Yup we were also in Iran until the over throw of the Shah in the 70's...... as well as most of the Gulf , Africa, and ickle bits in S. America and S.E and East Asia. But that is a different world and the end of the Empire....there are many papers in modern history on the benefits and repercussions caused by the the Imperialism of those era's...... but on the whole I think Britain with its program of infrastructure, road, rail and goverment building helped to develope most of those countries.....many took independence and thrived...others tore themselves apart by the greed and viciousness of their own dictators and people.....a whole other subject there...
  But back to Blair and the british public.. oil ... and why we allowed it to happen...   If we became like Holland and had to vote ( it is an offence not to vote) then we would have a government in power that the people wanted by voting with their feet....then we only have ourselves to blame if they don't do what we want.... ......would it work...nope because 70% of people vote for the party whom their parents vote for.... most wouldn't have a clue what the policies at all..... only 60% of the population voted in the last election andduring local elections it is on average 30%...... becuase people generally don't care....or they would vote...   Just ask yourself.....did you vote for a labour governement time before last did your MP vote to go to war....if so did you complain...if not...why not if its such a big deal......Politicians don't go to war neither do civilians ( except those caught up in it)....soldiers finish what governments start.....and as for oil...well wait a few years from now when the machinery stops turning and the cars stop running as the oils running out for us....medicines and basic wares we take for granted are gone from the shelfs....we'll see whose that bothered if its over oil or not...   ....we in the uk are so molley cuddled and spoiled by our trimmings of life that we take everything for granted..... if that life slips away and if we run out of oil trust me it will all slip away ( nearly everything we use daily is born from the black gold everything)....will we all be so bothered by the benefits of oil from an invaded nation.....   The next big war is gonna be over one of two things.....oil or water.... take any of those things away from our comfortable lifes and see whether or not people of this country give two feeks what reasons are given to secure by force if necessary, as long as it doesn't affect their comfort of living the way they want...                                                                                                                                                                             

I have had too many deployments over the years with a lot of time to read and see far too much.... nothing like healthy debate its what makes us thrive....   “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”~Joseph Joubert                                                                                                                                                                              

It's Belgium where they have to vote. Here in Holland it's not such a big deal, but my Belgian colleagues all have to come in late or go home early on voting day                                                                                                                                                                             

Yeah sorry Matt, geographically challenged in my rant....but think it is a fantastic system..... should be law in UK then the majority rule by vote and we have no one else to blame when they goverment don't do as we want.....   ....read the manifesto if they don't produce change allegence....its how the game is played...                                                                                                                                                                             

I met Tony Blair when John Smith was still alive, and the slimy b**stard was lining himself up for PM then.  Don't know how many of his relatives will be buying his book cos I suspect he has sold most of them to get a vote.
Rather than pelting him and ranting, people should just not buy the book.  He's made enough money out of shafting this country.  He's on about donating £4m to the British Legion, he should give the lot, and it should have been an anonymous donation not another publicity stunt.   I have always voted Labour, not cos my parents did but because I'm a socialist, and in Clay Cross, hometown of Dennis Skinner, any other vote is wasted,our current Labour MP is called Ey-ore.  But for the last 3 general elections I've had to stick to my principles and waste my vote, because Labour is no longer a socialist  party, so yes I can criticise without conscience.   Back to the topic, we went to war, because he wanted to engratiate himself with Bush, Bush went to war because half the senate own 80% of the oil companies.   War criminal or not, Blair lied to the country re the reason for going to war.   As for the injustices executed on middle eastern population, many African dictators are no better but do we step in there?  No!  I wonder why!  Is it cos they is poor?    And there's much better ways to work off stress Johnny                                                                                                                                                                              

Ah! Now, Iran. There's an interesting case. We were in there before the overthrow of the Shah because we engineered the coup which brought him to power, ousting the democratically elected, secular government of the time (1953). You know why? Because the Mosaddegh government was elected with a mandate to nationalize the Anglo Persian Oil Company (better known now as BP). We didn't give a stuff then about the rights and freedoms of the people in the region then. The Shah's secret police have the dubious distinction of being, according to Amnesty Int, the worst violators of human rights anywhere, ever!

And our government doesn't give a stuff about the people in the region now! We bleat on about Sadam killing his people (using hardware we mostly sold to him), get distracted about the ooo pretty TV pictures of smart missiles flying down people's chimneys, and somehow ignore the carpet bombing, and cluster bombs and the civilian casualties of over 60,000. Sadam was a rank feckin amateur.

"Soldiers finish what politicians start." Very true, and very fitting my friend, and I am ashamed of a government who put our soldiers in harms way on the strength of a lie. I didn't vote labour, and I've never voted labour since they gave up socialism. 

                                                                                                                                                                             

Drum you have opened a can of worms with this thread lol                                                                                                                                                                             

Lets not get started on Burma then.                                                                                                                                                                               

Africa is far from poor my friends, there is an untapped wealth below the ground there in oil minerals and precious metals....its the logistics of it all....desert is one thing but the jungle is a totally different ball game..   As for the war....intell said he had WMD ie chemical and bio weapons....I stand by that....remember a bio weapon is a test tube....or a bag of powder, its not hard to hide..or to destroy....very easy to make very easy to destroy......   My friends, I will not be told by hack newspeople who were not there, saying that there was never any WMD ..... there is a lot of things that the every day person doesn't know....   lets just say, just because there is no concrete proof, it doesn't mean it wasn't there...... take my word for it ...or you can rely on information from the some two bit news hack or the Sun or Mirror or what ever crap the press are generating... remember the political climate and press wanted it to read this way... and there were a lot more reasons why that regime needed to go, research what happened under the regime and tell me it didn't need to go.......we sold those people out after the first Gulf by not finishing the job then........what happened to the Marsh arabs who rose up waiting for us to come help.......160,000 slaughtered and their ancestoral marsh lands destroyed for ever..... look at what they did to the Kurds before we took back Kurdistan, Genocide. mass murder mutilation, rape, torture.....use of chemical and bio weapons.   Ok there is a power struggle going on, there was no real after strategy.......the biggest mistake the west made was not invading in 91.....the rest of the region was 100% behind us, the people of Iraq were waiting and hoping, happy to see us..... but we bowed to the political pressure of the F**king French...turncoat f**kers, Germans ...since when should we listen to those shites...and Russia...who if you check my former posts were right in it with Iraq trading banking oil etc......same in the second Gulf with Oil for Aid.........Rememebr the Falklands...the Feeking Frogs were selling the Argies missles ... a lot went on during all of these conflicts, things that will never reach the light of day....   So my parting wisdom my left wing friends is " don't believe what you see or hear in the press, it is the illusion of what the people in the shadows want us to believe"........... there are far more powerful people and organisations operating in the back ground of every thing that happens in this world, that we will never know about and never hear about or see. Rememebr that the bigger the lie the easier it is to believe......   But ours is not to reason why ours is but to do and die                                                                                                                                                                             

Wow  what a good thread  My ex was in the SaS (sat 'n'sun  TA ) He went to Iraq  as a demic........... sorry medic .... Spent all his time in the med centres  and came  back  bullshitting and giving talks on the 'action' he had seen  (  plasters and Ibuprofen mainly)  but I must say  I have learned more by reading this thread than I did married for 24 years to a wannabe  ...............   sorry....