Yes, I do wonder about this – Rentoul, amongst others, seem to think that, because most of the population believe the former PM is a liar and tosser, then everyone must have gone mental.

There’s a simpler explanation, of course, but I’m not surprised that it never occurs to the JRs of this world.

It’s all over we have peace in the middle east well in Iraq anyway, 50,000 holiday makers wearing American uniforms will stay, just to make sure the Oil flows and the leadership does not wonder.

I just saw Blair now and he is a lawyer, he sounds like one, looks like one he is one.

New labour lives on, or does it, the real question is do we have enough people who care anymore.

You guys are just WMD deniers. *Everyone* knows that Saddam could totally nuke the shit out of us in 45 minutes like Blair said.

I mean there’s no way the government and its experts would lie about something important like that, right? Oh by the way, the Earth’s going to warm by 3.5 degrees before 2100, we’re all going to drown, and only denialists say otherwise.

Rentoul is spot-on. Your bank robber analogy is misplaced. The facts are straightforward enough:

1. Every intelligence agency in the West believed that Saddam was engaged in covertly resuming WMD production. They had good reason for this: they had interdicted numerous attempts by Iraqi agents to purchase banned substances and technologies.

2. A significant proportion of the chemical and biological stock Saddam is known to have once possessed remained unaccounted for and he was uncooperative with weapons inspectors.

3. Saddam had a history of sponsoring terrorist organizations and Abu Nidal was living in a villa in Baghdad.

4. Iraqi agents tried to smuggle biological weapons into the UK in 1998. It was one of the first big security crises Blair had to deal with after coming to power.

In the light of 1-4 above, it was perfectly rational of Blair to be worried in 2002-3 by the possible fusion of WMD & terrorism and to conclude that unless Saddam was deposed he would eventually supply lethal substances to one or more terrorist groups.

It was this fear that Blair said at the time was what concerned him most (see Chris Mullin’s diaries).

All the 45 minute hype/ dodgy dossier stuff came later and though, no doubt, the spinners acted irresponsibly, the basic analysis Blair made was sound.

A whole encyclopaedia could be written dissecting the *incredibly shallow* world of Tony Blair, his industrial tons of glossing over factual objections and his extensive re-writing of history.

One question though is compelling: how can people like John Rentoul never *EVER* at all disagree with their political heroes (in his case Blair)? How is that humanly possible? How? Not even once, not even by chance?

Have you got a personality of your own, Mr Rentokil?

@4

Shorter: We kept the receipts [to steal Bill Hicks gag from 1991].

We did know about Saddam WMD because we sold him the shit to make them, so I suspect Blair was a bit worried, but I think Blair was more worried he’d piss off bush and then be refused the possibility of coming over and making a fortune.

In the end history will know the truth, I do love seeing Blair in 1999 telling the public why he wanted to stop fox hunting and his Conservative view now, also love the bit about him saying he was a Liberal in view, why not join them now they need somebody in power.

But the best bit was of course I’m dam sorry about the freedom of information saying that turned out to be a nightmare, never mind Tony you knew how to work that one mate you got a court to order the lies sorry facts about you to be destroyed.

New Labour rules.

@4: “Every intelligence agency in the West believed that Saddam was engaged in covertly resuming WMD production. They had good reason for this: they had interdicted numerous attempts by Iraqi agents to purchase banned substances and technologies.”

That is plain and demonstrable rubbish.

“A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country’s intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/feb/04/iraq.israel

Dr Brian Jones quietly blew up the credibility of Blair’s signed claims in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD, published at a special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002.

In the Ministry of Defence, a branch of the Defence Intelligence Service was tasked to monitor and assess all incoming intelligence on WMD. At the time of the Iraq invasion, Dr Brian Jones was head of this branch. A report in The London Times on 4 February 2004 relates to the doubts he had about the claims made in the government’s dossier published at a special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1011171.ece

This letter of 8 July 2003 from Dr Jones to the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence was submitted to the Hutton inquiry:
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/mod/mod_4_0011.pdf

The letter includes this passage:

“Your records will show that as [blanked out] and probably the most senior and experienced intelligence community official working on ‘WMD,’ I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessment for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier of 24 September 2002, that I was moved to write formally to your predecessor, Tony Crag, recording and explaining my reservations.”

In the discrete language of the civil service, Dr Jones disowned responsibility for the claims made in the government’s dossier.

