The reactions to Michael Williams’ article “Gordon’s great idea: EU peace corps” are a flagship example.

Today’s Absurd Idiocy Award goes to Cifer AndrewWatt:

“Making Tony Blair a peace envoy is like making Adolf Hitler a rabbi.”

Enough said.

But, there is a BUT.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be yet another of the anti-Iraq war movies, based on the “we-went-to-war-on-a-deliberate-lie” myth. It reminded me of what Rober Harris did in his Blair-hating novel “The Ghost”, incessantly ignoring reality and confusing it with fiction.

The story line takes place immediately after the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his team are commissioned to discover WMDs, according to the evidence provided by the intelligence services and the Pentagon. But soon, Miller finds out that most of the intelligence is faulty and manipulated. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that a high official in the Pentagon met one of Saddam’s military leaders in Jordan, shortly before the invasion of Iraq. During the meeting, General Al Rawi confirmed to him that his country stopped its WMD programme, after the first Gulf War in the 1990s. However, against the background of what Washington wanted to hear, the official reported the contrary. Consequently, the casus belli was a deception to allow the Americans to enforce regime change and install a puppet leader.

Of course, the anti-war brigade always knew the truth. While leaving the cinema, I noticed some of their species lapsing into stereotype anti-American, anti-Bush and anti-war rhetoric.

What all of them failed to recognise was the twisted logic. The great lie of the movie derived from further, even greater lies and fantasies of the opponents of the war.

Firstly, the US administration did not interview Saddam’s generals and scientists. The UN inspectors did, or at least tried to.

Secondly, the few generals and scientists with whom the inspectors were able to talk did not confirm to the UN inspectors that there was no ongoing WMD programme. In fact, they did quite the contrary and tried immensely hard to make the world believe that their boss was still the mass possessor of WMDs.

People forget so easily. Nobody, neither Blix nor ElBaradei nor any other country besides Russia, warned the US and the UK that their intelligence into Saddam’s weapons programme was wrong. Even the strongest opponents of the war, like President Chirac of France, were convinced that his regime had the capability of developing WMDs.

Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.”
– Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

Movies like the Green Zone may provide good entertainment but they certainly do not help improving the quality of a factual debate over the war in Iraq.

Greengrass and Damon should leave politics aside and focus on what they are good at – producing Bourne movies. I can hardly wait for the sequel and at least write a positive review then.

My job is to try to get agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, for the Quartet which tries to get agreement between the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.  I thought after being Prime Minister of Britain for ten years I should try something easy

–> Good one Tony  ;o)

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I am always described as a friend of Israel.  It is true.  I am and proud of it and I will tell you why.

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Israel is a democracy. The politicians are in fear of the people, not the people in fear of the politicians.

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Citizens are governed by the rule of law.  Men and women are equal before the law.

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In Israel you can worship your faith in the way you want; or not as you choose.

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There is freedom of thought and speech; Israeli society is vibrant, its art electrifying and its culture open.

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In many respects, the Middle East region should regard Israel not as an enemy but as a model.

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I admire the fortitude of its people.  I remember attending Independence Day at Mount Herzl.  I met a young man. Five of his family had been killed in a terrorist attack.  He had been blinded.  But there he was standing tall and strong and proud to be carrying one of the 12 torches of the tribes of Israel.

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Israelis and Palestinians are not destined to be enemies to each other.  I regard myself as a true friend of both.

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Month in, month out, I and my team, spend my time in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Sderot, Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, Jericho, in small villages and towns, down in the valley of the River Jordan, up in the hills of Sebastia, even in Gaza.  I speak to the business people, the local mayors, the security chiefs, the generals, the political leaders, and of course the people.  In most, not all, but the overwhelming majority, I find a deep yearning to discover the path to peace.

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And I believe with a passion: the only solution that works is a solution that delivers security to Israel and dignity to the Palestinian people.

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A state for the Jewish people.

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A state for the Palestinian people.

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It means that once there is an agreement on the contours of a Palestinian state,  that is that.

The end of all claims.

A settlement that is final.

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It means that the Palestinian state has to be viable, independent and democratic.

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This is the two state solution.  It is not a slogan. It is the only path to lasting peace

And it can be done.

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But only if we understand the nature of the challenge.

