Thursday, November 26, 2009

Deciding on war then looking for the excuse to invade

No wonder Labour politicians were so reluctant to have an inquiry on the Iraq war. Once the time had run out for putting off the evil day, the story about the decision to go to war would come out into the public domain. And so we are starting to see what did go on. Today, Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to the UN, revealed that they were scraping around looking for a "smoking gun" only weeks before the invasion started, yet Bush and Blair had already opted for war a year before.

So Blair was sending the troops to war without the cause for war. He never got the excuse and the rest is history. What I find so amazing however is that the Lib Dems and a minority in Labour could see that the evidence for WMDs was not there before the war happened. Why was the Cabinet not able to see that the excuses for war did not exist. Whilst Blair needs to take his share of blame, serious questions have to be asked about the craven backing for war by the senior levels of the Labour government. Responsible government broke down in 2002-3. Labour politicians who were there at the time need to explain the failure that has made them as guilty of huge misjudgement as Blair was.
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