'Dodgy Dossier' to Newspaper 'Editor': Tony Blair Re-invents Himself

[Cidersomerset]

“Dodgy Dossier” to Newspaper “Editor”: Tony Blair Re-invents Himself
by : Felicity Arbuthnot with additions of pics/vids by me....





July 6, 2012



We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to
slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed
of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed … we justify our
terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them…

— Erskine Childers, 1870-1922


Even by the standards of a seemingly increasingly partisan British media, the
decision to invite Tony Blair to Guest Edit the London Evening Standard on June
27th, the fifth anniversary of his leaving office, was, well, bizarre.

The Standard (established1827) gained early eminence for its detailed foreign
news. Within little over forty years of its founding, reporters had covered the
American Civil War, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War.

Fast forward to the turn of this century when well grounded fact-checking had
apparently become less relevant. The last time Blair "edited" The Standard (or
apparently detonated all editorial scrutiny and detachment) was on September
24th, 2002, when the newspaper’s bannered page one read: "45 Minutes from
Attack" with a picture of Saddam Hussein and: "Dossier reveals Saddam is ready to
launch chemical war strikes." The full front page was taken up by the then Prime
Minister’s "revelations" of the (first) "Dodgy Dossier."



Blair’s current editing foray was heralded by a breathless interview with him by
Sarah Sands, the actual Editor, in his offices "with a view of the American Embassy
from the window", the room adorned with photographs of him including with "…
Arnie Schwarzenegger, and crowds of laughing African children."




Tony Blair’s stated global vision includes his "Africa Governance Initiative."

Further: "Whether in the Middle East, faith, Africa, climate change … my focus is on
devising long term solutions to some of the world’s most difficult problems", he
states modestly.

The mass graves and apocalyptic destruction in the Balkans and Iraq, the near
world beating corruption in Kosovo – where streets and children are named after
him – Iraq’s despotic, nepotistic US-UK choice "Prime Minister" — whose improbity
and inability to restore or to halt the collapse of even basic services, burdens under
which the population stagger daily — hardly reflect beacons of hope for his
messianic, megalomanic, planetary "long term solutions."



Back to The Standard interview. Incredibly, he cites Iraq’s growing economy and
falling infant mortality rate: "It will end up with a happy ending but it has to go
through what the whole region has to go through which is to put religion in its
proper place and to realise democracy isn’t just a technical system but an attitude
of mind", opined the man of whom George W. Bush said: "We pray together" and
who, of course, joined that chilling "Crusade".

However, infant mortality in Iraq "dropping" from the death-dealing embargo
years? Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves, is now a shocking nine places
below Zimbabwe in neo-natal deaths on the world scale.

Moreover, Doctors in the 2004 bombarded city of Falluja have been "overwhelmed"
by birth defects, including babies with two heads, Cyclops eyes, no eyes, no brain,
no limbs, paralysis and a cancer epidemic.



http://bsnews.info/_DepletedUranium.html

Noam Chomsky on Cancer rates in Fallujah beyond Hiroshima - Depleted Uranium

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4-i_0WUl9Xw

Iraqi children being born with birth defects has been devastating families for years.
A July 2010 study showed that increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia
in Falluja surpass those of the atomic bomb devastated cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.

In fact, Falluja’s nightmare has been mirrored across Iraq, near ignored by the
world, since the 1991 attacks and years of US-UK subsequent bombings.

Meticulous country-wide surveys, succour, remedial action, de-contamination –
mobilized by the relevant international bodies – and compensation from the
countries responsible, should be a priority of Blair’s vaunted "global community."

Iraq’s victims certainly qualify as being amongst "the world’s most difficult
problems". From 1997 when Blair became Prime Minister, culminating in the 2003
assault and consequent additional contamination, Blair’s Whitehall with Washington
were allies in creating Iraqis’ Hadean plight.

Afghanistan, also invaded by the US and UK under Blair’s premiership, has the
world’s highest infant mortality.

Seemingly, though, he has long forgotten Afghanistan and moved on from Iraq,
apparently unaware or uncaring that since the latter’s 2010 "free and democratic
elections", Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has controlled all security Ministries in the
country, thus presiding over summary executions, secret prisons, with allegations
of near industrial scale torture rampant.

"Today Tony Blair takes my place as editor of the Evening Standard. He has
embraced the role but I am confident that it is not the big job he is looking for.
Anyone interested in politics will witness his return open-mouthed", concluded Ms
Sands’ fawning article.

In "open mouthed" she had a point. In his "Editorial" Blair opines:

…where there has not been revolution, we should actively promote evolution.
People often say: learn the lesson of Iraq. Actually, I have …

So unimaginable bloodshed now becomes "evolution."

What a way the jobbing, stand-in "Editor" has with words. Facts, as we know, are
anyway a "far away place of which (he seemingly) knows nothing."

This from a man who, after a terrible bombing of shoppers in Omagh, Northern
Ireland, on a sunny weekend in August 1998, killed thirty-one people, including
nine children and an eighteen month old baby, he rightly condemned "an appalling
act of savagery and evil."

He continued:

I have seen sights here today which will haunt me for the rest of my life. If
anything happened to one of my children, I would go mad with grief.

But his enjoined "savagery and evil" silently killing Iraq’s children day after day,
year after year, resultant from the embargo’s denial of medicines – of parts and
chemicals to purify the water – of imports resulting in death by malnutrition – even
when they were not actually being routinely, illegally, bombed.

And "learned the lesson of Iraq"? In March 2006, asked on Sky News if he would
have taken the Iraq action if he knew then what he knew now, he replied, "I most
certainly would, yes." In December 2009 when he was again asked if he would
have "gone on" if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction, he
replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him", said the Attorney,
married to a Judge, who has seemingly forgotten the law.

At the Chilcot Inquiry on January 29th, 2010, perhaps one and a half million
resultant dead later, he repeated that he had no regrets and said Iraqis were now
better off and he would take the same decisions again.

Blair says no regrets for removing Saddam

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=73anWaIrAUc

The Evening Standard was taken over by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev in
2009, as the major shareholder, with a commitment to make the paper more
progressive, to reconnect with Londoners.

Tony Blair’s Big Day seems to have fallen short of "reconnection". Out of 123
speedy responses on one site, 119 were less than polite, some were of the, "If he
wants a voice, it should be in Court from the Dock" sort of genre.

A "binblair" Twitter page speedily sprung up with a vociferous and succinct Bianca
Jagger amongst those weighing instantly in.

By July 4th, US Independence Day, he may have been looking especially wistfully
at that neighbouring American Embassy.

"He feels like an alien in his own country. He feels despised – and that is very
difficult for him" a "friend" told the Financial Times, quoted by Mark Donne in the
Guardian (July 4th) who added, "and however many feature spots he is offered by
national newspapers, the message should be clear and demonstrated in any way
possible by us all. We haven’t forgotten." Ouch!

Oh, and the Arrest Blair site is still offering a reward.