[PDF file]: […] and steal to enrich their masters on our behalf. This Orwellian (and even Heinleinian) reality was obvious from the first moments 9/11 turned into an invasion of Iraq, but it has been in the cards constantly in my lifetime: the Congressional oversight in the 70s led only to an October Surprise in 1980 and […]
[PDF file]: […] of the Trump presidency?) The War on Terror was an opportunity to reshape the whole Middle East in the US interest, beginning with the decision to invade Iraq. And then there was the use of torture. He was told ‘. . . again and again in those early days by involved officials who insisted […]
[PDF file]: […] tiny state. In Saudi Arabia the King is not the head of Islam (the agitation for such a role, a Caliph, being behind the current mayhem in Iraq and Syria). Japan and North Korea appear to be quite similar to the UK model – both have heads of state who are (or can be) […]
[PDF file]: […] Johnson’s Tories in 2019. While the Blair government undoubtedly improved the lives of many, it failed to grapple with many of the UK’s underlying issues. After the Iraq war and the banking crisis there was little shine left on the New Labour brand. The successors to Blair and Brown were left to pick up […]
[PDF file]: […] those wanting to go to university, lower than average investment in health care, poor unemployment benefits and no appreciable investment in the arts. And in foreign policy, Iraq. By 2010 the turn-out gap between the under 35s and the over 55s had widened to 20% producing David Cameron and Brexit (in the 2016 EU […]
[PDF file]: […] achieved prominence on that title before becoming editor of The Observer. The paper that had courageously opposed Suez in 1956 became a champion for the invasion of Iraq under Alton’s editorship. From 2008 to 2010 he was editor of The Independent. Of late Alton has turned up on television defending News International with an […]
[PDF file]: […] With a CV combining the roles of trade union leader and merchant banker, Triesman was General Secretary of the Labour Party at the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion, having previously attacked the New Statesman in 2002 for articles on the influence of Israel supporters on the Blair government. He is a member of […]
[PDF file]: […] Ronald Reagan, but is much more relaxed about Blair’s relationship with George W. Bush, a relationship that was sealed in a great deal of blood. The disastrous Iraq war that dominated the Blair years shamefully gets less than a page of text and the lies that were told to inveigle us into the conflict […]
[PDF file]: […] by Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (known as the ‘Mad Mullah’ by the British) in Somalia was considered a great success. The British made use of aerial bombardment in Iraq, Egypt, Russia and the Sudan, and even considered making use of it against any revolutionary outbreaks in Britain itself. It was not just deployed against insurgents, […]
[PDF file]: […] specific events in the Thatcher period. Some are familiar – the miners’ strike; nukes civil and military; the deaths of Hilda Murrell and Willie McRae; arms for Iraq. These later chapters are less error-strewn (though no better sourced) than his account of the 1974-79 period, perhaps because the material is less complex. When he […]
