Tony Blair had resolved to send British troops into action alongside US forces eight months before the Iraq War began, despite a clear warning from the Foreign Office that the conflict could be illegal.
A damning minute leaked to a Sunday newspaper reveals that in July 2002, a few weeks after meeting George Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr. Blair summoned his closest aides for what amounted to a council of war. The minute reveals the head of British intelligence reported that President Bush had firmly made up his mind to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, adding that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”…
http://dissidentvoice.org/May05/Frank0503.htm
Tony Blair knew of secret policy on terror interrogations
Letter reveals former PM was aware of guidance to UK agents
By Ian Cobain | Guardian.co.UK
Tony Blair was aware of the existence of a secret interrogation policy which effectively led to British citizens, and others, being tortured during counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.
The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.
British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.
But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.
“Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said. Read more.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/43716
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Published on Sunday, February 29, 2004 by The Observer
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Army Chiefs Feared Iraq War Illegal Just Days Before Start
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by Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
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| Britain’s Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal.
The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act. The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an ‘unequivocal’ assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal. Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign. Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing concerns that the war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The Observer’s revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his legal advice on the eve of war. Senior Whitehall sources involved in putting together critical legal advice on the war told The Observer that Goldsmith was originally ‘sitting on the fence’ and that his initial advice was ‘prevaricating’. This was ‘tightened’ up only days before the conflict began after concerns were raised by Sir Michael Boyce, the then Chief of Defence Staff, who told senior ministers of his worries. It is believed that Boyce demanded an unequivocal statement that the invasion of Iraq was lawful. It is understood that it was only after seeing Goldsmith’s final legal advice, given days before the outbreak of war, that Boyce gave his approval. Without this legal reassurace, military leaders and their troops could have laid themselves open to charges of war crimes. At the time, UK troops were already in Kuwait poised for an invasion. Last week, Goldsmith controversially agreed to drop the Government’s prosecution of the former GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. Her defence had demanded documents relating to his legal advice, including communications with the Prime Minister. Although Goldsmith denied his decision to drop the case was political, critics of the war believe the Government was desperate to prevent these details from being revealed in open court. Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: ‘These allegations go to the very heart of the Government’s case for war, and inevitably its credibility. I have no doubt whatever that if Parliament had been told these things, the Government would not have achieved its majority and been unable to go to war. Public opinion, already deeply divided, would have swung overwhelmingly against the Government.’ Opposition MPs have demanded a statement in the Commons from the Prime Minister and will redouble the pressure for an explanation. The revelations will also increase pressure for the Butler inquiry, set up by the Prime Minister into intelli gence in the run-up to the war, to study the Gun case and subsequent revelations. It will take evidence in private. Last night former Cabinet Minister Clare Short told The Observer that she knew of military doubts over the legality the war: ‘I was told at the highest level in the department that the military were saying they wouldn’t go, whatever the PM said, with out the Attorney-General’s advice. The question is: was the AG lent on? ‘This was a very personal operation by Tony Blair. The Attorney-General is a friend of Tony’s, put in the Lords by Tony and made Attorney-General by Tony.’ The Observer has also established that GCHQ, the Government’s top-secret surveillance centre, has a specialist unit dedicated to spying on the UN. The revelation will strengthen claims that the bugging of Britain’s diplomatic allies at the UN was routine and is likely to trigger a fresh international furore over the legality of Britain’s spying operations abroad. The former Chilean ambassador to the UN, Juan Gabriel Valdes, said last night: ‘All I can say is what I said at the time when asked if I had information about spying on Chile and I said yes, it has been proved. ‘It [eavesdropping] was one more element of tension during some very tense weeks. Nobody was very surprised. But it is one thing not to be surprised and another to do clearly illegal things.’ Gun leaked a top-secret email published in The Observer last March revealing a joint British-American operation to spy on the UN in the run-up to war. She claimed she acted to prevent the loss of human life in an illegal war. The political furore continued as Short’s political future remains in the balance, with the Prime Minister reserving a final decision until he has seen the round of interviews she has planned for this weekend. ‘Everyone has talked about the fact that they don’t want her to be a martyr, but of course the only difficulty is that we are in her hands – what will she say tomorrow?’ said one senior party figure. However, it remains highly unlikely that she will face an organised attempt to unseat her, because of the months of upheaval it would cause in the Labour party. ‘The pain of extraction might finish off the patient,’ said one backbencher far from loyal to Short. Downing Street last night refused to comment on the allegations. Blair’s spokesman also refused to say whether the White House had been consulted over the dropping of the Gun case, despite growing conviction at Westminster that it would have been inconceivable for the Foreign Office not to have taken its closest ally’s views into consideration. Despite Blair’s refusal to give a statement to the Commons, the Government is unlikely to escape further questioning. Both Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, are already due to answer questions next week while the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will be grilled by a joint Commons inquiry into homeland security. Labour and Opposition MPs have also tabled a string of written questions. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0229-01.htm
