The Real Lockerbie bombers must be unable to believe their luck that the witch hunt against Megrahi is still letting them get off with mass murder even after he's dead

The real Lockerbie bombers, whoever they are, must be unable to believe their luck that they are still not even facing any charges for their criminal act of mass murder, due to most politicians and much of the media continuing witch-hunting Megrahi even after his death. This is helping governments deny Scottish and British relatives of Lockerbie victims from getting the truth which they are demanding, by helping the Scottish and British governments deny them an independent public inquiry.

Megrahi is still routinely labelled a 'mass murderer' or 'convicted Lockerbie bomber' by many politicians and much of them media, despite his trial having been a show trial that Stalin would have admired. There was no jury (1). Key evidence - the timer fragment - was tampered with and probably fake according to witness and timer manufacturer Edwin Bollier. Bollier also says the fragment he was shown in court had a brown circuit board, while those he sold to the Libyan government had green circuit boards (2).

Witness Tony Gauci - who identified Megrahi as the person who bought clothes said to have been found in a suitcase surviving the plane crash - was paid $2 million by the US government to identify Megrahi as the man who bought them ; and had seen photos of Megrahi in magazines before doing so (3) - (4).

Scots Law Professor Robert Black (who helped negotiate the establishment of the trial), UN observer Dr Hans Kochler and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, are among the many reliable neutral observers present at the trial and appeals hearings who say they were shams and that Megrahi was innocent (5) - (7).

Kochler said the trial verdict made no sense based on the evidence, while the appeal hearing (in which Megrahi was denied an appeal) was more like an intelligence operation than a legal process and also"a spectacular miscarriage of justice" (8) - (11).

Black has written that "for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi ... this is precisely what the trial judges did. I am absolutely convinced that if the evidence had come out in front of a Scottish jury of 15 there is absolutely no way he would have been convicted." (12)

Theories that should be investigated

There are three theories plausible enough to warrant investigation.

Iranian revenge for the killing of 290 Iranian airliner passengers by the USS Vincennes?

The first is that the bombers were Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists contracted by Syria's government for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini after he vowed revenge for the killing of 290 Iranian civilians when the US navy warship the USS Vincennes entered Iranian waters during the Iran-Iraq war (in which the Reagan administration was allied to Saddam Hussein) and shot down an Iranian Airbus airliner earlier in 1988 (13) - (14).

This would be embarrassing to the US government and it's allies because it highlights a massacre of civilians by their own forces, whether deliberately or , more likely, accidentally through sheer recklessness and carelessness in starting a battle that could have been avoided and not using their radar system properly (15).

If this did lead to the Lockerbie bombing in revenge it would also show that terrorist attacks are not always random or based on irrational hatred, but sometimes acts of revenge for the murder of other civilians by the US government and it's military.

It was also the original line followed by the first British police investigations into Lockerbie, but rapidly reversed after a phone call to Margaret Thatcher from President Bush senior in 1989. Bush would go on to enlist Syria as an ally against Iraq in the 1990 Gulf War and secure Iran's neutrality in it (16) - (20).

Gaddafi's revenge for US airstrikes using planes refuelling in the UK in 1986?

The second is that Gaddafi ordered it as revenge for US bombing attacks on Tripoli in 1986, in which the planes involved used British airbases with to refuel (with the permission of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher). The bombings killed dozens of people including Gaddafi's adopted daughter but fai (21) - (22).

Cover-up of CIA drug trafficking involvement from the Middle East to Europe,
similar to that from central and Southern America in the 1980s as part of Iran-Contra?

The third is that the CIA bombed the flight to kill operatives who were about to reveal their involvement in Middle Eastern heroin trafficking. Former US Defence Intelligence Agency operative Lester Coleman says some CIA and DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency) agents' bags were never checked when they flew through Frankfurt or London Heathrow airports (23) - (24).

This would explain how the bomb, which the prosecution claimed was in Megrahi's suitcase, managed to get through airport security without being detected.

