20 years ago the U.S and UK invaded Iraq.
Today Tony Blair is free to go on television
has made a huge amount of money the same with George Bush.
At the same time Julian Assange languages in Belmarsh prison
because he told the truth about this war.
"Light em all up"
There is something deeply wrong with a society
with those kind of priorities.
When you look at the people who brought us the war in Iraq
the people who used everything at their disposal the state machine,
Parliament, the media when you look at what all those people did
nobody has faced any of the consequences.
Even when the Chilcott report reported Tony Blair set up his own
press conference paid for by the immense wealth
which he now has the many houses that he has.
He was made Envoy for peace in the Middle East,
he was given a Knighthood last year.
Whereas all the people who told the truth about the war
the people who marched what happened to them?
The Muslim Community penalised by the prevent system for telling the truth
and for standing up for their rights.
The people like Julian Assange imprisoned in Belmarsh
for all these years for telling the truth.
I remember Tony Blair the day of February the 15th
when we had so many people marching in London he said:
"Even if a million people march in London that's not as many
as Saddam Hussein killed."
The war in Iraq ended up killing more people.
He talked about human rights this is about democracies
about getting rid of a dictatorship.
After he stopped being Prime Minister
what did he spend his time doing? Advising dictators.
The truth is all of these were lies,
all of them were things where they said we are going to make things better,
and actually they made it worse,
and not just in Iraq in the last 20 years armament worldwide,
amount of money spent on Military has doubled.
Nearly two trillion dollars are now spent on arms every year,
making the world a much more dangerous place.
We've now got conflict not just between dictator in the Middle East
and the biggest Imperial power in the world the United States.
We've now got effectively a proxy war in Ukraine between two major
Imperial powers and both of them with nuclear arms.
We've got much more real possibility of war with China again this will be a nuclear war
and therefore the devastation of humanity so exactly the opposite of what we were told 20
years ago has turned out to be the case it's a more dangerous World Iraq's a much more dangerous
place we have far more refugees than we had then Taliban in Afghanistan back in control terrorism
has grown and indeed where did ISIS and Al-Qaeda come from well in Iraq they came from British
occupied Basra Province where they were formed in prison where many Iraqis were in prisons and the
shameful thing is that the people who created the war are still being given awards are still
making huge amounts of money and in the case of Tony Blair is still being invited onto the BBC
to give his views on absolutely everything instead of being in the dock at The Hague
which is where I think most people in Britain would like him to be from the very beginning from
the time he went to Bush's Ranch in the spring of 2002 Tony Blair was absolutely fully committed to
every aspect of the war in Iraq he lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction which
had never been found because they didn't exist and there were all sorts of people who said so
at the time including the um weapons inspectors who you might think would be people who did have
some particular knowledge about this this was all dismissed by Blair by Aleister Campbell when they
devised a dossier in this is the man who promoted the dossiers over the evening standard that day
Iraq and attacked Britain in 45 minutes I think a period of Silence from Alistair Campbell would be
welcomed by everybody instead of which he seems to be in podcasts and on couches all over the TV
studios this tells you something about the lack of integrity and the lack of morals of so much
of our media coverage I think the media role was very very important and again that hasn't really
been helped to account at all if you look at the broadcast media particularly the BBC it was an
absolute disgrace I remember Andrew Marr who was the political correspondent who just after
the war started said Tony Blair had won this argument he said that they would be able to
take Baghdad without a bloodbath and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating and on both
of those points he has been proved conclusively right and it would be entirely ungracious even
for his critics not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime
minister as a result 20 years on this is so important because it's not just about the past
it's not just about the present it's also about the future and this question of war is going to
become a bigger and bigger question over the next two or three years the project for a New
American Century was essentially about trying to redraw the world on Pro U.S lines American
Germany had to be maintained and had to be extended many of Bush's key advisors were
people who were part of that project they could see that China was a rising power as a rising
power economically it was also becoming a major military power China is today the second biggest
military power in the world it has long been a permanent member of the UN Security Council and it
has long been a nuclear power so the project saw the threat of China as a very real one and they
wanted to change the politics of the Far East of the Pacific in terms of the rise of China and to
strengthen the United States in that region they also wanted to redraw the politics of the Middle
East and that particularly meant boosting Saudi Arabia and Israel as their two closest allies
in the region against Iraq and against Iran and that's a policy that's continued the Middle East
itself there are very few democratic governments and that is to do with the way in which Imperial
Powers decided on a particular form of government which really didn't care about democracy they were
concerned with having regimes which were closely connected to them politically economically and
militarily and that's what's been created yes Saddam Hussein was a dictator he was a dictator
who was put into power through the acts of the United States but he was by no means unique in
that region Saudi Arabia for example has been engaged in a war against Yemen for seven years
no question about regime change the murder of a journalist carried out at the behest of members
of the Saudi royal family nothing is done you know we're talking here about extremely undemocratic
States the British government United States governments are perfectly happy to work with
those people as long as they keep the area secure for oil profits that's the bottom line we had many
many Iraqis in this country who campaigned with us against the war in Iraq not because they lie
rights to them actually they had suffered they'd been put in prison they'd suffered
terrible too which evades up and all sorts of things at his hand so they knew exactly what
was going on but they also knew that the war was not going to make it better for ordinary Iraqis
actually would mean as it has meant a breakup of the country a complete destruction of lives
of livelihoods of huge numbers of refugees who are treated appallingly when they get to any of
the countries that were involved in the war the impact of things like depleted uranium all sorts
of terrible things that the Iraqi people have suffered perhaps the most shocking one was the
revelation of what happened in the Iraqi prison of Abu ghraib where American troops were torturing
people were photographing them in the most degrading way we're treating them like animals
we're doing all these sorts of things this is not only in contravention of every International legal
agreement about the way in which prisoners of War or indeed any prisoners should be treated
it also told you exactly what the occupation was about the occupation was about repression
and cruelty and putting down the people who dared to stand up against the American Invasion and Abu
grave showed that in the most terrific terms but you know you can't separate a brutal War shock a
law the bombing of cities which took place The Invasion the cruelty the siege of Fallujah all
these things that went on you can't separate that from the repression that followed they're
very much part of the same thing and if you're invading a country and occupying a country one
of the things you have to do is to dehumanize the population that you're occupying because you have
to justify what you're doing and that's what they did war is embedded in the kind of society we live
in we live in a society which is imperialist which is about conquering other countries and
extracting money from other countries we live in a society where the rich get richer and the poor
get poorer so they don't care about whether your hospital is crumbling they don't care if the roof
of your children's school is leaking they don't care if you can't afford to heat or eat and you
have to choose or maybe these days you can't even afford both they really don't care about
those things what they do care about is preserving their wealth and power and their ability to spread
that wealth and power and War and weapons are absolutely Central to their ability to do so this
is locked into their system and that's why they do it and that's why we have to fight against it
we've got a mainstream media which is really not open to any views which don't coincide with
a very very narrow consensus we need Independent Media so much it's so important that we can get
alternative views out that's why it's important to subscribe to Double Down News on patreon