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It isn’t that sensible, well-intentioned people could not sit down and negotiate their way through the issues of borders, refugees, even Jerusalem.  They could.  Most people on both sides have a sense in their head of what the answer would be.

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The challenge is not simply about what happens in the elevated heights of the negotiating chamber.  The challenge arises from the breakdown of trust.  And that is about what happens down in the street, in the daily experience of the people.

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When I try to describe this issue to outsiders, I say: first look at the map.  You could fit the whole of Israel and the Palestinian territory into New Jersey.  On Sunday, I flew by helicopter from Jordan, crossed the West Bank and landed by the Knesset.  It took me less than ten minutes.

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See how closely people live to each other.  Remember the history.  Then realise the simple truth that Israel will not and cannot agree to a Palestinian state, unless it is sure that state will be securely and properly governed. I wouldn’t take risks with my country’s security; I don’t ask Israel to take risks with theirs.
Israel can’t afford what happened in Gaza in 2006 happening in the West Bank in 2012.

Rockets from Gaza it can, with difficulty, survive.

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Rockets a few minutes from Ben Gurion Airport it cannot.

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So when Israelis say they doubt if they have a partner for peace, it is not only about whether Palestinian leaders want peace; but whether they can deliver peace.
The tragedy for the Palestinians is that the penalty for the extremism of the few is paid by the many in checkpoints, searches, permits, demolitions and security measures that are often heavy and sometimes oppressive.

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Then they see that though they cannot build in Area C, which still constitutes 60% of the West Bank, settlement expansion continues in disputed territory.
So what do we do?

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First, start negotiations.

The Israeli PM said at Bar-Ilan he wants a two state solution.

The Palestinian President says he wants a two state solution.

So begin negotiating about it.  Put all the issues on the table and talk.

Senator George Mitchell, someone with whom I worked closely and successfully, making peace in Northern Ireland, is now using all his considerable wisdom in this process.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton are fully behind this endeavour. Reward their efforts and get the negotiation going, face to face, direct, PM to President, as soon as possible.

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Secondly, however, let us acknowledge what has changed since the failure to reach agreement in the year 2000.

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Until the year 2000, and with the heroic attempts of President Clinton, we attempted to achieve an agreement first and then shape reality around it.

But it was not to be.

After that came the Intifada.

Thousands died.

Then came the withdrawal from Gaza.

Israel got out.

It took 7000 settlers with it.

In Israeli eyes, it received violence and terror in return.

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The occupation deepened.  Gaza was isolated.  Faith in peace collapsed.

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Ten years on, that faith has to be restored.

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It can’t be done in a summit.

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It has to be done patiently, and over time on the ground.

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It can’t only be negotiated top-down.

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It has also to be built bottom up.

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Peace now will not come simply through an agreement negotiated; it must come through a reality created and sustained.

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It means building institutions of Palestinian Government: not just well equipped, loyal security forces, but civil police, courts, prisons, prosecutors, the whole infrastructure of the rule of law.

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It means treating those who commit acts of terror not only as enemies of Israel but enemies of Palestine.

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It’s about the economy: jobs, living standards, aspiration and ambition.  It’s about education, about children taught in modern classrooms by good teachers and taught peace in order to live peacefully.

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It’s about human rights, equality, freedom, democracy.

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These things are the substance of statehood. The form of a state may be about its borders.

Its lifeblood is about what happens within those borders.

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That is the work my team and others, like the United States and the European Police Mission, are engaged in.

And here is the good news.

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Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, under President Abbas is trying to build the state from the bottom up. Over the past two years, the Palestinian Authority has taken militia off the streets. New court houses are being opened. Proper prison facilities are being built.  In the last year, the judicial system handled more cases than in the previous ten.

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The Israeli Chief of Defence staff regularly says to me: tell the Palestinians: if they do more, we can do less.

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The Palestinians are.  PM Netanyahu and Defence Minister Barak, with whom I work closely, deserve credit for the steps taken in response.  Many of the main checkpoints are now removed or open.

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Israeli Arabs are coming over the border.

They are helping reflate the economy. I can tell you today the latest figures. In 2009, not a good year for the world economy, the Palestinian economy grew by almost 10%.  In 2010, for the first time Palestinian revenues will top $2 billion.

Donors will provide only a third of the Budget, down from half in 2008. The budget deficit will fall.

