-Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.- Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.)
Last week a little more was learned as to the circumventions in Whitehall and Washington delaying the publication of the findings of Sir
John Chilcot-â„¢s marathon inquiry into the background of the Iraq invasion.
The UK-â„¢s Chilcot Inquiry, was convened under then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to establish the decisions taken by the UK government and military, pre and post invasion. It ran from November 24, 2009 until February 2, 2011 and cost an estimated ‚£7.5 million. The as yet unpublished Report is believed to run to 1,000,000 words.
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Tony Blair |
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Gordon Brown |
The stumbling block -” more of an Israeli-style -separation barrier- in reality -” has been the correspondence between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, prior to an invasion and occupation, which former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan finally told the BBC was: -illegal- and that: -painful lessons- had been learned. (BBC September 16, 2004.) -Lessons- clearly not learned by the current British government.
The communications, in Sir John Chilcot-â„¢s words to former Cabinet Secretary Lord O-â„¢Donnell related to: -The question when and how the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) made commitments to the U.S about the UK-â„¢s involvement in military action in Iraq, and subsequent decisions on the UK-â„¢s continuing involvement, is central to its considerations.-(Guardian July 17, 2013.)
Further: -Chilcot said the release of notes of the conversations between Blair and Bush would serve to -Ëœilluminate Mr Blair-â„¢s position at critical points-â„¢ in the run up to war.-
Iraq war
The Inquiry had also been seeking clarification from O-â„¢Donnell-â„¢s successor Sir Jeremy Heywood regarding inclusion of references to: -the content of Mr Blair-â„¢s notes to President Bush, and to the records of discussions between Mr Blair and Presidents Bush and Obama.- The wall remains in place.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, now the country-â„¢s most senior civil servant, was Tony Blair-â„¢s Private Secretary during the period of the trans-Atlantic lies that led to the Iraq war and during the creation of the Blair regime-â„¢s -dodgy dossiers.-
Interestingly too: -O-â„¢Donnell had consulted Blair before saying the notes must remain secret.- Effectively, one of the accused, in an action which has destroyed a country, lynched the President, murdered his sons and teenage nephew and caused the deaths of perhaps one and a half million people, decides what evidence can be presented before the Court. Chilcot, has seen the documents but seemingly needs the accused permission to publish them.
A stitch-up of which any -rogue- or -totalitarian- regime, would surely be proud.
Center to the dispute between the Inquiry, Cameron and his ennobled gate keepers is material requested for inclusion in the final Report: -to reflect its analysis of discussions in Cabinet and Cabinet Committees and their significance.-
Openness and transparency
The documents being denied to the Inquiry include twenty five pieces of correspondence sent by Tony Blair to George W. Bush and one hundred and thirty documents relating to conversations between these lead plotters of Iraq-â„¢s destruction. Additionally: -dozens of records of Cabinet meetings.-(i)
Ironically on October 31, 2006, David Cameron voted in favour of a motion brought by the Scottish National Party and Wales-â„¢ Plaid Cymru (-The Party of Wales-) calling for an Inquiry into the Blair government-â„¢s conduct of the Gulf war.
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David Cameron |
On June 15, 2009, in a parliamentary debate, the terms of the Chilcot Inquiry were presented in detail, duly recorded in Hansard, the parliamentary records.(ii.)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Blair-â„¢s successor stated: -In order that the committee is as objective and non-partisan as possible, the membership of the committee will consist entirely of non-partisan public figures acknowledged to be experts and leaders in their fields. There will be no representatives of political parties from either side of this House.-
David Cameron, then Leader of Opposition stated piously:
-The whole point of having an Inquiry is that it has to be able to make clear recommendations, to go wherever the evidence leads, to establish the full truth and to ensure that the right lessons are learned -¦ in a way that builds public confidence.-
Cameron was particularly concerned about: -openness.- How times change.
