The Poodle's Prevarications
Tony Blair testified today at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, and while it sounds like he didn’t admit any huge lies, his answers were riddled with inconsistencies. As the Times points out, for example, Blair told Parliament Saddam’s WMD programs were growing.
His weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The weapons of mass destruction programme is not shut down; it is up and running now.
But today he used the same excuse Bush has since used–that the alleged WMD programs hadn’t changed, but rather the significance of them in light of 9/11.
But as part of that analysis Mr Blair conceded that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s purported programme to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not actually grown – only the understanding of that threat.
“It wasn’t that objectively he had done more,” he said of the Iraqi leader. “It was that our perception of the risk had shifted.”
Here’s how Blair tried to explain away his assertion that he would have taken Saddam out even if he had known he didn’t have WMD.
Mr Blair sought to play down his comments in a BBC interview with Fern Britton in which he said he would have thought it right to remove Saddam, even if he had known that he did not have WMD.
“Even with all my experience in dealing with interviews, it still indicates that I have got something to learn about it,” he said.
“I didn’t use the words ’regime change’ in that interview and I didn’t mean in any sense to change the basis. Obviously, all I was saying was you cannot describe the nature of the threat in the same way if we knew then what we know now.
“It was in no sense a change of position. The position was that it was the approach of UN resolutions on WMD. That was the case. It was then and it remains.”
As to the question of whether Blair agreed to go to war in April 2002? He claimed, at least, not to have gotten into specifics.
Mr Blair confirmed that he had discussed the issue of Iraq when he met Mr Bush for private, one-to-one talks at his Texas ranch at Crawford in April 2002, 11 months before the invasion, but he insisted that they did not get into “specifics”.
Of course, none of it has any credibility. But Blair might have skated through the most obvious risks of perjury at the inquiry.
I do not think he has skated. I think Lord Goldsmith’s testimony is boxing him in and he knows it.
Meant this link regarding Goldsmith.
It will be interesting to see if they dig more on the “why” he changed his mind.
Perhaps. If this were in America, it would be just Kabuki. Certain questions would be carefully avoided, certain obvious lies would be accepted, nothing under oath and a LOT of “I don’t recall”.
Perhaps it’s just British politeness, but it does seem as though they’re missing some fairly obvious questions. And they’re avoiding asking things that might incriminate BushCo, and when they DO ask they accept whatever fluff spews.
Boxturtle (And why isn’t Blair strapped to a waterboard during questioning? More politeness?)
Blair live at commish on cspan3.
Is this under oath?
Headline I’m waiting to see:
Tony Blair has been scheduled to testify in the Hague War Crimes Trials of …(fill in the blanks)
Tony could be spinning for the public but eCHAN is right is this under oath? We can drive a truck through WMD program is growing because there where no WMD found?
Any PR person or Lawyer would tell Tony to avoid easily disproved statements and tell vague statements I don’t recall.
Does Tony think he is smarter than everyone else a possibility or does he need to make this claim to legally justify himself or just publicly justify himself?
the real thing is not only were there no wmd found, they were told the wmd program was shut down, they were told sadam was not a threat
I read the other day (I’ll try to find the link) that Blair’s time with the EU may be done due to the fact the he may not be able to leave GB because of the threat of being arrested for war crimes.
sweet!!!
I wonder if we can get bush booked for an overseas gig!
tee hee
Bush will not leave this country without a diplomatic passport. Neither will Cheney, Rice, or Rumsfield.
Boxturtle (Probably wise. There is a rumored warrant for Rumsfield in Europe already)
Sure they will; unless the US government sanctions their detention which will NEVER happen, then they have no worries.
European courts don’t always do what their government wants them to do. I can only guess the future, but can you name an EU country that any of those I listed have visited without a diplomatic passport since Rummy was rushed out?
Boxturtle (Discresion is the better part of valor)
Then I see another more legal inquiry happening soon that and Tony getting dropped from many corporate gigs and social events.
Remember that Tony is schooled in the British Parliamentary system of floor debate. “I don’t recall” doesn’t cut it in those debates. He’s used to responding off the cuff, and he’s also used to tossing verbal curve balls when needed. That experience gives him confidence that he doesn’t need to resort to “I don’t recall.”