According to this secret memo of 23 July 2002, leaked to the Sunday Times and published on 1 May 2005, shortly before the 2005 election on 5 May:

“C [the traditional title for the head of MI6, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service - at the time: Sir Richard Dearlove] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

The final sentence is absolutely damning: “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece

According to this source placed to know:

“(CNN) — The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House [in January 2001], former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill told CBS News.’”
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/

@4: “Every intelligence agency in the West believed that Saddam was engaged in covertly resuming WMD production. They had good reason for this: they had interdicted numerous attempts by Iraqi agents to purchase banned substances and technologies.”

That is plain and demonstrable rubbish.

“A prominent Israeli MP said yesterday that his country’s intelligence services knew claims that Saddam Hussein was capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction were wrong but withheld the information from Washington.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/feb/04/iraq.israel

Dr Brian Jones quietly blew up the credibility of Blair’s signed claims in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD, published at a special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002.

In the Ministry of Defence, a branch of the Defence Intelligence Service was tasked to monitor and assess all incoming intelligence on WMD. At the time of the Iraq invasion, Dr Brian Jones was head of this branch. A report in The London Times on 4 February 2004 relates to the doubts he had about the claims made in the government’s dossier published at a special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1011171.ece

This letter of 8 July 2003 from Dr Jones to the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence was submitted to the Hutton inquiry:
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/mod/mod_4_0011.pdf

The letter includes this passage:

“Your records will show that as [blanked out] and probably the most senior and experienced intelligence community official working on ‘WMD,’ I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessment for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier of 24 September 2002, that I was moved to write formally to your predecessor, Tony Crag, recording and explaining my reservations.”

In the discrete language of the civil service, Dr Jones disowned responsibility for the claims made in the government’s dossier.

Not sure Blair has any supporters as such – just some people who don’t quite understand the extent of hatred some people feel for him and the conclusions it leads them to (such as that Labour achieved nothing at all of value on his watch, if you look at the article entitled “What qualities will a new Labour leader need?” on this very website.

For example – Rentoul’s whole article was just that – a questioning of where the bile and hatred comes from.

After all – it isn’t very sensible to imagine Tony Blair decided it would be great fun to lie to people and so concocted a lot of stuff about Iraq in order to indulge some personal quest.

It is more sensible to imagine he was presented with some information, much of it that turned out not to be very valid, and was sufficiently convinced that it needed acting on that he made misjudgements there-after.

Not evil – just wrong.

Flowerpower you do talk some shit, but then you are well drilled at tory central to spout this crap.

In 1998 Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Jeb Bush the whole neo con bullshitters wrote an open letter to the Washington Times calling on the then President Clinton to attack Iraq. This was 3 years before 9/11 and shows the whole “9/11 changed everything” was hooey.

A senior CIA man has testified to congress that when in February 2001 he warned Cheney that the biggest problem they will face is Bin Laden he was told “only bring me things on Iraq”

In August 2001 Colin Powell giving a press conference in Egypt said that Iraq posed no thread to it’s neighbours or the rest of the world. He said all their weapons had been destroyed in the first Iraq war.

Within days of 9/11 when the Americans knew that it had been carried out by Bin Laden the Republicans were running to microphones all over America demanding that America attack Iraq. John McCain was one of the biggest offenders.

The neo Cons had already decided to “Take Saddam out”, and all they needed was the excuse. As for Bair, he is delusional. Anyone who starts referring to himself as ‘the decider’ has gone bat shit insane. Blair likes to portray himself as someone who made the tough decisions. But in reality in took the easy decisions, and avoided the much more difficult ones of standing up to the international right wing. He caved in to Bush/Murdoch/the Telegraph, and instead did what he always does, attack straw men. Blair was good at attacking straw men. He loved to pick fights against the weak, and pretend that he was the big man. But he will die a rich man ,well rewarded by his corporate masters.

@10 margin

“Not sure Blair has any supporters as such – just some people who don’t quite understand the extent of hatred some people feel for him and the conclusions it leads them to (such as that Labour achieved nothing at all of value on his watch, if you look at the article entitled “What qualities will a new Labour leader need?” on this very website.”

I have come to loathe Blair and much of what he stood for, so perhaps I count as one of those you refer to above? I accept that “things of value” were done during his administation: BUT (yeah, there is always a but….) that doesn’t make up for all the bad things which were done, nor does it mean that Blairism and the whole NuLabour project were right.

