Protesters Pelt Blair With Shoes And Eggs

[chowka]

Protesters Pelt Blair With Shoes And Eggs

5:16pm, Saturday September 04, 2010
David Williams

Tony Blair has faced the wrath of around 200 anti-war protesters and an attempted citizen's arrest during the first public signing of his rapidly-selling memoirs in Dublin.
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Shoes and eggs were hurled at the former prime minister and scuffles broke out upon his arrival at Eason's bookstore in the Irish capital, despite heavy security. Activists clashed with Gardai as they tried to push down a security barrier outside the O'Connell Street shop, which had already been locked down in the anticipation of trouble. Officials exerted far more control inside, although 24-year-old protester Kate O'Sullivan from Cork succeeded in infiltrating the signing to attempt to make a citizen's arrest for war crimes.

Kate O'Sullivan tried to arrest Mr Blair after he signed his memoirs for her

She told Sky News she was swiftly evicted, seconds after addressing the former prime minister. "I went up to him and I said 'Mr Blair, I'm here to make a citizen's arrest for the war crimes that you've committed'," she said. "Immediately five security people grabbed me, started dragging me off. "I cried out there was half a million people dead in Iraq, how can you live with yourself, you've committed war crimes."

Mr Blair's arrival marked the high point of the unrest

The missiles hurled missed Mr Blair after he had emerged from the back of a car surrounded by a security team who shielded him with umbrellas. There was more unrest as he emerged from the bookstore after the signing session a couple of hours later. The campaigners, who turned out in the pouring rain, chanted: "Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?" They also shouted: "Tony Blair war criminal", "Arrest the butcher Blair" and "Blair Blair Bush's man and blood blood on their hands".

Seething activists gave the former prime minister a vociferous reception

Protesters also shouted abuse at customers and supporters of Mr Blair as they left the store with their newly-signed books. Undercover detectives had mingled with the crowds taking names before Mr Blair arrived at the shop at about 10.30am. The city tram service was suspended as Gardai blocked off streets surrounding the city centre store. Shops in the area also closed, with Penny's department store pulling down its shutters as scuffles broke out.

Those attending had already been prepped with stringent security measures and been issued with wristbands after passing through the cordon. All bags, purses and phones were ordered to be left at a holding point, while customers were also barred from taking photographs and told personal dedications were also off limits. Mr Blair was expected to spend around an hour signing copies of A Journey, the account of his political career which has already recorded unprecedented sales figures since its release earlier this week. Those keen for a signature had queued since the early morning. Sky News' Ireland correspondent David Blevins, in Dublin, said Mr Blair's attempts to begin his book signing tour outside the UK in the hope it would limit trouble had "backfired". He forecasted a vociferous response earlier, saying: "There will be a number of anti-war protesters. Some have already gathered outside and they are expected to increase in number. They are determined to make their voice heard."

 

[chobolan]

Army chief: How Blair and Brown betrayed our troops


Army chief: How Blair and Brown betrayed our troops

The former head of the Army accuses Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of badly letting down the Armed Forces during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite
Published: 10:00PM BST 04 Sep 2010

In a damning verdict, General Sir Richard Dannatt accuses Mr Brown of being a “malign” influence by failing to honour guarantees on defence spending during his time at the Treasury, and charges Mr Blair with lacking “moral courage” for failing to overrule his chancellor. Gen Dannatt’s book, Leading from the Front, which begins its serialisation in The Sunday Telegraph today, is the first major public critique of the Blair/Brown administration by a senior outside figure who served under both men. He was Chief of the General Staff from 2006-09.

He describes his efforts to persuade Mr Blair and Mr Brown that the Army – fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering heavy casualties – was facing almost unbearable pressures as “pushing a rock up a steep hill almost all the way through”. His book is further evidence of the cripplingly dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which Mr Blair spelt out in his own memoir, A Journey, published this week. The general also reveals in his book and in interviews for this newspaper that: -By early 2009, at a time when the Army was suffering a punishing casualty rate in Afghanistan, he had not had a face-to-face meeting with Mr Brown for six months.

Eventually he was forced to “ambush” the prime minister during a chance meeting in Horse Guards Parade to get his concerns across -The 1997-98 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which set out a “good framework” for future defence policy, could not cope with troops being committed to Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time and was “fatally flawed” through being underfunded

-The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, cited as the main reason for Britain joining the United States in the 2003 war, was “most uncompelling”. Planning for the aftermath of the conflict was, he said, an “abject failure”. Gen Dannatt reserves his strongest criticism for Labour’s two prime ministers, accusing them of letting down the troops they sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He writes in his book: “History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown’s malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the en tire process from the outset. “The seeds were sown for some of the impossible operational pressures to come.” Mr Blair “lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor”. The general also admits he was “bemused” by Mr Brown’s decision to write his book, Wartime Courage, about the generation that suffered so much in winning the Second World War.

He adds: “I am still not sure whether he ever realised that by denying the proper funding of his own government’s declared policy, he was condemning more young men and women to the same sacrifices he railed against in a previous generation.” Asked why he thought Mr Blair did not overrule Mr Brown, he replied: “To me it seems extraordinary that the prime minister, the No 1 guy, cannot crack the whip sufficiently to his very close friend apparently, his next door neighbour, the chancellor.

“In the war Cabinet that Margaret Thatcher put together in 1982 [during the Falklands conflict] there was no one from the Treasury. It’s tough to criticise lack of moral courage, but moral courage is what you need. Physical courage is a wonderful thing, but moral courage is actually doing the right thing at the right time.” Gen Dannatt warns the Coalition that carrying on with the current rate of casualties in Afghanistan – where more than 100 servicemen were killed last year – would be unacceptable. “We’ve got to have cracked it by 2014, 2015,” he said.