UK Prime Minister Covers Up Crimes Against Humanity –
Lectures Sri Lanka on Crimes Against Humanity
“Hypocrisy, the most protected of vices.” Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673.)
Last week a little more was
learned as to the circumventions in Whitehall and Washington delaying
the publication of the findings of Sir John Chilcot’s marathon Inquiry
in to the background of the Iraq invasion.
The UK’s Chilcot Inquiry, was
convened under then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to establish the
decisions taken by the UK government and military, pre and post
invasion. It ran from 24th November 2009 until 2nd February 2011 and
cost an estimated £7.5 million. The as yet unpublished Report is
believed to run to 1000,000 words.
The stumbling block – more of an Israeli-style “separation barrier”
in reality – has been the correspondence between Tony Blair and George
W. Bush, prior to an invasion and occupation, which former UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan finally told the BBC was: “illegal” and that:
“painful lessons” had been learned. (BBC 16th September 2004.) “Lessons”
clearly not learned by the current British government.
The communications, in Sir John Chilcot’s words to former Cabinet
Secretary Lord O’Donnell related to: “The question when and how the
Prime Minister (Tony Blair) made commitments to the US about the UK’s
involvement in military action in Iraq, and subsequent decisions on the
UK’s continuing involvement, is central to its considerations.”(Guardian
17th July 2013.)
Further: “Chilcot said the release of notes of the conversations
between Blair and Bush would serve to ‘illuminate Mr Blair’s position at
critical points’ in the run up to war.”
The Inquiry had also been seeking clarification from O’Donnell’s
successor Sir Jeremy Heywood regarding inclusion of references to: “the
content of Mr Blair’s notes to President Bush, and to the records of
discussions between Mr Blair and Presidents Bush and Obama.” The wall
remains in place.
Sir Jeremy Heywood, now the country’s most senior civil servant, was
Tony Blair’s Private Secretary during the period of the trans-Atlantic
lies that led to the Iraq war and during the creation of the Blair
regime’s “dodgy dossiers.”
Interestingly too: “O’Donnell had consulted Blair before saying the
notes must remain secret.” Effectively, one of the accused, in an action
which has destroyed a country, lynched the President, murdered his sons
and teenage nephew and caused the deaths of perhaps one and a half
million people, decides what evidence can be presented before the Court.
Chilcot, has seen the documents but seemingly needs the accused
permission to publish them.
A stitch-up of which any “rogue” or “totalitarian” regime, would surely be proud.
Center to the dispute between the Inquiry, Cameron and his ennobled
gate keepers is material requested for inclusion in the final Report:
“to reflect its analysis of discussions in Cabinet and Cabinet
Committees and their significance.”
The documents being denied to the Inquiry include twenty five pieces
of correspondence sent by Tony Blair to George W. Bush and one hundred
and thirty documents relating to conversations between these lead
plotters of Iraq’s destruction. Additionally: “dozens of records of
Cabinet meetings.”(i)
Ironically on 31st October 2006, David Cameron voted in favour of a
motion brought by the Scottish National Party and Wales’ Plaid Cymru
(“The Party of Wales”) calling for an Inquiry into the Blair
government’s conduct of the Gulf war.
On 15th June 2009, in a parliamentary debate, the terms of the
Chilcot Inquiry were presented in detail, duly recorded in Hansard, the
parliamentary records.(ii.)
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor stated: “In order that
the committee is as objective and non-partisan as possible, the
membership of the committee will consist entirely of non-partisan public
figures acknowledged to be experts and leaders in their fields. There
will be no representatives of political parties from either side of this
House.”
David Cameron, then Leader of Opposition stated piously:
“The whole point of having an Inquiry is
that it has to be able to make clear recommendations, to go wherever the
evidence leads, to establish the full truth and to ensure that the
right lessons are learned … in a way that builds public confidence.”
Cameron was particularly concerned about: “openness.” How times change.
Further, said Cameron:
“The inquiry needs to be, and needs to be
seen to be, truly independent and not an establishment stitch-up … The
Prime Minister was very clear that the inquiry would have access to all
British documents and all British witnesses. Does that mean that the
inquiry may not have access to documents from the USA … On the scope of
the inquiry, will the Prime Minister confirm that it will cover
relations with the United States …”
Cameron concluded with again a demand for “openness and transparency.”
