Following Blair's weekend outbursts after the loosening of the straight-jacket, if (big if) The Guardian is to believed the US may be cosying up to Iran with a view to some sort of initiative over Iraq. How many times can sides be changed?

Reported in the Times too Dally. Funny how in Syria IF the yanks had intervened it would have been against Assad, therefore arguably on the side of ISIS. Next door in Iraq they would be supporting the state against ISIS. The Iranians ability to exploit the situation in Iraq should not be under estimated, I think.

Dally, didn't Tony Blair pretty much say what you have said all along that the world has become a more dangerous place since Obama was elected pointing to his (and others) inaction over Syria?

Yes (although I predicted the world would become more dangerous in the euphoria of Obama's election and seem to recall the wannabe thinking classes on here rubbished my thoughts) but he seems to have omitted to mention that his apparently illegal involvement in Iraq also lead to inevitable problems and doesn't see to think that further meddling will just cause more long-term problems.

The message Blair is delivering that the Syrian conflict has spilled over into Iraq is supported by other diplomatic types not known for supporting the original invasion in Iraq in 2003.

I am pretty sure one of them has said he'd wish Blair would shut up because with Blair saying this the message which is not wrong is lost under all the indignation he has the cheek to offer an opinion.

Blair is also probably right to suggest Iraq could have descended into civil unrest the same way as other Arab countries have done had there been no invasion.

None of that means the invasion was right (which he still seems to think it was) and I am certain it radicalised many leading to thousands of deaths between 2003 and before Syria kicked off but that doesn't mean the current situation is all down to what happened in 2003.

ISIS is an organisation that supposedly wants some sort of joint Syrian/Iraqi state and its military operations have previously been predominantly involved in the Syrian civil war. There was even a revolt in Syria where other groups opposed to Assad rounded on ISIS trying to kick the foreign fighters it is noted for having out of Syria.

Lakhdar Brahimi who was as close to the action as you can get being the former UN representative to Iraq holds no truck with Bliars revisionism!

[urlhttp://www.channel4.com/news/people-dont-listen-to-tony-blair-any-more-brahimi[/url

Seems a good way to proceed to me: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... EFFER.html

Seems a good way to proceed to me: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... EFFER.html

Well I can't watch that at the moment but saying something didn't exist before 2003, which is the headline on the site, doesn't mean the only reason it does is because of the invasion of Iraq. It would mean what has happened in Syria has nothing to do with the organisation which I think is obviously not true.

Blair can waffle as much as he wants about Syria, Arab Springs et al, but most independent observers are in agreement that the fragmentation and destabilisation of Iraq is down to the Allies phoney War on Terror.
You see, the 'New Iraq' spiel was just fantasy, even when they put their own puppet-master in control, the one they are now trying to blame for the countries current woes.
When you launch an indicrimate war against a sovereign state, whilst in the process killing hundreds of thousands of innnoent people, bombing the country by air to smithereens without any serious attempt at putting it back together again, you unshockingly get just that, destabilisation.

The invasion of Iraq was a huge mistake but it still doesn't mean the only reason ISIS exists is for because of it and it doesn't mean the conflict in Syria isn't a huge reason why this organisation exists either.

It looks like whoever said Bair should keep quiet because if he pointed this out the message would get lost in the noise was right.

The ISIS thing is a really complex one with backers from all over the place including Kuwait which was of course invaded by Iraq.

It is indeed complex and here's [url=http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_06_18/I-told-you-so-says-Galloway-as-Cameron-warns-of-UK-terror-threat-6895/George Galloway's take on it[/url.

Ignoring the grandstanding, I find it hard to argue with much of his analysis and conclusions. More interestingly, the article suggests that, however you do it, Gorgeous George "has started the process" of asking Parliament to impeach Bliar for his role in the Iraq invasion. Now that will be an eye-opener.

Dave reckons those ISIS fellows are planning attacks in the UK...

The argument goes that if someone goes to Syria and/or Iraq to fight for their indoctrinated religion fueled agenda then when they come back here they'll already be programmed into continuing their jihad in the UK.

So lets just think about this for ten seconds, our security people state that there could be up to 500 of them, so presumably they know who they are, thats assuming that they haven't just pulled the 500 number out of thin air for political effect, so they know who they are, they know where they are, they know where they will be returning from - so just don't let them come back.

Or are our homeland "security experts" not quite that clever enough to know who these people are, this in itself wouldn't be surprising having seen what they rely on as cctv "evidence" in the most terrorist sensitive street in London ...

I think you overestimate what they can do.

If 500 'possibles' set off abroad they have every right to do so. On what grounds could you stop them?

