Well I never,

I see that Blair is shortly to be interviewed on the box about religion.
I'd have had more respect for the Catholic church if it had refused to receive him.

True, but nothing will happen. What does it say about ourselves and our 'democracy' when the even the truth is not enough to put war criminals like Blair behind bars

"It would be unfair to ascribe his support for the war to an anticipation of this lucrative outcome."

It might be unkind, but its the brutal truth.

" The unfortunate Lord Goldsmith was pressured "

Unfortunate? How about totally lacking in guts and principles? If he felt that strongly, why didn't he resign?

Apart from that, a brilliant article.

If Blair and his associates lied about the need to go to war then they have obtained the services of the UK Armed Forces by a deception. Should this matter not be in the hands of the Police?

At least one serviceman is or has served a term of imprisonment for his part in the war. Had the truth been told he would never have been put in the position that caused him to be so sentenced.

bravo diane.

unlike most of the lobby fodder on this particular issue have been a credit to parliament. robin cook will have his revenge one day i hope.

here's hoping tony & cherie (the human rights lawyer, there's irony for you!) are tucked up in one of their many million pound mansions & can't sleep for fear of tyres screeching on the gravel on the drive & flashing blue lights at the window.

It was the light from the shining gold futures from Goldman Sachs that dazzled Blair perhaps?

Bet Goldman made out like bandits when they bought British gold from Gordon Brown at $200 per oz. It is now trading over $1,100 per oz.

So why didn't "the unfortunate Lord Goldsmith" have the balls to stick two fingers up to Blair and resign?

Nice to hear it loud and clear from a Labour MP.

Blair is indeed vermin.

PS How about denouncing Brown and the others too. Please.

I am unconvinced by the analysis in this article. Blair struck me increasingly as an old-style imperialist, one who was convinced that Britain knew best and could solve the world's problem. He may well have convinced himself that his intentions were altruistic, as the old imperialists did. But he recognised that Britain couldn't do that on its own any more and that he needed US power to achieve his ambitions. It was not Bush he was dizzied by - it was the vision of himself as world statesman and architect of a new world order.

It would be unfair to ascribe his support for the war to an anticipation of this lucrative outcome. But what does seem true is that, for Blair, standing on a podium shoulder to shoulder with the swaggering George Bush was dizzying stuff. So dizzying that everything else was subordinated.

Why would it be unfair to ascribe his support for the war to an anticipation of a lucrative outcome ? He has behaved exactly as if that was his motive. But we also know that Blair is a deeply insecure man, concerned, as John Pilger told us a few years ago, about his own personal effeteness. He had been beaten and humiliated by Chirac in his effort to grab leadership of Europe (wasnt even close !), and that he was already infatuated by Clinton. Blair was meeting his personal needs to associate with the kind of macho swagger that was the hallmark of the Bush administration. His love affair with another macho buffoon, Silvio Berlusconi, and his association with celebrities, indicates that he was in need of more then money to meet his own deep personality flaws.

Blair's support for Bush has made him fabulously popular in America, particularly corporate America, and he is now making millions out of that popularity. It would be unfair to ascribe his support for the war to an anticipation of this lucrative outcome. But what does seem true is that, for Blair, standing on a podium shoulder to shoulder with the swaggering George Bush was dizzying stuff. So dizzying that everything else was subordinated.

The disastrous humanitarian results for the people of Iraq were also something that did not apparently concern Blair overmuch. In the end, it was all about Blair.

I knew at the time that it was an illegal and misconceived war and was proud to vote against it.

Well, its good Abbott voted against it but it's not true that the war was all about Blair it reflects the collective failure of Parliament and the entire British political class and media to hold the executive power to scrutiny and account.