I happen to agree with you WRT Iraq, and believe him to have been (despite my distate for the man) wrong, rather than eveil. My problem with the conspiracy theory zealots is that their one track obsession with proving that he was, if not the anti-christ, then at least one of his minions, and probably a war criminal to boot, simply deflects attention away from the structural failures in processes and institutions which allowed this “wrong” decision to turn from drama, to crisis and then into farce.

The problem is not that he was some Machiavellian figure orchestrating some huge conspiracy, it is that he didn’t have the gumption to see the decision was wrong, and what the consequences would be of the decision. By concentrating on the fervid imaginings of the conspiracy theorists, we are in effect letting him, his advisers and the un-reformed system over which he presided, off the hook. the man isn’t evil, he’s just a self deluded fool who has never been able to admit he was wrong.

Not evil – just wrong.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

@11 Sally

Indeed, and they/we did bomb Iraq in 1998 in Operation Desert Fox – some cynically said to distract from the Lewinsky affair but I can’t imagine our leaders being so callous… :O

Flowerpower -

(1) is a misleading appeal to authority, (2) is just downright misleading, (3) is a non sequitur and none are dreadfully relevant as they do not contradict the notion that Saddam’s threat was “hugely overblown“.

Margin -

I’m more interested in the methods of Rentoul, Jacobsen et al than their beliefs. The former is certainly a fan of Tony Blair, however; dyed-in-the-proverbial-wool.

Galen10 -

What do you mean by “conspiracy theorists”? People who believe the threat of WMDs was systematically exaggerated? Well, it was. If that implies a conspiracy then so be it.

Galen

I disagree with you – I don’t think you are one of those people I’m referring to at all. At least not based on what you just said which sounded perfectly reasonable and sensible as a criticism of a man who happens to be some one whose values and judgement you disagree with.

I can see how some one hates or loathes a politician in pure terminology. It is easier to say one hates Thatcher or Blair than say she or he was of poor judgement and also was motivated by utterly the wrong aims, based on my view of their “achievements” in politics.

What I think “Blair’s supporters” (as the article labels us) don’t see is how that turns in to real hatred – which is so blinkered and unfailingly vehment that there can be no recognition of any positive, any mistake, or any contributing failure external to the hate figure.

That just makes no sense, is utterly unsustainable in regards to making a case against the individual or the policies involved, and undermines real discourse.

As you say – Hating TB only distracts lots of people from more important things. Especially with regards to Iraq.

BenSix

Don’t much care for the methods of columnists – More interested in the extreme views held by some people that lead them not to seek answers but to wallow (or perhaps revel) in their own indignation.

Also – you apparently don’t know what “systematically” suggests – since that would counter the argument that there was a conspiracy – or at least that Blair ran one.

For it to have been systematically would have required for the institutions gathering and presenting data to have naturally (without concious decision) exagerrated their findings one way or another. As such unless Blair created those institutions (such as MI6) he could hardly be blamed for that.

That said, if what you mean is that Blair, along with various security chiefs and other political figures colluded to exagerate the case – well – that’s not systematic at all – it is concious. And if it were the case, it would require a motive.

And no one has as yet suggested an evil motive (as Rentoul points out) that makes any more sense than Tony Blair acting in what he wrong thought was the national interest (be it because he believed that included good relations with the USA or because he believed Iraq was a threat)

Which again – is cause for thinking him wrong, but not that he is evil or worthy of inspiring hate.

“Politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even distort it, where the interest of the bigger strategic goal demands it be done” – Tony Blair

That said, if what you mean is that Blair, along with various security chiefs and other political figures colluded to exagerate the case – well – that’s not systematic at all – it is concious. And if it were the case, it would require a motive.

Money £15 million in a bank account from going around America on speaking engagements.

no it could not be that easy could it, all those secret meeting with Bush the idiot, it could never all be about money.

Eh? “Systematic” just means “ordered” – why on earth does that imply “[no] concious decision“. As for motive, well, I can’t know the motives of the individuals involved. That doesn’t mean they were good, though. Absence of evidence – here, at least – isn’t evidence of absence.

@13 ukliberty

“Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

That has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. If you can’t distinguish between someone who has caused some evil to occur through malice, and someone who has caused some wrong through incompetence (however egregious) then your moral compass needs a service.

It’s Clark’s Law (c.f. Hanlon’s Razor, Ingham’s Law), not mine, and it’s about outcomes more than people.