John Ashton and Paul Foot’s investigation found that Jim Wilson, a farmer whose farm was near Lockerbie, found a suit-case containing bags of white powder which he suspected were drugs among the debris on his land. He was not called to give evidence at the trial. The name on the case was not on flight's passenger list. On the night of the bombing two bus loads of FBI agents arrived the same night at the site. Residents reported that they had a coffin on one of the buses. Scottish doctors and police had tagged 59 bodies. Only 58 were ever mentioned by the FBI and the prosecution. According toe Coleman the 59th body was Major Charles Mckee - a US intelligence agent who was about to blow the whistle on a deal with Lebanese drug traffickers. (25).

This may sound far-fetched unless you know about the part of the Iran-Contra scandal which involved the CIA and US military intelligence, using Latin American drug smugglers' planes to fly guns to the contras, with the purchase of the guns funded by the CIA taking a cut of the profits from cocaine smuggling into the US in the same planes. This was authorised by senior members of the Reagan administration in order to get round the congressional Boland Amendment which banded any US government funding of arms for the contra terrorists. This has been established by congressional inquiries and investigations by American academics - and it was going through the 1980s - with the Lockerbie bombing happening in 1988 (26) - (28).

This third theory is strengthened by the fact that the US government, after recieving a warning phone call, warned many of it's employees not to get on the flight, but did not warn McKee nor other governments or members of the public (29).

The truth did not die when Megrahi did : Give Scottish and British Lockerbie relatives the Independent Public Inquiry they demand

Whether one of the above theories is the truth or something else entirely, we should give the relatives of Lockerbie victims the independent public inquiry which they are demanding, deserve and are being denied by politicians of every major party in Scotland and Britain (30).

By an independent public inquiry I mean one in which the inquiry is given governmental authority and powers, but it's powers, remitt (the evidence it can consider, questions it can ask and conclusions it can draw) and who heads it are all decided by the Scottish and other British relatives of those killed at Lockerbie.

The truth being embarrassing for politicians and judges is not a good enough reason to deny it to the families.

The governments and politicians and judges for whom an end to any questions about Lockerbie would avoid embarrassment ; and those in the media who have chosen to parrot the government line might prefer to claim that the truth about Lockerbie was lost when Megrahi died , but it was not and will not be.

Sources

(1) = BBC News 20 May 2012 'Lockerbie questions remain following Megrahi's death', http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-12191604

(2) = Observer 02 Sep 2007 'Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'', http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/sep/02/theairlineindustry.libya

(3) = Herald 03 Oct 2007 'Revealed: CIA offered $2m to Lockerbie witness and brother', http://www.heraldscotland.com/revealed-cia-offered-2m-to-lockerbie-witness-and-brother-1.866400

(4) = BBC News 28 Aug 2008 'Lockerbie evidence not disclosed ', http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7573244.stm ; '...Tony Gauci, who picked al-Megrahi out in a line-up, had looked at a magazine photograph of him just four days before he made the identification. BBC TV programme The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie has now seen documentary evidence that Scottish police knew this was the case. That information should have been passed to the defence, but the disclosure did not take place. '

(5) = Professor Robert Black's 'The Lockerbie Case' blog, http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/

(6) = Dr Hans Kochler , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_K%C3%B6chler%27s_Lockerbie_trial_observer_mission

(7) = Lockerbietruth.com - The website of Dr Jim Swire and Lockerbie researcher Peter Biddulph, http://www.lockerbietruth.com/

(8) = Independent 21 Aug 2009 ‘Hans Köchler: I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense’, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hans-kchler-i-saw-the-trial-ndash-and-the-verdict-made-no-sense-1775217.html

(9) = BBC News 14 Mar 2002 ‘UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1872996.stm

(10) = The Firm (Scottish lawyers’ magazine) 10 Jun 2008 ‘UN Observer to the Lockerbie Trial says ‘totalitarian’ appeal process bears the hallmarks of an “intelligence operation”’, http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/901/UN_Observer_to_the_Lockerbie_Trial_says_%E2%80%98totalitarian%E2%80%99_appeal_process_bears_the_hallmarks_of_an_%E2%80%9Cintelligence_operation%E2%80%9D_.html

(11) = Report on the appeal proceedings at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (Lockerbie Court) in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi v. H. M. Advocate by Professor Hans Köchler, international observer of the International Progress Organization nominated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998)

(12) = ‘The Lockerbie Case’ 21 Aug 2009 , http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-shameful-miscarriage-has-gravely.html (blog written by Professor Robert Black)

Sources - Iranian revenge for killing of 290 Iranian airliner passengers by the USS Vincennes?