The reason is that the UK needs the oil in Iraq This drove Blair into war in Iraq as David Strahan makes clear,

....there is still only a remarkably vague understanding of the real reason behind the invasion. True, evidence of the intense interest of the international oil companies continues to build. Both BP and Shell have assessed the condition of oilfields for the Iraqi government in the hope of securing major deals when conditions improve, Chevron has a team waiting over the border in Kuwait, and only last week ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson said in London ?We look forward to the day when we can partner with Iraq to develop that resource potential.?

But despite the oil majors? undoubted interest and influence, the decision to attack was not taken in the boardroom. Iraq was indeed all about oil, but in a sense that transcends the interests of individual corporations ? however large.

Blair too had reason to be anxious about oil: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999 ? and has been falling ever since ? while the petrol protests of 2000 had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious.

The British government has never conducted its own assessment of when global oil production will peak, at least not one it has made public, and despite being urged to as part of its 2006 Energy Review. But it is significant that two of Blair?s closest advisors believe the event will happen by around 2015.

Britain and America?s shared energy fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely accepted that Blair?s commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush at Crawford in April 2002. The Times headline was typical that weekend: Iraq Action Is Delayed But ?Certain?.

What is less well known is that at the same summit Blair proposed and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent diplomatic liason dedicated to ?energy security and diversity?. No announcement was made, and the Dialogue?s existence was only later exposed through a US Freedom of Information enquiry.

Iraq was evidently not just about corporate greed but strategic desperation.

Abbot evades the big picture because as Freud said people cannot bear too much reality. The exclusive focus on Blair is comforting: it means that without devious leaders and a dissembling Establishment we can continue our addiction to EasyJet, wasteful consumerism and 'the great car economy'.

I million people are dead in Iraq because Westerners do not want to change their lifestyles. That includes probably most of the anti-war types who enjoy stimulating their adrenals at Ballardian anti-war marches that acheive nothing but the illusion of change.

As Tolstoy once said,

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

@Cairncross

It was perfectly possible to suggest that the Iraq war was unnecessary and a bad idea without subscribing to bluecloud's "the Jooos did it" conspiracy theory. It is a bit off to tar us all with that. The Germans told Rumsfeld publicly and clearly that the evidence for continued production of weapons of mass destruction was unconvincing and the case for the war poor. The Germans were right.

Saddam was a git and a dictator but no more so than a lot of other gits and dictators around the world. Bush and the US strategists were the primary movers in this and Blair for whatever reason bought into it - which is why he was feted by the Bush administration.

Power often ends up in the hands of those least equipped to use it wisely.

the byeline is enough -

The evidence on Iraq is now clear. The former PM was dizzied by Bush, and misled gullible MPs

to possibly misquote boxer, 'i don't believe that'.

I agree with one or two above who find this an unconvincing article.

Blair was much more of a hawk than he is credited with above. The Americans did not feel the need to invent the kind of drivel that New Labour managed to conjure up to justify this war.

The truth is that New Labour apparatchiks were hawks for the war, waged a campaign to mislead the public and this attempt to lay the blame at Blairs doorstep is convenient untruth to absolve themselves of the blame.

What kind of human being could seriously remain within a party that blatantly lied to wage war on a sovereign state and over a sustained period of time enveloped the nation in a web of deceipt driving a man to his own suicide with their pernicious leaks to the press......?

Well......Dianne Abbott for one!!!

David own thought that
A Blair was hyperthyroid or B he had Hubris syndrome a temporary Personality Disorder.

However the very first bit of the enquiry actually laid out that containment was failing
sanctions were only harming the vulnerable and oil for food was not turning into food.http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011203/cortright
sanctions were the first attempt to get SH out of Kuwait.

sanctions killed many and Saddam was still after a bomb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