@22 ukliberty

Don’t hide behind whose law it is. By giving it an airing you presumably have a view as to whether or not it is accurate, or why bother bringing it up? The outcome of a wrong decision might for example be someone being killed, but I doubt many people would say that there was a moral equivalence between the person responsible for a the death who was malicious, and the person responsible being incompetent. True, the person would be just as dead…but there is a difference.

Bob B @ 9

That is plain and demonstrable rubbish.

If, instead of endlessly reproducing press cuttings that are beside the point, you were to use your own brain, you’d see that it is not rubbish at all. Like many others here you conflate being “capable of swiftly launching weapons of mass destruction” with “engaged in covertly resuming WMD production”. They are not the same thing. One is work in progress; the other is, to borrow a phrase, “mission accomplished”.

Brian Jones was in no doubt that Saddam had WMD programmes. His job was to assess whether Saddam had weaponized the chemical and biological agents yet. He and David Kelly concluded that he had not. But neither disputed the fact that Saddam was trying.

Ben Six @ 15

My point 1 was neither an appeal to authority, nor was it misleading. Blair had to make his judgment on whether Saddam must be stopped on the basis of available intelligence about Saddam’s intentions and capabilities. There was a consensus among Western intelligence agencies that Saddam did indeed have the intention and was working on the capability.

You try to refute my point 2 with an anachronistic irrelevance. Since Blair made his risk assessment in 2002, a briefing by El Baradei in March 2003 is hardly relevant. In any case, El Baradei was concerned with whether Saddam was developing a nuclear bomb, not with chemical and biological weapons (which are what worried Blair).

You say point 3 is a non-sequitur. Well it wasn’t supposed to logically follow on from its predecessor. It is an independent point. It is germaine. Blair repeatedly said he was anxious that Saddam would pass on chemical or biological materials to a terrorist group who would use them in the West. Abu Nidal was precisely the kind of person who would do so.

You ignore point 4 (as is usual with people advancing your ‘Bliar’ analysis).

You then say: do not contradict the notion that Saddam’s threat was “hugely overblown“.

Another anachronism. Blair made his judgment that Saddam was a serious threat before the 45 mins intelligence… before either of the dossiers…before the matter was “blown” at all. The fact that the policy was wrongly sold doesn’t mean the policy was wrong.

The WMD issue was no doubt hyped…… but the WMD threat was real. Blair was well within the mainstream in believing in 2002 that Saddam posed a medium term threat.

By the bye, Tony Blair wasn’t exactly alone (or even unusual) in believing what he did in 2002 , as the following quotations show:

What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead us to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.” – Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology.– Nancy Pelosi

Galen10,

The outcome of a wrong decision might for example be someone being killed, but I doubt many people would say that there was a moral equivalence between the person responsible for a the death who was malicious, and the person responsible being incompetent.

Clark’s Law doesn’t suggest a “moral equivalence”.

The point is, there are thousands of casualties in an ongoing conflict in part because of “structural failures in processes and institutions which allowed this “wrong” decision to turn from drama, to crisis and then into farce”, a man without “the gumption to see the decision was wrong, and what the consequences would be of the decision … a self deluded fool who has never been able to admit he was wrong”.

We might want to sort out those “structural failures in processes and institutions which allowed this “wrong” decision to turn from drama, to crisis and then into farce” and try to prevent “self deluded fools” from getting into positions where they can do so much damage – failing that, limit the damage they can do.

So a whole bunch of other politicians who’s political future also depended on going into Iraq justified it… I’m shocked flowerpower!

Re; @8 and @24

With no apology, even more citations – or “press cuttings” – to show that there was no substantial evidence for the claims Blair made in the dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction published at that special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002:

See the Butler Report (paras 573-578) on the handling of intelligence relating to Iraq’s WMD and the 45-minute claim – which is made no less than four times in the government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD published at that special session of Parliament on 24 September 2002, presumably for greater effect.
http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/deps/hc/hc898/898.pdf

Note in particular this passage in para 578 of The Butler Report:

“[David Manning] briefed [on 12 September] the Prime Minister on each of SIS’s [SIS = MI6] main sources including the new source on trial. He told us that he had underlined to the Prime Minister the potential importance of the new source and what SIS understood his access to be; but also said that the case was developmental and that the source remained unproven. Nevertheless, it may be that, in the context of the intense interest at that moment in the status of Iraq’s prohibited weapons programmes, and in particular continuing work on the dossier, this concurrence of events caused more weight to be given to this unvalidated new source than would normally have been the case.”

