is clearly OPINION and NOT Editorial. While the Conservatives enjoy the Murdochracy bias, the people of Australia are only being informed of one side of the coin.

We are told, by the very media Barons who have decided the issue, that the media must have complete freedom of speech and even the judgment thereof.

We should try to imagine, when agreeing or not with the opinions (not editorials) of the major foreign media barons of Australia, we are only getting the biased “information” that the employers demand.  But they must pay well?

The infamous “I’ll keep your secret if you tell me” Laurie Oaks has made his name by promising confidentiality and then revealing that “sacred oath” by the not so clever means of “asking questions” in front of a journalist audience. Laurie, I wouldn’t trust you about a short cut to the toilet.

In short, my disgust is, as always, with the de-regulated and possibly illegal use of the “influence” laws concerning the media’s right to multi-opinions by Mafia type journalists.

If only – if only – the Australian public could realize that the journalists working for Murdoch must abide by the politics of their employer.

Who pays Laurie Oaks?  Time will tell if some independent media outlet could emerge?

I have very little hope for the introduction of the ABC continuous news attitude on all methods of communication when we consider the behavior of that falsely claimed ownership of the Australian people.

God Bless Australia and may we shake off the appearance of being Howardist servants of the powers that be. NE OUBLIE.

 

 

the personification of evil .....

Tony Blair, summoned back to the inquiry into the Iraq invasion in light of damaging and conflicting evidence revealed since he answered questions a year ago, is to appear before Sir John Chilcot on 21 January, it has been revealed.

A ballot has been held for 60 seats, with a third reserved for family members who lost loved ones in Iraq, the inquiry has announced. All the people who were successful in the ballot will be notified in the next few days, it said.

The former prime minister will attend in light of evidence about the legality of the invasion, and assurances he gave George Bush.

The inquiry is believed to be concerned about the revelation in documents released in June showing that the day before he privately assured Bush he would back US-led military action, Blair was warned by Lord Goldsmith, then attorney general, that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal.

Tony Blair to appear before Iraq War Inquiry on January 21

criminals all .....

Tony Blair misled Parliament and the public about the legality of the Iraq War, according to explosive documents released last night.

Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said the then prime minister's claims that Britain did not need a UN ­resolution explicitly authorising force were not compatible with his legal advice.

In testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, made public for the first time yesterday, Lord Goldsmith said Mr Blair based his case for invasion on grounds that 'did not have any application in international law'.

He said he felt 'uncomfortable' about the way Mr Blair ignored his legal rulings when making the case to Parliament.

Asked whether 'the Prime Minister's words were compatible with the advice you had given him', he replied: 'No.'

The shattering testimony is a watershed moment for the Iraq Inquiry, as it is the first time that Lord Goldsmith has directly contradicted Mr Blair. The claims will form the centrepiece of Mr Blair's ­second grilling by the inquiry on Friday.

Blair 'Misled MPs on Legality of War' Law Chief Who Advised ex-PM Tells Iraq Inquiry

meanwhile .....

British authorities have refused to publish notes that Tony Blair sent to President George W. Bush before the Iraq war, prompting a complaint Tuesday from the chief of a public inquiry into the divisive conflict.

Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service, turned down the Iraq Inquiry's request for the communications between the then-British prime minister and Bush to be declassified and made public. The notes deal with extensive correspondence between Blair and Bush during the period leading up to U.S.-led 2003 invasion.

O'Donnell declined, saying publication "would, or would be likely to, damage the U.K.'s international relations."

Iraq Inquiry chairman John Chilcot and the other members of his panel have seen the correspondence.

Chilcot said Tuesday that the inquiry was "disappointed that the cabinet secretary was not willing to accede to its request."

UK government blocks release of Blair Iraq notes