"Many other countries contributed as well; since Iraq's nuclear program in the early 1980s was officially viewed internationally as for power production, not weapons, there were no UN prohibitions against it. An Austrian company gave Iraq calutrons for enriching uranium. The nation also provided heat exchangers, tanks, condensers, and columns for the Iraqi chemical weapons infrastructure, 16% of the international sales. Singapore gave 4,515 tons of precursors for VX, sarin, tabun, and mustard gasses to Iraq. The Dutch gave 4,261 tons of precursors for sarin, tabun, mustard, and tear gasses to Iraq. Egypt gave 2,400 tons of tabun and sarin precursors to Iraq and 28,500 tons of weapons designed for carrying chemical munitions. India gave 2,343 tons of precursors to VX, tabun, Sarin, and mustard gasses. Luxembourg gave Iraq 650 tons of mustard gas precursors. Spain gave Iraq 57,500 munitions designed for carrying chemical weapons. In addition, they provided reactors, condensers, columns and tanks for Iraq?s chemical warfare program, 4.4% of the international sales. China provided 45,000 munitions designed for chemical warfare. Portugal provided yellowcake between 1980 and 1982. Niger provided yellowcake in 1981.[32]

Then the evidence about "doubt" about WMDs kept saying "may". He "may" not have etc etc. He did have WMDs and every intelligence service across the world knew this. Saddam was a monster. The upper guess of how many he killed was 50,000 a year. A total of
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/mostert/050117

"The Iran-Iraq War in which approximately 5,000 Iranians were killed with chemical weapons between 1983-1988, plus the several thousand Iranian prisoners of war killed by Hussein. (In the "legal" part of the war between these two powerful Muslim nations, 200,000 Iraqis died and over 300,000 Iranians died. They are not counted in Scheffer's report on war crimes.)

The dropping of chemical weapons on the Kurdish city of Halaja in Iraq in March of 1988, that killed over 5,000 civilians. The U.S. government has satellite photos of the carnage. The Kurds have since reported that five to seven thousand people of 80,000 inhabitants died immediately and a further 20,000 to 30,000 were injured, many severely. Initial studies indicate approximately 52% of current inhabitants were exposed at the time of the chemical warhead attack on Halaja.

The Anfal campaigns, also against the Kurds, when Chemical Ali, Hussein's cousin, was given the orders to slaughter the Kurds. Somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed. Scheffer called it genocide.

The invasion and occupation of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 in which Saddam Hussein's forces killed more than 1000 Kuwaiti nationals, and an uncounted number from other nations while launching the environmental crime "such as the destruction of oil wells in Kuwait's oil fields. War crimes also were committed against other nationals in an "effort to coerce their governments into pro-Iraqi policies."

In 1991, when the United Nations failed to approve the actual removal of Saddam Hussein from power, from 30,000 to 60,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly Kurds and Shiites were killed.

In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein drained the southern marshes, which deprived over 100,000 people of their livelihood and their ability to live on land their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years.

The ethnic cleansing of Persians and other non-Arabs from Iraq,

The killing, torturing and raping of political opponents and their wives and daughters and the disappearance of 300,000 people, the remains of many of whom have been found in mass graves following Iraq's liberation in 2003.

And, according to a booklet written by the U.S. Agency for International Development approximately 400,000 Iraqi civilians were seized by Saddam Hussein's various "security" organizations and simply never heard from again

Iraq, a country approximately the size of California, but with only 2/3rd its population, suffered more than a million violent deaths under Saddam Hussein's regime. That would average out at about 50,000 deaths a year in a population of 25 million before the Americans got involved. In the two years since the Americans have been fighting in Iraq, 13,650 Iraqis, have been killed, many of them by terrorist attacks by their own countrymen. Others were by military action. That averages out at 6, 825 deaths per year in a popula

NIce to hear from a proper Labour politician for a change.

The arguments Tony Blair used in order to convince the House of Commons and the country that invading Iraq was a legitimate course to take, weren't necessarily the arguments that convinced him to back George Bush. He saw the need to gather support everywhere he could as strategically sound. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was unfinished American business. Tony Blair believes the US is the best side to be on. And isn't he right? Isn't America the most successful democracy in history? Shouldn't we be thankful to live in a world largely shaped by American rather than totalitarian victories? I doubt Tony Blair deliberately lied to to the country. He felt strongly about dealing with Saddam Hussein and was probably filled with a strong sense of commitment to his own views when he backed George Bush so unequivocally. He may have judged Saddam Hussein a bit too harshly, but he was just basing himself on past experience.

