http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8410071.stm

For someone who lives their life by "christian" values he has a bit of a killing fetish – ahhhh.

as long as it isn't his kids I guess… c0ck…

Its easy looking on and criticizing after all thats gone on since but that was one bloody big decision he had to make. Can you imagine the pressure of that job?

Lots of pressure form yanks, I think he thought he was doing the right thing. The Americans made the biggest mistake for not sorting it out properly in the first Gulf war.

How can he remain so smug and self righteous after having been shown up to be so utterly wrong and dishonest? 😡

Doesn't matter now anyway – what's done is done

Saddam was a threat to oil supplies anyway so best rid of

Carbon337, Prvious PMs, (such as Harold Wilson with Vietnam) managed to resist pressure from the Americans.
I'd agree that he thought he was doing the right thing, but that is true of how Saddam thought too when he was quelling opposition in his country etc. 'Doing the right thing' is always the excuse used by power mad leaders after the event.

He took us into a war that most of population did not want, based on a bunch of blatant lies. Strange he's now playing the religion card. He has blood on his hands & he has to live with that.

I still remember seeing Colin Powell & Jack Straw do their bits at the UN. I believed then & do still that it was totally fabricated. What has been coming out in the last few weeks proves that!

As for pressure from the yanks – makes me wonder what kind of agreements we have them behind closed doors that means we have to agree to whatever they wish. Are we still indebted to them for the WW2 bailout?

Are we still indebted to them for the WW2 bailout?

no, it was paid off a few years back

Its easy looking on and criticizing………..

Yep, I find it a piece of piss criticizing an unrepentant liar. He now openly admits that despite what he told the British people, it had nothing to do with WMD – he would have gone to war anyway.

And he didn't just lie to the British people, he also lied to the Hans Blix, the UN, and the rest of the world – contrary to what he claimed, war was very obviously inevitable. Since the war had nothing to do with UN resolutions on Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and was in fact about 'regime change' it was indisputably illegal. Britain should now show the world that no one, not even the Prime Minister, is above the law – Blair should be arrested.

BTW, he still continues with his lying as he now maintains that Iraq was a threat to the region. After years of crippling sanctions Iraq was a threat to no one, they didn't even in effect, have an air force ffs. And never at any time did Iran, Iraq's sworn enemy, call for an attack on Iraq – which incidentally, they had already defeated many years earlier when Iraq had been much more powerful.

In fact Saddam and his government were not even a threat to northern Iraq, which was completely out of their control as a result of the implementation of the 'no fly zone' ……. so they couldn't even invade the north of
their own country then.

Tony Blair is a liar. He always has been, and always will be …. end of.

odd that the only time Blair took moral stance and led the country [ I mean do something a forum session had not advised would be popular] he chose this and displayed such terrible judgement.
Bad on decision legally,vmorally, politically, logically.
He wont ever admit he was wrong that is for sure…wonder if he said something about it a confessions though 🙄
EDIT: Plus what ernie said

ernie_lynch – 10/10.

Its easy looking on and criticizing after all thats gone on since

Lots of us were critical of him at the time and said then that he was full of shit – and were smugly told we were being 'naive' by many people including Tony.

He really must be very confident he is never going to face a war crimes tribunal with what he is admitting to. Sadly he is almost certainly right to be confident.

Choosing to finally reveal his (not at all shocking) true intentions (y'know) to that Pit Bull of BBC current affairs, Fern Britten, was presumably a way to 'leak' his strategy to avoid having to defend the indefensible when he got to the enquiry.

I hope he's bricking it and that he gets a really good going over when he does eventually face the enquiry. Afterwards there will hopefully be a nice, secure taxi waiting outside to take him to The Hague where he can have a room next to the recently invisible George Bush.

Peace Envoy, my F**king *rse.

Politician tells lies shocker.

Blair should be arrested.

Damn right. And only because everyone has a right to due process. Beyond that, he should count himself lucky we don't have the death penalty here.

Sadly, he'll stroll free and we know it.

Politician tells lies shocker.

