{"id":453,"date":"2005-04-25T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-25T19:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/04\/25\/jack-straw-thinks-youre-a-jerk\/"},"modified":"2005-04-25T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-25T19:37:00","slug":"jack-straw-thinks-youre-a-jerk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/04\/jack-straw-thinks-youre-a-jerk\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Jack Straw thinks you&#8217;re a jerk&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t worked it out yet, our man Justin McKeating &#8211; aka <a href=\"http:\/\/chickyog.blogspot.com\/\">Chicken Yoghurt<\/a> &#8211; is a bit good at the old enraged demolition of politicians&#8217; neverending doublespeak. That&#8217;s probably why they had a screenshot of his place in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/guardianpolitics\/story\/0,,1468407,00.html\">teh Grauniad<\/a> on Saturday and ignored poor old me (although <a href=\"http:\/\/pseudomagazine.blogspot.com\/2005\/04\/lawson-bastard.html\">Jarndyce has a theory on that&#8230;<\/a>). Methinks had Mark Lawson actually bothered to read Justin&#8217;s site for more than two seconds he might have realised that there are some British blogs which could very easily give newspapers a run for their money both in terms of quality of writing and depth of analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I digress. <a href=\"http:\/\/chickyog.blogspot.com\/2005\/04\/bunker-buster.html\">I agree with pretty much every single thing in this particularly top-notch post.<\/a> Except the bits said by Staw and Blair, obviously.<\/p>\n<p>And, as I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/europhobia.blogspot.com\/2005\/04\/john-ofarrell-tries-to-get-me-to-vote.html#comments\">STILL<\/a> getting people on here doing the usual &#8220;if you&#8217;re against the war you&#8217;re pro-Saddam&#8221; crap, here &#8211; for the record:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>I believe that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a GOOD THING<\/li>\n<li>BUT I do not believe he had connections to Al Quaeda<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I believe he had weapons of mass destruction<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think Saddam was a threat to Britain or America<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I believe that the war was legal under international law<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think it was a sensible time to launch a war when Afghanistan was still not pacified<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think it was a sensible place to launch a war at a time when the Islamic world was already pissed off at the West<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think it was well planned<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think it was well executed<\/li>\n<li>NOR do I think there is or was a realistic exit strategy<\/li>\n<li>AND I believe other dictators were (and are) more of a threat than Saddam<\/li>\n<li>AND I believe that the civilian casualties &#8211; whatever figure you take &#8211; are unacceptable<\/li>\n<li>AND I believe that the military casualties &#8211; whatever figure you take &#8211; are unacceptable<\/li>\n<li>AND I remember being told that &#8220;regime change&#8221; was not a war aim<\/li>\n<li>AND I believe that the British and American governments either lied or were utterly incompetent, or both\n<\/li>\n<li>AND I have friends &#8211; both journalists and soldiers &#8211; who have been posted to Iraq and put in direct, deadly danger because of all this<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So I reckon it&#8217;s fair enough for me to be a tad annoyed. Before you accuse me of being a wishy-washy anti-war Saddam-loving hippie, bear it all in mind.<\/p>\n<p>Especially bear in mind that one of my best friends from university and one of my best friends from school (with whom I shared a room for five years), both in the army, have both been posted to Iraq over the last couple of years. Understandably, I&#8217;d rather they weren&#8217;t killed &#8211; if that makes me a peacenik, so be it.<\/p>\n<p>But you accuse me of loving Saddam, or of not understanding the situation, or of being naive, or if you patronise me in any way &#8211; and this goes for you too Mr Straw, Mr Blair, Mr Hoon and all the rest &#8211; I&#8217;ll tell you to fuck off.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t worked it out yet, our man Justin McKeating &#8211; aka Chicken Yoghurt &#8211; is a bit good at the old enraged demolition of politicians&#8217; neverending doublespeak. That&#8217;s probably why they had a screenshot of his place in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2005\/04\/jack-straw-thinks-youre-a-jerk\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}