US may go it alone as Blair is caught in diplomatic deadlock Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday March 12, 2003 Washington was forced to admit for the first time last night that it might have to start the war against Iraq without British forces because of the internal political problems heaping up for Tony Blair. The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that Mr Blair's difficulties had caused the White House to contemplate going to war without its closest ally. After talks with his British counterpart, Geoff Hoon, Mr Rumsfeld said that the British role in an assault was now "unclear" and that Washington was well aware that the Blair government's freedom of action might be restrained by a rebellious parliament. "Their situation is distinctive to their country and they have a government that deals with a parliament in their distinctive way," Mr Rumsfeld said. "And what will ultimately be decided is unclear as to their role; that is to say, their role in the event a decision is made to use force." Mr Rumsfeld's remarks provoked a mixture of panic and fury in Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence last night. After frantic telephone calls between Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Hoon, the Pentagon issued a clarification of Mr Rumsfeld's remarks, although there was no retraction. In the written statement, Mr Rumsfeld added: "In my press briefing today, I was simply pointing out that obtaining a second United Nations security council resolution is important to the United Kingdom and that we are working to achieve it." The row over his remarks came amid growing tension between Washington and London on the diplomatic front. Sharp differences have emerged over the British strategy in pursuit of a second resolution authorising war. Britain insisted yesterday that it was close to winning over the six "undecided" security council members and that the vote will go ahead this week. Mr Rumsfeld said that if Britain failed to participate in the initial assault, it could still have a role in the post-Saddam policing of Iraq. Going to war without British troops would represent a complication for US military planners, who are struggling to craft an alternative to using Turkey as a launch pad for a northern offensive. The absence of Britain from the invasion force would also represent a serious political blow for George Bush, who has sought to convince American public opinion that he is not acting unilaterally. Mr Rumsfeld said discussions were under way between Washington and London on a "daily or every other day basis", and that the prospect of going to war without Britain was now being actively contemplated. "That is an issue that the president will be addressing in the days ahead, one would assume," he said. Mr Rumsfeld's comments and Mr Blair's intensive attempts to garner more support for a second resolution mean that the next 72 hours could be the most dangerous of the prime minister's time in power. Failure to secure the resolution might force him to accept that British forces cannot participate in the invasion. According to British sources, Washington is alarmed at the extent to which the British government is prepared to be flexible in offering compromises to the six "undecided" members. Cameroon, Guinea, Angola, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan yesterday demanded that the proposed US-British ultimatum, set last week for March 17, be extended to allow Iraq 45 days to disarm. They also suggested that Saddam Hussein be given a short list of disarmament tasks to complete. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, insisted that the proposal to push back the March 17 deadline by a month was "a non-starter." But the UK ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, offered the six an extension to the end of the month and was ready to concede ground over the benchmarks. British sources hinted that Mr Bush was becoming alarmed at being dragged into an increasingly messy process. Mr Blair desperately needs the second resolution to prevent revolt by his ministers and MPs. Panic gripped Downing Street on Monday after the French president, Jacques Chirac, said in a televised interview that he would veto the resolution. Mr Blair has apparently been told by government lawyers that without a second resolution, it will be illegal for Britain to participate in war. Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is due in London today for a dinner with Mr Blair, at which the atmosphere is likely to be distinctly strained. Apart from the two leaders' sharply contrasting stances on Iraq, they will be meeting against a background of renewed speculation on the emergence of a "two-tier" Europe that could leave Britain and other Iraq hawks such as Spain and Portugal out in the cold. For the Blair government, the idea is worryingly reminiscent of a proposal by the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, in May 2000 calling for an "avant-garde" of states willing to move faster towards unity.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Mar03/index120.shtml March 12, 2003 Blair goes wobbly If public statements of position are anything to go by -- and they sometimes are -- the U.S., Britain, Spain have already lost the vote in the Security Council, no matter how they phrase their resolution. The vote was supposed to happen yesterday, and has been set back at least until tomorrow, possibly Friday, undermining the stated deadline of Monday for Iraq's Saddam regime to show a "strategic decision" to obey the 17 U.N. resolutions it has defied, lo these last 12 years of the slowest "rush to war" in history. The gap is now clearly unbridgeable. Those not already onside with the U.S. are opposed to war under any circumstances at all. The revelations of the last few days -- including the discovery by U.N. inspectors in Iraq of such "smoking guns" as a gas-spewing air drone, and delivery devices for chemical and biological bombs; the revelation on Al-Jazeera TV of one of Saddam's suicide-terrorist