It's not that a politician has told a lie, which is the real 'shocker' here porterclough – it's firstly, the sheer enormity of it (we're not simply talking about being 'economical with the truth')

Then there's the fact that the lie resulted in the government acting illegally, starting a war which caused a countless number of deaths (probably somewhere between 100,000 and 1000,000) and leaving it open to charges of international crimes – Nuremberg established that waging aggressive war is, quote : "not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole"

And finally, Tony Blair is someone who described himself as, quote : "I think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy".

The whole incident is unprecedented "shocking" in relation to British politics.

And still Tony Blair proves that he is completely unable to tell the truth. In the Fern Britton interview Blair says
quote : "you know, in the end I had to take the decision." That is untrue and a complete lie. Whilst Blair under the Royal Prerogative could have made the decision, he choose not to do so. Instead, he reluctantly agreed to allow Parliament to decide (which established a precedent that the late Robin Cook said was the one worthwhile thing to come out of the whole affair) Of course Parliament made the decision based on the lies told to them by Blair.

Blair imo has done lasting damage to the trust between the people and the government concerning international issues and the security of the country. He has probably also done damage in the relationship between Parliament and the government. Which I reckon, all in all, is pretty shocking stuff.

I'm bound to agree with Freddie Flintoff's estimation of the fellow's character:

"Tony Blair is a knob".

The most bizarre thing for me is that he seems to be convincing himself that everyone believed his lies, that he carried out the political subterfuge of the century and that we need to be told that he was bullshitting about the WMD's.

No tony, we'd all figured it out oooh, about ten seconds after the words first came out of your mouth.

The most bizarre thing for me is that he seems to be convincing himself that everyone believed his lies

Denial. Cognitive dissonance.

He looks a bit like a hamster on a wheel to me.

Even Ratzinger thinks he's a knob… Oh dear.

>I'm bound to agree with Freddie Flintoff's estimation of the fellow's >character:

>"Tony Blair is a knob".

Surely:
'Tony Blair is a ****'

Edit: yay, the swear filter works 😉

I'll hold my hand up, at the time I believed him. In fact I probably argued with Ernie under our pre-crash personas. Do I feel angry now? You bet. Not so much about the fact that we were all lied to, although that does chafe, more the way in which he is now admitting the lies. He is obviously safe in the knowledge that he is untouchable and will remain free to generate vast piles of cash for as long as he sees fit. At the very least he should be stripped of his "peace envoy" status.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0352857e-e644-11de-bcbe-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

I wonder what the war was really about 🙄

The whole reason for the war is so the west has control of an oil producing country, this means they cannot be held at ransom by Opec. They are hoping that they can rely on Iraq oil supplies long enough to cause rifts between the oil producing countries and eventually leading to the disbanding of Opec.

this means they cannot be held at ransom by Opec

OPEC increases oil production when demand is high/supplies low and it considers the global price of oil to be too high – it is not in their interest to have excessively high prices as in encourages a move away from oil dependency. As far as I am aware, by far the most influential OPEC member is Saudi Arabia, which has exceptionally close links with the Bush family, so the Bush administration already had considerable leverage on OPEC. In Britain's case oil prices probably have far less effect than we are led to believe as, iirrc, Britain is more or less self-sufficient in oil – we export about as much as we import. I doubt whether the Iraq war had much to do with oil prices, although it was undoubtedly linked with the desire of the US oil companies to get their hands on Iraqi oil.

It happened in 1973 when Opec (OAPEC) refused to ship oil to the west because they supported Isreal in it's 6 day war.

When you look at the huge tension in the Middle East now it would be very easy for a similar situation to occur again. It would be very hard for industry to move away from oil dependency and they certainly would not do it because of a short term price increase.

In the first iraq war the army was prevented from invading iraq by the lack of support at home, political and public opinion (us).

To start the second war this opinion had to be manipulated. The goal posts
were moved as we were softened up. At first we were told it was not about regime change.
We had to invade Afganistan first as an attack on terrorists was more just than invading iraq. we wouldnt have gone in to afganistan if we didnt want to invade iraq. we are still there.

so why was it so important, oil, world stability, I have never been convinced but live in the hope that politicans know what they are doing.

