So at last we know. Tony Blair has appeared in front of the Chilcott enquiry and has told us all what happened in the lead up to the Gulf War. Or has he?
Much seems to have been said about the legality or otherwise of going to war in Iraq. It transpires that dozens of lawyers in the foreign office advised the then Foreign Secretary that in their opinion taking military action against Saddam Hussein would be illegal without a further UN mandate. It would also seem that the Attorney General agreed with this view, so how did we end up going to war?
Enter Tony Blair. With his usual customary lawyer's skills and much gesticultaion, he told us in considerable detail pretty much nothing at all. It seems that he was quite happily go to war and had assured our good friend Bush that should America decide to invade Iraq, the British Army would be right behind him. This is quite wise as the worst possible place for anyone to stand is in front of the American Army - unless you want to be shot at...
So was the Iraq war illegal? - and in any case does it really matter? Perhaps we should be concentrating not so much upon the presentational skills of a trained lawyer who we all know to be a master of spin, and concentrating more upon whether or not the war was morally justified in the first place. It is true that Saddam Hussein had access to chemical weapons and is quite clear that he was prepared to use these as he had already used them against his own people. Clearly the sexed up dodgy dossier's claim of an imminent delivery method for these weapons was grossly exaggerated, but at the same time it is but a short step to making these weapons available to international terrorists.
This is a compelling argument and yet it is not one that appears to have been put forward. Rather Mr Blair's justification for the debacle that has turned out to be the aftermath of the Iraq war was simply that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed because he was "a bad man".
Whilst it is difficult to argue the case for Saddam being a good man, one wonders why this same argument is not used against other tyrants such as Robert Mugabi. The cynical amongst us would perhaps suggest that the main reason for the initiation of the war in Iraq was not to remove a "bad man" but for Dick Cheney to regain control over the oilfields which Saddam nationalised. This argument certainly explains why we have never invaded Zimbabwe. After all, there is no oil there.
Many questions have been asked about exactly when Blair agreed with Bush that Britain would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States. I suspect that we will never know the exact timing of this agreement.
But the most worrying thing about this week's events in the Chilcott enquiry, in my view, is Mr Blair's insistence that it was "the right thing to do" and he would have no hesitation whatsoever in doing it again. Such deeply held conviction is seriously unnerving.
So we should be grateful that this dynamic duo is no longer in power. There never was an exit strategy for Iraq and Obama would appear to be coming clean that he has a long-term mess on his hands. Whilst Mr Blair is no longer in situ, we are saddled with a Prime Minister who was happy to go along for the ride and to ensure that he could pick up the reins when the time came.
The change of President in the United States and has been a breath of fresh air, and perhaps the same thing will be said of Great Britain after the forthcoming election. While Obama received an overwhelming mandate from his people, we should remind ourselves that Gordon Brown was never elected by anybody. In a democracy this cannot be healthy. Let's either give Brown a mandate or kick him out. This would, after all, be "the right thing to do"...
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