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And the money, by the way, goes into a special treasury account, certified by the World Bank and IMF.

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In just over two months, in Bethlehem, we will hold the second Palestinian Investment Conference.

Last year we succeeded in getting the single biggest FDI project Palestine has seen.  This year we will showcase technology, financial services and tourism.

Two years ago I could not have gone to Jenin.

Now I go freely.

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There in the northern point of Palestine, we will soon open a new industrial park at Jalemeh, where some months back I sat on the Israeli side of the line, talking with the Mayor of Gilboa.

My interpreter, since the Mayor only spoke Hebrew, was his Arab Deputy Mayor.

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So, yes, the obstacles remain huge, the distance to go immense. The mistrust still deep.

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But what you see nightly on your TV screen is only one part of the story.

Too often we see the hate. But there is also the hope.

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Sometimes people say to me: hey you used to be Prime Minister of a great nation, and now you spend your time examining earth mounds in obscure parts of Palestine, arguing why hospital workers should be able to travel into East Jerusalem, getting electricity and water to small villages outside Qualqilya.  They think I’ve gone down in the world; feel sorry for me.

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But one thing I learnt in all the years of painstaking peace-making in Northern Ireland: details matter.  They may seem trivial to us but to people who live them, they are the difference between paralysis and possibility.

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So what I ask of Israel, as its friend, is not to risk its security; but to know that in changing the lives of the Palestinians who want peace and if empowered, can deliver it, Israel’s security is not forfeited but enhanced.

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Learn from what we have done and do more.

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Even in Gaza.  Gilad Shalit’s captivity is a disgrace.  He should be released forthwith.

Ordinary Gazans, many of whom are opposed to Hamas, should have clean water and sanitation; that legitimate people not the tunnel merchants can do business; that the children, half the population there, get the care they need.

This I ask of Israel.

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What I ask of the Palestinians is to realise one thing above all else:  the two state solution begins not with a state of land but a state of mind.  The mentality has to move from resistance to governance.

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There can be no ambiguity, no wavering, no half heart towards terrorism.  It is totally and completely without justification and we will never compromise in our opposition to it or those that practice it.

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Over all of this undertaking, challenging and fraught as it is already, lies  a shadow.

We are not the only external actors in this drama.  Iran has conceived a role also; and it is not for peace.
Its regime sees this dispute as part of a far bigger picture, and in this, at least, it is right.

They are clear in what they seek.

We should be clear also.

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Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

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They must know that we will do whatever it takes to stop them getting it.

The danger is if they suspect for a moment we might allow such a thing.  We cannot and we will not.  This is not simply an issue of Israeli’s security.  This is a matter of global security, mine, yours, all of us.

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Iran’s regime is the biggest de-stabilising  influence in the region.

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Israel understands that.

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So do the Arab nations.

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That is why the Arab Peace Initiative launched in 2002, remains their earnest desire.

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The Middle East region faces a struggle that goes far beyond its borders and encompasses much more than the dispute between Israel and Palestine.
The population of the Arab world is set to double in the next decades.  But what sort of future will it be?  The far-sighted among them know that it should be a future not of narrow minds, religious bigotry and hostility to others, but one in which across the divide of faith, race and geography, we pursue together with common purpose, the good of all humanity.

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This is a vision we share. One which a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians can help strengthen; not because the conflict is the cause of the extremism but because its resolution would be such a powerful harbinger of hope.

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No person of Abrahamic faith can stay long in Jerusalem without feeling they are in their spiritual home.

Jerusalem should always be an open city for all people who wish to worship free and without fear.

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I like the fact that my young son’s friends in London number Jews, Muslims and Hindus as well as Christians.

I look at this nation of the USA, a patchwork of different races and faiths, woven into one. This is the right way for the 21st century world.
This is the world we want to pass on to our children.

This is the world my father fought for, when Europe was plunged into the nightmare of an ideology that sought to treat one race as superior to others, the ideology that brought us the Holocaust, the most wretched abomination in human history.

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What we learned then, we should learn still.

That human beings are born equal and should live free.  It is in striving for that ideal that the state of Israel came into being.

If one day, Israel can be secure, recognised, understood and respected by the nations which surround it; if one day the Palestinian people can have their own state and can prosper in peace within it and beyond it, we will bring more than peace to people who have lived too long with conflict.  We will lift the scourge of extremism and bring hope to the world.

