[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

With respect, TS... maybe you're more acquainted with a five year old's excuses but you're not really acquainted with this particular issue. You have your own opinion, I can accept that, but you're taking your depressive cynicism a step too far. I have no doubt that the intelligence was sound and the decision to carry out the bombing legal. If you want to disagree because it's the Tories, go right ahead. But they will have been advised by the security services and I trust them implicitly.

Have a think for a minute and try to remember... this is IS we're talking about here. IS. Not the Boy Scouts.

Absolutely nothing to do with the Tories, Livia, in fact I seem to remember Labour being pretty good at "finding" reasons to make strikes and attacks not too long ago. Not sure what the security and intelligence services were doing then? Were they not the same services? Am I confused? Or did they drop the ball? I mean, you have been quite vocal about Mr Blair in the past... Maybe he had different, silly, Labour intelligence services who were not to be trusted quite so implicitly.

Alternatively, (all) military forces quite often decide which strikes they want or need to make, and then find justifications. In that order.

I'm not even saying there was no need for this strike or that it wasn't done for good reasons. I'm just saying, they needed the strike to be legal, so they found a way to make it so. It reeks of being an excuse, because it is one.