Once they are abroad they are free to travel wherever they want. What if, just for one example, one of them travels to Yemen, or Kenya, and then takes a ferry or a desert road into Somalia and meets up with some rum bunch somewhere there? What do you think they could do? Send a guy with a hat and raincoat to tail each one?

And despite being in Somalia, this individual hasn't yet done anything illegal. If he then moves on to some guerilla unit which makes its way to Syria, or Iraq, or wherever, just how do you propose they establish this? Man in raincoat again?

The biggest problem is you can't track everyone who goes abroad, even ones who you suspect are off to train or fight you can't follow, and so unless you are proposing detention without charge, what, practically, could be done?

There little to no chance Blair would ever be tried for war crimes so the impeachment idea is interesting.

The reasoning behind the no war crimes view is for a start the treaty of Rome that governs the International Criminal Court doesn't cover acts of aggression properly. There is no accepted definition of what constitutes it included in the treaty because when it was written Britain and the USA could not agree on a definition so it never made it into the treaty in a suitably defined way. As it is not clearly defined you can't try someone for the crime.

You will also not get him in actual war crimes either which [iare[/i defined by the treaty. For leaders to be tried for war crimes they have to be ones instigating them. So if a squaddy executes half a dozen prisoners this is a war crime but it doesn't mean Blair could be tried for it as he didn't send in the troops with the orders to execute prisoners. Such an incident as that would be dealt with by military or national criminal courts with a case against the squaddy not the prime minister of the time.

Perhaps you could argue if the UK knowingly undertook torture such as waterboarding Blair could be seen as liable for prosecution but even then the ICC would only prosecute if it could be shown Britain wasn't going to. The ICC only acts where the country in question either can't because it does not have the set up to do so or won't. If the issue is being dealt with nationally the ICC doesn't get involved. So things like the Chilcot enquiry will help head off any such moves. Even if it acted on this idea it is still incredibly hard to prove it was actual policy.

So I think with all that the best you are going to get is impeachment for misleading parliament about the reasons for going to war but even then I am not sure there would be a great appetite for it. It might also be biased because as Galloway says the views of an MP's constituents may influence them to vote a certain way and if they are just anti-Blair for the sake of it that could lead to an outcome based on bias not considered legal opinion.

Here is another interesting article on why Blair won't be tried to counter Galloway's views:

[urlhttp://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/05/does-boris-johnson-really-want-to-see-tony-blair-tried-for-war-crimes/[/url

"Considered legal opinion" - ah yes, I remember that. IIRC in summary, it considered war on Iraq wasn't legal, but as Bliar didn't like that, he got them to change "wasn't" to "was".

Goldsmith, the attorney general, told them it was legal. And it was Jack Straw as foreign secretary who was in the thick of the legal aspect of it as it was Straw who was seeking the legal opinion not Blair.

In this article [urlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7078079/Chilcot-inquiry-Iraq-invasion-had-no-legal-basis-in-international-law.html[/url

You will see that Sir Michael Wood contended in 2003 it was illegal but then back in 2002 told Goldsmith earlier UN resolutions could be used so it was legal.

Hmm.

Well, in his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry Goldsmith said Biar’s claims that Britain did not need a UN ­resolution explicitly authorising force were not compatible with his legal advice.



[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/27/iraq.iraq2[/url

I agree (!). In addition to what you say, keeping people under surveillance is extremely labour intensive. Since the 1990 s the Security Service took on most of this responsibility from the police, which led, in my view, to better performance. But no one is perfect, as the events of 7th July 2005 showed.

But its either 500 or its not, and if its 500 as quoted then someone somewhere has counted them and knows who they are, and will therefore Have their passport details - they'll know all of this because otherwise they wouldnt be able to differentiate between the 500 trainee terrorists and the couple of dozen flights full of other people which leave Heathrow for the middle east every day.

Either that or the 500 is a pile of bollax made up for the newspapers to make us think that our security people actually do something.

I'd suppose they have a very good idea what many will be looking to get up to, and will have a varying degree of suspicion about the rest. Once they are out of the country I expect that they can try to build up a picture and a pattern with perhaps lots of little bits of information, I don't expect they will have very many easy cases at all.

Other countries, the UN, Nato etc... will only get involved once the oil fields are threatened

Read this morning that ISIS as well as getting 40kg of uranium my have got their hands on "chemical weapons" in Iraq. Did they find them when the US and UN couldn't!? Or did the US / UK / puppet government put them there?

I was gobsmacked to hear that they also file online "accounts", apparently they are worth upwards of $2 billions. Their wealth comes from extortion, kidnap, looting etc and their expenditure includes repairs and improvements to infrastructure - something the allies seemed to have overlooked after they bombed the crap out of Iraq

There was no need for any infrastructure reparation.
It was put to much better use in Rumsfeld and Haliburtons pockets.