In the months before his death, Dr. Kelly became embroiled in a shouting match between the British government and BBC. Andrew Gilligan, a reporter for BBC claimed that Kelly had given him and other reporters information that proved the government had exaggerated the Iraqi danger in its “dossier” justifying the war against Iraq and that Kelly had not been completely honest in telling his MoD superiors what he had disclosed to them. Writer Tom Mangold (it’s not clear when he left the employ of BBC) used this to reason that Kelly’s loss of integrity at being exposed as a “liar” was what led him to suicide. Mangold was not the only one to push the suicide angle. After Kelly’s death, Foreign Office diplomat David Broucher made headlines around the world when he claimed Kelly had said if Iraq was attacked he might be “found dead in the woods.” Broucher testified the remark was made at the end of a meeting he had with Kelly in February of this year in Geneva where they discussed the WMD “dossier.” He said he didn’t think much of it at the time but in retrospect Kelly may have been considering suicide then. When Kelly’s daughter Rachel testified at the inquiry, she proved through her father’s diaries that the only time he had been in Geneva, and the only time he ever met Broucher, was a year earlier in February of 2002. There was not even a draft of the “dossier” in existence at that time suggesting that Broucher’s story was fiction. Actually, the opposite of the Mangold thesis appears to be the truth. Kelly was treated badly by MoD over the last three years of his life. He had not had a salary increase in three years as he approached retirement where his pension would be a function of salary. At one time he was told there would be reorganization within the intelligence operation and he would get a sizeable increase in salary. That didn’t happen. Kelly had written several letters about his position and, according to his widow, was quite upset and frustrated about it (not despondent and suicidal). Kelly had voluntarily disclosed to MoD his contacts with the media. To his dying day, he maintained that he had not provided all the information Gilligan attributed to him. Nevertheless, Kelly was hauled before the Joint Intelligence Committee for a grilling. The final affront came in a mandated one-on-one session with MoD Personnel Director Richard Hatfield. MoD, with the approval of Tony Blair, had devised an orchestrated charade to “out” Kelly as the source of the “leak. Hatfield, head of the department that had been jerking Kelly around for three years, was supposed to get Kelly’s acquiescence in the plan. Somehow, he never got around to the subject. Subsequently, at an MoD press conference, through a series of disclosures to the press, the MoD confirmed Kelly as the leak (as previously planned) when a reporter asked if Kelly was the one. Understandably, this treatment would have made Kelly a resentful employee. In intelligence circles, resentful employees are considered “unstable” and security risks. Kelly had for years maintained his silence about his extensive knowledge of the bio-warfare weapons of at least four countries. Had it become imperative that the silence be made permanent? Footnotes: *See Dark Actors at the Scene of David Kelly’s Death **The three-part series can be found at http://www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/Archives.htm http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111203_kelly_2.html http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/iraq_%20afghanistan.htm
In 1999, an international investigation of child pornographers and paedophiles run by Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service, code named Operation Ore, resulted in 7,250 suspects being identified in the United Kingdom alone. Some 1850 people were criminally charged in the case and there were 1451 convictions. Almost 500 people were interviewed “under caution” by police, meaning they were suspects. Some 900 individuals remain under investigation. In early 2003, British police began to close in on some top suspects in the Operation Ore investigation, including senior members of Blair’s government.
However, Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair cited the impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice. Police also discovered links between British Labour government paedophile suspects and the trafficking of children for purposes of prostitution from Belgium and Portugal (including young boys from the Casa Pia orphanage in Portugal). Tony Blair: stifling investigations of paedophiles in his Labour government. In the United States, Operation Ore’s counterpart was Operation Avalanche. However, U.S. authorities only charged 100 people out of 35,000 investigated. The international paedophile investigation began when Dallas police and the US Postal Inspection Service raided the offices of Landslide Productions of Fort Worth, Texas and confiscated records on thousands of people around the world who were child pornography customers of the firm. Landslide’s halcyon days as a Fort Worth-based international online marketplace of kiddie porn was during the term of Texas Governor George W. Bush. WMR has learned that the Bush administration, like that of Blair, is rife with paedophiles in top positions. The paedophile network also extends to the U.S. defense industry, particularly some of the companies that have been involved in the sexual abuse of minors at overt and covert U.S. prisons in Abu Ghraib, Iraq; Guantanamo, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Thailand, and now, at three prisons in Ethiopia.
‘commons clerk on trial after IT find thousands of images of children performing sexual acts’
Tony Blair’s closest confidante’s is a practising paedophile, are even suggesting that this particular scandal, and not Blair’s repeated lies and fabricated reports in regard to Iraq, may well prove the downfall of a government mired in sleaze and corruption.
