Posted on 05/23/2011 7:05:19 AM PDT by Cardhu
As the last group of British Royal Navy training staff pulls out of Iraq on Sunday marking the end of the UK military operation in the country, British MP Paul Flynn told RT the war in Iraq was not really worth it. “With 179 British lives lost and ten billion pounds spent, there will be no celebrations, no parades or marches or flags out to mark the end of the war. And all we seem to have achieved is we have replaced one rotten government with another rotten government,” stated Flynn.
According to the MP, the whole country understood it was the wrong war to get involved into.
“When it was decided in the British parliament to start the war there were over 200 MPs who voted against, which is unheard of! We very rarely go to war without the full-hearted consent of the British people, and in this case there were great reservations. And I believe today it is one of the worst moments of our history,” admitted Flynn.
MPs were under great pressure before the war actually started. Flynn claimed that the MPs were told they might lose their seats and the attempt was made “to bribe them, to bully them, to bamboozle them into taking a decision.”
“I voted against the war, but there were others who were persuaded to vote the other way. And it was on the basis of a lie – all the evidence is saying that there was an attempt made to deliberately deceive the British people and parliament. Tony Blair had decided and agreed with Bush that he deliver Britain into the war, but the evidence wasn’t there, so it was manufactured,” recollected the MP.
Flynn said that prior to the point of going into the Helmand province in Afghanistan in 2006, British intervention had a pretty good history; there were soft power interventions that produced good results.
“But then we went into Afghanistan. It might have been sensible to go there in 2001, but it was disaster to go to Helmand in 2006! There were only two British soldiers that died in Afghanistan in the first five years we were there. But in 2006 the death rate went up to 356.”
After that the UK lost its confidence in military intervention. According to Flynn, though some of those interventions can be beneficial, unfortunately the record of Iraq means it will be very difficult to use military intervention beneficially when situations arise in the future.
I guess the Crimean War was a cake walk..............
Apparently history began when Flynn was born. No mention of the German Blitz during WWII... and we won't even go back into truly ancient history like the slaughter of Boudica's army by the Romans.
I figure it was that one time when they lost that big ‘ole chunk of land across the pond....
For Mr. FLYNN! I guess Oliver Cromwell marching into Ireland and slaughtering thousands of Irish doesn’t qualify as a bad moment. His Irish ancestors and family members might want to correct him.
Welcome to the new ROE.
You can’t win a war if you don’t admit it’s a war.
He really does have a point there.
It is said that democracies should go to war reluctantly and fiercely. There are exceptions of course, but that's a good rule to follow. And that's not what happened in Iraq.
“But then we went into Afghanistan...”
Doesn’t he mean ‘returned’ to Afghanistan? I mean-Brits were wasting those guys for a long time....”King of the Kyber Rifles” and all that stuff???
That was one of the high points they needed teaching a lesson.
Same thought
Wasn’t the previous govt pursuing (and occasionally using) WMD, engaging in genocide against its own people, raping the environment, sponsoring terrorist training and operations vs the West and Israel, defying UN resolutions, dealing in long range missile research with North Korea, raping and beheading women as instrument of terror, shredding and dissolving in acid the political opposition leaders after raping their wives and children in front of them, and enabling the sociopathy of Uday and Qusay, presumably the next two leaders in Saddam’s family dynasty?
Weren’t millions of Iraqi children dying from sanctions (so we were told)? How many Iraqis have clean water, police protection, a military that does not consider them the enemy, electicity, and economic oporotunity now vs 2001? What is the trend line?
Didn’t the last government launch a nationalist war aginst Iran that killed millions? Launch an invasion of Kuwait?
Toss SCUDS at Israel? Constantly threaten shipping in the Gulf?
Where are the killing fields and mass graves the current government has created since 2003?
If this government is “rotten” what arab state has a government that is “good”?
Back to you. “Flynn”
Obviously the leftists are using their old tricks of lying about the past to condemn the present they don't like. In my view, Hussein would have eventually tried a mass murder attack in the U.S. If he was brazen enough to attempt an assassination of an American president, Bush Senior, he certainly would have reinstituted his wmd programs with the ultimate goal of a mass murder in the U.S. We eliminated a major threat to our country, and I was happy to see him at the end of a rope.
Well, technically, the German Blitz was one of England’s FINEST moments.
Right back at ya', Sir Winston! ;-)
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