Straw denies that illegal Iraq war is terror factor
BBC: Straw plays down Iraq war warning
The UK was a terror target before the Iraq war, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said after news of his officials' concern about the conflict's impact.
The Foreign Office's top civil servant, Sir Michael Jay, warned in May 2004 the war was fuelling UK Muslim extremism.
Responding for the first time to leaks of the warning, Mr Straw said he had agreed Sir Michael's letter. He said extremists used the war as an "excuse" but that did not mean the UK would have been safer without it. "We were in any event a target, and so was the rest of the world, for this extremist terrorism before Iraq," he said.
He refuted any suggestion that the UK would somehow have been immune from attack if the war had not happened.
db: Jack - your mind is not that dull; but it may have been warped by over indulgence in the herb. Like the other war-mongers you twist this argument. Nobody is saying that had the UK not attacked Iraq we would have
been free from all risk of being targeted by terrorists. What however is plain for anyone to see is that by attacking Iraq that risk increased exponentially. Like it or not Jack your foreign policy significantly contributed to the factors that brought terror to the streets of London. A more noble defense would be that 'it is a price worth paying' - surely that is what you must have believed when you were brain storming the possible consequences of throwing in your lot with the worlds #1 terrorist - and after all you are spreading freedom around the planet [as a farmer spreads muck]. And if you didn't see it coming - despite the warnings and your own misgivings - then that's pretty incompetent, Jack.
The UK was a terror target before the Iraq war, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said after news of his officials' concern about the conflict's impact.
The Foreign Office's top civil servant, Sir Michael Jay, warned in May 2004 the war was fuelling UK Muslim extremism.
Responding for the first time to leaks of the warning, Mr Straw said he had agreed Sir Michael's letter. He said extremists used the war as an "excuse" but that did not mean the UK would have been safer without it. "We were in any event a target, and so was the rest of the world, for this extremist terrorism before Iraq," he said.
He refuted any suggestion that the UK would somehow have been immune from attack if the war had not happened.
db: Jack - your mind is not that dull; but it may have been warped by over indulgence in the herb. Like the other war-mongers you twist this argument. Nobody is saying that had the UK not attacked Iraq we would have
been free from all risk of being targeted by terrorists. What however is plain for anyone to see is that by attacking Iraq that risk increased exponentially. Like it or not Jack your foreign policy significantly contributed to the factors that brought terror to the streets of London. A more noble defense would be that 'it is a price worth paying' - surely that is what you must have believed when you were brain storming the possible consequences of throwing in your lot with the worlds #1 terrorist - and after all you are spreading freedom around the planet [as a farmer spreads muck]. And if you didn't see it coming - despite the warnings and your own misgivings - then that's pretty incompetent, Jack.
posted by exoplanet at 12:34 AM
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