In response, Gordon Brown stated:
“ … I cannot think of an Inquiry with a
more comprehensive, wider or broader remit than the one that I have just
announced. Far from being restricted, it will cover eight years, from
2001 to 2009. Far from being restricted, it will have access to
any documents that are available, and that will include foreign
documents that are available in British archives. (Emphasis mine.)
However, four years is a long time in politics and last week, as
David Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of
Government meeting, it transpired that the documents Sir John Chilcot
had been pursuing and been denied for six months have been also blocked
by: “officials in the White House and the US Department of State who
have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre-and
post-war communications between George W. Bush and Tony Blair.”
David Cameron is apparently also blocking evidence: “ … on
Washington’s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive
and lengthy British Inquiry.”(iii) Confirmation, were it ever needed,
that Britain is the US 51st State, whose puppet Prime Ministers simply
obey their Master’s voice.
However, “shame” clearly not being a word in Cameron’s lexicon, he
landed in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon, a British Colony 1815-1948) as the
above shoddy details broke, in full colonial mode.
Spectacular welcoming ceremonies barely over, he launched in to an
entirely undiplomatic, public tirade, at this gathering of the
“Commonwealth family of nations” alleging that his host, President
Mahinda Rajapaksa was guilty of war crimes during the civil war with the
Tamil Tigers. Not disputed is, as any conflict, that terrible crimes
were committed on both sides. But these are accusations from the man
both covering up the genesis of massacres of genocidal magnitude – and
who enjoined in the near destruction of Libya, the resultant lynching of
the country’s leader, the murder of his sons and small grand children
and uncounted others in another decimation of a country who had
threatened no other.
Cameron’s Libya, is Blair’s Iraq. As Iraq, the dying continues daily.
The pontification also from a Prime Minister backing funding for the
cannibalistic orientated insurgents in Syria, the beheading,
dismembering, looting, displacing, kidnapping, chemical weapons
lobbying, child killing, infanticide-bent crazies, including those from
his own country.
In Sri Lanka he demanded the country ensure: “credible, transparent
and independent investigations into alleged war crimes” and said if this
did not happen by the March deadline he arbitrarily imposed, he would
press the UN Human Rights Council to hold an international inquiry.
Further: “truth telling”, he said, was essential. To cite hypocrisy of
breathtaking proportions has become a redundant accusation, but words
are failing.
In the event Cameron: “ … left Colombo having failed to secure any
concessions from President Rajapaksa or persuade fellow leaders to
criticise Sri Lanka’s record in a communique”, reported the Guardian
(16th November.)
As the Prime Minster slunk out, President Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered
an apt, withering reaction: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw
stones”, he responded.
Ironically, in spite a tragic recent past, Sri Lanka is the only
country in South Asia rated high on the Human Development Index. The UK
and “allies” recent victims, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan barely make it to
the bottom.
David Cameron returned to Britain still having to grapple with how to evade delivering truth to the Chilcot Inquiry.
Hopefully he will read a letter from writer Lesley Docksey (Independent, 18th November 2013.)
“It was British taxpayers’ money that
funded the Chilcot Inquiry, and this taxpayer wants her money’s worth.
All the British government papers concerning the sorry affair of an
invasion of another country belong to this nation, not to the United
States, not to Tony Blair, not to the current government. Taxpayers
aren’t here to save the faces of politicians.
“Nor is it, in the words of the Cabinet
Office, ‘in the public’s interest’ that exchanges between the UK Prime
Minister and the US President are kept secret’ – sorry, ‘privileged’ –
from those who are paying their wages. The phrase ‘in the public
interest’ only ever means the interests of the government of the day.
“Unless Sir John Chilcot and his team can
publish a full and honest report, no lessons will be learnt by future
governments. But then, if those lessons were learnt, and we the public
knew (as in fact we do) what they were, this country would find it
difficult to ever invade anywhere ever again.
“So, Sir John, in the words of a former PM, the Duke of Wellington, ‘Publish and be damned!’
Oh, and as David Cameron was lecturing Sri Lanka on “transparency”,
the Conservatives were removing: ‘ a decade of speeches from their
website and from the main internet library – including one in which
David Cameron claimed that being able to search the web would
democratise politics by making “more information available to more
people.” ’.
“The party removed records of speeches
and press releases from 2000 until May 2010. The effect will be to
remove any speeches and articles during the Tories’ modernisation period
…” (iv.)
Comment again redundant.
Notes
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