I'm beginning to feel some sympathy for Tony Blair

We should have had ordinary Iraqi and British citizens on the inquiry panel

A Good Comment

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
The Independent

".....Mandarins, secretive official dealers and others use language like floor polish – shine and gloss for listeners to skid over. Their facts are finely modulated and tempered to suit the times they find themselves in – when the country has had enough obfuscation and dissimulation. The nation now has only contempt for our warrior leaders who push British soldiers into battles without end ( Afghanistan) or honour ( Iraq).

They have lost all respect and credibility, those who believed Iraq could be kicked and bombed towards democracy, so its oil could flow to the west freely. And so they give us the performance of their lives, acting innocent, or protesting too much and generally giving the impression that they tried to do the right thing but were helpless before the butch men Blair and Bush who had a pact to get Saddam and use his head as a trophy and forewarning.

I have to go lie down. I am feeling a tremor of sympathy for Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. Hearing so many turncoats who once cuddled up to him must fill him with righteous rage.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, then our man at the UN now says his knowledge and conscience made him feel uncomfortable that the war, though legal had no legitimacy. He thought of resigning. Well, Sir WHY DIDN'T YOU? If you look back at what he said over those gruesome years, it is clear he supported the war, thought the UN was either too feeble or asinine to understand the manifestly superior US and UK......

The Iraqi academic Sami Ramadhani says his countrymen have no interest in this inquiry. They have felt and seen what happened. Ordinary Britons too have a clearer view than assumed by these people in high places. We should have had ordinary Iraqi and British citizens on the panel and sharp lawyers too. They might have disarmed the slip sliders and pushed collective responsibility.

L'etat was never just Blair. But that isn't how Albion does things. The British way is to suppress any incipient social rebellions by making sure something is seen to be done, and also that nothing really changes."