Polishing Blair's Halo

Matthew Taylor on Tony Blair's admission about regime change in Iraq:

I was going to post about my former boss’s interview with Fern Britton. Tony Blair said that even if had not thought there were WMD he would still have tried to make a case for regime change in Iraq. Whatever we may think of this opinion, it is simply wrong to claim, as many commentators seem to, that this is the same as saying ‘I had decided to invade and made up the WMD threat as a pretext’.

Well, yes, it is. Some of us don't have problems understanding the English language since it is completely clear that this is exactly what Blair has admitted. Here is what he said:

"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".

Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

Being politic in his choice of words he may have been, but the import is undeniable, especially when you take into account Blair's self-regarding opportunism and his reverential attitude to the sanctity of his own conscience.

Saddam had no WMDs; Blair and his advisers knew it; the Americans knew it and most of us knew it. It was perfectly obvious to many people (perhaps the majority) that even if Britain did not join in the Americans were going to invade Iraq whether they had justifiable reasons or UN resolutions or not.

For years now we have had to put up with this charade conducted by the politicians and the media that there were reliable justifications for the war. Blair lied and lied again about it and the lickspittles in parliament and the civil service gave their assent to this criminality.

It's sickening to watch the spectacle of a moral derelict such as Blair parading his self-justifications in public, being 'interviewed' by someone like Fern Britton (surely as rigorous as playing roly-poly with a Dulux puppy) when so many thousands of people have died and suffered as a result of his vanity.