Smooth Operator

'Teflon Tony' was at it again, as we suspected. The polished and well rehearsed performance of our former PM showed he has lost none of those skills that kept him at the top of his game in politics.

Even his admissions on Fern Britton's show that if he had known that WMD were not in Iraq, he would have still gone to war and just spun the evidence to give a different excuse, was laughed away as if he had been tricked by some skilled advocate rather than a weekday second rate presenter.

We learnt nothing more than what he was prepared to let us know and it was presented as if there was a compelling moral cause to his actions.

Faith is a great gift - it allows you to break circular arguments by providing a neat end point. The fact that Blair had faith meant he knew, no matter what the reason he invented or knew, that he was right to invade Iraq. He would do it again in a heartbeat for another reason - faith told him he would be always right. You cannot challenge faith; there is no logic, no evidenciary reasoning, no rational thought process, there is just a blind and utter belief in what you want to do or something to be.

Blair has buckets of faith - so much so that he has made it a past time to tell us all about his pious beliefs. The warning signs are there for us all to see - faith is not a reason to start killing people. Wars down the generations have relied on such stuff but we are developed, mature and intelligent humans - we need more of a reason to start killing one another.

If we don't, then this world is forever cursed with the burden of religion.

No other species on earth from the single cell structures to the most advanced primates have a concept of a God or worship - they may have pack leaders or alpha males but they do not have Gods. That sort of tells you something about the limitation of intelligence - it gives the ability for us to question, reason, invent, discover but then 'draw a line' under the whole thing when the answer does not coincide with evidence. From planetary motions, to disease control to evolution - faith has challenged humans every step of the way.

Tony Blair never cared whether Saddam Hussein had any WMDs or chemical weapons, nor if he could launch any within 45 minutes. He was more concerned in following his fellow believer in faith, George W. Bush. This week Blair declared, in his clinical knowledge and expertise, that Saddam Hussein was a psychopath. It was a clutch at a straw that at least most would believe.

But that is not what the UN 1441 stated - the grounds for armed intervention were not there. Blair knew that a second resolution would never be passed as both Russia and France at minimum opposed them. So he threw in his lot with the US and would do the justifications later when he was called to account.

The Chilcot Inquiry was advertised as the definitive inquiry into the war, we got nothing. All the evidence in the inquiry to date points that war was unnecessary and that the intelligence around it was deeply flawed at best and, at worst, lies.

We will never know the truth as faith stands in our way.

Perpetuating The Lie

Quite what the Chilcot Inquiry will achieve is very unclear. The one thing we can be certain of is that we will never get the truth.

Today, and live now, Alistair Campbell gives his version of events for the inquiry. Campbell was the spin-doctor at the heart of creating the myth that Iraq represented a threat to British Sovereign Territory and was the butt of Andrew Gilligan's assumptions on the 'Sexing Up' affair of the evidence document released to justify our decision to invade Iraq along with the US. Amid innuendo and spin, Dr. David Kelly, who allegedly whistle blew to Gilligan, committed suicide rather than apparently face the music.

Even as we speak, Campbell has already told the enquiry that Blair did not back regime change beforehand when Blair already told Fern Britton on BBC TV he did back regime change. The Guardian has previously reported that George W Bush and Blair had decided on going to war with Iraq at Camp David a year before the final button was pushed. Now Campbell is trying to say that WMD were never the main reason of why we invaded - even though this was the only legitimacy via the UN. But these are the things you will not hear truthfully - history has changed; history we lived ourselves and saw with own eyes.


The web of deceit surrounding that whole period of history will be spun yet further today by Campbell. Incredibly, at the height of the storm over the Kelly suicide, he stormed into Channel Four Newsroom and demanded to be put on prime time TV and explain his side of the story. Arguably then, and now, this showed that Campbell had become bigger than anyone in the country and that propaganda sinisterly ruled.


Nothing much has changed. Tony Blair has already tweaked his version of events to suit the facts over a period of time, culminating in his recent interview with Fern Britton in which he said that he would have removed Saddam anyway even if WMD did not exist saying, "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."


The Chilcot Inquiry was dead before it got under way as it was politicised from the start - Gordon Brown will not give evidence until after the election even though there is no earthly reason why that makes sense. So you can assure yourself of some facts - there will be no blame apportioned, no real truth will emerge, no new evidence will gain credence, no former ministers or spin doctors will lose the earnings on their biographies and Britain will still be vilified in the eyes of the wider world community for openly lying about the reasons it went to war.


I am sure, as it did not change the last one, that it will not affect the outcome of this election either. Too much skill, spin, changing of the facts and equivocation will ensure that nobody is blamed. That makes you think that if no one really was to blame then everyone from the Intelligence Community to Government Ministers to the PM himself must have so rubbish at their jobs as to be incompetent.

Hey ho, it only cost us many £billions and the lives of some young heroes. As long as Tony and Alistair's income stream is not interrupted then no one has REALLY lost out, have they?