Brown on Iraq: I wasn’t at fault

Gordon Brown’s Day of Chilcot Whitewashing

cdhsmithers wrote:
Saturday, 6 March 2010 at 04:23 am

Gordon Brown comes across as both a deluded self opinionated prune and a congenital liar!

How for example can Brown make a definitive statement to justify sending our armed forces into combat? "It was the right decision made for the right reasons", and then effectively contradict himself by stating that he knew nothing about crucial last minute changes to the advice on the legality of the invasion? This makes no sense!

Some salient points of Brown’s evidence to the Chilcot inquiry are that:

• He denied accusations that he withheld vital funding for the military in his position as Chancellor and placed any blame for lack of proper equipment on the Generals in charge.
• He ridiculed the US government about its failure to properly plan and implement a credible reconstruction program post Saddam.
• He referred to doubts and reservations about UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq circulating in the Foreign Office at the time, but Brown only learned of these facts via the media.

The Permanent Secretary at the MOD, Sir Kevin Tebbit complained that the department was being run on a crisis budget!

But Brown disingenuously retorted by making reference to plans drawn up by the department to spend an extra £1.3 billion on new equipment that he maintains the department said they could fund with efficiency savings.

Brown then went on to say that he doubted that this had been achieved and he even pompously declared that if every Whitehall department operated by the same rules then this would cost the taxpayer an additional £12 billion per annum!

The foregoing begs the question as to why the MOD should fund their requirements from efficiency savings at all when Brown stated unequivocally in his testimony that all their requests for resources were granted.

As Chancellor he should have firsthand knowledge as to whether efficiency savings in respect of an amount £1.3 billion had been achieved or not! I fail to see that efficiency savings has any quantifiable connection with a £12 billion additional cost to the taxpayer if other Whitehall departments followed suit and operated under the same rules.

Surely common sense tells us that if a government department is able to fund its additional requirements by re-prioritizing existing budgets then this can hardly be at an additional expense to the taxpayer!

Brown makes bold and sweeping statements as being unequivocally and factually correct, but when questioned about the details he either shifts the blame for any shortcomings or any negative consequences onto the shoulders of others; he develops selective amnesia by highlighting gaps in his knowledge of the events at the time; or as was too often the case he completely sidesteps the question much to the amusement of those members of the public in attendance bearing witness to this farce!

Like Blair and Campbell before him Brown makes a complete mockery of anything that should embody the principle of due process! “The truth is what I say it is and to hell with anyone who says otherwise!” is the sad reality of thirteen years of Labour!

This outrageous perpetuation of further lies and deceit continues to permeate the fabric of our society with all the decadent baggage that goes with it! What more evidence do people need to see? There are no depths low enough that Brown and his gathering of Shysters will not plumb in order to advance their own agendas!

We should all be outraged at this obscenity and tell Brown in no uncertain terms where he can shove his moral compass!

The last thirteen years of Labour government are a fact and a blight on our recent history, with the record there for all to see! Not a record I hasten to add on which by their own admission they want to canvass support for the pending general election! Today’s events one again show the caliber of leadership running the country at the moment!

Need more be said?

Independent  06 March 2010   

Anne Main is but a single example of the misuse of expenses by some MPs.

The taxpayer was - according to the Telegraph report - paying, nightly, more than the cost of an overnight stay at The Ritz.

Yet this MP signed up the following declaration:

" ... that I incurred these costs wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to stay overnight away from my only or main home for the purpose of performing my duties as a Member of Parliament ..."   [BBC]

" ... wholly, exclusively and necessarily ... "

This phrase looks all-encompassing and unambivalent to me, but not - apparently - to many MPs.

It must be assumed, therefore, that the same MPs are not endowed with a moral compass, and might therefore be thought unfit to represent voters, who, in this apology for a democracy, were kept wholly in the dark as to what was taking place.

The backbencher was found to have stayed 213 nights at the flat in her constituency of St Albans, Herts, during the three years in which her daughter Claire Tonks used the property, charging the taxpayer a total of £62,060.

That worked out at £291 a night, which, the Telegraph claims, is more than the cost of an overnight stay at London’s Ritz Hotel.

Following a highly critical report by John Lyon, the Commissioner for Standards, Mrs Main was ordered to repay £7,100 and apologise in writing.

She was also found to have breached rules by claiming thousands of pounds a year for food eaten away from her main home, including dining out in Westminster restaurants.

In his report, Mr Lyon said that while MPs were permitted to have their partners and children stay in their taxpayer-funded second home, there was no reason why adult offspring should live for free at public expense ... ...

Telegraph  04 Feb 2010

MPs told to repay £1.1m expenses

Brown, Cameron and Clegg ordered to repay money

'Culture of dishonesty' at Westminster

Key points: Legg report

Members Estimate Committee - Report

Clare Short: Tony Blair lied and misled parliament in build-up to Iraq war

• Blair 'lied' over war preparations
• Attorney general 'misled' government
• Brown 'marginalised and unhappy'

Declassified letters between Short and Blair released today show she believed that invading Iraq without a second UN resolution would be illegal and there was a significant risk of a humanitarian catastrophe.

She told the inquiry that she had a conversation with Blair in 2002. He told her that he was not planning for war against Iraq and that the evidence has since revealed that he was not telling the truth at that point, she said.

She also said she was "stunned" when she read the 337-word legal advice on the war written by the then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith during a cabinet meeting on 17 March 2003, three days before the war began. She was forbidden by Blair from discussing it during the meeting.