The Sunday Times is reported to have obtained an FBI list of Labour MPs who have used credit cards to pay for internet child pornography, and Blair has responded by imposing a massive news blackout, failing however to stop the arrest of one of his most important aides, Phillip Lyon. Lyon used his computer “to pursue his interest and perhaps curiosity in this type of material. He searched for it on the internet and, when found, downloaded it for his delectation later”, said Ms Karmy-Jones. Lyon, 38, from Stanford le Hope in Essex, denies 12 specimen charges of making an indecent image of a child between October 2001 and April 2002. “It is like a drug, you try one and you want to try something harder, and it has a snowball effect,” he is alleged to have told officers when arrested. Lyon worked in the Upper Table Office, where he met MPs, the Speaker, and Deputy Speaker while checking parliamentary questions and administering early day motions. “He needed skills in computing and the internet,” said Ms Karmy-Jones. “He is an intelligent individual, and knew full well what he was doing.” When first interviewed, he allegedly told police he did not distribute material – “I just look at pictures.” Ms Karmy-Jones told jurors: “This case is about child pornography – what others might call photos of child abuse. When I say child abuse, it may sound harsh, but it is the nature of these images which is central to the case. They are unpleasant and disturbing.” She said the issue might be whether it was Lyon who downloaded the images. “We say it is clear he was that man.” Under Blair’s government paedophiles get off with a slap on the wrist ‘Proof’
There is a lot more here that is being exposed. We already know about Lord
George Robertson’s (ex UK Defence Secretary 1997/98 and Sec Gen of Nato) links with Thomas Hamilton (Dunblane), procurer of young boys and a massive British establishment [Masonic] cover up.
Blair government insider Lord Robertson has threatened to sue Scotland’s leading independent newspaper over internet allegations that he not only used his influence as a Freemason to procure a gun licence for child killer Thomas Hamilton, but was also a member of a clandestine paedophile ring reportedly set up by Hamilton for the British elite. On 13 March 1996, Hamilton, armed with four hand-guns, opened fire on a junior school class, killing 16 children and one teacher before turning the gun on himself, shattering forever the idyllic 13th century Scottish town of Dunblane. Lord Robertson was the referee on Thomas Hamilton’s shotgun licence. [FACT]
Blair government, which has already issued a D-Notice to gag the press from revealing the names of known paedophiles within the British executive, including at least two senior ministers; and the case highlights the government’s NATO boss and Blair government insider Lord Robertson has threatened to sue Scotland’s leading independent newspaper over internet allegations that he not only used his influence as a Freemason to procure a gun licence for child killer Thomas Hamilton, but was also a member of a clandestine paedophile ring reportedly set up by Hamilton for the British elite.
Tony Blair’s closest confidante’s is a practising paedophile, are even suggesting that this particular scandal, and not Blair’s repeated lies and fabricated reports in regard to Iraq, may well prove the downfall of a government mired in sleaze and corruption. The Sunday Times is reported to have obtained an FBI list of Labour MPs who have used credit cards to pay for internet child pornography, and Blair has responded by imposing a massive news blackout, failing however to stop the arrest of one of his most important aides, Phillip Lyon.
The latest allegations came to light following a campaign to lift the secrecy on the Dunblane massacre. Large sections of the police report were banned from the public domain under a 100-year secrecy order. Lord Cullen, an establishment insider, also omitted and censored references to the documents in his final report. Parents and teachers were advised to concentrate their efforts on a campaign to outlaw handguns instead of focusing on how the mentally unstable Freemason, already known by the police to be a paedophile, had obtained a firearms licence for six handguns. Hamilton allegedly enjoyed good relations with both local Labour luminary George Robertson and Michael Forsyth, the then Scottish Secretary of State and MP for Stirling. Forsyth congratulated and encouraged Hamilton for running a boy’s club. Hamilton was also found to have exchanged letters with the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth.
Now where in this is there a national security risk so great, that documents part of the public enquiry are now state secrets to be held for 100 years? Funny kind of public enquiry. Why, when Thomas Hamilton’s application for a gun licence was turned down, due to him being regarded as a man of unsound character [and] him being the object of several paedophilia investigations, did his MP, our friend George Robertson (now Lord Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO), write him a glowing character reference, and personally see to it that his application was successful, when he knew the grounds for the original refusal were because he was suspected of procuring boys for sexual services?”
Dunblane may have been just over 11 years ago, but the questions still loom, that have to be answered. 1.No proper Autopsy and no inquest on Hamilton?
2. Reasons unknown – Shoots Kids? – was he a scape goat to get rid of evidence of a paedophile ring of MP’s and Mason’s in Scotland? – there seems to be mounting evidence to prove this theory.
3. Receives Shotgun Licence even though he was turned down by normal channels – Why was Lord Robertson not prosecuted for refereeing his application?
4. Why did he shoot himself with a different gun from the one he shot the kid’s with, even though the first gun still hand rounds in it? – strange to say the least.
These and many more questions, still remain unanswered.
‘Assorted Party Political Perverts for your attention’
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EMPATHY WITH THE LIKES OF THE ABOVE————NOT ON YOUR LIFE!!
THE MEASURE OF ANTONY BLAIR….IS CLEAR TO SEE.
The Sunday Times is reported to have obtained an FBI list of Labour MPs who have used credit cards to pay for internet child pornography, and Blair has responded by imposing a massive news blackout, failing however to stop the arrest of one of his most important aides, Phillip Lyon
WE KNOW THEY ARE CORRUPT…..THEIR NAMES SHOULD NOT BE PROTECTED……….CHILDREN AT RISK FROM BRITISH MPs………….it’s an OUTRAGE!!