Saturday, July 9, 2016

Greg Sheridan: Master Satirist

This is satire, right?:

"Listening to Tony Blair's epic press conference and John Howard's shorter but no less commanding performance, I was struck by just what master politicians these two men were, and how far they tower over all their successors from both sides of politics in either country. Thirteen years after the events, these two giants are still masters of all the detail, picking their way through the fog of war in real time." (Giants show the path to truth in fog of war, The Australian, 8/7/16)

"Blair's memo to Bush that 'we will be with you, whatever' was not a blank cheque to go to war... but a commitment that Britain would work with Washington to solve the problem of Iraq." (ibid)

"Islamic State emerged out of Syria, a collapsed nation in which the West did not intervene at all." (ibid)

5 comments:

Grappler said...

It must be, MERC. either that or Sheridan lives in a parallel universe. All of those statements are demonstrably false.

On ISIS:

http://www.crethiplethi.com/the-historical-roots-and-stages-in-the-development-of-isis/islamic-countries/syria-islamic-countries/2015/


Blair's note to Bush is here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/06/full-text-annotated-tony-blairs-2002-iraq-memo-to-george-bush/

I quote:

"I will be with you, whatever. But this is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties. The planning on this and the strategy are the toughest yet. This is not Kosovo. This is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf War."


I have just arrived in the UK on a visit. Blair is almost universally reviled here from both ends of the political spectrum. Except for the Blairites in the Parliamentary Labour Party, no-one believes a word he says. Sheridan would see that if he went and read the comment pages of a few newspapers.

What is interesting is that this is the Murdoch press defending Blair.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/new-book-claims-tony-and-hcherie-blair-have-grown-apart-since-wendi-deng-revelations-20150309-13zrfj.html

MERC said...

G, suffice it to note that in the exact same issue in which Sheridan claims that ISIS is a purely Syrian phenomenon (p 8), there's an article by Catherine Philp of The Times headed, 'How Islamic State rose up from the ashes of Iraq conflict' (p 9). And Sheridan's The Australian's foreign editor.

Grappler said...

Nice one, MERC!

Grappler said...

Another pertinent quote from the memo:

"We don't want to be mucked around by Saddam over this, and the danger is he drags us into negotiation. But we need, as with Afghanistan and the ultimatum to the Taleban, to encapsulate our casus belli in some defining way."

Sheridan does not read!

Anonymous said...

How on earth did this clown receive the "AO"? Something fishy here.