The present British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said it was right to go to war, also saying that the United States dismissed warnings of chaos and violence once Saddam Hussein was toppled.  Brown testified for over four hours before a public inquiry panel about Britain’s role in the conflict and its aftermath.

Defending his role in the conflict, but at the same time cautious not to inflame tensions over the unpopular war ahead of a looming national election campaign, Brown said joining the 2003 U.S.-led invasion was a tough call.

“We have got to recognize that war may be necessary, but it is also tragic in the effect it has on people’s lives,” said Brown, who voted – like most British lawmakers – to approve Britain’s role in the war.

“These were difficult decisions. I believe they were the right decisions for the right reasons,” he said.

But he was critical of U.S. planning, saying American officials failed to heed warnings about the need for clarity on how to protect and govern Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.

Unlike Tony Blair, who defiantly stood by the invasion and argued Saddam was a threat to the entire world; Brown said he believed the war was justified because Baghdad had breached international rules in failing to abide by U.N. resolutions.

If you do some searching, you will find that a number of countries, including the main U.S. ally in the Middle East have also failed to abide by a whole slew of U.N. resolutions. Nevertheless, the “coalition” has not invaded those countries.

Brown insisted that Iraq had posed the first serious test to the post-Cold War world, claiming that any failure to depose the Iraqi leader would have emboldened other dictators and stirred global tensions.

Brown also sought to distance himself from President George W. Bush, suggesting their relations were “amicable” and criticizing the doctrine of some members of Bush’s administration.

“I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-conservative proposition that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty or democracy could be conjured up,” Brown told the panel.

Hard to believe that either Brown, or Blair could actually believe in the crud they were spewing. It was without a doubt still another case of justifying their crimes and of covering their well-fed asses.

Technorati Tags: Britain, defend, Gordon Brown, Iraq invasion, Tony Blair

Bush’s top aide Karl Rove just wrote a memoir, entitled Courage and Consequence, in which he claims that Bush 43 did not mislead the nation about weapons of mass destruction as a way to “lie us” into a war.

Crap! Remember the memoirs by other neocons, such as Douglas Feith, who has denied any responsibility in the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal and really any responsibility for anything altogether?

While defending the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, Rove concedes that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction damaged the administration’s credibility. And he blames himself for failing to set the record straight.

Yes, Karl, please DO blame somebody for not finding stacks and warehouses full of WMDs. You might as well blame yourself too for a very different than expected – by people like you – Iraqi reception of our invading troops. After all, some neocons claimed that the Iraqi people would line the streets and welcome us with flowers and tears in their eyes.

“When the pattern of the Democratic attacks became apparent in July 2003, we should have countered in a forceful and overwhelming way,” wrote Rove. “We should have seen this for what it was: a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency.”

Rove also comes up with all kinds of lame excuses for the administration’s abject failure after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf coast.

We’ll keep this short and succint: Don’t waste your money buying another neocon memoir.

Technorati Tags: bush, Iraq War, justifying, Karl Rove, Katrina, memoir

From top left: Kue Bui for Newsweek; Andrew Hetherington / Redux; James Keyser / Time Life Pictures-Getty Images; Richard A. Bloom / Corbis; Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Gettty Images; Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

Newsweek magazine has a very interesting and lengthy article, entitled “The Return of the Neocons” by David Margolick.

Here’s a short excerpt: “One prominent activist on the libertarian end of the party – who hates what he sees as their costly foreign – policy adventurism and the GOP electoral losses (i.e., the presidency and both houses of Congress) he attributes to them – calls them ‘parasites’: with little electoral power of their own, he claims, they have had to attach themselves to others, like George W. Bush. Comfortably ensconced behind a cloak of anonymity, he bristles, but also marvels, at their endurance and effectiveness, comparing them to ‘an infection that keeps coming back.’ “They’ve perfected this absolutely incredible thing: they announce who they are, how powerful they are, how influential they are, and get people to write articles about them,” he says. “But when their policies are perceived to have caused mass chaos, they don’t exist, they didn’t have anything to do with it, they weren’t there, and they get really snotty. And anyone who attacks them is anti-Semitic.”

Worth a read we think.

Technorati Tags: neocons, Newsweek, return

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Council chief Stephen Hadley are teaming up as the latest participants in the endless battle of the groups, such as: the Kissinger Group, the Scowcroft Group, the Chertoff Group and other outfits of that genre.

The official launch of the RiceHadley Group, which styles itself as a “strategic advisory firm” for international companies, is scheduled soon. The firm registered its Web site domain name in October.

It will not be exactly a localized operation. Rice, who was Hadley’s boss at the National Security Council during Bush’s first term, will be teaching at Stanford while Hadley remains in Washington as a senior adviser for international affairs at the government-funded think-tank the U.S. Institute of Peace. A third founding partner, Washington lawyer Anja Manuel, is also heading to Stanford to teach international studies.

Manuel was an aide from 2005 to 2007 to former undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns. Her firm bio says she “managed [Burns's] involvement in South and Central Asia policy, congressional outreach and legal matters. Among other projects, she negotiated the U.S.-India civilian nuclear accord, and helped to secure passage . . . of the India civilian nuclear legislation.” She was also “extensively involved in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other issues,”

In case you are thinking of doing business overseas, especially in South Asia and supposed “emerging markets” in the Middle East and Latin America, you do want to get some serious strategic advice. To paraphrase Condi’s famous statement, you wouldn’t want to find your business under “a mushroom cloud.”

Technorati Tags: Condi, Condoleezza Rice, groups, RiceHadley, Stephen Hadley

One of the greatest symbols of capitalism, New York’s Empire State Building got lit up in red on Wednesday night, a day before the official 60^th anniversary of the Chinese revolution and the creation of the People’s Republic of China.

We realize that money talks and that China is holding trillions of dollars of U.S. debt, but this isn’t exactly a celebration of the Chinese people, their history, or their culture, but of their Communist party.

Human Rights Watch, a tenant of the building, put it quite succinctly:

“We want to make clear we have no objection to honoring China as a nation, a great civilization or a vibrant people. However, this date commemorates the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, a political entity that is responsible historically for many grave violations of human rights.”

There is no doubt that China has made enormous strides in the past 60 years – mostly in the economic and military direction, that Shanghai and other cities have huge clusters of skyscrapers and that it is developing, for better and for worse in leaps and bounds. At the same time, let’s not forget the tens of millions of human lives and suffering that this transformation has cost.

Let’s not forget the “Cultural Revolution”, the Tiananmen Square massacre and many other events, before we light up our landmark buildings in de facto celebration of these crimes.

Technorati Tags: anniversary, china, communist, Empire State Building, genocide, party, US