COOK RESIGNS in PROTEST

kegs - I can hear what you're saying. But by cabinet shared responsibility, Robin Cook would have to take the heat for any civilian/military deaths resulting from this conflict.

I'm sure he's done his best to get Blair to take a different course of action, but if he feels he can't support the prime minister then he's within his right to resign. If enough cabinet ministers had backbones we could still end up with British troops staying in Kuwait.

This *is* a very serious issue, Tony Blair only has about 20% of the population behind him right now. It is right that people come out publicly against his policies.

20% yet another poll noone really know how amny ppl are actually for or against. think about it even if 1,000,000 ppl were polled how many other million ppl did not get there voice hear??? Warning with all these precentages they are mearly just refelction on the people who are givin the poll

Originally posted by RavenStar
Okay..so that is britain.

Is anyone in America thinking of resigning or is all the senate agreed on this course of action?

If so...Presidency is better than Parliment!!!

NO WAY!!!! Our politicians are whores. Power power power.. all they care and will hold to it anyway they can. I can only hope though that they ALL resign.

Dom:
I Know, I know, ....and yet, I dont.
My head is up my arse right now. I'm Playing loud music just to drown out myself.
I agree with you, execpt he's not the foreign secretary anymore, he's just responsible for the M.P's and in that way you're right as a lot of M.P's are against the war and he has to stand up for them, but I still dont think It was the right decison. If he wanted to cause embarassment he could have just gone to the press. If he wanted to resign he should have done it at an earlier stage, and then maybe it would have had a constructive effect. Not now when we're at such a heavy point of the whole shebang
feck I need a drink....

[Edited on 17-3-2003 by kegs]

"cassini, what is your point of view? "

Ravenstar, I think Blair is exactly wher he wants to be, Clare Short and Robin Cook matter little when you have majority support in your own party AND majority support in the opposition party.

Blair and Bush are not bad men and obviously want a better world but Roosevelt and Churchill they are not.

Agree with you there!

They'll do their best!

we can ask no more or less of them.

I think about it like..how would i have done it if i was them?

Heres's the speech, not sure if its the full amount but it was 11 minutes long. Its a great one, he even has a pop at Bush not being elected!


"I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour's foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.
I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.

In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.

The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not Nato. Not the EU. And now not the security council. To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.

Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is divided. The security council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being fired.

The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq's military strength is now less than half its size at the time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq's military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in days.

We cannot base our military strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a seri ous threat. Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term - namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the 1980s when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.

Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?

I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience is exhausted. Yet it is over 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

We do not express the same impatience with the persis tent refusal of Israel to comply. What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to action in Iraq.

I believe the prevailing mood of the British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be given a chance. And they are suspicious that they are being pushed hurriedly into conflict by a US administration with an agenda of its own. Above all, they are uneasy at Britain taking part in a military adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that the House of Commons has lost its central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for parliament to stop the commitment of British troops to a war that has neither international authority nor domestic support."

� Robin Cook was, until yesterday, leader of the House of Commons

Kegs,

Hi again

Were you bored yesterday to copy that?

I admit that yesterday i was fuming at one point over a debate but to copy that out, you must have recorded the news or something?

Nice info though....never heard the speech!!

Hows the weather by the way?

That was an amazingly good speech. He covered every major point that people have been worried about. I'm glad Robin Cook has stepped down, it gives the country one last chance to pull out of this war. Hopefully this evening the 120 rebel labour mps will rise to 180, + 20 conservatives, + 50 libdems would be 250 votes. They really need 350 to push it, so they probably won't win the vote, but at least there is this final chance remaining.

One more copy of the speech at CNN...

edition.cnn.com...

This is definitely a different transcript to the one above (1500 words against 850). I wouldn't be surprised if CNN have modified it either, although they do include the comment about Israel, removed from the BBC's "exciting excerpts" version of the speech...

[Edited on 18-3-2003 by dom]

Just got it off the gaurdian website.
The weathers not too bad, sunny, but baltic as usual...

First difference I've noticed...

CNN : "France has been at the receiving end of bucketloads of commentary in recent days"

Guardian : "In recent days France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. "

So CNN are at it again...

Dom, I'm more inclined to agree with you now I've heard the speech.
His resignation could be worth it to get the points
he made into public debate.

Yeah, in agreement with both of you there!!

Kegs, sympathise with you....its sunny but piggin' cold over here as well!!!

Lets just hope that i can still take my 3 weeks holiday in May so i can go away somewhere warm?

I've found a BBC transcript...

news.bbc.co.uk...

and a realvideo link to the speech is on that page (US people, watch it, you'll find it interesting)

And apologies to CNN, looks like The Guardian were the ones twisting his words...

Ah, you found the BBC one! That's what I was looking for. Dont usually use the gaurdian. Are you saying CNN, the BBC and the one I've posted have differnt versions? (I wouldnt be surprised)

Ravenstar, fancy going to jamiaca? YA MON!

Third minister resigns, home office minister John Denham has just resigned saying he can not (oops)support the government in the vote tonight. May be we will have a few more by the end of today.

[Edited on 18-3-2003 by cassini]

Originally posted by dom

AF1 - this was expected. Clair Short has already said she will resign if Blair goes to war without a resolution. She's also publicly called him reckless (it was a BIG story over here last week).

Hi Dom!

Just received this message from BBC email - Clare Short isn't resigning. Details at

news.bbc.co.uk...

Lots of useful links there too - I'm sure others would have already bookmarked the BBC Home page but, if not, it comes very highly rated!

Why did she not resign?

I thought that she was willing to go because of her morality issues on the war?

Oh, by the way Kegs.....Jamaica is okay..Mexico is better!

Originally posted by RavenStar
Why did she not resign?

I thought that she was willing to go because of her morality issues on the war?

Oh, by the way Kegs.....Jamaica is okay..Mexico is better!

Hi RavenStar!

Well, you got me there, that's for sure. Certainly, Clare Short spent a week or so blowing hot and cold over whether to resign or not (I suppose) and it's probably a wonder that she wasn't sacked from the Cabinet before she could resign??

All I can suppose is that she feels she can do more *inside* the Gavernment than she could outside it: with her particular remit, once the war is over, I guess she'll be in a strong position to help rebuild Iraq??

I'd be guessing that Tony Blair has been whispering in her ear for the past week about how great she is.

The rumour I've heard is that Tony Blair has said she's the best person for the job of rebuilding Iraq, and I'd also heard there was some UN pressure for her to stay for the same reason.

Overall though, I think she just signed her political suicide note. The backbenchers will no longer respect her, and the frontbenches will be looking for a way to get rid of her quietly in a few months time.

You've got to admire Blair though, incredible that he could manage to bring her round after she attacked him so publicly...