Saturday, March 13, 2010

Tony Blair deserves kudos

It wasn't big news on this side of the pond, but back in February, former British prime Minister Tony Blair was called to testify at an enquiry being held - in England - on the Iraq theatre of this Global War on Terror. Via The Thunder Run, I came across a wonderful assessment of Mr Blair's testimony. Christopher S Carson writes in the New English Review:
The Worst of Intentions

by Christopher S. Carson (March 2010)

Dr. Spertzel, it is not a lie when you are ordered to lie.”
–Dr. “Germ” Rihab Taha, former head of Saddam’s bioweapons program, in response to UNSCOM inspectors when asked why she continued to lie in the face of proof,
1995


Although it hardly made the American news, the Rt. Hon. Anthony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007, was called to the hot seat in London in February, testifying before Britain’s Chilcot “Iraq Inquiry” in what was ubiquitously referred to as his “Day of Judgment.” It seemed the political and media classes in Great Britain expected him to beat his breast in biblical lamentation for his vile sin of deposing Saddam Hussein’s monstrous regime in 2003. Perhaps the media and political classes at least hoped to see him sweat, or even see him beg for forgiveness, the way Richard Clarke did when he testified histrionically before the 9-11 Commission just as his Bush-bashing book hit the stores.

A ferocious crowd of some 400 protesters, outside the front entrance of the Queen Elizabeth Centre, bayed for his blood like animals—yelling that he was a murderer and a liar. Blair’s car slipped in the back entrance, in what the media all referred to as a “sneaky” maneuver. (Evidently Fleet Street thought it more honorable for him to be pelted with the fake blood and then lynched for real at the front doorway.)
The prospect of actually destroying Mr. Blair’s life as he knows it is not as far-fetched as it might sound. Earlier, the Inquiry heard from two senior Foreign Office lawyers, Sir Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst. They told the Iraq inquiry the invasion was against international law and amounted to a “crime of aggression”. For his part, “Human rights lawyer” Sir Geoffrey Bindman yesterday said there was a case for taking action against Mr Blair for waging an unlawful war. He said: “I would not be surprised if a prosecution were attempted in the UK. The difficulty would be to establish his personal responsibility for specific crimes against UK law.” Sir Geoffrey added that there would be serious difficulties in making the case but these were not “insurmountable.”

But Mr. Blair disappointed them all. "The decision I took - and frankly would take again - was if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) we should stop him," he said. "That was my view then and that is my view now." [ emphasis mine] Dressed in an impeccable suit, he used his considerable charm to tell the colorlessly verbose members of the Board that he had made the judgment that Britain should not "run the risk" of allowing Saddam to remain in power. "This isn't about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception. It's a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam's history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking UN resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes or is that a risk that it would be irresponsible to take?" He went on: "I had to take the decision. I believed, and in the end the Cabinet believed - so did Parliament incidentally - that we were right not to run that risk."

Mr. Blair was his usual polite self, effortlessly addressing the Board members by their knightly titles and displaying a remarkable self assurance during his six hours of historical reckoning. Of course he was savaged for it—for not apologizing, for not groveling, for not admitting he had been wrong to ally his government with the hated Texan in 2003 over WMD and Iraq’s ties to terrorists.

The savaging was universal, across all the newspapers and media outlets. Brian Reade of the Daily Mirror noted how Blair had “sneaked in the back gate” and lamented that his verbally challenged interlocutors “seemed unable to contradict him. Even though you found yourself internally screaming at him: "’Why don't you just own up and say a big Texan boy made me do it.’"

James Chapman, of the Tory Daily Mail, lamented that “despite the deaths of up to 700,000 Iraqis and 179 British troops, Mr Blair said he felt 'responsibility but not a regret'. Mr. Chapman did not feel the need to validate his outlandish Iraqi body count that of course was squarely the responsibility of Mr. Blair and George Bush. The 179 British troops over six years of war actually compares rather favorably to the 20,000 dead British Tommies on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (July 1st, 1916), but to hear the English media tell it, 179 fallen, volunteer soldiers over the entire history of the Iraq War constitute a veritable holocaust of bloody culpability....


This column is long, but a MUST READ! Mr Carson details the masterful way Mr Blair addressed every question put to him by these inquisitors out for his blood. Grab a pot of coffee, and take the time to read it all here.

Kudos to Mr. Blair.

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