Sorry David Owen thought TB had etc

Saddam was a monster killing his own people in industrial numbers and trying to develop lots of different WMDs. Sanctions had been bad, weapons were getting through, so what was left to stop him?

Credit where due: Diane Abbott heads this list of 139 MPs (including 16 Tories) who voted against Blair's Folly:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/mar/19/uk.houseofcommons3

Something over a million of us marched in London on 15 February 2003 against the war. It was manifestly clear then, and it is now, that the fix was in. And that no legal case for war existed outside Bush and Blair's febrile imaginations.

That does not mean I have a great deal of confidence that Chilcot will conclude what was and is obvious to a hell of a lot of people...

@UndergroundMan
"Well, its good Abbott voted against it but it's not true that the war was all about Blair it reflects the collective failure of Parliament and the entire British political class and media to hold the executive power to scrutiny and account."

I would agree with this. I would accuse journalists on this once great paper of being part of that failure. Party before truth(?), before honour(?) and before what was right. Mind you, honour, is an old fashioned term and probably one that should never or very rarely be applied to a journalist now or in the past.

Dianne Abbott says Blair misled gullible mp's. I would suspect that it is in a lot of peoples interest, not least other members of Nulabour, to put all the blame onto Blair. Not that Blair doesn't deserve a large part of the blame, but there are other people who also share in the responsibility including present members of the goverment, members of the goverment up to and including the PM. How many of these people 'did a Cook'? Trough and career was much more important.

Yes, it was about Blair, but Simon Jenkins is right, it was about the despair of watching all the careerist cynical New Labour MPs doing what they were told and voting for war.

Young politicians are the most corrupt of all. What they will not do to climb the greasy pole.

And of course it was about the Conservatives, who would have happily gone along with Bush's agenda and who happily went along with Blair.

This blog by Diane Abbot does look a bit like a can, because although Blair was ultimately responsible, Labour MPs and his own cabinet did not try to stop him - failed to do so.

The most deeply revolting thing of all was to hear Blair get an ovation from both Congress and the Senate.

I think that was probably one of the lowest points for British Soveriegnity since William of Orange.

freewoman

wrote

Saddam was a monster killing his own people in industrial numbers and trying to develop lots of different WMDs.

Iraq did not have the resources to persue a real Nuclear weapons programme.
As for Saddam being a monster, he was a Monster even when he was being feted by the West. Since when have we ever bothered about what sort of monster a leader is as long as we can do business with him.

And many times on here you have said we should use force to take the resources we need to survive.

Saddam did what he did to survive, you want us to do the same, does that not make you a monster as well.

So how do we, the people, bring Mr Blair and his lot to justice? It is clear that this enquiry was never going to do that, but that is precisely what the electorate want and deserve.

So how can we bring TB up on charges of treason, mass murder, war crimes, and anything else that is relevant?

Otherwise, the bastard will get away with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

I love this idea that there are "legal" and "illegal" wars. Who decides that again??!!
The legality of the war is irrelevant to be honest. War is crap, and unless someone's pointing a gun at your head and laughing like a maniac, it's best avoided altogether I'd have thought.
Oh, and can I put in a plea for an end to the lame and childish wordplayers who frequent these boards with "Bliar" (how hilarious! Blair can be anagrammed to B-liar!) and "Za - Nu - Labour" as if there was ANY EQUIVALENCE AT ALL between our governemtn and that of Robert Mugabe.
Not big. Not clever.

Correction:

This blog by Diane Abbot does look a bit like a con, because although Blair was ultimately responsible, Labour MPs and his own cabinet did not try to stop him - failed to do so.

blueclloud

it was her son actually.

i hardly think sending your child to a fee paying school and sending hundreds of thousands of other peoples children to their death really equates,

call me old fashioned.