Further, said Cameron:
-The inquiry needs to be, and needs to be seen to be, truly independent and not an establishment stitch-up -¦ The Prime Minister was very clear that the inquiry would have access to all British documents and all British witnesses. Does that mean that the inquiry may not have access to documents from the USA -¦ On the scope of the inquiry, will the Prime Minister confirm that it will cover relations with the United States -¦-
Cameron concluded with again a demand for -openness and transparency.-
In response, Gordon Brown stated:
– -¦ I cannot think of an Inquiry with a more comprehensive, wider or broader remit than the one that I have just announced. Far from being restricted, it will cover eight years, from 2001 to 2009. Far from being restricted, it will have access to any documents that are available, and that will include foreign documents that are available in British archives. (Emphasis mine.)
However, four years is a long time in politics and last week, as David Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, it transpired that the documents Sir John Chilcot had been pursuing and been denied for six months have been also blocked by: -officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre-and post-war communications between George W. Bush and Tony Blair.-
David Cameron is apparently also blocking evidence: – -¦ on Washington-â„¢s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive and lengthy British Inquiry.-(iii) Confirmation, were it ever needed, that Britain is the U.S 51st State, whose puppet Prime Ministers simply obey their Master-â„¢s voice.
However, -shame- clearly not being a word in Cameron-â„¢s lexicon, he landed in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon, a British Colony 1815-1948) as the above shoddy details broke, in full colonial mode.
Spectacular welcoming ceremonies barely over, he launched in to an entirely undiplomatic, public tirade, at this gathering of the -Commonwealth family of nations- alleging that his host, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was guilty of war crimes during the civil war with the Tamil Tigers. In any conflict, terrible crimes are committed on both sides. But these are accusations from the man both covering up the genesis of massacres of genocidal magnitude -” and who enjoined in the near destruction of Libya, the resultant lynching of the country-â„¢s leader, the murder of his sons and small grand children and uncounted others in another decimation of a country who had threatened no other.
Cameron-â„¢s Libya, is Blair-â„¢s Iraq. As Iraq, the dying continues daily.
The pontification also from a Prime Minister backing funding for the cannibalistic orientated insurgents in Syria, the beheading, dismembering, looting, displacing, kidnapping, chemical weapons lobbying, child killing, infanticide-bent crazies, including those from his own country.
In Sri Lanka he demanded the country ensure: -credible, transparent and independent investigations into alleged war crimes- and said if this did not happen by the March deadline he arbitrarily imposed, he would press the UN Human Rights Council to hold an international inquiry. Further: -truth telling-, he said, was essential. To cite hypocrisy of breathtaking proportions has become a redundant accusation, but words are failing.
British taxpayers-â„¢ money
In the event Cameron: – -¦ left Colombo having failed to secure any concessions from President Rajapaksa or persuade fellow leaders to criticise Sri Lanka-â„¢s record in a communique-, reported the Guardian (November 16)
As the Prime Minster slunk out, President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered an apt, withering reaction: -People in glass houses shouldn-â„¢t throw stones-, he responded.
Ironically, in spite a tragic recent past, Sri Lanka is the only country in South Asia rated high on the Human Development Index. The UK and -allies- recent victims, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan barely make it to the bottom.
David Cameron returned to Britain still having to grapple with how to evade delivering truth to the Chilcot Inquiry.
Hopefully he will read a letter from writer Lesley Docksey (Independent, November 18, 2013.)
-It was British taxpayers-â„¢ money that funded the Chilcot Inquiry, and this taxpayer wants her money-â„¢s worth. All the British government papers concerning the sorry affair of an invasion of another country belong to this nation, not to the United States, not to Tony Blair, not to the current government. Taxpayers aren-â„¢t here to save the faces of politicians.
-Nor is it, in the words of the Cabinet Office, -Ëœin the public-â„¢s interest-â„¢ that exchanges between the UK Prime Minister and the U.S President are kept secret-â„¢ -” sorry, -Ëœprivileged-â„¢ -” from those who are paying their wages. The phrase -Ëœin the public interest-â„¢ only ever means the interests of the government of the day.
-Unless Sir John Chilcot and his team can publish a full and honest report, no lessons will be learnt by future governments. But then, if those lessons were learnt, and we the public knew (as in fact we do) what they were, this country would find it difficult to ever invade anywhere ever again.