Bob in AZ
Bush and Tony got their stories straight we should ask Tony if he has harmonized his story with Bush’s then we look at phone records.
Not for Tony and Bush but Tony or Tony’s Lawyers and the WH lawyers and Bush’s personal Lawyers.
Tony talking to Bush thats expected but why would Tony or his Lawyers need to talk to Bush’s Lawyers unless they expect to be in trouble?
Tony’s wife is an international human rights lawyer I bet she talked to Bush’s Lawyers too.
It’s just so bizarre that we started a war by invading Iraq almost 7 years ago, and nobody can tell us why with any credibility.
I get your point, but I’ll tell you why in one word: MONEY!!!!!!!!
But Blair might have skated through the most obvious risks of perjury at the inquiry.
So does this mean he’s an extraordinary tap-dancer or that he’s so far in denial that he can be labeled as clinically psychotic? Or both?
Sounds like this statement could get Tony in trouble so he walking back from it but why?
If he was under oath, he just committed perjury.
Boxturtle (Though in Blair’s defense, at least he seems to remember what happened)
Please expand on this if you would.
I’m trying to find the link, but at the time Blair was overstating the intelligence, he was getting reports from his own services that it wasn’t true. Oh, he can make the case that he didn’t believe them, I suppose. Much like here, a sales job was performed where the most favorable “intelligence” was selected and disagreeable information was discredited or buried.
Boxturtel (WTF can’t I find the Kelly article on this?!? Internet idiot this morning, I suppose)
Hey I trust you I just need a few more details to refresh my memory. But why give wrong and easy to disprove answers when I don’t recall should be able to keep you away from a later more legal inquiry?
Credit where credit is due, I’m not hearing a lot of IDR answers from Blair.
But they’ve got a court system like we do. KNOWING something and proving it are two different things, and the Brits have a system like ours that enables them to classify things that would be embarrassing. Blair might not feel particularly threatened, as long as the enquiry doesn’t drift into international war crimes. The enquiry seems to have little interest so far in questions of that nature.
Boxturtle (In these things, I always seem to have better questions than the Offical questioners do)
Good Morning All,
I know which link you are talking about – Los Angeles Times published a timeline in early 06 showing when various Foreign Intel Services informed US of no wmd, and it included links about British Agencies briefing Blair’s govt early on –
and I went here upon seeing that pic up top:
Prevarication Prevails !
I swear, when these politicians talk, I feel as tho my head is being pushed thru mush!
Nonetheless, why aren’t WE doing THAT here? We spent more money and lost more lives by thousands than the Brits did and…..no questions asked. Instead Obama sends Bush to Haiti…as an ambassador!
Good grief!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/12/britain.blair.iraq.war/index.html
He doesn’t give a shit about the law. He wanted to kill people and the self-justifications came later.
Someone who violates international law so brazenly (Blair) has no credibility when accusing others (Saddam Hussein) of having done so.
They are peas in a pod.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/7072427/Watch-Tony-Blair-live-at-Iraq-war-inquiry.html
You can watch it live here.
This is his obfuscatory way of saying “we had whipped ourselves into a frenzy over the possibility that 99% of our Intel was wrong, and the 1% lunatic fringe might be right,” with a footnote to the effect that in this case, “lunatic fringe” = senior leadership of the U.S. Government.
Bob in AZ
What this means that, according to Blair, that the facts didn’t change…but the environment in which those facts were assessed changed. IOW the pressures from the United States compelled the poodle to perceive that 2+2=7.
Exactly. But this is presented as a rationalization, even though no one should accept it as a legitimate rationalization.
“Golly gee, your honor, David Addington just harangued us to death about Iraq, and frankly his bullying just wore us down, so we capitulated.”
That’s not much of a defense.
Bob in AZ
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen emptywheel and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Neither Great Britain or the United States has a real justice system…otherwise both Bush AND Blair would be hangin’ in the most public square in the Hague as testimony to the world and history.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CORPORATE WARS FOR PROFIT!!