………………………………………………………….

I watched the Blair-hating movie of the year, The Ghostwriter, a few days ago. I can only advise all Blairites to give it a wide berth. However, the Shortists and jihadis of that world will love it. Blair err Lang is shot dead in the end by a grieving father of a British Soldier killed in Iraq.

But of course the movie is not about Tony Blair. Really.  Brosnan, McGregor and Polanski have stressed that again and again.

Quite. NOT! I assume they are only distancing themselves from linking Blair to Lang for legal reasons.

The similarities – or better say the ALLEGED similarities- between Adam Lang and Tony Blair are not only extremely obvious but also so numerous that it is impossible to name them all.

Just a few:

A former British Prime Minister

He led an unpopular war against Iraq

He is accused of torture

He is accused of war crimes

He is very close to the US

One of his characteristics is his smile

He has a difficult wife (Ruth/Cherie Blair) who does not like his assistant (Amelia/Anji Hunter)

He is writing his memoirs for 10 million pounds

He has two middle names just like Blair

He launched the Adam Lang Foundation

He likes sport, notably tennis and running

He graduated from an elite university (Cambridge/Oxford)

He was an actor at university

The media accuse him of still being an actor

…………………………………………………………………….

Against that background, it appears irritating and ridiculous that the Republic of Germany subsidised a movie, with 200,000,00 Euro of taxpayer’s money, which obviously accuses a former British Prime Minister of war crimes and torture.

WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Filmförderung Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein:

Is that what you call good bilateral relations nowadays? I doubt it.

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RELATED:

John Rentoul on the irony of “a film directed by a man facing extradition to face sentence, about a man whose guilt exists only in the minds of the haters” aka. The Blair haters hate us, we must have done something right.

“My friend Julie has seen the “Blair-hating movie of the year”, as she calls The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski’s film of Robert Harris’s book.

I can only advise all Blairites to give it a wide berth. However, the Shortists and jihadis of that world will love it.

Curiously, she says the Tony Blair character (Adam Lang, played by Pierce Brosnan) is shot at the end. In the book it is a suicide bomb, carried by a British man whose son was a soldier killed in Iraq (and whose wife was killed in a London suicide bomb – Harris lays it on thick), which is more nauseatingly pointed, I would have thought.”

The comments speak for themselves

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BlairSupporter on the wicked joy of the haters over Tony Blair’s dead body

As I alluded to at Julie’s site, child sex abuser Polanski evidently wanted the film-going haters of Lang, I mean Blair to wallow in the joy of gazing upon the dead body of the memoirs-writing, now wealthy, wanted for “war crimes” former prime minister. Using some artistic licence he decided that his mock-up of a prime minister would die differently from that of the other misfit Robert Harris the writer of this stuff. Instead of being blown up by an irate father, he is just shot. Neater, and probably more painful, y’ see. No-one else has to die. Just Blair… er I mean Lang.

Thanks to my friend John Rentoul for his kind words re me here. John criticises the lack of coverage of Miliband’s evidence in the press and provides great inside into the problem of the whole Iraq debate: The cherry-picking of the anti-war brigade.

“David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, made some important points at the Iraq Inquiry yesterday. You will know little of them, because they do not fit the template by which the inquiry is reported. Only BBC Online carried a detailed report; the Financial Times had 36 words; The Independent, as a Quote of the Day, had 22.”

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These are the most significant quotes from the session of the Iraq Inquiry with Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

You can read the full transcript of the session here

And you can watch the video here

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8th  of March, 2010:  Morning and Afternoon session: Evidence

• Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, 2007 – 2009

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Miliband:

“I think someone said to you that Iran lost an enemy and gained a potential ally in the removal of Saddam. As I said earlier, I don’t buy the thesis that the removal of Saddam released Iran to do its ill around the region, because I don’t think Saddam was the constraint in the ’90s, or after, that was said. I also think that I read John Jenkins’s evidence and he made a really profound point. He said there was a lot of bad feeling among all communities about the way Iran tried to exploit the situation after 2003. I think that is a profound point. This notion that Iran has misplayed its hand and underestimated the extent of Iraqi nationalism among the Shia of Iraq.”

