Tony Blair and the Iraq War

I've just been watching some of the video of Blair's evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry on their website (well someone has to do it!). As usual Blair comes over quite convincingly but I don't think that I have the time or stamina to sit through six hours or whatever it is. There is so much one could write on the subject but I'll just make a few comments via bullet points:

• Whatever conclusions are reached by the Inquiry at the end of the day I don't think those who felt strongly about the war at the time (I mean both pros and antis) will change their viewpoint. It is very much like the two sides in the hunting debate or the climate change debate once someone has an entrenched position that is it. Additional evidence is unlikely to sway them in the other direction.
• When Blair became PM in 1997 I don't think he had thought about foreign policy much but when he paid a visit to Kosovo things changed. Witnessing the situation over there he decided that an interventionist policy was needed where there were occasions of that type. Some people referred to Blair as Bush's poodle with reference to Iraq but I beg to differ. I think that Blair developed a missionary zeal and assuming that Saddam had WMD and wasn't going to disarm then Blair had no problems in invading Iraq.
• I think in his evidence on Friday - I didn't get to that bit watching the video this evening - Blair mentioned the figure of 100,000 Iraqis dead as a result of the war. Estimates vary a lot, some have used this lowest figure whilst others have used greater numbers up to one million in fact. I think that Blair volunteered his figure without prompting and I am wondering whether he was trying to spike the questioners' guns. If he got in the 100,000 dead in his evidence first then it might be overlooked that this was the very lowest estimate of several.
• Blair tried to lay the blame for the problems in Iraq post invasion on those pesky Iranians coming in and spoiling the party. No Mr Blair, it's you and Mr Bush who are culpable - before the war there was some sort of strategic balance between Iraq and Iran, post war there was obviously an imbalance in the situation, effectively a vacuum where Iraq is concerned. It is perhaps not too surprising that Iraq's hated neighbour wanted to exploit the situation. The coalition was not prepared for the aftermath, they should have been - no excuses.
• Blair tried to make a strong point about Iraq possibly supplying terrorists with WMD post 9/11. Whether this might have happened one day I don't know but there was zero evidence of any connection between Saddam and Al-Qaida. This reminds me of the fact that following the 9/11 attacks Vice President Dick Cheney set up a special unit to try every way possible to find a connection between the two. I believe that many many Americans were misled into believing that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 thus giving extra legitimacy to the invasion.

Much more could be added to this blogpost but I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Alastair Campbell at Iraq Enquiry

Today is the day when Alastair Campbell is taking centre stage at the Chilcot Enquiry into the war in Iraq. Ignored by many blogs we have to thank Andrew Sparrow of 'The Guardian' who is blogging the enquiry as it happens. It can be read here. And thank goodness for Paul Waugh of 'The Evening Standard' who has taken a keen interest in the Enquiry and posted a lot of Twitter comments. Paul is the best of the political bloggers in my opinion, he really gets how it should be done. He's a journalist as well and has a nice lightness of touch with his blog and picks up on details others miss.

So what of Campbell? Obviously still loyal to Blair. We know how combative he is and so no surprise he attacked Andrew Gillingham in the course of giving his evidence. For Campbell it's pretty obvious that he believes in attack being the best form of defence at times. I've now just spotted as today's session finishes that the BBC have been supplying live video of proceedings. As has happened in previous enquiries Campbell wasn't subjected to really strong cross examination and probably got away with it again. The problem is that the inconsistencies will get lost in the overall narrative.

Clinton lies for all to see on YouTube

A week since I last blogged: where's the time gone? I'm going international with this entry which is something I don't do that often. But I can't ignore the story of how one of America's serial liars, Hillary Clinton, has recently been caught out. It all centres of course around her repeated claim of visiting Bosnia in the nineties when husband Bill was US President and landing with her daughter Chelsea under sniper fire. Unfortunately for this absolutely appalling woman film footage has been unearthed showing her story to be totally bogus, she didn't have to run to avoid the bullets, in fact everything was calm and under control. If you were to type 'Hilary Clinton Bosnia' into YouTube you would be confronted with numerous videos showing the reality of the situation. There are one or two very good spoof videos too.

