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max_tranmere wrote:

> No mention of special relationship

> No mention of special relationship

> Obama does use the words

> Obama does use the words

> No mention of special relationship

Two of out of five, so I suppose I owe you two/fifths of an apology. But I will apologise wholeheartedly... Well done, some neat research.

No worries. There are many other videos on YouTube that are similar.

[quote]I was thinking about this recently, bearing in mind we feel we have an obligation to support the Americans in whatever they do I think Tony Blair may have felt he had little choice but to go along with it.[/quote]

People still don't get it. Tony Blair was talking about Saddam Hussain and the need to stop him right back in 1997-98, 3 years before George Bush Jr was elected. Blair was not George's obeying poodle but very much ahead of the curve.

"People still don't get it."

Oh yes, they do.

" Tony Blair was talking about Saddam Hussain and the need to stop him right back in 1997-98, 3 years before George Bush Jr was elected."

And 6 years after the American and British government had deployed navy, army and fighter pilots to "stop him right back" in 1990-91 in the 1st Gulf War.

"Blair was not George's obeying poodle but very much ahead of the curve."

Read about the 1st Gulf War. Blair's thoughts on Iraq in 1997/98 were very similar to the US's.

Of course American politicians play up to the 'Special Relationship' bit, hardly surprising when a succession of British PM's first act has been to jet over to Washington, earnestly seeking assurance that we're still Uncle Sam's best friend. Their actions often prove different.

When Eisenhower humiliated this country over the Suez crisis in 1956, by threatening financial sanctions that would have put the economy in jeopardy, Britain should have accepted that its days as a world power were over, and let the Americans get on with it. The British Establishment couldn't accept this, so they threw in their lot with the Americans, as a very junior partner. Not every PM was so keen and one of the reasons Heath was so determined to get us in to what was then the Common Market was this knowledge that our relationship with our friends from over the Atlantic was so one-sided. (Ironically, every American administration for the last 50 years has also wanted us to be in the CM/EU albeit for different reasons)

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The worst terrorist attacks on the British mainland, 7/7 apart were carried out not by Islamic extremists, but the Provisional IRA. Did anyone from across the Atlantic stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with us? On the contrary, no serious attempts were made to stop the supply of arms and finance from IRA supporters in New York and Boston and senators called for IRA gangsters on the run over there to be given political asylum. The Good Friday Agreement in which an amnesty was given to the murderers of British soldiers and civilians also came about under American pressure. They did finally support Britain in the Falklands, but it was a close run thing. Reagan's administration was split, with some powerful players advising that if the Argentinian Junta fell, it might be replaced by, horror of horrors, a socialist administration.

As for Iraq, it was an unmitigated catastrophe. Whatever else he may have done, Saddam Hussein was a secular dictator who kept the lid on the religious crazies now at the heart of ISIS.

There are some in the Republican Party who take a misty-eyed view of the likes of Churchill and Thatcher, but for the most part, their politicians have a business-like attitude to this country. I am not at all antagonistic to American people and there's much about the country I admire, not least the determination of the majority to stand up for their rights and freedoms. But the idea that the two countries always share the same interests and that we should always be there by their side, is crap.

Interesting comments. It does concern me how we are, certainly, the very junior partner in the deal that is the special relationship. It concerns me exactly what will happen next that we will follow them on.

Regarding the IRA, an Irish friend of mine said to me after 11 September 2001: "now that it's happened to THEM, now they know what it feels like, they won't be so keen to support, co-ordinate and finance a war 3,000 miles from home." He was right, The Irish-American community of New York, who gave so much money to the IRA, and could not give a shit about innocent people, including children, being killed in England as a result of this war they were paying for, now knew what it was like to be on the receiving end. I remember the Economist magazine just after 9/11 describing the IRA as a 'busted flush'. They were, they could never go back to bombing again now that their backers and financers had had a taste of their own medicine.

The IRA's disastrous decision to send three of their men to Columbia in the late 1990's to train FARC rebels caused the IRA massive problems with the American State department. Other than Al Quaeda the USA had no bigger problem internationally than the FARC organisation of Columbia - most of the drugs into the USA come from there and the USA has lost undercover agents down there over the years. It was said that the first round of IRA decommissioning happened because the Americans forced them to do it following their anger over the FARC business.

The IRA continued to dig its own grave even further with the Northern Bank raid in 2005 and with the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast that same year. This got worldwide publicity and his wife and sisters met the American President and also Ted Kennedy, the man who was always regarded as the daddy of Irish-America. Kennedy held a press conference following his meeting with Robert McCartney's wife and sisters and demanded the IRA packed up. He famously said "no political party can have an armed unit. The IRA should be immediately disbanded and every gun, bullet and every piece of bomb making material immediately decommissioned and the organisation broken up and disbanded once and for all". His comment also officially outed Sinn Fein as the political wing of the IRA. Those who follow this knew that anyway, but now it was undeniable by Sinn Fein people in interviews they would give.

So, in response to what you said about the IRA, the Americans were uncaring of the consequences of the IRA's activities for years, so much so it was tantamount to low-level condonement, but they got so fed up with them towards the end that that is the main reason the IRA doesn't exist anymore.

It's a strange one: the Saddam thing. An evil tyrant but a situation where having removed him from office, and killed him, the country he ran is now in an even WORSE state than it was when he was in power. I heard someone use the expression: "if you break it you own it" with regard to Iraq once. We and the Americans broke it, and then left a country with an administration that can only control certain parts of the country, a state of almost anarchy in large parts of that huge country (Iraq is about the size of France), daily bombings, major sectarian problems that will probably never be solved, it makes you wonder whether we should have left Saddam in power.

[quote]It's a strange one: the Saddam thing. An evil tyrant but a situation where having removed him from office, and killed him, the country he ran is now in an even WORSE state than it was when he was in power.[/quote]

Tell me, Max.....would you like to have a party from the north get hold of power in Westminster, with a despotic Mancunian who gets despotic power over the police and army so he can do as he pleases. Who then takes control of the internet, tv and papers to constantly send out his own propaganda, raising statues of him all over London. He then commits genocide on the people of Kent and Essex and displaces Cockneys out of London, making half of them disappear, never to be seen again by their families and rumoured to be buried in unmarked mass graves all over the country. Would you like a to be brought up in such a country where it's almost impossible to leave where an argument in a pub could lead you to be visited in the night by your leader's secret police, taken and tortured and have threats of your family killed because of a rumour they heard about you? Would you put up living in totalitarian state like that if you knew that, on the good side, the nation is far less vulnerable to terrorist attacks from Muslims and the IRA? That you'd prefer to live as a serf or slave as long as the despot in charge does a decent job of keeping law and order?

Sam, I'm well aware that all the things you describe went on under Saddam, it was one of the worst places to live on earth. What I was saying was it's awful now still - in that there are major sectaratian problems and bombings and killings daily. Which situation would I prefer, the Saddam Iraq or the post Saddam Iraq? Neither. Both are/were hell.