Harry´s Blog

Tony Blair to Iraq Inquiry, Jan. 30, 2010:
“Frankly, I would do it all again….Blair’s cockeyed logic: “If Saddam hadn’t been removed “today we would have a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran both in terms of nuclear capability and in respect of support of terrorist groups.”
 

Thumbs Down on Blair!

Opposition to Blair (as President of the E.U.) centers on his support for the war in Iraq. The war was mishandled and misbegotten - but if Blair had abandoned the United States, there would be little left of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance that was the rock on which the E.U. was built.
- Roger Cohen, “Giving Europe a Voice,” New York Times, Oct. 19, 2009

Bush, Cheney and Blair liberated Iraq and tens of thousands of Iraqis from life, as well as thousands of American and British soldiers. They invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, thus removing the buffer to Iran, making the United States and Israel more vulnerable. After pushing the Taliban back in Afghanistan, Bush & Co. let the country go to pot, increasing the danger to the Western World.

Blair did not simply go along with the invasion of Iraq. He passionately and eloquently made the case for it. He claimed that secular Saddam Hussein was in a tandem with sectarian Osama bin Laden, which was pure and unadulterated mendacity.

Those responsible for the senseless deaths of thousands belong in the dock in the Hague.
 

Buying from Blair

When Bush and Blair declared their aims concerning Iraq,
I wasn’t buying anything from Bush, but I lent my ear to Blair.
Blair’s eloquent casus belli was a rousing call
that brought King Harry’s Agincourt speech to mind.
I didn’t quite accept it, but I couldn’t quite reject it.
I was more than sceptical about the affiliation between bin Laden and Saddam
which Blair claimed was tightening.
But all-in-all, I could fathom the MPs voting for Blair’s resolution.
It would be hard not to.
Robin Cook’s resignation from the government got me thinking.
His actions look good in retrospect, and they look even better
after death silenced his voice.

At any rate, Blair threw me off track.
I sat on the fence.

I had Bush, Cheney and Condi figured out,
but I still didn’t have a handle on Blair.

He looks well meaning and sincere,
and he hasn’t tripped himself up with his own quotes.

How was I to know that Blair was every bit the manipulator
and equivocator as Bush and Cheney?

Stay-at-home Dick Cheney wanted to go it alone.
According to the Sunday Times,
the “US vice-president, ‘waged a guerrilla war’
against attempts by Tony Blair to secure
United Nations backing for the invasion of Iraq.”
One Blair aide remarked: “He’s a visceral unilateralist.”
Another agreed: “Cheney fought it all the way -
at every twist and turn, even after Bush’s speech to the UN.”(1)

Was Blair naïve?
“What is clear, though, is that Blair simply failed to comprehend
that neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle,
whom (Christopher) Meyer says Colin Powell privately dismissed
as ‘fucking crazies,’ saw Iraq as ‘the anvil
on which they could forge a realignment of the Middle East,’
and that Britain was being inexorably dragged down their path.”(2)

I, for one, don’t think that Blair was being “dragged.”anywhere.
Blair was a dragger.

Concerning military service,
the Blair Bunch is no different
from the Bush Crowd.

Here’s Geoffrey Wheatcraft in the “traitorous” Trib:
“…a Blair government, not one of whom
has ever performed any kind of military service,
and a Bush administration whose senior members
have never been burdened by any sense
of private honor incurred by privilege.
Like Dick Cheney they ‘had other priorities’ when they
should have been drafted.”(3)

Blair in Retrospect

The Independent reports: “Tony Blair has told Rupert Murdoch he believes
the BBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina was ‘full of hatred of America and gloating.’” (4)
And here’s The Observer: “Bill Clinton, the former US President …
also attacked the tone of the BBC coverage at a seminar on the media.
He said it had been ‘stacked up’ to criticize the federal government’s slow response.” (5)
On the other hand here is an Agence France Press headline:
“Clinton Launches Withering Attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, Budget.”(6)

Strange things are happening!
What is Tony Blair up to? Muzzling the media?
And what’s Bill’s role in this?
He’s “attacking” the BBC’s reporting on Katrina
while he’s “attacking” Bush on Katrina.

 The Key to Blair

Tony Blair is another passenger on the “Deity Train.”:
“Well, I think if you have faith about these things,
then you realize that judgment is made by other people….
If you believe in God, (the judgment) is made by God as well.”(7)

The next stop should be the Hague for all those who have
Iraqi and Allied blood on their hands.

- Herbert Kuhner

* * *

(1) The Sunday Times, May 1, 2005.
(2) Andrew Stephen, Review of DC Confidential by
Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to the
US, The Observer, Nov. 13, 2005.
(3 Geoffrey Wheatcraft: “Battle of the Somme. Honor and
Courage,” Int. Herald Tribune, July 1-2, 2006.
(4) The Independent Online Edition, Sept. 19, 2005.
(5) The Observer, September 18, 2005.
(6) Agence France Presse, September 18, 2005.
(7) The Guardian, March 4, 2006.