It would be very hard for industry to move away from oil dependency

But possibly not as hard as you might imagine. The reason why Britain is more or less self-sufficient in oil despite a huge drop in oil production, is precisely because Britain's dependency on oil has been reduced in recent years. As oil prices increase, people/countries find ways of reducing their oil dependency – if oil was dirt cheap, little or no attempt would be made to limit consumption. BTW, I'm not sure that the obscene drive to war with Iraq was driven by an event which had happened almost 40 years previously.

Just out of interest, if anyone knows, what was the relationship between the Saudis and Saddam ? Was he a threat to them in anyway? Given the links between the Saudis and the Bush clan was the war in part ways motivated by Saudi interests in the region ?

mr monkey, I googled and found

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/08/saudis/index.html

It thinks the threat to saudi was from iran and is now (article 2 years old) worse that iraq is destabilised.

The surprising thing is not that Blair lied about WMD (surely no-one really believed him did they?). The surprise is it that he now thinks it is ok to admit it was all cooked up to get the result he wanted.

What's next – will he admit to ordering the killing of David Kelly for example?

Did (some of ) the british public not re-elect him after the Iraq invasion?

I am glad a never voted for Blair, I always thought he was a charlatan, smiling assassin, Liar call him what you may,so to all you new Labour voters shame on you, bloody halfwits. As song went when Blair came into power Things Will Only Get Better. Utter tosh!

I am glad a never voted for Blair, I always thought he was a charlatan, smiling assassin, Liar call him what you may,so to all you new Labour voters shame on you, bloody halfwits.

I can only apologise for my naivity and hope that one day I can achieve access to the higher plane you obviously inhabit.

Cock.

To be fair, he fooled most of the population.
I didn't vote for him but he came across as charismatic and was the only option for those who didn't want the tories in power (the other parties are even more halfwitted).
But, I would have hoped that he would have been booted after the invasion.

Rather be a cock than a labour voter!

Rather be a cock than a labour voter

It's a shame that this thread has descended into partisan politics, when there appeared to be such a broad consensus that whatever our politics, most, it would appear, agreed that Blair is a lying lowlife (for that reason I specifically avoided criticising New Labour) Still, I guess some people can't help themselves and feel the irresistible need to score cheap political points at any given opportunity.

So whilst we're at it, it's worth remembering that Blair's success (landslide victory) wasn't down to an overwhelming popularity he enjoyed amongst traditional Labour supporters, but the enormous support he received from traditional Tory voters. People, like indeed his own father, who had always voted Tory – including Thatcher, felt hugely comfortable voting for Blair.

In fact if traditional Tory voters hadn't voted for him in such huge numbers he would have had a considerably smaller majority, and would therefore have struggled in getting his way on the more controversial issues – relying as he would have had to, more on traditional Labour base support. So I blame Tory voters – not traditional Labour voters.

.

It thinks the threat to saudi was from iran

I have always believed that Afghanistan and Iraq were but mere stepping stones towards the much larger prize of Iran (with possibly Syria as the 3rd stepping stone) Unfortunate for the Yanks 'plan A' went tits up when Donald Rumsfeld's strategy of "invasion light" proved to be nothing more than the arrogant wishful thinking of those who deluded themselves with their own rhetoric, self-importance, sense of superiority, and belief in their own divine destiny. As is fitting in cases of a conceited sense of superiority and divine destiny, there was no 'plan B'. On the plus side for the Yanks, they succeeded in their goal of getting their hands on Iraqi oil – but then again, that was never exactly in doubt.

ernie_lynch So I blame Tory voters – not traditional Labour voters.

good point not that I want to bring it down to party politics, we only get to put one cross every four years for every issue

I do hope that was irony!
Even though he did get more votes from defectors, many many more labourites voted for him than tories did.

The Tories didn't quite vote against the war in the House – did they?
In fact – IIRC – they argued for a tougher stance

http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/MediaLobbying/IraqWarVote/tabid/142/Default.aspx

Now if Blair's lies were as obvious as claimed – why didn't they see through it & vote against?

Now if Blair's lies were as obvious as claimed – why didn't they see through it & vote against?

Because it suited them not to?

Now ask me another, that was too easy.

Because it suited them not to?

Care to elaborate?