camps; the public threat by a member of Iraq's cabinet to gas the Kurds again; multiple reports of the placing of explosives in Iraqi oil wells both north and south; the allegation that France has been shipping spare parts for the repair of Saddam's air fleet through third parties in the Gulf -- such overwhelming evidence of the true state of affairs is ignored alike by media and diplomats. <b>They have reached their decision, to isolate and damage the United States as much as possible, and grant Saddam a pass. They don't want to know about anything that doesn't advance their argument, just as the appeasers of Hitler in a former generation did not want to know. </b> The difference between sides is doctrinal. President Bush first announced his own "doctrine of pre-emption" about 17 months ago, and won reticent international support as far as Kabul. It is a position the U.S. has consciously taken in deviation from past foreign policy, to address new and very frightening circumstances in the real world. France and her supporters, quite apart from various cynical motives for defending the monstrous Iraqi regime, do not accept the U.S. premise. As in any doctrinal dispute, the issue is about reality itself. They wish to continue, and to compel the U.S. to recognize, an international order that served the world adequately enough in the olden days; and they will persist in this until the current reality catches up with them. But the United States is not going to wait for another "9/11". It will, as Donald Rumsfeld quietly mentioned yesterday, proceed if necessary even without British support. The U.S. did not choose unilateralism, it is having unilateralism thrust upon it. But if it is stuck with that fate, then it will fight alone for human freedom; as Churchill was prepared to lead what was still available of the British Empire, to fight alone in 1940. Indeed, the only reason the U.S. introduced a new, and 18th resolution to the Security Council, and has been delaying the vote, is to provide the political cover to keep Tony Blair in office as British prime minister, and thus keep extremely useful British forces in the field in Iraq. The only remaining advantage of delay is for the new Turkish prime minister to give the U.S. forces that have actually been unloading in, and transiting, Turkey, the legal cover of a fresh Turkish Parliamentary vote. For as I am convinced by witnesses on the scene, the U.S. and Turkish armies are now in fact fully co-operating towards joint action on Iraq's northern front, whatever you read in the papers. Mr. Blair has started to hedge his bets. Though he declared he was willing to lose his job, to stand by what he believed in, he, too, has begun "to weasel". The British foreign office yesterday began to make distance from the U.S. position, and cast doubt on whether Britain would keep its promise to act in Iraq even without U.N. support. <b>Mr. Blair is recoiling, domestically, from one of the most sustained propaganda campaigns in British history, a 24/7 battery of lies from the BBC and similar media, that has succeeded in whipping up an anti-war frenzy on the backbenches of the Labour Party, as well as filling the British streets with Saddam's pacifist allies. Yet that is only the proximate cause for his sudden loss of backbone. The conditions to which he has succumbed were created and abetted by a profoundly cynical power-play, from France, Germany, and Russia -- one which, in the French and Russian promise to use their vetoes to kill any U.N. decision to enforce its resolutions, is now exposed as a frontal attack on the interests of the United States -- an attempt to create a new balance of power, by cutting America down to size. </b> The French et al. smell blood, they are not going to back off now when they see the prospect of doing real damage. Their strategy was from the beginning to split the British from the Americans by humbling Mr. Blair, to delay the inevitable full-scale attack into the Iraqi hot season, when the fighting would be more difficult and thus the casualties higher; to isolate the U.S. diplomatically; to galvanize the international peace movement against the Bush administration; and to improve Saddam's prospects for creating a catastrophe when war comes. <b>The French betrayal is as total as it was surprising, after earnest promises from President Chirac to support the U.S. in return for elaborate concessions on U.N. Resolution 1441. They think they now have President Bush in a fox-trap: from which he cannot escape without chewing off a leg. They may be right: he may now have no choice but to chew off the British leg. But whether they are right or not, they will now reap the whirlwind. </b> David Warren
<quote><b>"They have reached their decision, to isolate and damage the United States as much as possible, and grant Saddam a pass. They don't want to know about anything that doesn't advance their argument, just as the appeasers of Hitler in a former generation did not want to know." </b></quote> I cite this one again, because it seems to me to resonate with the experience here on ET, where, to give just two recent examples, we've seen articles like Steven Pelletiere's or pieces on Hussein Kemal brought forward as though they somehow can be construed to defeat the simple and actually rather indisputable case that Saddam is a genocidally murderous tyrant with history, ambitions, and abilities in the area of WMDs. When the articles are the cases made on their basis are answered, the sponsors, as ever, just move on to some other subject. <b>They virtually never make a defense of their outrageous claims, probably because there is no defense. They show the same irresponsibility and refusal to face the facts, and the dangers, that they apply to the larger topic in all its aspects. </b> I'm still waiting for evidence that arguing with the likes of msfe, Trader556, et al, is worth the effort. Individuals interested in a civilized discussion would either seek to defend their positions or would concede the points and make adjustments in their arguments.
