Lack of Intelligence

Sir David Omand testified at the Chilcot Inquiry yesterday and what should have been a good day for our Intelligence Services descended into farce.

Like something out of a John Le Carre plot, Omand described the construction of the infamous Iraq dossier that was 'sold' to the public as the reason why invading Iraq was legitimate and fitted with UN Resolution 1441, was just a series of colourful assertions.

The grim hope that all of us will now be convinced that Tony Blair and his Ministers were absolutely convinced that WMDs existed with deadly and immediate capability along with vast chemical warfare factories, seems to be evaporating. The picture that is emerging is that each person called before the enquiry is carefully covering their tracks and trying to detract us from the real chain of events. There is a systematic plan to park the Iraq dossier as just a bit of Joint Intelligence doodling and that no one really believed that a) it would be taken so seriously, b) it would presented as the reason why war was required and c) that the Prime Minister's preface would be taken as gospel. There is also the aura being created that the Weapons Inspector Team was some kind of clown act being teased by Iraq like a pantomime scene, 'He's behind you' and when they look there is no one there.

It's all very quaint and relaxed - Alistair Campbell was polished and as credible as ever. The chilling undertone is that these people created a myth and caused a war that has destroyed lives and cost fortunes. Yet they make it sound as though it was all a bit of fun and that really Saddam Hussein was bad so we should not get hung up about the dossier or the war. Right won in the end.

Well, there is a serious outcome of trivialising all this. The question now must be asked, if the dossier, Al Qaeda connections, The Axis of Evil and the WMDs were all a myth, just how much should we all believe about Iraq at all?

I can feel another enquiry coming on that will prove nothing and condemn no one. So how many lives have to be lost before anyone cares why we started a war that has stirred up Islamic extremism that will last for generations?

The answer is plain to be seen. It doesn't matter when us Christians and Westerners cause it - because we are the 'good guys'.

One Way Or Another

I am one of those people who did not believe we were invading Iraq for the right reasons. I felt at the time we were being lied to and this week's polished PR performance by Tony Blair in the lead up to his testimony at the Iraq Inquiry only made my beliefs more firm.

For a man so devote and steeped in faith, it's disgusting that his convictions were so tainted. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was an evil man but the only danger he posed was to his own people - he was an international spent force. That alone is not a reason for regime change and it was a far cry from the botched and flawed gimmickry of concocting a reason when we did invade. In his own mind, Blair is blameless - he killed a worse man than he. But in the minds of the friends and relatives of the soldiers who died during the whole fiasco, he is little better than the evil dictator he sent them to fight.

This is the man who is a Middle East Peace Envoy, who wanted to be the inaugural EU President, who would want a Nobel Peace Prize, who wants a place in his history. For me, the only place for him in my memory is as a lying, egotistical sham of a man who did no good for this country. To my mind, along with George W Bush, he should be tried for War Crimes as the war they started in Iraq was illegal and contrary to the wishes of the UN. Since his time as PM, he has busied himself making money - he could not get away from the squalid world of the sleazy politics he was involved in fast enough, or the puerile relationship with Gordon Brown and then distance him from the mess he created that we all live in. He spent time, expertly creating the rewritten history of the 'Blair Years' to convince us of a new story to bathe himself in glory even though we had witnessed the same history at first hand. Largely, people swallowed it and a new generation of 'Blair Apologists' rose - who cannot wait for his autobiography which is probably being rewritten as we speak so that he can give us an updated version of his lies.

I never saw the man as the shining beacon of a new world or glossy New Labour - I saw him and Mandelson for the slimy creeps they are. Lying, shady and, ultimately, guilty of crimes against humanity.

His is a Faith I want no part of.