(13) = NYT 15 Jul 1988 ‘Iran Falls Short in Drive at U.N. To Condemn U.S. in Airbus Case’, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/15/world/iran-falls-short-in-drive-at-un-to-condemn-us-in-airbus-case.html

(14) = Newsweek 13 Jul 1992 ‘Sea of Lies : Sea Of Lies : The Inside Story Of How An American Naval Vessel Blundered Into An Attack On Iran Air Flight 655 At The Height Of Tensions During The Iran-Iraq War-And How The Pentagon Tried To Cover Its Tracks After 290 Innocent Civilians Died’, http://www.newsweek.com/id/126358

(15) = See (14) above

(16) = Guardian 31 March 2004 ‘Lockerbie's dirty secret’, by Paul Foot, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/31/lockerbie.libya

(17) = Paul Foot (1989-2001) ‘The Great Lockerbie Whitewash’ in Pilger, John (ed.) (2005) ‘Tell Me No Lies’, Vintage/Random House, London, 2005, pages 214-254

(18) = Sunday Times 01 Jul 2007 ‘Unpicking the Lockerbie truth’, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2009603.ece (19) = Guardian 07 Apr 1999 ‘Lockerbie conspiracies: from A to Z ; Based on a 1995 Guardian investigation by Paul Foot and John Ashton’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/1999/apr/07/lockerbie.patrickbarkham (20) = Guardian 29 Jul 1995, SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND, Page T22 ‘INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE’, http://leninology4.blogspot.com/2007/06/paul-foot-john-ashtons-1995.html

Sources - Gaddafi's revenge for US airstrikes using planes refuelling in the UK in 1986?

(21) = Bovard, James (2003) ‘Terrorism and Tyranny’, Palgrave-MacMillan, NY,2003, Chapter 2, pages 24-26

(22) = Geoff Simons (2003) ‘Libya and the West’ Center for Libyan Studies, Oxford, UK, 2003,Chapter 7, pages 131-134 of hardback edition

Sources - Cover-up of CIA drug trafficking involvement from the Middle East to Europe, similar to that from central and Southern America in the 1980s as part of Iran-Contra

(23) = Coleman, Lester K & Goddard, Donald (1993) ‘Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie - Inside the DIA’

(24) = Guardian 29 Jul 1995, SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND, Page T22 ‘INSIDE STORY: BODY OF EVIDENCE’, http://leninology4.blogspot.com/2007/06/paul-foot-john-ashtons-1995.html

(25) = See (24) above (26) = Cockburn, Alexander & St. Clair, Jeffrey (1998), ‘Whiteout – The CIA, Drugs and the Press’, Verso, London & N.Y , 1998, Chapters 12 & 13 (27) = Scott, Peter Dale & Marshall, Jonathan (1998) ‘Cocaine Politics – Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (1998 edition)’, University of California Press, Berkeley, London & Los Angeles, 1998 (28) = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North#Involvement_with_drug_trafficking (this is a wikipedia entry but provides reliable sources - including the Kerry report - a congressional inquiry into links between drug traffickers, the contras and the CIA - and FBI investigations)

(29) = See (24) above

Sources - Give Lockerbie relatives the Independent Public Inquiry they demand

(30) = Herald (Scotland) 22 May 2012 'Lockerbie families vow to force public inquiry', http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/crime-courts/lockerbie-families-vow-to-force-public-inquiry.17660141

The Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq, Blair ; and Guardian editor Michael White’s lazy, contemptuous failure to research the facts on Iraq or Iran