Blair used to persuade gullible Labour colleagues in the final frantic arm-twisting days before the key vote in parliament.

So why haven't the shameless bastards resigned?

@Freewoman

Stop him doing what?

Most of the deaths under Saddam's regime were during the Iran/Iraq war. He was still a dictator and the sanctions were hurting ordinary people - particularly the block on medical equipment. However when you say weapons were getting through what weapons are you talking about? Clearly it wasn't WMD.

I thought it was right to go after Bin Laden and I despaired when we changed horses mid stream. Afghanistan was forgotten, Bin Laden is still free and the Taliban have 8 years on given us our hardest year yet and the elections in Afghanistan were a joke. If half the resources used in Iraq had gone to Afghanistan we might have had one completed job by now. All the time we could have used the example of Afghanistan to push Iraq to reform and continue with inspections. A hell of a lot of Iraqis have died since 2003.

" The evidence on Iraq is now clear. The former PM was dizzied by Bush, and misled gullible MPs"

I believe Ms Abbott voted agsinst when the House approved the invasion of Iraq, as against it as she has done on several other debates. For her pains she is destined to remain a back bench MP all the same, well done.

While I agree that Mr Blair was mendacious and is the chief culprit in the misadventure, the MPs who voted for the war can not escape their share of the blame. I watched the debate that day. There was a servile Labour back benches and they were egged on by Mr Ian Duncan Smith and the Tories, All of them are culpable for there was ample reasoned warning from Mr Robin Cooke who gave a reasoned argument and resigned from High Office- a rare display of integrity from a politician since Lord Carrington's resignation.

All those MPs who suspended their integrity and failed to probe the executive and particularly Ms Claire Short who threated to resign and then did not must hang their head in shame.

God, those poor simple MPs, misled by nasty Tony Blair, who in turn was obviously overawed by Bush's intellect - plenty of us plebs were convinced it was wrong from day one, that the ''intelligence'' was 100 percent purest sewage - and stank accordingly - and, indeed, that Tony Blair was an oleaginous bullshit merchant from the start. But hey, what would we know?

I recall one wonderful description of Tony Blair as being more akin to Bush's guide dog than his poodle, which I think was far closer to the truth.

Credit where due: Diane Abbott heads this list of 139 MPs (including 16 Tories) who voted against Blair's Folly:

stevehill

Sorry Steve I don't buy this argument at all. You cannot realistically lay this all at Tony Blairs door. Labour were happy to cope with his obvious inability to cope with the truth whilst he was winning elections and dispensing favours.

The party would have had some credibility if they had discarded him prior to that third term win on the basis of the illegal war. But they couldn't could they - they still needed him.

the knowledge that abbott had to bring her to the conclusion that the war was illegal and misconceived was available to the entire house of commons and a large part of the population. unbinding though it was, the commons majority vote for war on the evidence presented by blair condemns that house. i do not accept for a moment the 'stupidity' defence for mp's.

the idea that blair was somehow 'dizzied' into war - suggexting a mitigation of some loss of control, when confronted with the magnetic character (!) of bush - is so much cod psychology and won't wash.

the us and the uk were in this together because their inseperably combined military industrial complex ensured that this would be the case. they'd been in it together in both afghanistan and iraq throughout the neo-imperialist era, and the imperialist era before that.

the non - binding vote in the commons, and powell's laughable wmd presentations to the un, demonstrated to the inquisitive citizen in both countries a quite incredible democratic deficit - mouths stuffed with gold and contracts.

much to agree with in abbott's article, but still too much myth-making.

FaLsEFlag91177
26 Nov 2009, 9:02PM
Blair disgusts me...His grinning Cheshire cat smile...
How does he sleep at night?