So how has Mrs Clinton reacted since she was found out? Apparently she "mis-spoke". I think I'll add that to my lexicon, just in case I'm rumbled telling porkies. Seriously though she and Bill ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman") will tell any number of barefaced lies in advancing their cause. Just a couple of other examples from that loathsome woman: she had said that she was named Hillary after Sir Edmund Hillary who it will be recalled was one of the two men to conquer Everest in May 1953, the other person being Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. However Hillary Rodham Clinton was born in October 1947 when Edmund wasn't a household name. Another instance of her deliberate lying: she said that daughter Chelsea was jogging around the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001. No she wasn't. Chelsea was at home watching the tragedy unfold on television.

Clinton's premier crime which has raised the hackles of so many is her absolutely blatant lying to push forward her personal agenda. But second to that, and far less commented on, is her total lack of judgment in thinking that she could just get away with it. Surely she and her advisers were aware of the film crews in Bosnia when she made her visit and that at some stage the reality would be broadcast. This is where the internet becomes all powerful - as I noted earlier there are a number of places on YouTube where you can view the film footage and also some of the subsequent fallout. One of these videos alone has had almost 2 million hits at the time of writing. In the old days it would be possible to hope that most people might forget such lies, radio and newspaper reports would not always have a lasting effect. But in this highly visual age things are very different. It only takes seconds with a broadband connection to view the footage and the film isn't going to vanish from this site anytime soon.

Perhaps I ought to comment at this point that yes politicians habitually lie, it's stock in trade for them. Take Tony Blair and Iraq for example. We know without doubt that the dossiers on WMD were "sexed up" to use that oft repeated phrase. But I believe that the seeds for Blair's mistaken Iraq adventure were sown a few years before in Kosovo of all places. Why? He and his wife visited the heavily oppressed people in that part of the Balkans and from that point on Blair believed, rightly or wrongly, that our foreign policy should be an interventionist one, for him it was all about a moral crusade. I think with Iraq it was the fact that Saddam was a tyrant that partly drove his policy and not entirely being Bush's "poodle". In Mr Blair's case therefore blurring of some facts, massive over emphasis on others, was all part and parcel of the necessity in his eyes of removing Saddam. Don't get me wrong, I'm no apologist for Blair, once it became clear that Saddam was never a threat to the west I was very firmly on the side of the anti-war folk. But I think Blair thought he was taking this country into war for a just cause even though deceiving the population on such a serious matter as going to war is in itself a very serious matter.

With the Clintons though any lies will do in order to get your sticky fingers on the levers of power. I believe that the next test of democratic opinion regarding whether it should be 'Obama' or 'Clinton' is on 22nd April in Pennsylvania. Let's hope that Clinton is soundly defeated.

Tony Blair visits Devon again

"Tony Blair visits Devon again". All right I'm being sarcastic now! Mr Blair was in Devon yesterday and Thursday, it was his SECOND visit to Devon in the almost ten years of his premiership. This wasn't because of a guilty conscience in that he had been neglecting us it was because he made a speech to a selected audience of about 600 on board HMS Albion at Devonport. His lecture was one of a number he is making regarding our Nation's Future and concerned itself about our armed forces. It appears to have been a real mishmash of thoughts but it seems that he believes that the UK should combine a defensive role with an interventionist one. Bloggers are generally tearing his lecture to shreds for example see the entry here this morning by Tom (http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/).

My view is that if the war in Afghanistan is questionable the one in Iraq is downright wrong. What is patently obvious is that we cannot conduct two significant wars at the same time and that our armed forces are seriously overstretched; it should be remembered that the top brass have been warning the government about this in a very public way.

Once again I have to say that Tony Blair is almost an irrelevance now; why should his MPs, his ministers, world leaders and the public at large take any notice of a prime minister who in months or even possibly weeks will be departing the scene. I certainly wouldn't!