"I said, 'That is extraordinary.' I was jeered at to be quiet. If the prime minister says be quiet there is only so much you can do.

"I think for the attorney general to come and say there's unequivocal legal authority to go to war was misleading."

Short, who was applauded by some audience members in public seats at the end of her evidence, said the ministerial code was broken as cabinet colleagues were not aware of Goldsmith's modifications to his legal advice over the previous weeks ...

Guardian  02 Feb 2010

Short shrift for Blair at Chilcot

Tony Blair 'leaned on Lord Goldsmith'

Gordon Brown ‘had no input’ over decision on Iraq

Blair deceived Parliament over grounds for war

Gordon Brown ‘had no input’ over decision on Iraq

Resource Holding Power

This paper describes experimental work on the nature of dominance hierarchy and the manner in which it is established.

Under this model Claire Short might be described as unaccepting of Tony Blair's dominance - and its support by the majority of his cabinet- and sought a 'fight' which she could only lose.

Given the evidence that many hierarchies in nature have a strong linear component, and that dangerous fights are the exception rather than the rule, we hope that our model will spur on continued research in the area of winner and loser effects and hierarchy formation. In addition, our results that estimating an opponent's fighting score produces linear hierarchies with few fights suggests that future work examining hierarchy formation from a more cognitive perspective, including experimental work on animals' abilities to estimate various features of potential opponents, may be fruitful.

Lee Alan Dugatkin1 and Aaron David Dugatkin

Social Dominance

This volume focuses on two questions: why do people from one social group oppress and discriminate against people from other groups? and why is this oppression so mind numbingly difficult to eliminate?

The answers to these questions are framed using the conceptual framework of social dominance theory.

Social dominance theory argues that the major forms of intergroup conflict, such as racism, classism and patriarchy, are all basically derived from the basic human predisposition to form and maintain hierarchical and group-based systems of social organization.

In essence, social dominance theory presumes that, beneath major and sometimes profound difference between different human societies, there is also a basic grammar of social power shared by all societies in common.

We use social dominance theory in an attempt to identify the elements of this grammar and to understand how these elements interact and reinforce each other to produce and maintain group-based social hierarchy ...

Dominance Hierarchy: Primates

Dominance hierarchies, though often more subtle, can be observed in human societies and are important for understanding the organization of family, tribe or clan, work organizations, politics, etc. in normal and abnormal social situations.

It is not clear how much of dominance hierarchy in humans is due to the intrinsic biology of our brains, derived from evolution, and how much is due to cultural factors.

Dominance relationships require the cooperation of both parties. The dominant party tacitly agrees not to kill or injure the submissive party provided the submitter concedes and does not interfere with the dominant party's access to resources or compete for mates.

The ability to identify and remember members of the group along with their dominance status is also necessary ...

Individuals with greater hierarchical status tend to displace those ranked lower from access to space, to food and to mating opportunities ...

These hierarchies are not fixed and depend on any number of changing factors, among them are age, gender, body size, intelligence, and aggressiveness.

Status may also be affected by the ability to marshal the support of others. Indeed, the need to maintain social position and social knowledge may be an impetus for the evolution of larger brains in humans and other animals.

Dominance Hierarchy

Body Language to Convey Status, Hierarchy or Dominance

... there is no separate history, as such, of sociopathy because, this writer contends, history is itself, in many, many cases, the obvious chronicle of the sociopath. Moreover, learned writers make every indication that it is the sociopath who, by and large, writes the history regarded anyway (Parenti, 1999).

It may not be much of a stretch that this is a convenient and arbitrary history precluding much of the record of that which conflicts with the self-involved interests of those... who conveniently cobble the historically extant together to serve their absorbed self-interest ...

Like "The Simpson's" Montgomery Burns — a classic if caricaturized sociopath, consider that Bob Dole seems unaffected by all the terrific death and abject misery his support of big tobacco has caused throughout the years.

Bill Clinton might be a sociopathic lothario who cheated on his wife for over a decade with no apparent remorse, or crisis of conscience.

To some degree Ronald Reagan wouldn't begin to admit to the existence of AIDS as long as he thought it was a targeted disease that only affected gay persons.

Consider the stockholders of the tainted blood banks of Reagan's time, men and women who kept on selling their AIDS contaminated blood products when they KNEW (on some level) they were infecting people with the killer virus ...

Sweetly charming while cunningly, mindfully and artfully uncaring — these predators might relieve you of your money, your dignity, your life, or your individuality.

Sometimes, the victim, astonishingly (inexplicably!) still loves the sociopath when that sociopath has relieved them of their money and their self-respect (Morris, 1988). One can see ready parallels in the leaderships of all major and minor institutions, agencies, and governments ...

The authoritarian admonitions of our institutional leadership do not convince us that they have our best interests at heart.

Doctors want to soullessly market drugs and services, insurance companies want to treat their courtrooms like money-tree orchards, preachers want to prosecute their campaigns of intolerance and social hatred while they fill tax-free collection plates... we won't even mention the dirty politicians and the all-business captains of industry or their coteries of pandering lieutenants ...

Alfred Lehmberg

Bush isn't a moron ...

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world ...

Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Antisocial Personality

Are We Governed by Sociopaths?

Political Corruption

Political Sociopaths

Profile of the Sociopath

Psychopathy

Sociopaths & Short Sellers

Sociopathy