| Tony Blair: Questions Arising |
[Dec. 13th, 2009|11:08 am]
Tony Grist
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Tony Blair has apparently admitted- in an interview with Fern Britton that hasn't been broadcast yet- that the WMD thing was a pretext- and if it hadn't been available he'd have found other reasons for going to war with Saddam Hussein. Gosh! So, he was blagging us about WMD- and lying to us when he said that Saddam had a chance of redemption if he came clean. I knew that, of course, but I never thought I'd hear it confirmed by Blair himself.
He also- in the same interview- burbles something about the War being about Islam and the bad things that were going on inside it. I'm unclear quite what he's trying to say here- possibly because Blair is unclear himself. After all, if militant Islam had been his prime worry- and the war was a crusade- he should surely have been going after Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Iran or one of those other countries that promotes Islamic extremism- and not after Saddam- who ran a secular regime and hated Al Quaeda. Is Blair being disingenuous here- counting on the ignorance of his audience- or is he (and this is perhaps even more alarming) exposing his own ignorance?
Another thing: if Blair is particularly down on Islam- and isn't worried about voicing this prejudice on air- what on earth does he think he's doing drawing a large stipend as the UN's peace envoy to the Middle East? Doesn't that job call- at the very least- for a pretence of even-handedness?
So he admits he lied about the war, and he also admits- incidentally- that he's unfit to be doing his most high-profile international job. Will he be held to account for any of this? It seems unlikely. |
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