-So, Sir John, in the words of a former PM, the Duke of Wellington, -ËœPublish and be damned!-â„¢
Oh, and as David Cameron was lecturing Sri Lanka on -transparency-, the Conservatives were removing: -Ëœa decade of speeches from their website and from the main internet library -” including one in which David Cameron claimed that being able to search the web would democratise politics by making -more information available to more people.- -â„¢.
-The party removed records of speeches and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to remove any speeches and articles during the Tories-â„¢ modernisation period -¦- (iv.)
Comment again redundant.
Courtesy: GlobalResearch
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:46 am
Does David Cameron think that our President has raped the statue of Liberty in the highnoon and wiped his tally whacker with the union jack for him to get so furious?
November 22nd, 2013 at 9:03 am
Shameless.glory seeking crude opportunist David Cameron is now clinging to Tigers’ coat-tails to win his next election!!!!
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:27 pm
“Lord” Parekh is a CONGENITAL HALF-WIT if he thinks “Our Prime Minister (David CAmeron) was right to visit Jaffna, commiserate with the Tamils, condemn the army operations which killed thousands of Tamils, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Tamil group”!
By the same standards, “Our President Mahinda Rajapaksa should visit Dresden in Germany, commiserate with the Neo-Nazi Germans, condemn the British Airforce operations which killed thousands of Germans, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Neo-Nazi group!”
It is only a question of WHOSE OX IS BEING GORED …. Isn’t it …. “Lord” Parekh? To these Neo-Colonialists Sinhala lives don’t matter …. only their global agenda and Tamil votes for local elections do … TO HELL WITH THE TRUTH!
When it is your OX being FATALLY GORED, it is DO TENFOLD UNTO Dresden, Germany AS DONE UNTO to Coventry, England …. Isn’t it … “Lord” Parekh?
BLOODY HYPOCRITES ALL WAVING DOUBLE STANDARDS!
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UK parliament reiterates PM’s edict on Sri Lanka
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.
Nov 22, London: The UK parliament reiterated the Prime Minister’s call for an international investigation on Sri Lanka if the Sri Lankan government fails to conduct a credible and transparent independent investigation into allegations of war crimes to the satisfaction of the British government.
Debating the UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHIGM) in Colombo in the House of Lords Thursday, Lord Parekh commended the PM for the stand he took at CHOGM in Sri Lanka.
“He was right to go. I think that the Prime Minister of India was not right not to go. Our Prime Minister was right to visit Jaffna, commiserate with the Tamils, condemn the army operations which killed thousands of Tamils, demand an investigation into what actually happened during the war and afterwards, and meet the representatives of the Tamil group,” he said.
Baroness Warsi, the Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said the Prime Minister was right to attend the meeting in Colombo since “not talking to people is never the answer.”
“By going, the Prime Minister shone a spotlight on the situation there, and he was the first foreign leader to visit the north of the country since 1948. Because of his decision, journalists were granted access that would otherwise have been impossible to gain, and the local people – the families of the missing -were given an international voice,” she said.
The Minister said the PM was bold and blunt in his views and had a “frank and tough” meeting with the Sri Lankan President.
During the meeting, the PM clearly set out the need for Sri Lanka to make further progress in a number of areas, including a credible and transparent independent investigation into allegations of war crimes, Baroness Warsi said adding that the talks also covered a meaningful political settlement with the north, including demilitarization, and proper implementation of the range of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission recommendations.
“If the Sri Lankan Government fails to do this, the UK will fully back an international investigation,” the Baroness stressed.
“However, I accept that more needs to be done, not just in Sri Lanka but to ensure that the principles of the Commonwealth charter are applied by the countries of the Commonwealth,” she emphasized.
The Sri Lankan government has flatly rejected Cameron’s call for an independent investigation and the March 2014 deadline saying that Sri Lanka has already set mechanisms in place to address the issues the PM raised and will take more than four years to achieve resolutions to the issues from a 30-year war.
The Indian government yesterday criticized Cameron’s ultimatum saying that it is counterproductive and not their style of handling such issues.