Guardian editor Michael White's coverage of the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq is unbelievably lazy. His fact free, condescending and contemptuous piece makes the ludicrous claim that Blair is partly right on Iran as Iran is “scary”. White couldn't even be bothered finding out the second name of the mother who had lost her son to Blair's war - she's just "a middle aged woman called Deirdre" to him

According to White on Tony Blair’s latest appearance before another shoddy ‘ Iraq Inquiry’, “Yet again Sir John Chilcot's panel had hardly laid a glove on the former prime minister” (1)

What a surprise that such trenchant critics of Blair as the Chilcot Inquiry didn’t put him on the spot.

There’s Baroness Prashar, made a Baroness and member of the Lords by one Tony Blair MP in 1999 – and also appointed by him to various other jobs (2) – (3).

There’s historian (read propagandist in this case) Sir Martin Gilbert, who is an expert on and hero worshipper of Winston Churchill (4) – (5). He whitewashes Churchill’s urging of the use of “poison gas” on such “uncivilised tribes” as the Iraqi Kurds – and later on German civilians in World War Two. Churchill claimed that targeting civilians and using chemical weapons on them were matters of “fashion” not of “morality” (a German historian has brought attention to this) (6) – (8). Luckily no-one at the time listened to Churchill’s plan for an early version of Saddam’s Anfal genocide of the Kurds by gassing them – though the RAF and British army deliberately massacred thousands of Kurdish villagers and other Iraqi rebels and civilians with conventional weapons in the 1920s and 1930s, one RAF officer recounting tactics used against Kurdish villages as follows “the attack with bombs and machine guns must be..unrelenting…continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle” An RAF manual noted that by using such methods “within 45 minutes a full sized village can be wiped out”.  (This is not a quote from Gilbert’s histories but Arab American historian Rashid Khalidi) (9).  Boer and black African civilians in the Boer War were starved to death in huge numbers in the first concentration camps, a British invention which provided neither enough food nor any shelter. Sadly for Churchill he didn’t get to use poisoned gas on the detainees, but he fought in and enthusiastically backed the war and the methods used in it (10). Churchill’s actions could only look enlightened by comparison with Hitler’s – and then only because other members of the British government and military refused to carry out Churchill’s full plans.

Gilbert also hero worships and whitewashes the records of Bush and Blair, which are even worse, just as much.  In 2004 he compared Bush and Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill and the "war on terror" against some terrorist groups to World War Two against the most powerful state and military in the world – as if bombing, invading and occupying entire countries with whole armies and air-forces could ever stop terrorism rather than create new enemies with dead allies and civilians to avenge) – and as if in the present the attacked  and invaded weaker countries, not the attackers, were the aggressors. If he’d compared the war on terror to the British and French Empires’ invasions and occupations in the Middle East between the First and Second World Wars he’d have been closer to the truth. (11) – (12).

Gilbert’s modern day heroes continued the British Empire’s methods in Iraq with constant air strikes by the USAF and RAF on Iraqi civilians from the 1991 war on through the ‘No Fly Zone’ period from 1991 to March 2003 - and massively increased during ‘Operation Desert Fox’ and from 2000 to 2003. Between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians were killed directly by US and Coalition bombing in the 1991 war alone and an estimated 250,000 died due to damage to clean water supplies, sewage systems and hospitals as an indirect result of that bombing. During the war from 2003 to 2010, in which (as in 1991) bombing, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, napalm and similar substances and white phosphorus were used on Iraqi cities, massive civilian casualties were the result again. Many more would die due to sanctions. They continue to be killed by terrorism, Iraqi government (US trained) death squads and torture; and hunger and illness due to corruption and lack of reconstruction at a rate exceeding that under Saddam and sanctions. Millions of civilians have died as a result from 1991 to present; at least as many as were killed by Saddam in the 80s (when he was armed and funded by the US and British governments among others even after Halabja) and in 1991 (when the US government ordered it’s troops to prevent Shia rebels getting to arms caches and let Saddam’s forces wipe them out to minimise Iranian influence in Iraq) (13) – (22).