If you are NOT with ‘us’ (‘us’ later defined as Bush/Chaney/Republican crime family)…you are a terrorist. How much plainer can this be stated. We were and are still against them…now what?
Read Glenn greenwald today (1/29) on this issue.
I have never read a better wide-angle view of the consequences
to both Iraq and to the u.s.
Of our unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“Boxturtle (Probably wise. There is a rumored warrant for Rumsfield in Europe already)”
If that turns out to be true the MSM and the righty Blogs will explode with outrage:) Obama will have a very hard time explaining why he isn’t after Rummy himself.
The GOP will demand that every American be protected from foreign courts they will invoke the Troops but really they want Bush to know he is protected.
It is known that Rumsfield was rushed out of a speech to a US embassy and subsequently made his way back to the USA. The RUMOR was an arrest warrant and there has been no offical comment from anybody.
To my knowledge, Rumsfield has not entered Europe since.
Boxturtle (I wish they’d make the warrant public, and demand extradition)
I read in the Guardian yesterday that all of the people on inquiry board are government insiders…not so good.
OT but not unrelated: Our Supreme Court has just overturned lower court decisions ordering the government to seek Omar Khadr’s return from GTMO, even though the court agrees that his rights have been and continue to be violated by our officials.
I just want to cry. First the GG caves in to Steve, and now the Supremes. We have no one to protect us.
“We have no one to protect us.”
Oh, yes we do, skdadl. We have each other, a community drawn together and coalescing in the age-old struggle of freedom for all.
Have a shoulder kid. I know how you feel – it wasn’t really enough for the torturers to just be torturers, that’s never enough. They have to reshape the world around them so that it accepts and glorifies them and their depravity.
Thank you, Mary, and fatster @ 40. I’m reading the actual judgement, which maybe leaves us some loopholes.
To me, it reads like a lot of lawyers arguing over extraterritoriality. Gah! That is not the moral problem perceived by citizens, eh? The moral problem is that we have watched, repeatedly, the U.S. government and the UK government and the Canadian government and Lord knows who else using national security/executive powers/damage to international relations as CYA for serious violations of international law. That is teh problem, judges!
The only court I know of so far who seem to grasp this is those two dear High Court judges in London, who really have pushed on this issue. I guess waiting for the appeal against their decision is our next cliff-hanger.
skdadl, that isn’t what the Canadian Supremes ruled, and their decision was unanimous, 9-0.
Their decision is detailed around the questions
In conclusion
Basically the Supremes are saying to the Executive, the responsibility and power for remedy are first in the executive’s hands. This is their equivalent of a sternly worded letter. But (I think) we can expect the Supremes to follow through at some point if the Executive fails to respond appropriately.
Yes, I agree. I’ve read the judgement now, and that’s what I meant by the loopholes, although there’s another problem I’m trying to put into words.
Maybe the problem is that they were restricted to the case that was put before them. They were looking at what was done to Omar Khadr, not what the doers did. No one has yet asked them whether several of our governments have been criminal, only whether Khadr has been the victim of criminal acts by our officials.
I’m putting all that in the vernacular on purpose because I’m still not ready to make nice, y’know?
But yes, you’re right. We have a few openings here. They sure aren’t the UK High Court, though.
And not one person has been held accountable for any of the false pre war intelligence. Not one. Hundreds of thousands dead, injured, millions displaced. What was the point of Phase I and Phase II of the SSCI? A charade.
Then all we hear in regard to accountability for these serious crimes is “move on, turn the page, next chapter, don’t be about revenge, retribution, witch hunts”
I keep asking at what point did justice and accountability start being described as “vengeance”
We are not talking about blowjobs here (which is obviously what gets our congress justice juices flowing). We are talking about people’s lives lost based on a “pack of lies”
New post up…
One need to examime the Bush-Blair relationship, and seek a quid pro quo.
It’s my belief that Blair supported Bust in an exchange from Bush cutting funding from the Irish Catholics to the IRA. The Northern Ireland has been a long running issues where US Nationals supported terrorism in a long time US ally.
It would be interesting to lay out an Iraq timeline, from January 2001 alongside a Northern Ireland timeline.
