CHILCOT : BLAIR REMAINS DEFIANT

After years and years of procrastination, the Chilcot Report has finally been published. Rather surprisingly, the report has pointed fingers, very particularly at former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Way back in the mists of time, Blair involved the UK in a costly and pointless war in Iraq. He claimed that the Iraqi government was a major threat to peace and had 'weapons of mass destruction' galore; he backed up his claims with an assortment of information from the security services and others. Now, it seems, that much of what was claimed was spurious or even downright lies.

Chilcot has concluded that Blair made a secret arrangement with the US President, George W Bush, that the UK would take part in a war against Iraq, pretty well 'come what may'. He didn't communicate effectively with his cabinet colleagues or Parliament, and didn't initiate any post invasion planning. The security information was largely flawed, misrepresented, or entirely bogus and there were no 'weapons of mass destruction'. Effectively, the invasion was unjustified and even illegal.

Blair's response has been to say that he has no regrets about his decision to take the country to war and says that his actions were justified by the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He seems to believe that the Iraq of today is a better place than the Iraq of yesteryear, even though it is now a country in terminal meltdown. Previously it had a powerful dictator who kept the country under control, albeit brutally at times; now it is supposedly democratic but is in a constant state of civil war, with no one in effective control. How is one condition better than the other ?

More than 200 British citizens died during our involvement in the conflict and many thousands of Iraqis, most of them civilians, also perished. The country is certainly no better off than it was previously and may well be worse off; some of its people have been reported as saying that they regret the demise of Hussein as, at least, under him there was order.

In my eyes, Tony Blair was, and is, an egomaniac, driven by a desire to be seen as a great statesman, bestriding the world and upholding his notions of decency and morality. He saw himself standing alongside the US President as being a clear indication of his own importance and was more than happy to ignore truth, accept dubious security services reports without question and send thousands of British troops to war for his own personal ends. The British people were, at least, misled, at worst lied to, all in the pursuit of one man's goals. 

Blair is an utter disgrace and yet, as a by-product of his activities, he's amassed a fortune in the upper tens of millions of pounds. While soldiers died, he made money; while the middle east, and beyond, is a disaster zone, he makes money as a supposed mediator. How on earth does he get away with it ?