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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBlair to Bush: "If we win quickly, everyone will be our friend"
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/06/chilcot-report-tony-blair-told-george-w-bush-if-we-win-quickly-everyone-will-be-our-friend/(snip)
Consider this July 28, 2002, letter from Blair to George W. Bush. The first thing youll notice is its tone: It sounds like an adult trying to placate a heavily armed 8-year-old. I will be with you, whatever, Blair writes. Getting rid of Saddam is the right thing to do. But, he writes, Suppose it got militarily tricky. And suppose the Iraqis feel ambivalent about being invaded. Blair suggests Bush not go it alone. If we win quickly, everyone will be our friend.
Chillingly naïve stuff. But the most important thing about Blairs letter is that its clearly a response to a British cabinet meeting memorialized in the famous Downing Street Memo of July 23, 2002, which was authored just five days before Blair wrote to Bush.
The Downing Street Memo, sometimes called the smoking gun document of the Iraq war, was leaked to the U.K.s Sunday Times in 2005 (and the original has now been declassified as part of the Chilcot Report).
(snip)
So the Blair letter is, among other things, the final proof of the seriousness of the Downing Street Memo, which, if you recall, the mainstream U.S. media ignored and mocked when it was leaked. The memo did not record meaningless D.C. gossip, as pundit Michael Kinsley suggested when it was published in 2005. Instead it was the basis for the most crucial communication possible between the U.S. president and the U.K. prime minister.
(end snip)
So, where is the American "press"? Sitting with their thumbs up their bums watching the freak show in Congress with meaningless investigations.
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Blair to Bush: "If we win quickly, everyone will be our friend" (Original Post)
deminks
Jul 2016
OP
You know, what's a few hundred thousand lives between friends and corporate benefactors?
HughBeaumont
Jul 2016
#3
malaise
(269,054 posts)1. Frat boys
English public school thinking like they were on the playfields of Eton
Fugg 'em!
Cracklin Charlie
(12,904 posts)2. Aaah
So this is the reason to rush to televise the freak show.
To take the public eye off the Chilcot inquiry. That makes sense.
dhill926
(16,346 posts)5. good point...
as they say, nothing happens by accident in DC...
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)3. You know, what's a few hundred thousand lives between friends and corporate benefactors?
La la la!!
To the HAGUE with ALL of them. War crimes are war crimes are war crimes.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)4. And suppose “the Iraqis feel ambivalent about being invaded.”
I can't imagine why
bemildred
(90,061 posts)6. And if you lose over a long period of time, nobody will like you any more. nt
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,501 posts)7. So that worked well. Good to know we can
move on now.