So not so much Blair getting gigs through the “Washington Speakers Bureau”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5034235.ece?print=yes&randnum=1151003209000
and his gigee favorite, the Carlyle Group?Since Mr Blair can pick and choose audiences, some will be surprised by his selection so far.
Had there been no WMD’s – there weren’t any and it’s probable the main players knew that and lied about it – the reason to remove Saddam from government and kill him was to effect regime change. There was no mandate for that. It was illegal, Lord Goldsmith’s “change of heart” notwithstanding, and all these players knew it.
It didn’t matter, because they chose for political reasons to invade a country that had long been on both countries’ lists of targets of empire. That hasn’t worked out so well. With judgment like that, how could anyone responsibly ask Bush or Blair to manage anything of consequence, let alone a massive international relief effort?
From the perspective of strategy against jihadism, getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the dumbest thing we could have done. He was a secularist who feared and hated Muslim extremism and was willing to take extreme measures against it.
So, what was the motivation? Fear of WMD? Apparently not. Desire to steal Iraq’s oil? That doesn’t seem to be proceeding in a way that’s worth the cost.
The only things that seem to have been accomplished are:
* GWB got to be a war president.
* Weapons makes made money.
@8 – this country hasn’t even made a serious effort to try. Al-Libi wouldn’t have turned up dead in Libya after having last been in CIA hands if anyone had wanted to delve into how we created the worst refugee crisis in the world and swaths of death and destruction and filled narrative holes with the bodies of America’s children who went out in good faith, thinking they were going to protect – – protect a country that was propagandized into being “The Homeland” to help sell the war.
EW – all his dancing is helping out his personal interests but burying his party.
OT – Some additional insight into how our intel *industries* manage(d) to get things so wrong – apparently they recruit guys like Teabugger Stan Dai and not only that, they use their star recruit Teabugger to recruit women and minorities into the biz.
Yes, the “movement conservative” working in an affirmative action program. And no one with the intel agencies thought that might be a problem.
Newsweek links to a pamphlet for an intel symposium that Dai put together with a grant from ODNI. I was particularly impressed with how he included Robert McFarlane as a speaker but didn’t title the presentation “Lessons Learned from Iran-Contra: How to Lie to Congress and End Up With Speaking Engagements Paid for by… Congress”
TPM also reports that Dai penned “an anti-feminist parody called The Penis Monlogues.” I guess if you leave out the balls, you end up with a monlogue.
In Britain, the party can change the leader even if the leader is the current Prime Minister. So his party should be buried for letting him stay on as leader and PM when he was taking the country to war.
Jane has a fresh cross-post available: Obama Leads the Way on Lobbyist Transparency
a few choice moments of lawyerly parsing, almost on the same sublime level of bubba questioning “what the definition of is is.”
sorry tony — and what fun to correct an englishman’s use of english — but if i say “2+2=4 is beyond doubt” it certainly does not mean the same thing as “…beyond MY doubt”!
as to regime change, that’s the nuremberg nub of the matter: Lebensraum, baby!
scariest thing apart from the banality of evil: tony baloney the neocon is using the hearings to shill for an invasion of iran.
Why even hold this inquiry when you have the evidence surrounding David Kelly’s “suicide” sealed under a 70 year gag order?
Talk about a stacked deck…
Lord Huff-and-Blow had to relax that ruling a bit. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7003861.ece
Is anyone familiar enough with the British legal and Parliamentary systems to know if it is incumbent to be sworn in, if statements made whether under oath or not before a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry is grounds for perjury in a British criminal court?
Brits? International lawyers?
I want some factual revelations however. I still want to know why the Brits accepted the Italian forgeries re. Niger as being credible and no effort was undertaken to independently evaluate both the source and the claims. Was there a “Joe Wilson” of the UK?
OT – but UCLA law prof Adam Winkler makes some of the same points bmaz did about the Obama rhetoric and Alito exchange.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/alito-was-rude-but-right_b_440207.html
Winkler doesn’t touch on the foreign corp statutory prohibitions that also were not affected, but it’s also the case that the ruling did not touch on those statutes.