I despair of Blair

The more time goes on the more I despair of Tony Blair! If ever a government leader is past his sell by date it is him. His silence on commenting on Saddam's execution is absolutely deafening; Margaret Beckett, John Prescott, Gordon Brown and now "Downing Street" itself have spoken so what is holding back Mr Blair? The aforementioned politicians have spoken fairly diplomatically about Saddam's hanging and the circumstances surrounding it (I could have written the script for them!) so why is our leader so reticent? He could have made similar comments without creating a diplomatic incident I'm sure. We are told he will talk about it during this coming week so why is he holding back?

Let me advance a couple of alternative theories: we know that Tony's mentor George W is going to make a speech to the Americans in the next few days so perhaps Bush has told Blair to "sit and stay" for the moment. Another possibility, perhaps Iraq has so got to Blair now that, while he is sunning himself in Florida, he just can't face up to dealing with such things. One has to remember that Blair is a control freak and what two things are exercising his mind right now? I would suggest that they are how we now proceed with the quagmire that is Iraq and what happens with the "cash for honours" investigation being carried out by Yates of the Yard. These are events that are taking on a life of their own and have largely spun out of Blair's control.

Listening to Blair and looking at his body language he seems to have lost his edge; certainly the swagger has gone and he is in an incredibly weak position with it seems very little power to influence anything. I suspect he will still put in some good performances at PMQs unless Cameron can floor him with totally unexpected questions but so far as his party and the country are concerned he has lost all authority. We will now see more and more ministers aligning themselves with Gordon Brown (it will be funny if Reid gets the job) so now we have a government in power but with no real direction or purpose. I know that Blair let it be known that he wasn't seeking a fourth term as leader when there were anxieties about his long term health but what a terrible misjudgement on his part for creating all this uncertainty.

But the bottom line is this: Blair falsified the reason for going to war with Iraq, a country that had not declared war on us and which was not attacking our interests. This is fundamentally wrong. Blair is now reaping the whirlwind, the trouble is that hundreds of thousands are dying because of the folly of Bush and Blair.

Inquest starts at last

Yesterday saw the start of an inquest into the deaths of 6 UK servicemen, based at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, who with a US serviceman were killed as a result of a collision between two Sea King helicopters in the Iraq war back in 2003. Out of the 6 three came from Cornwall and one came from Devon. I was very pleased that on the inquest's first day relatives of the dead were able to voice their own moving tributes to those they had lost.

It was a subject discussed on the Radio Devon phone in Wednesday lunchtime. One impassioned member of the public was very distressed about the long delay between event and inquest and I have to say how I agree with him. Clearly the families can have no sense of closure on this awful tragedy until the inquest is completed. Justin Leigh, who hosts the programme, stated that one problem causing the delay was the fact that the bodies being repatriated to this country generally are flown to RAF Brize Norton and that the inquests are all carried out at Oxford as is happening in this current case. I really do not understand why some of these inquests can't be carried out elsewhere in the case of bodies being returned from abroad if it would shorten the agonies of the loved ones.

Just one further comment. I may be wrong but I don't believe that Tony Blair has written any letters of condolence to the families of those who have died in Afghanistan or the over 100 who have come back in coffins from Iraq, or have visited the families. If he had I think it would have been made public by now. With his bogus sincerity he and the other leading party leaders will acknowledge the deaths in Parliament but that seems to be it. Blair will always be remembered for taking us into a war on a false premise, that is his legacy.

A resigning matter

Sergeant Steve Roberts came from Wadebridge in Cornwall and died as a result of friendly fire in Iraq in 2003. If there had been enough enhanced combat body armour (cost just £167) to go round he would have survived. The former defence minister Geoff Hoon had delayed the order for this body armour by 8 weeks the lamentable excuse being that companies could not be asked to bid to supply the kit as it would have revealed preparations were already in hand for an invasion. This pathetic explanation makes me very very angry; how Mr Hoon can live with this I don't know. Well I do know I suppose - he's a politician, and what's more a politician from a totally discredited party. And I say that having no particular liking for any of the parties.

This is what assistant deputy coroner Andrew Walker said at the inquest " To send soldiers into a combat zone without the appropriate equipment is, in my view, unforgivable and inexcusable and represents a breach of trust that the soldiers have in those in government".

I don't think his comments can be blunter than that.

Mr Hoon should clearly do the honourable thing and resign but don't hold your breath that he actually will.