The groundswell of hatred and resentment against Tony Blair is at fever pitch, so that anyone who dares to raise their head in support of him or his performance at the Chilcot inquiry will be pelted with dogshit and disemboweled.
The BBC had a queue of talking heads lined up, eager to add their bit. “He showed no remorse, no contrition, no respect for the families,” they bleated. “He took us to war on a lie, he disregarded the legality, he ignored Robin Cook and Clare Short, he promised undying loyalty to Bush, he switched the justification for war from WMDs in 24 hours to regime change” etc etc.
Suddenly Robin Cook and Clare Short are reinvented as heroic martyrs. If only they’d been listened to, albeit resigning making that a little difficult, everything would have been fine and Saddam and Iraq would have lived happily ever after. No one would have needed to be radicalized, no one would have insurged, and Uday and the other one would have mellowed and given out posies of roses.
The BBC’s disproportionate fascination with the new-age under-age protesters ratcheted up the ante; various interviews and analyses consolidated the consensus that Blair was an insensitive self-obsessed delusional war criminal, and an Oscar-deserving actor to boot.
Today ran an interview with the former ambassador to Iran, Sir Richard Dalton. You can guess what he had to say about Blair’s allusion to confronting Iran. It caused James Naughtie to remark, “The Devil Incarnate would like that” – sorry, that should be, “Benjamin Netanyahu would like that” – to which Dalton replied, “That’s not in the UK’s interest.”
Naughtie referred to rogue states with access to nuclear weapons, but was assured that Iran having nuclear capabilities doesn’t necessarily mean it would ‘hand secrets to terrorists.’ After all, Iran has chemical weapons and hasn’t done such a thing and never would. Not counting Hamas and Hezbollah of course. If the former ambassador to Iran says they don’t arm terrorists, well, he would know. Or did he mean to say they don’t harm terrorists?
We are still at war, both at home and abroad.
Whether Pres Bush and PM Blair were right in taking the war after 9/11, to the heart of the ME, will have to wait for the judgement of history.
Tony Blair’s intelligent 6 hour defence of his policy on Iraq (with which I disagreed), is being whittled down to cryptic, distorted soundbites in the MSM, inc. BBC.
Two of the least dismissive commentators on this are:
1.) Melanie Phillips
” A class act”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5739701/a-class-act.thtml
2.) Alex Massie
“Blair’s Gutsy Stand”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-29/blair-under-fire/full
Blair sees the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran as greater now than Iraq was in 2003. And he (rightly) warns against appeasement.
George it’s a huge mistake, of historic proportions, by the conservatives to abuse this issue simply to get at Labour. Led by fake conservatives (as represented by the Daily Mail). No good will come of this for our national interest all for some peripheral political gain.
I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t a million other things to hit the qwackery of socialism.
I just listened to the segment, but did not hear Naughtie say “the Devil Incarnate”, although I heard the line where this ought to have appeared. Did the BBC edit this before putting it online?
David P, he didn’t SAY it, but I somehow HEARD it. It’s what some people call my cryptic style, and others call my rambling incoherence.
A smiley seemed not quite apt.
(Did you see how so many people mistook Stephanie Gutmann’s irony for sincerity in her Telegraph article about the Israeli response at Hiati?) Must not use irony on the interweb. Must not use irony on the interweb. Must not..
What you won’t hear from the BBC, and indeed the rest of the media, is the list of wars that have taken place since 1945. None of them had the approval of the UN.
it is perfectly proper to have opposed the invasion of Iraq. This Chilcot inquiry is yet another example of the fantasy world of the orthodox liberal elite. Drenched in guilt the elite wants a sacrificial victim.
A harder edged view is that the invasion did not serve Britain’s national interest and that this, and this alone should have been the over riding factor. We should not be in the business of regime change or spreading democracy to other lands.
Iraq , as we now see and many knew at the time, posed no actual threat to us. Blair is guilty of bad judgement and some sort of absurd desire to create a nicer world for the Iraqis. It was never our business.
Now Iran that is another matter altogether.
George R hit the nail on the head. Blair’s cogent arguments for removing Sadam irritated the hell out for the BBC, not least because they HAD to report what he said. No getting away from it, the “real” reason why we had the war was because Sadam was bidding his time on WMD and foolishly handed the US/UK the (slender, though in Goldstone’s decision unambiguous) justifaction to invade.
And the BBC will do anything to obsfucate these reasons, because heaven forbid they allow the public to make up their own mind.
I wonder how much longer things are going to go from bad to worse till we have a complete meltdown of our country?
The BBC in the hands of subversives. The ‘Conservative Party’ tailoring their policies to make them happy. .. The final countdown ..
Claire Short has the BBC’s kind of politics: pro-Hamas, pro-mass immigration, ‘multiculturalist’, anti-Blair:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/22/clare-short-hamas-meeting
So it’s not surprisinging that the BBC continues to propagandise prominently on her behalf again today, re-Iraq:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8489797.stm
Claire Short-On-Brains never misses an opportunity to prove that fact in public.
What a horrible woman with an IQ at room temperature. Centigrade, not Fahrenheit!
I caught the BBC Friday morning before Blairs appearance and the two talking heads they rolled in had of course already made their minds up that Blair lied, the war was illegal and we had to get out of Afghanistan now!
They had the editor of the daily mail, who’s feelings were pretty damn clear on what he thought (blaid lied, war illegal) and some other goon (who I have forgotten) who agreed but what was most odd was that continuously the al beeb presented stated that the hearing was competely impatial and utterly unbiased.
Which is kind of odd because of your only information on the enquiry was coming from the MSM then you would think the panel had already made their mind up, that the war was illegal and all those nasty evil politicians were liars.
Be interesting to see what the enquiry comes up with. Do they follow Norways lead (was it them or one of those other spineless Scandinavian countries???) and declare the war illegal or do they instead just say, well…given the info we had the war was inevetible?
Imagine the outcry if its the latter! 🙂
Mailman
Robin Shepherd:
“BBC takes an openly anti-war stance in coverage of Blair testimony on Iraq”
[Extract]:
..”it was clear right from the start what the agenda was going to be with comment after comment about whether Blair would show “contrition”. Would he apologise? Would he express regret for what he had done? The bias was so blatant it was laughable.”
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/bbc-takes-openly-anti-war-stance-in-coverage-of-blair-testimony-on-iraq/#more-2074
How will the BBC blame this latest Islamikaze attack in Iraq on the West?”
BBC report:
“Female suicide bomber kils dozens in Iraq”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8490819.stm