Tony Blair and George W. Bush: Partners in crime (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tony Blair thought himself brave for facing down the dictator of a 5th rate military power with an economy as big as a mid sized British city. Blair spent years justifying the invasion of Iraq after it had happened, defining it as a moral decision dictated to him by God to stop the ‘forces of evil’ from threatening the world with a make believe Weapon of Mass Destruction. In reality, real bravery would have been standing up to the incompetent cowboy in the White House and his psychopathic Vice President, and refusing to commit British troops to a war that was clearly more about oil than freeing Iraqis.

In an interview to promote his memoirs, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan said he believed Tony Blair could have single handedly prevent war in Iraq had he challenged Bush and Cheney on their fabrication and manipulation of events leading up to the war. Via the Guardian:

“I will forever wonder what would have happened if, without a second [UN] resolution … Blair had said ‘George [Bush], this is where we part company. You’re on your own’,” he told the Times. “I really think it could have stopped the war … It would have given the Americans a pause. It would have given them a very serious pause to think it through … All this would have raised a question: ‘Do we go this alone?’”

While Annan argued that neither his resignation as UN secretary general or that of then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, would have changed the course of military action, Blair could have made a difference had he spoken out. “Because of the special relationship and also the fact that … when you think of the big countries, Britain was the only one that teamed up with [Bush],” Annan said.

Instead, Blair became cheerleader in chief for America’s war in Iraq, doing the incredibly easy thing in saddling up to the world’s greatest super power. It never occurred to Blair that refusing to take part in the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation would have been viewed as the far braver thing to have done, but then the term ‘politician’ is not exactly synonymous with ‘courage’.

Annan’s scathing assessment of Blair’s role in the lead up to war further compounds the historic view that not only was he complicit in the catastrophic endeavor, he was pivotal in making it happen. Without Britain to back them up, it would have been unlikely for America to go it alone in Iraq, despite Bush’s rhetoric. The political consequences probably would have been to great at the time, and diplomacy may have been able to prevail.

Sadly, we’ll never know.

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State Television showed pictures of burnt and wrecked buildings after the attack

From the BBC:

Gunmen have attacked a Syrian pro-government TV channel, killing seven people, state media say.

Journalists and security guards died in the attack on al-Ikhbariya TV south of Damascus, Sana news agency reported.

Hours earlier, President Bashar al-Assad said Syria was in “a real state of war” and US intelligence officials predicted a long, drawn-out struggle.

UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has called a meeting of the UN action group for Syria for Saturday.

His deputy envoy said on Wednesday that the violence in the country had “reached or surpassed” levels before the April ceasefire deal.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says that Syrian TV dropped normal programming on Wednesday to run live coverage of the attack on the headquarters of Ikhbariya TV in the town of Drusha, some 20km (14 miles) south of the capital.

State TV showed pictures of burnt and wrecked buildings, with fires still smouldering.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi, on a visit to the site, said some of the victims had been abducted, bound, and killed in cold blood.

He also condemned the EU’s decision to impose sanctions on Syria’s state-run TV and radio agency for its support of the Assad government.

The Ikhbariya attack followed fierce clashes in suburbs of the capital, Damascus, described by opposition activists as the worst there so far.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting had taken place near positions of the Republican Guard, which is led by President Assad’s younger brother Maher and has the role of protecting the capital.

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A top U.N. human rights official accused Syria Thursday of engaging in crimes against humanity.

“They are both widespread and they are being committed in a systematic manner,” said Ivan Simonovic, assistant secretary-general of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The situation, in at least parts of Syria, “has reached the threshold to be considered as an internal armed conflict,” or civil war, he told CNNI’s “Amanpour.”

“From (an) international legal perspective, that means that, a part of crimes against humanity, there might be commission of war crimes as well.”

Simonovic said members of a U.N. mission returned last week from the region. Though denied entrance to Syria, they interviewed witnesses in neighboring countries and learned that “the crimes are continuing,” he said. “There is unselective shelling, there is deliberate targeting with live munition of protesters, there is systematic torture going on in prisons, and this is the torture of the worst possible form.”

Simonovic added, “It includes physical torture as well as psychological threats — threats such as raping members of family, direct torture involving putting people in the unnatural positions for a long time, torturing them by burning them, and so on and so on … it’s appalling.”

He said his office was calling on “all sides” to stop the violence and for the government to release arbitrarily detained persons, as called for the by the six-point peace plan of joint U.N.-Arab League Special Envoy Kofi Annan. “But this is not happening yet,” he said. Though about 200 detainees have been released, thousands more remain in custody, he said. “For some of them, we cannot establish their whereabouts.”

Read more at CNN…

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The president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar Al-Assad no can no longer count on support from the West (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Major Western powers say they are expelling senior Syrian diplomats following the killing of 108 people in the Houla region of Syria on Friday.

The United States, France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland all took action.

Most of the victims in Houla were summarily executed, the UN says.

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said, after talks with President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was at a “tipping point”.

Mr Annan said he had asked Mr Assad to take “bold steps” to see that his peace plan was implemented.

President Assad blamed the violence on “terrorists”. His remarks were quoted by state TV.

Earlier, UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said initial investigations had suggested that most of those killed in the village of Taldou, near Houla, were summarily executed.

He said 49 children and 34 women were among the victims. UN observers who visited Taldou said many of the victims had been killed by close-range gunfire or knife attacks.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that pro-government shabiha militiamen had carried out the killings. Survivors said they had hidden or played dead.

Syrian leaders insist that the massacre was the work of “terrorists”, aiming to derail the peace process and provoke intervention by Western powers.

Violence continued on Tuesday, with nearly 50 people killed in various incidents, according to activists.

Read more at the BBC….

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Syrian forces are executing scores of suspected opposition sympathisers in the northern city of Idlib, often burning their bodies in piles or torching them in their homes then sending family members to find them, witnesses say.

Idlib residents who spoke to an Amnesty International official last month painted a dire portrait of a city at the mercy of regime troops and irregular loyalists who routinely sweep homes seeking dissenters to kill.

The Amnesty report, prepared by senior crisis adviser Donatella Rovera, gathered harrowing testimonies of victims and their families, caught up in a purge of Idlib and surrounding villages that has steadily intensified over the past six months.

The report says hundreds of homes in some villages have been burned down and their populations terrorised by forces who kill with impunity.

After troops routed Homs in early March, Idlib became a focal point of the violence ravaging Syria, with regime forces hunting down defectors who had fled their posts in the city and rallied in the hinterland. Residents say loyalist incursions became more intensive around this time, the report confirms.

A woman whose house was set alight on 11 March was allegedly told that it was pointless reporting the incident unless she blamed terrorists.

“The neighbours saw it was military security members who attacked my house,” she told Amnesty. “It was the middle of the day and there were tanks and soldiers and security force members everywhere in the area – how on Earth could this have been the doing of armed groups? So I did not lodge a complaint.”

In the village of Taftanaz, two 80-year-old men were reportedly killed in their homes, which were then burned around them.

“I had been staying with relatives across the street and my husband was at home,” the wife of one of the men told Amnesty. “When I went back home I found it burned down but did not find my husband. I went out and asked the soldiers outside where they had taken him. I thought they had arrested him. A soldier replied: ‘Go back in and look for him’. I went back and found his remains in a pile of ash.”

Read more at the Guardian…

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