Then there’s Gilbert’s colleague on the Chilcot Inquiry, another (only a bit less biased) historian  Lawrence Freedman, who has written an entire book on US involvement in the Middle East since 1976 (‘A Choice of Enemies’) which makes almost no mention of the vast number of civilians killed in indiscriminate attacks by US forces or their allies – and absolutely none of the deliberate targeting of civilians and ambulances in Coalition assaults on Fallujah and other cities like Samarra ; nor of the systematic and brutal torture by Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq reported by US and British troops to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as to British courts. The word “torture” appears on just a few paragraphs on 4 of 509 pages of Freedman’s book and is glossed over without any discussion of the scale of it or the methods used. Unlike in soldier’s reports to human rights groups, Freedman mentions “beatings” once – without mention of the fact they often go on for days and nights on end by shifts of troops, with some victims dying. Breaking bones with baseball bats is never mentioned by Freedman, nor does battering head off doors or concrete floors, nor electrocution. His only other descriptions are “humiliation” and “attack with dogs”, in the same sentence as “beatings” – and he gives the false impression these happened only at Abu Ghraib and only by the soldiers named in the Taguba report. (23) – (24).

Then there are a two thoroughly establishment former civil servants, one being Inquiry Chairman sir John Chilcot, who approved the previous Butler Inquiry whitewash (25).

In short the entire inquiry is a joke Michael. It is not dealing with any of the core facts or evidence, just playing around the edges for show. Pretending otherwise is a sad joke, but feel free to pretend this is a rigorous trial which has found Blair guilty of nothing more than “mistakes”.

White goes on to say that

“a middle-aged woman called Deidre, smartly dressed and articulate, emerged from the hearing on BBC TV to sum up the familiar case for the prosecution….Deidre acknowledged "tears in his voice, but it was all rehearsed. I don't believe a word of it"…And that's it really: "We wuz robbed." Whatever the man says doesn't matter to his hardcore critics…It will not stop the Iraq specialists poring over Blair's testimony and the accompanying release of documents looking for flaws and inconsistencies, as they so often have done before – and emerge as "frustrated" as Deidre because they still can't find that final proof…. ……..

….It's disappointing for the pack that always gathers where Blair goes, not least because the Get Blair crowd are looking for something that isn't there – the smoking gun that proves Blair's villainy. Instead they get mistakes, his misplaced optimism in the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) intelligence about WMD, the efficacy of invading such a snake pit as quasi-Stalinist Iraq or the Pentagon's reckless occupation strategy.”

You really think we would ever expect to get evidence of Blair's guilt coming from his own mouth in an inquiry set up with a panel of Iraq war supporters who are banned from even referring to parts of his communications with President Bush during questioning in the inquiry or in the final report, when, even if they’re released, large sections of these conversations have also been deleted from Whitehall records ?  (26) – (27) How naive. How ludicrous.

Should we judge everyone's guilt or innocence of crimes on these standards? We could allow the accused to appoint his friends and associates as judges, not bother with a jury - and decide what evidence the "court" is allowed to bring up and what it can't; and what questions they can and can't ask. Then everyone will be found to have just made some mistakes, even if they got large numbers of people killed by premeditated lies, because i mean if they didn't admit their guilt you haven't laid a glove on them. Isn't that right Michael? The prisons can be emptied tommorrow that way. Everyone's a winner.

Still, it makes you feel smug to pretend that if Blair doesn’t admit guilt he must be innocent of anything but some “mistakes”, despite the wealth of evidence ; and clearly you can look down on some “middle aged woman” who’s only one of millions to have lost people they loved as a result of Blair’s lies.

Her name by the way Mr White is Deirdre Glover and her son's name was Kristian Glover. He was 30 when he was killed in Iraq.