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“One of the questions that I think is very hard to answer is why Saddam did not do more to show that he wasn’t actually the mass possessor of WMD that he had. The answer to that, I think, is that he didn’t actually believe that the UN would follow through, which rather makes my point that the successive failures of the UN to follow through on its commitments had weakened it in a rather profound way.”

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“I think that, given the Kosovo precedent, and the fact that there had been 12 or 14 resolutions based by the UN to get us to the point where we were, notably Resolution 1441, it limited the extent to which the authority of the UN was undermined by the action. Secondly, the fact that the argument was made very clearly, notably in this country, that feeble follow through undermines strong words, I think is significant, and that speaks to this quotation “to secure compliance with the UN”. Finally, I think it is worth saying that I don’t feel today, in the work that I’m doing and that the Foreign Office is doing in the UN that Iraq is thrown at us as a means of debating points or of underminingthe work that we are doing, and I think it is quite striking the extent to which the waters in New York close over and work carries on. What I think is significantly up for grabs is the extent to which commitments like the responsibility to protect are going to be anything more than words on paper. In all the debates about the UN and its role and its reform, I think this fundamental question about what the rights of sovereign powers are and the extent to which they extend into the territory of others, is still very, very contested in the international system. It was contested before 2003 and it remains contested today, and it pivots on this notion of the doctrine of noninterference and the Westphalian settlement, which significant numbers of countries in the international system adhere to, both for reasons of philosophy and vested interest, and other countries, including ours, believe is not a sufficient basis for foreign policy and international relations in an interdependent world, and this is a very fundamental point.”

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“The fact that so many of them have gone and exercised their democratic rights I think is significant, because there is no other country really, query Lebanon, in the whole of the Arab world that can muster that kind of potential and maybe that explains some of the wariness with which Iraq is viewed in significant parts of the region.”

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“I thought I would just make a final point, because in all the discussion of lessons, which is, after all, why we are here, I think it is important to register that, from my point of view as Foreign Secretary, I think it is very important that we don’t learn the wrong lesson and the wrong lesson, it seems to me, is that Britain should leave international engagement to others, that the world is just so complicated and dangerous that we are better off retreating into ourselves. We are a remarkable country, not just in the breadth of assets that we have, from the softest of soft power of the British Council and the BBC World Service to intelligence and hard power, we are also plugged into a unique group of networks: the UN, the EU, NATO, the Commonwealth. There is an argument about whether or not medium sized countries should think of themselves as global players and I think it is an argument that is going to become more and more pressing in the months and years ahead, because of the temptations for politicians, never mind those concerned with the finances, to rein us in, and I think that ask a lot of those whom we put into harm’s way, and I think that the way in which the Prime Minister summed up the not just the gratitude, but the respect and the sadness, the profound sadness that is felt by people in government, was absolutely right. But, equally, we mustn’t be a country that turns our back on the world, because, if we do, because of the hard decisions that are faced with, we will be much poorer in all senses of that term.”
–

Important exchanges:

LYNE: Did you see Saddam as representing a real and present danger through his possession of weapons of mass destruction?

MILIBAND: Well, one of the things that I did, I remember, before the vote in 2003, was to go back through the Blix report, or one of them, because there were a number of Blix reports, but one important one was he issued, I think, a 174/175page report which detailed the extent of unaccounted for WMD. That was important in my mind, because, as I think all three witnesses that you have described explained, we knew what the stocks were in 1991. We had had successive engagement through UNMOVIC and other inspectors to try to get to the bottom of what was left. Saddam certainly went to no lengths to try to deny the existence of WMD, for reasons that we might discuss, and so I think it was clear to me that there was a prima facie case that he continued to have them

LYNE: A prima facie case, but did this add up to a real and present danger?

MILIBAND: For me, as then a junior minister of the government, there was a prima facie case. We knew from his history the dangers that he posed to the region. I obviously wasn’t privy to the detailed presentations that were given to senior ministers at the time, and the Prime Minister obviously, from the security services, but I had watched Tony Blair, from the late 1990s, talking about the danger that Saddam had posed and I was confident that he would not have described them in the terms that he did if he was not convinced by the evidence that had been given to him.

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LYNE: Now, if the United States and the United Kingdom had not invaded Iraq in March 2003, do you believe that we would now be facing a situation where Iraq would be competing with Iran, both on nuclear weapons capability and in support of terrorist groups?