He sleeps at night because he is a Hollow Man in T S Eliot's terms...he is empty inside: no values, morals, conscience. He is the center of his universe, and he acts in terms of what is good for himself. It is no surprise that his relationship with Bush, a confirmed sociopath, was so warm. Remember what we have been told, Blair prays only when the TV cameras are on. He is an utterly constructed and therefore unauthentic person...so of course he sleeps soundly, dreaming of the millions he has made since he left office.

Oh, and can I put in a plea for an end to the lame and childish wordplayers who frequent these boards with "Bliar" (how hilarious! Blair can be anagrammed to B-liar!) and "Za - Nu - Labour" as if there was ANY EQUIVALENCE AT ALL between our governemtn and that of Robert Mugabe.
Not big. Not clever.

I think it comes from Nickerless Griffen's mob, so it is hardly surprising it is not clever.

Glad to see you're keeping alive that centuries-old European tradition of each new administration criminalizing the previous regime to consolidate its hold on power and eliminate dissent.

Congrats.

When does the inquiry into the Roosevelt/Churchill conspiracy to draw Japan into war commence?

Spare us the childish lamentations. The time to act is long past, and your petulance only highlights your complete fecklessness when it actually mattered.

IndependentLady:

So how do we, the people, bring Mr Blair and his lot to justice?

We can't (on the main crime of waging a war of aggression and all that entails) because our admirable politicians have carefully ensured that they can't possibly be prosecuted for that crime.

They've taken care not to incorporate the crime of aggression into our law (although they were quick enough to convict Germans of it at the end of WW2) so they can't be prosecuted in our Courts.

And they've made sure the ICC can't act on the crime of aggression until they have control of the process for deciding when one has occurred.

They are shameless, evil bastards, but they aren't stupid when it comes to self-preservation.

But doubtless most Guardian readers will continue voting for the warmongering scum anyway. (And yes, the Tories aren't much better). Anyone who votes for any MP who voted for the attack on Iraq is beneath contempt.

I'm rather amazed at the severity of the coded mandarin-speak attacks on thier old master by the first witnesses at Chilcot.

Chilcot may have pointed out at the start that this was an inquiry, rather than a court of law, but if the evidence continues to build against Blair at this rate, it must surely provide grounds eventually for some strictly legal proceedings against the smarmy war-criminal with an extremely unhealthy need to suck up to authority in all its forms from Pope and President through landed aristocrats to barons of industry and the press.

Please, Mr Obama, keep Guantanamo Bay open for Tony.

I want to see him manacled in an orange jumpsuit, in a cage.

I supported Blair at the time. I believed all the shit about the threat of WMD and dissidents being executed in shredding machines. I am profoundly ashamed. I can only hope, please God (forgive me my faith), that we will witness this smirking monster's fall, in this life, here and now, that our blinkered society would realise what unparralled destruction he has wrought. Vile, vile, vile.

MacRandall: Um, the same administration's still in power in the UK, just the head's changed. And Diane Abbott voted strongly against the war from the start (while millions in Britain marched and protested, as they did across Europe and the world) - so I don't think accusing her or us of fecklessness is very fair.

solocontrotutti:

Labour vote:
2001: 10,724,953
2005: 9,562,122

1,162,831 potentially decent former Labour voters, plus the ones who voted in 2005 for the Labour few who had rebelled against the war vote, or for candidates who had opposed the war from outside Parliament. The rest were naive fools or hypocrites

You know what people? You're all so desperately keen for one man to take responsibility for the entire set of events ending up with war in Iraq, do you really think that Blair alone made it happen? Because if you do, best take a look at the country you live in, the way democracy works or doesn't work here, and the reason that one person can have so much influence on events around the world.
Wouldn't you rather try and stop this kind of thing happening again rather than pursue a rather pointless vendetta against one ex-PM? Oh, no you wouldn't. Because that requires real insight, thought and concerted action. Best just stand outside the enquiry shouting "War Criminal" instead since it seems to make you feel better.