It is your point which is tangential. Clwyd is speaking to her experience not U.S. legislation which post-dates her involvement with Iraq by some years. This thread is about Clwyd’s testimony to the U.K.’s Chilcot Inquiry in to the reasons for the U.K.’s decision to go to war. She cannot be faulted (“… but …”) for speaking of her extensive contacts and reflections on her wide experience on the ground in Iraq.

Just saying.

As a start she could have simply read any US newspaper for the previous year to learn that regime change was an unapologetically declared objective of the Whitehouse.

It was a joint Dem/ Republican thing – for regime change in the Joint 1998 Iraq Liberation Act passed under the Clinton Administration AND the authroisation for use of force, in Oct 2002 under the GW Bush administration a few months before the coalition invasion.

Otherwise, spot on.

Clwyd is compelling, but as heartfelt true and heartrending as her testimony is, and – her testimony alone makes a complete nonsense of the illegal war trope, every bit as much as that for the earlier Kosovo NATO operation to protect the Muslims being persecuted by the Serbs.

But, it’s a little tangential to the main reason for the US led coalition invasion, which was essentially due to the threat presented by Iraq and the Iraqi continued non-compliance with the terms of the 1991 ceasefire over a period of 12 years. Pretty much what was ‘on the tin’ of the US Iraq Liberation Act, as well as in the substance of the speech delivered by president Clinton soon after the act was passedhere.

Anyway, it’s funny that Clwyd’s speech wasn’t broadcast or highlighted on the telly….NOT!

Pronunciation of Clwyd –

I’m not Welsh speaking but I know this. It’s more or less as you say. Perhaps more like “claw-id”.

In fact a kind of mixture of “Clue-id” as a Mancunian above suggests and “claw-id”. Either of these, and they’ll think you’re a local.

Now try this one for size:

“Ynysybwl”.

“As for the title of this blog – it is not a trial of Tony Blair.
As I have said in other media, it is a trial of Chilcot.”

http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/tony-blair-iraq-inquiry-apologising-to-bereaved-relatives-of-the-troops/

This kind of “thinking” is the reason the press and the pre-judging brainwashed anti-war warriors don’t want to read such as Ann Clwyd’s evidence. They do not want to confuse themselves with facts.

I have used this and others’ posts at my site on Clwyd too, btw. Thank you.

This is still some fight for justice, and in my opinion for democracy. The Fourth Estate is not and never should be the pre-determining body responsible for democracy, even when they think they KNOW all about it – better than the elected. They don’t and they won’t.

Please sign the Ban Blair-Baiting petition if you haven’t done so:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/ban-blair-baiting.html

It’s about MORE than defending Tony Blair, if that isn’t reason enough for you.

Seems to me quite clear that it is you that is ‘having fun’ with unproven contentions – not anyone else. That Uday tortured people to death in many ‘creative’ ways is a lot more of a solid proven fact than your Iraqi fiction makers in CIA pay, Clwyd’s gullibility, or the use of her human rights campaigns to build support for the war.

Proof?

Until a people-shredder or credible witnesses to one shows up, that’s an accurate statement.

No. It is your contention. There are no witnesses or material evidence of many atrocities during WW2 (for example) but it is not ‘just plain wrong’ to allude to their possibility.