Monday, February 1, 2010

Tony Blair and his oh-so-clean conscience


(Cartoon by Carlos Latuff)

Analysis by Robert Fisk

"....Lord Blair went to war because of al-Qa'ida but thought al-Qa'ida would let him win in Iraq. So it was all al-Qa'ida's fault. WE didn't kill 100,000 Iraqis (I noticed he used the lowest available figure). It was THEM, the terrorists, al-Qa'ida, insurgents, Iranians, "sectarians", the bad guys.

He played the same dishonest little trick over the Israel-Palestinian war....

It's a cold winter in the Middle East now, but yesterday I had to loosen my shirt collar from time to time. It seemed Blair was as successful in Iraq as he was in Gaza a year ago. Everything is getting better. Life in Iraq is better – better than it was in 2007, 2003, 2002 and for that matter, 2001. I got it. Before his invasion, it was all Saddam's fault. After his invasion it was all al-Qa'ida's and Iran's fault. And presumably we are now going to invade Iran?

At one point, the wretched man boasted of Britain's historical legacy in setting up an Iraqi government in the 1920s, deleting any mention of the massive insurgency against the British in Baghdad and Fallujah and Najaf in 1922 which might – just might – have forewarned him of the post-2003 anarchy.....

Lord Blair suddenly blurted out (indeed, appeared to want to blurt out) that he thought there had been "conversations with Israelis". What? Israelis? At the critical Crawford meeting? Israel was the only nation – apart from the US and Britain – that totally supported ther war, indeed encouraged it.....

Adam Price MP got it right. "We'll never get an apology from this man," he said. We can't, of course. Because Lord Blair was talking about judgement, about being "frank", "absolutely and completely" honest and "absolutely clear". We had "to stick in there and see it out". So that's what all the dead and the wounded and the bombs and the shredded bodies and the rape and Abu Ghraib torture was all about....."

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