"The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords." — F.E. Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
Another day, another glittering prize for one of the great war criminals of our day. We speak of course of that tanned and gurning jackanapes, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.
It was announced this week that Blair would be receiving a great big bushel basket of simoleons — a hundred thousand of them — from some U.S. outfit called The National Constitution Center. It seems the sinister twit has been awarded the Center’s "Liberty Medal" for, among other things, his "steadfast efforts to broker peace" in the Middle East, as the BBC reports.
This is of course most appropriate; for there are currently in excess of one million human beings enjoying eternal peace thanks to the war of aggression that Blair was instrumental in unleashing against Iraq. Oddly enough, just as the Liberty award was being announced, the Chilcot Inquiry into the war’s origins was disgorging even more confirmation of Blair’s adamant determination to march "shoulder to shoulder" with George W. Bush into the annals of Nurembergian perfidy.
As the Independent reports, new documents show how Blair was told — repeatedly — by his Attorney General that the planned attack on Iraq would be illegal. The legal chief, Peter Goldsmith, insisted on this position — despite Blair’s growing impatience — until almost the last moment. As is well known, Goldsmith had a confab with the gilded thugs of Bush’s war council, and suddenly reversed his long-held, closely-argued, legally detailed objections to the attack. One can only suppose that Blair and the Bushists "made him an offer he couldn’t refuse." From the Independent:
The drafts of legal advice and letters sent to the Prime Minister by Lord Goldsmith had been kept secret despite repeated calls for them to be published. Yesterday they were released by the Chilcot Inquiry into the war, after the head of the Civil Service, Sir Gus O’Donnell, stated that the "long-standing convention" for such documents to be kept confidential had to be waived because the issue of the legality of the Iraq war had a "unique status".
…Tony Blair appeared to show his irritation with the warnings over military actions [from Goldsmith], saying in a handwritten note: "I just do not understand this." In another note, a Downing Street aide said: "We do not need further advice on this matter."
In the documents released yesterday, Lord Goldsmith repeatedly stated that an invasion without a fresh UN resolution would be illegal, and warned against using Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD (weapons of mass destruction) as a reason for attack.
In January 2003 Mr Blair met President Bush at the White House. The Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, wrote a memo paraphrasing Mr Bush’s comments at the meeting as: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled for 10th March. This was when the bombing would begin."
In a letter to Mr Blair dated 30 January 2003, after the UN had passed another resolution on Iraq, 1441, Lord Goldsmith wrote: "In view of your meeting with President Bush on Friday, I thought you might wish to know whether a further decision of the Security Council is legally required in order to authorise the use of force against Iraq." The letter marked "secret" continued: "I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of Resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the Security Council."
The story details the legal chapter-and-verse behind Goldsmith’s conclusions, which only grew stronger as the pre-planned invasion grew nearer. In the end, Goldsmith bowed to the will of raw power, remained in his richly robed office until Blair resigned, and now reaps his monetary reward as a top corporate litigator for a New York law firm.
Meanwhile, his blood-caked boss continues to rake in the moolah his own self. He gobbles down millions every year from "advising" JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services, from the usual exorbitant fees that our modern war criminals command on the rubber chicken circuit, and from the usual backroom grease racket that our great and good set up to milk their connections after leaving office. ("Tony Blair Associates" — you know, like "Kissinger Associates.")
Blair has also been wadding his trousers with loot from UI Energy, a South Korean oil firm seeking to suck up some of the Iraqi oil that Blair helped "liberate" for corporate exploitation. Oh yes, and for the last three years, he has also been drawing a regular check from the Kuwaiti royal family. And what is the royal hireling doing to earn this crust? Why, he’s earnestly "producing a general report on the oil state’s future over the next 30 years, at a reported £1m fee," the Guardian reports.
Blair will receive his Liberty Prize from one of his great mentors and partners in international war crime. No, not George W. Bush — Bill Clinton, who is chairman of the National Constitution Center. After all, it was Clinton and Blair who pioneered the technique — later perfected by Blair and Bush — of bypassing the UN and unilaterally attacking a country, under false pretenses, that had not attacked them. And of course, after taking office in 1997, Blair stood shoulder to shoulder with Clinton in strangling the ordinary people of Iraq with a sanctions regime that killed — at the barest minimum — more than half a million innocent children. (Not to mention the innocent adults who died from the blockade.)
So what a joyous occasion it will be, when these two giants of international statesmanship meet on the podium in Philadelphia — the city of brotherly love — to celebrate a partnership, nay, a special relationship, that has left such an indelible mark on the world. It will surely be an inspiring occasion — as long as they don’t choke on the viscera dribbling from their lips as they utter their self-praising pieties.
Or to put it another way, as I did in an earlier report on the Chilcot panel:
O that the universe was not cold and indifferent, with no avenging furies to drive these bloodstained, sanctimonious wretches into soul-rending storms of madness and remorse. But there is not even an earthly venue where the scurrying servitors of power can receive even a modicum of justice. All we have are a few locked-down, buttoned-up, quasi-secret panels of worthies here and there now and then, to cause, at most, a moment or two of embarrassment before the servitors walk free to line their pockets and heap themselves with honors. Their only punishment, I suppose, must be to be what they are: the stunted, deadened husks of a full humanity which they have lost and will never recover.