how could we ever have loved such a bastard?

Nick Cohen on the psychodrama of the British media, seized by self-loathing and self-deceit in equal measure:

Like spurned teenage lovers, former Blairites wail that he ravished them and then betrayed them, and that he must pay by suffering every kind of humiliation. They cannot accept that Blair made an honourable mistake: knowing that Saddam Hussein had possessed the means and the will to commit genocide in the past, he believed that the dictator continued to possess them in 2003. The accusation that he was guilty of human error is not good enough. Blair must have lied to Parliament and the country. He must have known that there were no WMD in Iraq but went to war anyway. The result of the almost sexual revulsion behind the campaign against him is that we are now on our fifth inquiry into Iraq. Like the European Union with the Irish electorate, the media class will keep demanding inquiries until they get the right result and find that Blair conspired to steal their virginity.

Comments

[Richard]

I admire your relatively dispassionate view on the Blair PMship and his decision to join the war in 2003. But do you sincerely believe that decision was motivated primarily by a fear of Saddam using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (I refuse to use the newspeak "WMDs") against us? The invasion was clearly an attempt to dictate the broader future of the Middle East and perhaps also to vent US anger at being attacked and having no solid enemy to fight. The weapons issue was a causus belli - but the decision was rooted elsewhere and Blair's support was more about broader UK foreign policy than national security. It was obvious at the time and nothing that's emerged since 2003 has proved otherwise.

[Elemjay]

I think it's just a quote from another article not Mr Marbury's *own* views!

[Ian Leslie]

Well it's true this is a quote but it's also true that my views on this are close to Cohen's. Richard - I accept Blair's explanation of why he went to war, made very clearly and passionately in the first hour or two of his evidence to Chilcot. Doesn't mean I agree with his rationale, but I accept his explanation for his behaviour. Not just because I give him the benefit of the doubt but because it squares with all the evidence. He already regarded Saddam's WMD programme as a very serious problem, to that end supported the US bombing in 1998. He already regarded Saddam's regime as a problem in itself, as did the US (ILA 1998 etc). But 9/11 caused him to regard Saddam and his WMDs as a more urgent problem; one that had to be dealt with.

I say "Saddam and his WMDs" because to his mind, the two went together. This was just how Saddam wanted it, of course. He wanted the West, his neighbours, and his internal enemies to believe that he was a WMD kind of a guy.(I think it would be good if just a little of the anger at Blair and Bush was directed at Saddam, who could, if he'd wanted, done a Gadaffi and stopped the whole process in its tracks. It seems to me he's at least as responsible for the 100,000 deaths as they are.)

Ps I think national security and UK foreign policy were indistinguishable on this issue in Blair's mind.