Forget researching the facts, Iran is “scary” so Blair and his critics are supposedly equally wrong

White continues

“I think Blair was naive and careless, but so were many of his critics – as they demonstrate today on the scary subject of Iran, though I share their distaste for Blair's bellicosity, on evidence again today. But we're not learning more than nuances of the Iraq policy any more, we're mostly spinning in well-trodden mud.”

Wow another brilliant fact and argument free "analysis". Iran is "scary". Blair just made mistakes and all his critics are supposedly as wrong as he is and just as much to blame for being “careless”, based on not one fact, because he hasn’t admitted guilt.

Fact: Iran's government had the opportunity for glorious national martyrdom in 1988 when the US Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus. They believed this signalled the US was about to join the Iran-Iraq war on the Iraqi side, as opposed to arming him and providing him with chemical and biological weapons (as it had been for years). They - including Rafsanjani and Khameini and Revolutionary Guard officers like Ahmadinejad - chose to persuade Khomeini to make peace instead. This fact is available from many histories of Iran, including the Persian Puzzle by former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack (28).

Iran's 'Supreme Leader' Ayatollah Khameini (above) has control of Iran's military - not President Ahmadinejad while the pragmatic Ayatollah Rafsanjani (below) is influential in Iranian politics. Both helped persuade Khomeini to choose peace over national martyrdom in 1988.

So, as Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld and US General John Abizaid have both said, the world can live with a nuclear Iran, as Iran's government is not going to commit mass suicide by starting a nuclear war, however much they might urge individual martyrdom on others (29) – (30).

Former US General John Abizadi (above) and Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld (below) both say we can live with a nuclear Iran

Fact: This is basically the same scenario as with the whole Iraq charade. During the 1991 war Saddam did have WMDs and some delivery systems for them - highly inaccurate Scud missiles with chemical warheads. He did not use one of them (You can find this fact in a book written by Joseph S .Nye (a former member of the Clinton administration) and Robert Keohane called 'After the Storm' though they pretend it's a "mystery" that he didn't use them, despite the blindingly obvious - that as Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in 2000 "rogue regimes" could not use WMDs even if they developed them without being destroyed by a nuclear counter strike from Israel, the US or it's allies and so "classical deterrence" would render their WMDs ineffective for anything except deterring others from attacking them (31) – (32).

Chilcot Inquiry member and historian Lawrence Freedman also acknowledges the scud chemical warheads existed but weren’t used by Saddam in the 1991 war in his book ‘A Choice of Enemies’, adding that “Iraqis..Indicated that they were influenced by the prospect of nuclear retaliation, though as much from Israel as the United States.”, but, as far as I can find out, has never brought this up during the Inquiry. His book goes on to make up some illogical and vague claim about the Iraqis maybe having made this claim about their motives for reasons of “prestige”. (33)

A Scud missile - in 1991 Saddam had chemical warheads for his scud missiles, but only fired conventional ones for fear of nuclear retaliation from Israel or the US. So the supposed Iraqi "threat" never existed and whether Saddam had WMD or not was irrelevant.

North Korea has nuclear weapons already and it’s government is no less “unstable” or “irrational” than Iran’s – if anything more so. So why is the prospect that Iran might get it’s own nuclear deterrent “scary” to you Mr. White, but you don’t worry about North Korea?

The conspiracy theory that the Iraqi or Iranian governments would commit national and personal suicide by proxy by handing WMDs to terrorist groups is ludicrous - which is why, a decade into the "war on terror", it's never happened - despite the chaos in Iraq after the invasion letting Al Qa'ida get it's hands on the few remnants of Saddam's WMDs from the 1980s. Even Al Qa’ida do not want to risk nuclear retaliation.