According to the (secret) Manning Memo to Blair of 14 March 2002, the objective of the Iraq invasion all along was regime change – which is illegal under international law without UN sanction:
http://downingstreetmemo.com/manningtext.html

There are good reasons why “liberal interventionism” to engineer regime change without UN sanction should continue to be illegal in international law. The Nazi German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 was supposedly to protect the civil rights of the many German-speaking citizens resident in Poland. The deployment of Soviet tanks in East Germany in 1953 was to defend “socialism” and that was also the claimed justification for the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czecho-Slovakia in 1968. Blair himself made the point in a keynote speech in Chicago in April 1999:

In a keynote speech on foreign policy made to the Economic Club in Chicago in April 1999, Blair said: “If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june99/blair_doctrine4-23.html

Btw how else to show that Blair knew all along that the WMD claims were cooked up except by citations of press reports, by inquiry evidence and findings and by leaked memos?

Flowerpower -

There was a consensus among Western intelligence agencies that Saddam did indeed have the intention and was working on the capability.

I’m not sure that’s correct: even Eliza Manningham-Buller, the one-time head of MI5, has said Iraq “wasn’t of concern in either the short term or the medium term to [her] or [her] colleagues“. Even if it’s true, however, it needn’t imply that they had good reasons for thinking so. Assessing the risk a nation poses you should judge it by that risk, not by the perceptions in which the country is held.

It’s worth noting, too, that for Putin, Fischer and, eventually, Chirac the threat was not so pressing that invasion was called for. That was also true of the UN inspectors, for whom, as I’ve shown, Iraq had made “progress” and was “cooperating“.

Oh, about that…

Since Blair made his risk assessment in 2002, a briefing by El Baradei in March 2003 is hardly relevant.

Say you’re trying to decide whether a dangerous dog should be put down (apols. for the dehumanisation but I’m in a hurry). You conclude that it’s aggressive and unwilling be taught: a prime target for the chop. Later, though, a trainer reports on “progress” and “cooperation“. Your old judgement should evolve as newer evidence is brought to light.

This analogy assumes that Blair was – once, at least – sincere. That’s damnably generous.

Blair repeatedly said he was anxious that Saddam would pass on chemical or biological materials to a terrorist group who would use them in the West. Abu Nidal was precisely the kind of person who would do so.

Even assuming that Nidal might have posed such a threat, he snuffed it in 2002. (Evolving judgements, once again).

You ignore point 4 (as is usual with people advancing your ‘Bliar’ analysis).

That’s ‘cos I was researching it. Can’t say I’ve seen dreadfully compelling evidence as yet. Anything to substantiate the claim that “Iraqi agents tried to smuggle biological weapons into the UK in 1998“?

Another anachronism. Blair made his judgment that Saddam was a serious threat before the 45 mins intelligence… before either of the dossiers…before the matter was “blown” at all. The fact that the policy was wrongly sold doesn’t mean the policy was wrong.

You’re happy with a government deceiving its people? Taking institutions for a ride? Screwing soldiers over? Well, I’m not, and even if TB was quite sincere – which, as I’ve said, I doubt but cannot know – it wouldn’t make such actions right. And, by the way, the policy was wrong in the bargain.

@BenSix

I think Flowerpower is referring to this when he/she talks about Iraqi agents smuggling biological weapons to the UK. It was bollocks then and it’s bollocks now. Key quote:

“It is right to take sensible measures. But it is unnecessary to be alarmist,” Home Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament.

A number of countries have received information about possible Iraqi threats to smuggle deadly anthrax, a poison Iraq is known to have produced, Straw said.

“But our information is there is no specific threat to the United Kingdom. There is no evidence to indicate that any attempt has actually been made to smuggle anthrax into this country,” he said.

[emphasis added]

Sunny Hundal @ 28

So a whole bunch of other politicians who’s political future also depended on going into Iraq justified it… I’m shocked

Care to explain how Chirac’s “political future also depended on going into Iraq”?

Since Al Gore publicly opposed the invasion, your argument doesn’t stack up in his case either. Nor in Nancy Pelosi’s – she voted against the Iraq resolution.. Ted Kennedy also opposed the invasion on the grounds that although he saw Saddam as a threat, the threat was not “imminent”.

Ben Six @ 30

You’re happy with a government deceiving its people?

Nope. But I don’t believe we were any more deceived by New Labour over Iraq than we routinely were over education, health, economic policy etc. The put spin on every announcement, great or small.

Screwing soldiers over?