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:39 pm
An unbiased and independent view of an Indian writer:
CAMERON’s Un-Commonwealth-like Conduct
British Prime Minister David Cameron behaved abominably and displayed a racist disdain for rudimentary courtesy during his visit to Sri Lanka to attend the CHOGM summit. After all, the very notion of the Commonwealth is a liberal, philosophical expression of a post-colonial awakening in which Great Britain accepts its former colonies as equal partners in a club which rejects the colonial notion of European or white supremacy.
Cameron’s preppie posturing in Colombo as Prefect or School Captain during a gathering in which he arrogated to himself the moral posture of primus inter pares when he wagged a threatening finger at his host and Commonwealth Chair President Rajapaksa on the human rights issue was a crude display of the kind of colonial, racist jingoism that the very idea of the Commonwealth rejects. Cameron’s attitude, even as he hid behind the fig-leaf of the “Tamil Cause,” was actually a total negation of the Commonwealth and its principles.
Also, while Rajapaksa is often called authoritarian, he is no tinpot dictator, and Sri Lanka is no Banana Republic. It is a now a free and peaceful nation and Rajapaksa is a nationalist who has been elected twice through universal suffrage in elections described by most independent observers as free and fair. Two months ago in a voter turnout of more than 70 percent — that should put the low turnouts in Great Britain to shame — the Sri Lankan Tamils in the North elected a Tamil-majority Provincial Council headed by a Tamil Chief Minister.
This election, conducted under the Rajapaksa regime is the first real evidence of the beginning of a solution to the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka which had its genesis in Britain’s colonial policy of pitting the Tamils against the Sinhala by reserving jobs and education opportunities for Tamils which created a Sinhala backlash that finally culminated in the eruption of separatist Tamil politics of which the LTTE — off and on backed by India — became the final fascist/terrorist manifestation.
And Rajapaksa became the first world leader to eliminate a terrorist army through conventional warfare in which LTTE cadres including child soldiers and female suicide bombers were dressed as civilians, while uniformed LTTE terrorists used Tamil civilians as human shields resulting in large civilian casualties during the last phase of the war.
Cameron, who lives in a glass house that contains images of the bombing of civilians in Dresden during World War II, the Falklands war, Complicity in the bombings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, Suez, Ireland, Scotland…the list is endless … would do well before hurling stones at the democratic leader of a nation fast returning to normalcy and peace and tenaciously clinging on to democracy despite 30 years of a terrorist war waged by a Khmer Rouge-type organization backed by massive funding from a wealthy diaspora in Europe and North America supported by politicians who benefit from their votes and political fund raising. He should apologize for his un-Commonwealth-like conduct.
Badhwar, a Delhi-based senior journalist and author is former Editor, India Today
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:50 pm
SL lost a golden opportunity to highlight Brishit PLUNDER in SL and demand compensation.
Now NO POINT complaining! The horses have bolted.
We could have done it WITHOUT HURTING Prince Charles only targeting Brishit rulers – CUM-MORON, etc.
As always SL MISSED THE BUS!
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:57 pm
Indrajith,
A great find! A terrific honest article by Mr. Badwar without an axe of his own to grind!
We might ask, why can’t other Indians and jaundiced Westerners RECOGNIZE and DECLARE the truth Badwhar CLEARLY sees?
Actually, I know the answer to that: Their Self-Interest DROWNS the Truth!
That is why I call them HYPOCRITES INCARNATE!
November 22nd, 2013 at 10:45 pm
A request to the learned commentators of Lankaweb
Could you please indicate to me the following web sites:
1. With photos of Catholic priest demonstrating holding up images of Prabhakaran
2. With photos of Rev.S.J.Emmanuel posing with Prabhakaran and other LTTE leaders. Besides his photos with Prabha I remember seeing one of Emmanuel with Soosai and others.
I thank you for the attention you will pay to my request.
Mario Perera
Kadawata
November 23rd, 2013 at 10:24 am
MARIO !! I very well remember having seen all the photos that you mentioned. I remember the Catholic Priest, holding a large picture of Prabhahkaran. All this cam on the web long time back. The best person to request is the Editor, Lanka Web.