{"id":16252,"date":"2024-07-06T08:35:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T07:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=16252"},"modified":"2024-07-03T10:52:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T09:52:10","slug":"blair-lied-millions-died-chilcot-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=16252","title":{"rendered":"Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot<\/strong>: I’m certainly not a supporter of Trump and was shocked by the news of the US Supreme Court vote that granted presidents of the US immunity from prosecution for actions taken in their presidential role. But the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday 6th July 2016 was a reminder that in this country the same applies although our processes are more convoluted, lengthy and opaque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Blair<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In short, our establishment protects its own. And as Corbyn found out, demonises and discredits any who threaten it, even at times as in the case of weapons expert David Kelly most probably “eliminating” them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Blair<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Parts of the report were read out at the protest. It confirmed that the decision to go to war had been taken many months in advance between Bush and Blair, and revealed some new areas along with those already known where Blair had deliberately misled both Parliament and public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Blair<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Part of this was of course the ‘dodgy dossier’ or rather dossiers, the first issued in September 2002<\/a> as a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, to which Blair added the sensational (and nonsensical) claim that led the Sun to headline “Brits 45mins from doom<\/strong>” to unverified (and later found untrue) claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear weapons programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Blair<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The second ‘dodgy dosser’, issued in February 2003<\/a>, which repeated the claims about WMDs was found to “been plagiarised from various unattributed sources including a thesis produced by a student at California State University.<\/em>” It included some of the typographical errors from these, but some phrases had been altered “to strengthen the tone of the alleged findings<\/em>“, later referred to as “sexing up<\/em>” the report. A House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry found that the report had not been checked by ministers and “had only been reviewed by a group of civil servants operating under Alastair Campbell<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan revealed that his “report which claimed that the September Dossier had been deliberately exaggerated<\/em>” was based on an interview with David Kelly, although Kelly himself, as the 2011 BBC report Dr David Kelly: Controversial death examined<\/a> states “gave evidence to MPs’ committees in which he said he did not believe he was the main source of the story”.<\/em> Two days later he was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The protest on 6th July 2016 took place in the street by the side of the QEII Centre on the morning the Chilcot report was being published there. It began with a naming of a few of the dead, with people coming up to read 5 names of UK forces and 5 of Iraqi civilians who died because of the war. It was only a token gesture, as over a million Iraqis are generally acknowledged to have lost their lives. This was followed by a number of speeches – there are pictures of the speakers on My London Diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Police were unusually uncooperative with the protest, insisting on keeping the minor road by the side of the QE2 where the protest was being held open to traffic in both directions, although there was very little actual traffic and it would have caused hardly any disruption to close it. It was hard not to assume they had come under political pressure to harass the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The protesters demanded that Blair be brought to trial as a war criminal. Of course Blair has been tried for nothing. Despite having been found to have lied to Parliament he is still treated by the media as a respected politician. Lying to Parliament is surprisingly not a criminal offence – and in response to a 2021 petition with over 100,000 signatures the government said it had no plans to make it one. Almost certainly because too many politicians would be found guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More about the protest and many more pictures on My London Diary: Blair lied, Millions Died – Chilcot<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flickr<\/a> – Facebook<\/a> – My London Diary<\/a> – Hull Photos<\/a> – Lea Valley<\/a> – Paris<\/a>
London’s Industrial Heritage<\/a> – London Photos<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All photographs on this page are copyright \u00a9 Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot: I’m certainly not a supporter of Trump and was shocked by the news of the US Supreme Court vote that granted presidents of the US immunity from prosecution for actions taken in their presidential role. But the publication of the Chilcot report on Wednesday 6th July 2016 was a … Continue reading Blair Lied, Millions Died – Chilcot 2016<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[17262,17263,17255,17259,4783,2953,17257,17260,16191,17264,17,17256,83,628,16,693,17261,17265,790,14720,17258,4165],"class_list":["post-16252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-alastair-campbell","tag-andrew-gilligan","tag-blair-lied","tag-bush-and-blair","tag-chilcot-report","tag-corbyn","tag-david-kelly","tag-deliberately-misled","tag-dodgy-dossier","tag-lied-to-parliament","tag-london","tag-millions-died","tag-peter-marshall","tag-police","tag-protest","tag-qeii-centre","tag-sexing-up","tag-transparency","tag-truth","tag-war-criminal","tag-weapons-expert","tag-wmd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16252"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16254,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions\/16254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}