You said it Hobit! No wonder he felt so welcomed by the Bushi'tes.
Meanwhile we have had the Labour party conference here. Blair got off quite lightly over Iraq, mainly because most labour mps are in no danger of losing their seats to a pathetic Conservative opposition party, and because the conference was staged managed to give prominence to people like mp Ann Clwyd who blubbed at the microphone remembering seeing all the dead bodies during her visit to Iraq.
[not that I'm decryin de cryin if you see what I mean]
But immediately after conference, Robin Cook (former Sec of State at the Foreign Office) had his diary extracts published in the Sunday Times in which he states catagorically that Blair KNEW there were no WMD in Iraq on the eve of war, and that he was not even too concerned about battlefield chemical weapons because intelligence reports indicated they were so well buried they could not easily be used against invading forces.
Cook has previously said (most notably in his resignation speech just befor the war) that Blair made an honest mistake, and that we went to war in the mistaken belief that WMD were pointing at London. (Its easily done, there's a guy in the Solomon Islands with a sharp stick, and sometimes he waves it in this direction....time for pre emptive self defense some say). But now Cook is saying Blair deliberately lied about what he knew to be the true state of affairs on WMD, and what he told the public, or shall we say "allowed to be disseminated" to the public in the media. e.g. Evening Standard headlines 45 MINUTES FROM DOOMSDAY.
What a good job conference had just finished on Thursday with a rousing speech by Blair sending away the troops (metaphorical, military and otherwise) home to fight the good fight on the doorsteps of Britain.
Although I have great respect for TB (honestly I have) I think the titan Blair is now SS Titanic Blair, holed with 4/7 compartments flooding, and not enough bilge pump capacity.
Now its the Conservatives turn to have a day or so out at the Seaside. Lead by the human dynamo Iain Duncan-Smith (the political equivalent to the Austin Allegro estate car of the 1970s), they are bursting with new and dynamic policies designed to appeal to the movers and shakers amongst the old age pensioner groups. (e.g. £7 a week more, but over 4 years).
Of course the Tories are enamored of the American neo Cons even more so than TB himself (not possible! I hear you shout) and supported the war even before the war was thought of. So they find it difficult to criticise Government action they supported at the time. But hey get real you Conservatives. Its in Britain you are trying to curry favour, not Washington DC. All they have to do to take 10% off Labour is say "Yes of course we supported the war, we had to, and we still support our troops, but like everyone else we were CONNED into by Blair". Punish Tony and vote Tory!
But will they do this? Will they ****. Probably more exploits of daring do Iain Mainwaring Smith and his trout fishing.
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