Friday, September 3, 2010

Blair should take responsibility for Iraq. But he won't. He can't


This is not a debate, it's a bloody, blood-soaked disaster for which the former PM should take responsibility

By Robert Fisk

"Has this wretched man learned nothing? On and on, it went during his BBC interview: "I would absolutely...","I definitely...", "I believed absolutely clearly...", "It was very, very clear that this changed everything"....

And I hereby abandon all further reference to Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, with its unhappy reference to Britain's humiliating military defeat in 1915 Mesopotamia. He must be re-created Lord Blair of Isfahan. Having conquered Saddam, he wants to conquer Ahmadinejad. "I am saying that it is wholly unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons capability," he told poor old Andrew Marr. It was necessary for the Iranians," quoth he, "to get that message, loud and clear." Thus did our Middle East peace envoy prepare us for war with Persia......

Sometimes, Blair sounded like the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. He and his Israeli boss believe Ahmadinejad is worse than Hitler....even though Blair blurted out to the Chilcot inquiry that there had been "phone calls" with Israelis during his decision-making conference with Bush over Iraq. Marr missed out there. What on earth were Blair and Bush talking to the Israelis about as they prepared to take us into this catastrophe?....

.... I noticed, too, how Marr stuck to the minimum 100,000 figure for Iraq's dead, rather than the half million or million statistic which haunts our former prime minister. Thus Blair was able to refer to the "hundreds of thousands of people who died under Saddam". It was the old story. Blair wasn't as bad as Saddam. And Blair's nicer than Hitler, more sympathetic than Stalin, kinder than Genghis Khan. Nope. This whole mess had nothing to do with Lord Blair. "You have to have the courage to do what you think is right." But "thinking" is not good enough. I hope the air-raid sirens in Isfahan are in good working order."

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