Fact : Saddam could only use WMDs on his own people - and on Iranians- while the nuclear powers - including the US, France, theUK, Russia and China - were allied to him during the Iran-Iraq war. Fact :  At the time of Halabja none of these governments gave a toss about it - and Blair refused to sign parliamentary motions condeming the gassing and genocide and demanding US and British aid be ended (which it never was till shortly before the 1991 war as the Scott Report and US members of congress revealed) (34)

Saddam could only use chemical weapons on his own people and the Iranians when all the nuclear powers were supporting him, funding and arming him during the Iran-Iraq war - which they continued to do for 2 years after Halabja. After 1991, with the US hostile to him, he couldn't risk it. So there was no threat of him using WMD on his own people again either

As for Blair having made “mistakes” on WMD don’t make me laugh (or should that be cry that not one national newspaper editor seems to know or care about the basic facts). Read UNMOVIC head Hans Blix’s last two briefings of the UN Security Council on the progress being made in destroying Saddam’s last reserves of WMDs from the 80s and on the destruction of his longest ranged missiles and of manufacturing facilities for them (35) – (37).

Also note the trick of misdirection used on the mythical “threats” posed by Iraq or Iran getting WMD –  i.e both had and have proven they wouldn’t use them if they had them for fear of a nuclear counterstrike.

As for your theory that his critics should “move on”, that will only be possible when Blair, the Israeli government and half the politicians in the US at least stop calling for another war on Iran that would get hundreds of thousands more killed – and editors and journalists like yourself stop parroting them on the non-existent “threat” from “scary” Iran. (Hoping that they might admit the horrendous lies they told and crimes they committed in Iraq and deal with the reality that neither Iraq nor Iran can possibly pose a threat to nuclear armed nations and their allies who also have immensely stronger militaries than them would doubtless be too much.)

Iraqis will not be able to move on for decades, because they’re still being killed by the same US trained death squads and the same terrorists that the US let into the country by invading and creating chaos, with no concern for anything but their own profits.

You, Mr. White, like Blair, are certainly “careless” of the truth and “spinning in well-trodden mud” on Iran as on Iraq before it though. You never let facts get in the way of some smug opinion that Blair is half right and his critics are all just as wrong as he is - some tawdry, fact and logic free, fence sitting.

But forget facts, eh Michael? Iran is "scary" so Blair must be half right. Pathetic. Anyone paying to buy a newspaper with one of your columns in it is certainly being robbed if they expected any of the central facts from reliable sources, or any coherent argument.

Have you spent so much time being flattered and fed lies by government press officers and Ministers that you actually believe they’re giving you the facts and not spoon feeding you garbage? Do you actually check any reliable, neutral (as opposed to political, government) sources on anything? ; Clearly not often.

The above includes plenty of reliable sources with solid facts (listed below and in some cases on the links below). I wish you’d recognise some of them. I don’t think it’s likely you ever will though. Much easier to pretend the truth is half way between what Blair says and what his critics say than risk losing readers or having to do any work by researching and publishing the unpleasant facts.

(1) = Guardian Politics Blog 21 Jan 2011, 17.38 GMT, ‘Chilcot inquiry: we wuz robbed again’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/jan/21/chilcot-inquiry-tony-blair-iraq

(2) = Baroness Prashar,http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/usha-prasher/26541

(3) = The Iraq Inquiry – People - Baroness Usha Prashar of Runnymede,
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/background/ushaprashar.aspx

(4) = The Iraq Inquiry – People – Sir Martin Gilbert,http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/background/martingilbert.aspx

(5) = Sir Martin Gilbert Online,http://www.martingilbert.com/

(6) = Telegraph 31 Jan 2007 ‘Churchill wanted to use gas on enemies’,http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/WSC/gaswar.html

(7) = Guardian 28 Nov 2002 ‘The Churchill you didn't know’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2002/nov/28/features11.g21

(8) = Guenther W. Gellermann, "Der Krieg, der nicht stattfand", Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1986, pp. 249-251, http://www.codoh.com/incon/incongasmemo.html

(9) = Rashid Khalidi (2005) ‘Resurrecting Empire’, Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusets, 2005, page 26 - 27

(10) = Thomas Pakenham (1999) ‘ The Boer War’, The Folio Society, London, 1999,
p613-615, 626-634 (chapters 38 & 39)

(11) = Observer 26 Sep 2004 ‘Statesmen for these times’, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1379819,00.html

