Monday 18 July 2016

Fun Online Polls: Tony Blair & Renewing Trident

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which of the following revelations in the Chilcot report were NOT blindingly obvious back in 2002 or 2003?

Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq - 5 votes
There was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam - 5 votes
Blair was Bush's poodle - 4 votes
The British Army was unprepared for a second war - 9 votes
MoD procurement is staggeringly incompetent - 10 votes
Saddam had no WMDs - 16 votes
There would be total chaos in the Middle East afterwards - 10 votes
Blair would mysteriously become very rich after leaving office - 28 votes
None of the above - 68 votes

Total - 114 voters


To me. all of those things were blindingly obvious except the last one - why Blair would mysteriously become so very rich afterwards. I did not see that coming.

Maybe Chilcot should have just followed the money and done a report into who channelled all those millions to Blair and why. That would have been much more interesting. Especially when Chilcot does a "David Kelly" half way through, of course.

What nobody else saw coming is that the Chilcot Report would be delayed for years and years and then 'released' two weeks after the EU Referendum, ensuring it would quickly disappear off the front pages. A coincidence? Was it fuck.
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This week's Fun Online Poll: should we renew Trident or not?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

5 comments:

Physiocrat said...

I wonder if the real reason for the referendum was to create something to bury Chilcot under?

Bayard said...

P, no I think they were waiting for the Queen to die, have a stroke or abdicate, but couldn't stretch it out any longer.

Mind you, I am sure there was other crap sneaked through Parliament in the wake of the Referendum. Back in the day I was told that there was a lot stacked up waiting for the Queen Mother's death.

mombers said...

What's interesting is that detonating a nuke anywhere near a city would be an instant war crime - such massive civilian casualties aren't acceptable. So what use are they? Conventional weapons can take out military targets.

Bayard said...

What's also interesting is how effective the deterrent of having no nukes is. After all, since the end of WWII, how many non-nuclear countries have been attacked with nukes?

In any case, since the hardware for Trident is built in the US and largely continues to be owned by US companies, it seems very unlikely that we could launch any sort of nuclear strike without the say-so of the US, in which case what we are really paying is not for an independent nuclear deterrent, but protection money, "you buy our nukes, we'll rub out anyone who attacks you".

Mark Wadsworth said...

Phys, quite possibly.

B, interesting…

M, exactly.

B, it;s all bollocks. Do people who live in non-nuke countries feel less safe than in the few that openly do? Of course not. Don;t tell me that a single immigrant to the UK (or the USA or France or wherever) has done so on the grounds that they have nuclear weapons.

As to the Yanks, that highlights how un-independent our capacity is. When the shit hits the fan, they will do whatever suits them and to hell with the Brits.