If you want to fight the good fight, you have to know where to land your punches. Rhetoric over substance gives you “WMDs in Iraq” types of holes that you have to dig out of later. You fight best when you know what you’re fighting and I wish I got the feeling that Obama was paying enough attention to the substance of the issues, rather than what rhetorical note he can hit, to punch the right guy, much less in the right place.
Please correct me here, Mary, if you have a moment. I’d greatly appreciate it. So, the note that ol’ Bancroft Davis put into the written decision in the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Case remains (somehow!) law. That corporations have the same rights of speech as persons do remains in effect. A loophole allowing international corporations, working through their subsidiaries here in the US, to make campaign contributions has been opened, though.
Many thnx.
Short answer – yes, but that has pretty much been the case in many situations for a long time.
Much much longer answer here:
Teddy Roosevelt calls for the need to reform campaign law. In 1907 Congress passed the Tillman Act, which prohibited corporations from making direct contributions to political parties and election committees/campaigns. It didn’t have teeth and over the next few years Congress introduced more legislation trying to require more information and better enforce limits and also move the prohibitions into the primaries.
The prohibitions weren’t enforced much until Henry Ford lost a primary and Ford pushed for prosecution against his successful primary opponent. In Newberry v. US (1921), the Supreme Court reviewed some of the post 1907 legislation (the Federal Corrupt Practices Act [FCPA] of 1910 [as amended in 1911]). The Supreme Court ruled that 1910/1911 election legislation was unconstitutional as it applied to primaries and that Congress did NOT have the authority to regulate primaries.
This ruling didn’t affect the 1907 (Tillman) prohibition on direct contributions to political parties though. That stayed in effect. Skip forward to the early 70s, with the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which did lots of things. Maybe not the best source, but here’s a wiki on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Campaign_Act
Since the FECA defined a “person” within the legislation to include a corporation, the limits for individuals and corporations were in essence the same. Then you get Buckley v. Valeo, where the Sup Ct struck down parts of the FECA as unconstitutional, and upheld others. While limits on contributions to a campaign were upheld, the Court struck as unconstitutional limits on a “person’s” expenditures outside of the campaign/election committee setting.
So while limits on contributions to a campaign committee were upheld, limits on other kinds of expenditures (basically for or on behalf of a candidate or party, but made independently and not through a campaign committee vehicle) were voided as unconstitutional.
I’m not a big Volokh fan, but here’s a link to a pretty decent article by him on Buckley v. Valeo http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/buckley.pdf that makes a lot of the salient points on the case, whether you agree or disagree with them.
So at this point,you’ve had efforts to extend campaign law into the primary process, which were found unconstitutional in Newberry in 1920ish. You’ve had a second shot of campaign finance reform laws in the 70s and Buckely v. Valeo which upheld, with respect to individuals (and groups), the limits to campaign committees , but which struck as unconstitutional limits on spending outside of contributions to the campaign committees.
Now enter McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform legislation (aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act). Part of what BCRA does is to set up a definition of “electioneering communications” (communications about a candidate or tying an issue to a candidate within a certain time preceding the election) and prohibit/limit expenditures by for profits orgs and “issue” non-profits (like NRA, Env groups, etc.) with respect to electioneering communications. The BCRA also regulated “soft money” efforts involving things like getting voters registered and turned out to vote.
In 2003, you have the first round challenge to McCain Feingold – the McConnell v. FEC case. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-1674.ZS.html
In a long and complex ruling, McConnell v. FEC, chunks of the BCRA were upheld against a “facial” challenge (iow, a challenge saying that there is no way this statute could be applied that would be constitutional and just looking at it you have to rule it unconstitutional) It was a very difficult opinion to cite as authority for any particular issues and it was almost immediately followed by FEC v. Wisconsin Right To Life http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/06-969.ZS.html
In the WRTL case, the right to life org that wanted to run ads argued that the Sup Ct’s holding in the “facial challenge” in McConnell didn’t prevent them from asserting that the BCRA blackout regs were unconstitutional “as applied” to them (WRTL) on their issue.