(12) = See (9) above, entire book

(13) = Bennis , Phyllis & Moushabeck  , Michael (Editors) (1992)  ‘Beyond the Storm’  ; Canongate Press , London , 1992, p326 – 355

(14) = Lee , Ian (1991) ‘Continuing Health Costs of the Gulf War’, Medical Educational Trust , London , 1991

(15) = Clark , Ramsey (1992) ‘War Crimes: a Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq’ Maissoneuve Press , 1992 – and at http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm

(16) = Observer 20 Dec 1998 ‘Refineries in the bombsights in plan to undermine regime’

(17) = New York Times 18 Aug 1999 ‘With Little Notice, U.S. Planes Have Been Striking Iraq All Year’, http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/081399iraq-conflict.html

(18) = New Statesman 17 Aug 2000 ‘Labour claims its actions are lawful while it bombs Iraq, starves its people and sells arms to corrupt states’, http://www.newstatesman.com/200008070012

(19) = Guardian 19 Feb 2001 ‘Raid shows Bush-Blair bond on Iraq’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/feb/19/usa.iraq2

(20) = Counterpunch 04 Dec 2002 ‘No-Fly Zones Over Iraq : Washington's Undeclared War on "Saddam's Victiims"’, http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill1204.html

(21) = See blog post on following link and the sources listed for it,http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2010/09/blair-us-uk-and-saddams-invasions-and.html

(22) = See blog post on following link and the sources listed for it,http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2010/09/are-iraqis-better-off-as-result-of-2003.html

(23) = Lawrence Freedman (2008) ‘A Choice of Enemies’, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2008

(24) = See the website page on the following link and the sources listed for it, http://www.duncanmcfarlane.org/who%27s_right_on_Iraq/torture/

(25) = http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/people.aspx

(26) = BBC News 18 Jan 2011 ‘Iraq inquiry 'disappointed' by Bush-Blair note secrecy’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12210687

(27) = Independent 20 Jan 2011 ‘Details from Blair's Iraq calls were deleted’,http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/details-from-blairs-iraq-calls-were-deleted-2189275.html

(28) = Pollack, Kenneth M.(20054), ‘The Persian Puzzle, Random House, New York, 2005 paperback edition - pages 249-374 ; Also see the link below and the sources for it, which include Pollack’s book with chapter and page numbers, http://www.duncanmcfarlane.org/PersianProblem/

(29) = Forward – The Jewish Daily – 24 Sep 2007 ‘The World Can Live With a Nuclear Iran ’,http://www.forward.com/articles/11673/

(30) = CNN 18 Sep 2007 ‘Retired general: U.S. can live with a nuclear Iran’,http://articles.cnn.com/2007-09-18/world/france.iran_1_nuclear-weapon-nuclear-program-nuclear-fuel?_s=PM:WORLD

(31) = Nye , Joseph S. & Smith , Robert K. (1992), ‘After the Storm, Madison Books , London , 1992 , - pages 211-216

(32) = Rice, Condoleeza (2000) in Foreign Affairs January/February 2000‘ - 'Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest' http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20000101faessay5-p50/condoleezza-rice/campaign-2000-promoting-the-national-interest.html - cited in Chomsky, Noam (2003) 'Hegemony or Survival' , Penguin Books , London & NY 2004, pages 34 & 260 citing Mearsheimer, John & Walt, Stephen (2003) in Foreign Policy Jan/Feb 2003

(33) = Lawrence Freedman (2008) ‘A Choice of Enemies’, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2008, Chapter 12, p245

(34) = See the blog post link below and sources 5 to 11 at the bottom of it,http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2010/09/blair-us-uk-and-saddams-invasions-and.html

(35) = Briefing of the Security Council, 14 February 2003: An update on inspections, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, Dr. Hans Blix, http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/security_council_briefings.asp#6

(36) = Briefing of the Security Council, 7 March 2003: Oral introduction of the 12th quarterly report of UNMOVIC, Executive Chairman Dr. Hans Blix,http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/pages/security_council_briefings.asp#7

(37) = Also see the blog post link below and sources for it,http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2010/09/risks-of-action.html