Dr Reid's association with war criminals

Sgt. Sensible

The_Scary_Man wrote:

It seems a little coincidental that John Reid was giving a speech to a think tank yesterday knocking the terror critics who question the governments war on terror saying that "they just don't get it". He also hinted at new anti-terror laws that would require the public to "modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world" [it could almost be a white house press release]. It would seem the political landscape has been suitably primed to smooth the introduction of these new laws.

Strange kind of fellow is Reid. Do our fundamental values include hobnobbing with war criminals?

In the international arena, Reid, during his drinking days, fell into bad company in the Balkans with the Bosnian Serb mass-murderer Radovan Karadzic, who tops The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal list of wanted men. Reid has admitted spending three days in 1993 at a luxury Geneva lakeside hotel as a guest of Karadzic. "He used to talk to Karadzic, he admired Karadzic. He mistook the Bosnian Serb project as the inheritor of the united Communist ideal," says Brendan Simms, a Cambridge academic and author of Unfinest Hour: Britain And The Destruction of Bosnia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,659705,00.html

Sgt. Sensible

Earthman wrote:

Your point caller?
I highly doubt that Reid would have been aware of Radovans murder fetish back then...

This was in the middle of the war and everyone else was well aware of what was going on. It was on telly and in all the papers every single day.

I take your point however...

Right I've moved your discussion on Dr Reid to a new thread...

Discuss away to your hearts content withing the confines of the forum charter.

I'll get the ball rolling by including the next paragraph from the article you quoted above as well as I'm sure you'd agree, the two paragraphs are meant to be taken together-separating them puts the article into an entirely different context that was meant.

He remains extremely cagey about the whole Karadzic relationship. His defence is that, as a shadow defence minister, his potential role was to meet people engaged in conflict as a means of persuading them to stop violence. Reid was not alone. It has been argued that, during the Balkan wars, the peace efforts of Douglas Hurd and Lord Owen almost amounted to appeasement of the Bosnian Serbs' regime.

Theres another post in the original thread advocating that we should keep talking to bring change which would appear to be Reid's answer to the accusation.

Flukey

We could give a list of similar associations. The Middle Eastern envoy of Ronald Reagan's government was in Iraq giving support to one Saddam Hussein back in 1983. As I am sure you are all well aware, that envoy was one Donald Rumsfeld. We had Margaret Thatcher backing her old pal General Pinochet not so long ago who was also a good pal of Henry Kissinger. Ian Paisley often said that he would never talk to terrorists, yet he used to meet Margaret Thatcher regularly. He didn't always get one well with her, but he did talk to her. Even Osama himself was supported back in his Mujahadeen days by the American government. History is dotted which similar associations. So there is nothing remarkable about John Reid.

lostexpectation

maybe the commies have taken over!!!