Whatever the outcome, Mr Blair has played a magnificent part. France, what can we say, has proven itself to be very selfcentered, apparently mentally disturbed by their diminishing role in the power of the world, despite their dreams and aspirations of a mighty empire. They exacted concessions to vote in favour of 1414 AND, in return, made a promise that they would support the US. The tide will turn and I don't envy them for the high price they will have to be pay for their treacherous behaviour. What price do they now deserve to pay if it is shortly proven that they sold strategic spare parts to Iraq contra the U.N.'s embargo conditions ? Will Chirac be dragged to the Hague to stand trial ? Already there are moves afoot to not buy planes from them. Will the US public also shun them as a holiday destination ? Will there be a general boycot of French imports ? freealways
[Already there are moves afoot to not buy planes from them. Will the US public also shun them as a holiday destination ? Will there be a general boycott of French imports ? YES, YES and YES...... Im telling you it will get worse....chirac will have to get on his knees and take care of GWB when this is all over ...fortunately, he's French so they are kind of use to it
KymarFye said : I'm still waiting for evidence that arguing with the likes of msfe, Trader556, et al, is worth the effort." Of course it is never worth it to talk to morons. They aren't morons because of their opposing view, they are morons because, as you say, they never reply to argue their point of view and merely respond with another cut and paste job. freealways
The Bush warriors´ PR machine - for those able to read German SPIEGEL is Europe´s #1 weekly political magazine, not just another `irrelevant leftist/liberal rag´ PROPAGANDA-FELDZUG Die PR-Maschine der Bush-Krieger Von Jochen Bölsche Ein propagandistisches Trommelfeuer ohnegleichen prasselt auf die angloamerikanische Ãffentlichkeit ein: Vor allem die TV-Sender und Billigblätter des Murdoch-Konzerns, obskure Psychokrieger aus dem Pentagon und PR-Agenten mächtiger Pressure Groups blasen zum Angriffkrieg und zur Minderheitenjagd - mit Phantasieberichten, Fälschungen und gezielter Irreführung. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,239721,00.html
This sums up the German anti war stance pretty good Neo-Nazi lectured army, German magazine reveals DEIDRE BERGER Jewish Telegraphic Agency FRANKFURT -- The revelation that a leading neo-Nazi gave a training lecture to army officers has rocked the German army -- and forced German officials to scramble to respond. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported recently that neo-Nazi leader Manfred Roeder gave a lecture in 1995 at an officer's academy in Hamburg. The revelation was the latest in a spate of neo-Nazi scandals that have hit the German army. Last week, the Defense Ministry confirmed that six army parachuters held a party in an office decorated with a Nazi flag and pictures of Hitler. Prosecutors are also investigating a film made by soldiers glorifying neo-Nazi violence. Roeder lectured on the "Relocation of Ethnic Germans in Russia in the area of Koenigsberg." With other right-wing extremists, Roeder wants to re-establish the German culture and language in the Russian region of Kaliningrad, which was once a part of Germany called Koenigsberg. Russia has forbidden Roeder and three other German neo-Nazis from entering Kaliningrad because of a newspaper advertisement they published last year claiming that "the idea of war guilt [of the Germans] is a demonic modern invention." On Monday, the German defense minister announced disciplinary measures against a colonel who was responsible for the invitation. He also suspended a lieutenant-general who headed the academy at the time of the incident.
Manfred Roeder Sentenced for Holocaust Comment An outspoken German Nationalist was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison without parole for denying the Holocaust. Manfred Roeder, 70, was sentenced for having refered to the Holocaust as "humbug" during an August 1998 election rally in the eastern German city of Stralsund