Not sure what you mean here, but it’s worth remembering that there were only six combat casualties amongst British forces during the invasion of Iraq. I expect you will want to add to those the rather larger number of casualties suffered under the subsequent, unquestionably legal, UN Security Council authorized, occupation of Iraq. But then you’d have to sustain the fiction that Britain would not have contributed troops to the occupation if it had chosen not to take part in the invasion. Unlikely – given the roster of countries that did.

Later, though, a trainer reports on “progress” and “cooperation“. Your old judgement should evolve as newer evidence is brought to light.

A good point. My recollection is that when that very argument was raised at the time, the answer was that the “cooperation” was a ruse to delay the invasion to a time when a combination of the weather and greater Iraqi preparedness would be likely to result in higher coalition casualties.

I notice your reply to margin4error’s question about motive was that you cannot know what Blair’s motive was. Fair enough. But since you are accusing him of cynically leading us into an unnecessary war…. Couldn’t you at least give us your best guess why a popular Labour prime minister early in his second term would consider doing such a thing?

S Pill @ 31

A bit cherrypicky with your “key quote”. Try this from the same link.

The British government confirmed late Monday it had placed its ports on alert for Iraqi chemical weapons after intelligence sources warned of a plot to smuggle anthrax in duty-free bottles of perfume or alcohol.

Yep, Jack Straw started rowing back like Billy O once the tabloids threatened to turn it into a national panic. But he did issue the all ports warning. Wonder why? Just having a laugh, was he? Your argument seems to be that Blair lied, but Jack Straw always told the unvarnished truth. Yeah, right.

Ben Six

1. Of, characterized by, based on, or constituting a system.
2. Carried on using step-by-step procedures.

Sorry – I’m one of those horrible pedants who also hated the laurence inquiry declaring the met institutionally racist when clearly there was no institutional basis for the racism, nothing in its structures or the legislation that formed it and on which its legitimacy was based.

The racism was of course cultural – in that it was a result of turning a blind eye to and flippant acceptance of racism by the people who worked for it.

So of course the idea that the whole basis of intelligence gathering in this country systematically exagerating all its evidence jars a little.

margin4error: “After all – it isn’t very sensible to imagine Tony Blair decided it would be great fun to lie to people and so concocted a lot of stuff about Iraq in order to indulge some personal quest.”

This is a straw man argument. I don’t think anyone serious is claiming he chose to lie to the public to create support for an attack on Iraq because he was evil, and his evilness happened to show itself by total coincidence in a motiveless desire to send troops to Basra. The real argument is that he chose to lie to the public because he had other motives for attacking Iraq which he knew much of the public wouldn’t share.

It’s possible he believed he had a duty to take Britain to fight in an inevitable and existential conflict with the Islamic world (his pronouncements since have tended to support that view). It’s possible he believed it would be economically beneficial for the UK to have a stake in Iraq’s new government (all that oil). It’s possible he thought he was spreading democracy and freedom. Several years on, I’m still not sure which it might be.

But ultimately what matters is that he lied to get support, playing his part in a scheme to quite deliberately make Iraq falsely look like an imminent threat to public safety.

(BTW, I think you’re thinking of “systemic”, not “systematic”)

jungle @ 34

It’s possible he believed he had a duty to take Britain to fight in an inevitable and existential conflict with the Islamic world (his pronouncements since have tended to support that view)

What pronouncements have you in mind? Everything from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation seems the opposite of Huntingtonian Clash of Civilizations stuff … more like appeasement dressed up as interfaith dialogue etc.

flowerpower: “What pronouncements have you in mind? Everything from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation seems the opposite of Huntingtonian Clash of Civilizations stuff … more like appeasement dressed up as interfaith dialogue etc.”

http://actualeurope.info/headlines/war-on5477-092010.html

I don’t think Blair thinks you cannot have Islam without terrorism, like some on the right – but he does conflate the two to a pretty large degree.

Anyone who sees Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a unified religious World War against us that started with the twin towers attacks is doing that. Fundamentally there are no meaningful practical links between any of Iran or Al Qaeda or pro-Saddam militants (Shi’a fundamentalism, Sunni fundamentalism, semi-secular Arab nationalists). They even disagree with each other ideologically to the extent of wishing death on one another. If you see this set of wars as about fighting a single enemy, it’s because you think it’s about their basic religion.

I don’t think it’s at all implausible that he saw attacking Iraq as part of a duty to take part in an existential war of survival (i.e. Barbaric Islamists vs. Civilisation) that started on 9/11. It’s not by any means the only explanation, but it’s possible.