Basically the Sup Ct held that it was unconstitutional to block “genuine issue ads” under the electioneering communications prohibitions. By the time you had WRTL, you had Roberts and Alito ruling that the BCRA was unconstitutional as applied to WRTL, but Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas all three saying they were ready to overrule McConnell with respect to limits on electioneering communications, in part bc it is contra to the holding in Buckley v. Valeo.
So it is against that backdrop – not 100 years of unbroken precedent limiting corporate expenditures – that you have Citizens United.
And with respect to foreign corps, the statute imposing those limits has not been dealt with by the S. CT at all – you might make some guesses as to where they would go in some situations, based on Citizens United – but keep in mind that guys like Scalia have been known to view laws with respect to “US” persons (including corps)(like restricting habeas for a Padilla) as very different thing from laws with respect to foreign persons (or corps) (like an MCA destroying habeas for non-US citizens held at GITMO and elsewhere) .
All fwiw – but by way of showing were some of the hyperbole comes in. And fwiw – here’s a short piece
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/22/charles-schumer/campaign-finance-ruling-united-citizens-historical/
that does touch on some other cases that Citizens United is overruling and give some credence to cases in 1947 and that are arguably overruled and the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case (which arose under state law) from 1990 that IS being expressly overruled by Citizens United.
IMO, we’ve had foreign corps (and US based multinationals have so many foreign interests as to be foreign corps for many issues) involved for years in our politics. It’s Obama’s guy, Plouffe, himself who makes the argument that direct expenditures aren’t nearly as effective, anyway, as campaign committee coordinated expenditures.
I’m bummed over the decision but I think there is a lot too much hyperbole out there on what has been done now and was done over the last 100 years. fwiw
Mary, your intellect and knowledge just bowl me over! I never expected such a thorough reply and, as with several other of your writings, this is going into my MaryKeeper file. Over the weekend, I’ll follow through on the links you provided and, hopefully, will be able to digest this well enough that I won’t blunder around too much on the subject in the future (and always feel free to set me straight whenever I do–please). And, of course, I’ll return to it many times, I’m sure, to continue to refresh my understanding, and I suspect some others will, too. This is just awesome. Many, many thanks!
Fans of Mary, who comments much more often than she blogs, may find many needles in this haystack: Google search site:emptywheel.firedoglake.com “Mary @” Unfortunately, this gets more than 1,500 hits, but any of Mary’s comments that has been replied to will be included in this haystack (which will also include many references to other Marys.) If someone knows a cleaner search method for finding Mary’s bon mots, I’d like to know it.
Mary is in the Authors list in the FDL Advanced Search, but I don’t think that will find comments. Her (few) blogs on FDL may be found here.
Bob in AZ
Thanks ever so much, bobshacht. You’re much better at searching around here than I’ve ever been able to be (and I have tried).
Thanks. And to point out what should be obvious, you can use the same search templates to find the bon mots of other commentors and blog authors that you like.
Bob in AZ
and Mary @ 63 and all others who could use a chuckle (even a wry one) after the last few days, I recommend this.
bbc clip of Blair testifying
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8487400.stm
esp w/respect to the 45 minute claim
Was it wise to say, “it as established beyond doubt” – Blair, well, ya know, I meant my *personal* doubt, not an objectivey kinda doubt thingy.
Oh, great, now they’ll all be working the “personal” doubt thingy into their repertoire of obfuscation.
off topic news
old man geezer of the south is retiring (he was hearin footsteps anyway, so it’s time he quit)
one geezer down
who is the second oldest NFL QB now ???
The old geezer of the North is 2 years older. Is he retiring, too?
After getting beat up last weekend, I should think he would be interested in a less punishing profession.
After the two geezers, I think we’re next down to the Donovan McNabbs, I think. He’s about 5 years younger, I think.
Bob in AZ
Basically Tony Blair is another of the lying warmongers up to his eyeballs in war crimes. The question is–why? Why did he do it? Until we figure out why he did it, the rest remains an unexplained quagmire. Was it to gin up a war for electoral economic prosperity? Incompetence? Secret treaties between the US and Britain? What was the rationale?
Carlyle?