Tony Blair Heckled in House of Commons

[butnut]

Did anybody hear 5Live tonight?  If not, you missed a very interesting treat.

What did I miss?

[Dusty Gozongas]

Did anybody hear 5Live tonight?  If not, you missed a very interesting treat.

What did I miss?

Damn my inability to quote verbatim.   And damn the news for not reporting this in full.  Mr Cook was most eloquent in his oration.  His assertions alone should be enough to prove that Mr Tony  has been the liar some of us took him for long ago.  And then came Mr Hoon, not the best defence witness in the world all of a sudden.

I really can't be arsed to elaborate further - mainly due to the lack of photographic memory and also a bored acceptance of the influence of spin.
I tells ya it was serius stuff though.  If the debate is reported in full somewhere tomorrow (without dwelling on hecklers in the public gallery or the whitewashing of the gates to Downing Street) then you'll see why this is the beginning of the end for Mr Tony.  If it becomes soundbites and spin, the status quo has the upper hand yet again.

[Ambient Sheep]

The Guardian's take on what arqarqa said seems to be here.

Oh, and just found something amusing in today (Wednesday)'s Guardian Diary:

A vacancy is announced at the heart of government. "Special adviser to the secretary of state, Ministry of Defence," reads an internal email from Labour's staff network. "Geoff Hoon MP is looking for ..." Anyone tempted may email sofs-sps/specialadviser@mod.gsi.gov.uk, or fax 020 7218 7140, by February 9. And no facetious applications, if you please.

[Papercut]

So I suggest you call a General Election right the fuck now, making it clear that's what the basis for the election is, and we'll see what the people think, eh?

I bet the sad truth is that if a General Election was called today Labour would still win it.

Hoon and Cook knew that the '45 minute' claim referred only to battlefield weapons  but the PM didn't!  OK.  We forgive you Tony.

Anyone else think this is an obvious ploy to setup Hoon as a sacrificial scapegoat?

[Bilko]

Blair over the past week has been exposed and/or showing up his Thatcher cuntness. Thatcher for years was hated by a large proportion of the public yet would romp in elections, getting thousands upon thousands more votes then Labour. Blair now has turned into this, hated by those who analyse and who want to find out the autonomy of structures.

That piece of shit he came out with yesterday goes like this:
Hoon in September 2002 was informed by the MOD Iraq could threat us with Chemical/Biological weapons within 45 minute on the battlefield not long range weapons. Hoon told other Ministers about this but not the Prime Minster!!!!!!!!!!, that what Blair said yesterday. Blair apparently was lead to believe the 45 minute claim referred to long range attacks, Blair not knowing this authorised the claim we could face attack from long range Chemical/Biological weapons within 45 minutes into the Dossier.

After this was announced in the dossier Hoon never corrected the wrong insertion. This was left to stay in and led anyone in the public, press, and other Mp's to believe this meant long range weapons. The press when reading the dossier obviously gave headings about how we are 45 minutes from annihilation. The government Hoon particular (because Blair remember had never been told it really mean't battlefield weapons!!!!!!!!) never felt the need to correct the press in printing such wrong headlines. A headline like this would help the Government (minus Blair of course because he was never told) in persuading us to support a war against Iraq to get rid of such weapons.

So 6 months then passed between the release of the dossier and the war started. 18 months had then passed until the 4th February 2004 in the house of commons Hoon told us the 45 minute claim meant battlefield weapons, and Blair told us he was never told it meant battlefield thinking it meant long range. Mmmmmmmm how can I put diplomatically, you are a lying piece of fucking stinking horse shit wanking monkey jizzer cunting gimp pig-fucker. I use the 'you' very loosely this can refer to either Hoon or Blair.

In one and a half years in the thousands of press article relating to the 45 minute claim, in the hundreds of radio news programmes some involving interviewing ministers, in the press conferences giving by ministers, did any one of them stop the interviewer or take the opportunity to tell us the what 45 minute claim really meant.

Somewhere in-between the MOD telling Hoon the 45 minute claim referred to battlefield weapons and between this being allowed to mean long range weapons, somebody decided to let it go or change this claim, introducing Mr Campbell (Allegedly, probably).

arqarqa you are right yesterday was the start of the end for Blair, his has now publicly started to dig his own hole. Hoon will not be accepted by the press or public as the fall guy. All those years at PR school are not going to help him now, when the whole press and majority of the pubic are looking past the props of body language and soundbites. They are getting to the centre of reason, behind that veneer of PR is a great big lie.

[Purple Tentacle]

Plausable deniability?

[smoker]

arqarqa you are right yesterday was the start of the end for Blair, his has now publicly started to dig his own hole. Hoon will not be accepted by the press or public as the fall guy. All those years at PR school are not going to help him now, when the whole press and majority of the pubic are looking past the props of body language and soundbites. They are getting to the centre of reason, behind that veneer of PR is a great big lie.

i agree with you. the press want the top man now, nothing else will do. blair can't just stand at the top of the mountain fighting off everyone forever, sooner or later something's going to stick and he has to fall. this latest denial that he didn't know what the 45 minute claim referred to despite hoon, straw and cook knowing it sounds exactly like it is, bullshit imo.
doesn't matter how this latest inquiry ends, i think he's going to have to go now that blood has been smelt. mind you we've all thought that before

[Gamma Ray]

It just gets murkier and murkier ... On Newsnight last night Labour couldn't spare a senior government minister to argue their corner, so had some back bench lackey defending their position, no doubt with half an eye on impressing his masters. His argument was that the debate over battlefield/WMD is a technicality, and that the fact that Saddam had biological and chemical weapons was enough to destabilize the region and adversely affect world security.
Maybe so, but allowing the press hysteria that greeted the 45 minute claim to run rampant was a serious oversight. I guess that the government placed their bets on WMD being found pretty swiftly after the war ended.
It is this fact that worries me the most. There is a *serious* problem here - either the government 'misrepresented' the facts and gambled with soldiers lives, or our intelligence service is in fact supremely unintelligent. I'm willing to bet that it's a combination of the two - politicisation of inept intelligence. Whatever, the government is ultimately responsible, and Blair is ultimately responsible for the government. However he tries to worm his way out of it, he led our country into what is looking, day by day, an increasingly unjustifiable war.
And if he didn't see that coming, you'd have to question his intelligence and analytical skills too.

[zozman]

This all reminds me of the last days of Thatcher, or more recently, Major, when whatever they tried to do backfired as they'd been tainted and nobody believed them anymore.  When you've lost it, you've lost it in that game.

Saying that, I still think Blair will hang on for a bit yet and maybe 'til the next election.