MILIBAND: That’s obviously a very, very important question and an unanswerable one. I think that there are two things that weigh on me on the well, three actually. Three things that I think are important in this regard. One, the authority of the UN, I think, would have been severely dented. If the hypothetical case that you are putting is that we had marched to the top of the hill of pressure and then walked down again without disarming Saddam, then I think that would have been quite really quite damaging for any of the multilateral aims that we have that need to be pursued through the UN. Secondly, I think that Saddam had a history of destabilisation in the region. As we might come on to later, I think that both Iraq and Iran had other fish to fry seven years ago than each other, if you like, and I think that the argument that Saddam was the best bulwark against the Iranians and that the Iranians were the best bulwark against Saddam I don’t think is a terribly strong case. However, I think Iraq had shown itself to be a potential danger and certainly the irrationality of what quite a lot of 14

LYNE: A potential danger in terms of terrorism as well as weapons of mass destruction?

MILIBAND: One has got to be precise here. It is important to say that I have never seen any evidence of Al Qaeda linked up to Saddam Hussein or to Saddam’s regime. I don’t agree with the allegations that were made, I think, notably by Vice President Cheney in 2003 that I can’t remember the exact word he used, but I think he referred to an epicenter of global terrorism. That’s not quite the right word, but I remember an interview he did on one of the Sunday morning American shows. But nonetheless, the basic case, that the combination of countries that have both large stocks of WMD, or we fear have large stocks of WMD, that are themselves regimes that try to control things very, very tightly, but nonetheless are quite fragile, and, on the other hand, the growth of terrorist groups on the other is a particular and new kind of danger. I think there is to finish my narrative; the third aspect is obviously Iranian behaviour. I think it is very hard to make the case that Iranian support for Hezbollah or Hamas would somehow be affected by the presence or absence of Saddam. I think a lot of the debate with about Iran’s role in the Middle East, which tries to pivot on the idea that a constraint on Iran has been removed by the removal of Saddam, doesn’t really add up.

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LYNE: He had the capability.

MILIBAND: Well

LYNE: He had the intent, rather. Did he have the capability to be a threat in March 2003?

MILIBAND: Let me say, first of all, he had the material. You can’t be a threat

LYNE: He was presumed to have the material.

MILIBAND: According to all the intelligence agencies in the world. So we were advised

LYNE: With the possible exception of the Russians.

MILIBAND: I understand that there was very strong unanimity about the danger that he

LYNE: President Putin publicly said the opposite, but, other than him, yes, there was that perception which Blix had enhanced.

MILIBAND: He had the material. He had the record, which I think is an important part of this. As for motivation, his primary motivation was obviously the strength and defence of his own regime, but he had shown a willingness to abuse his region in defence of that, and, of course, he had also shown a willingness to attack his own people.

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CHAIRMAN: Simon MacDonald said that actually we had won a certain respect in the region from doing what we did, from being active and unafraid of action. So I just wonder what the sort of reputational sum is now in 2010 in your judgment.

MILIBAND: I think that there is no question that a lot of people thought we were wrong to have launched the war. That’s not just true about the region, though, that’s true here too. Equally, I think that so in that sense, people said, “We were a bit surprised that Britain went along with this, given how much you know about our region and the difficulties of it“. Equally, I do think people in the region do respect those who are willing to see through what they say they favour. Even those who disagree with it would say to me, “You have sent a message that, when you say something, you actually mean it, and if you say something is the last chance, it is a last chance”. So I think that wouldn’t agree that it is as simple as saying we took a hit and now we have made up for it. I think in some quarters people were very disappointed or surprised about the decision, but, equally, some of them recognised its value. I think, secondly, people know that we have a close partnership with the United States and they some of them felt we could have been more successful in persuading the Americans to do something different. Equally, others recognise that the UN route was pursued in significant part because of British engagement, as you have heard from the former Prime Minister and others. I think it is interesting that, even among Democrats in the States who opposed the war, there is a recognition that Britain is a staunch ally and that, again, balances out that part of the equation. I can honestly say to you, thirdly, that in the Arab world today, I don’t believe that the Iraq decisions have undermined our relatio–nships and our abilities to do business. Actually, some of our ambassadors say that we are in a strong position in various ways at the moment.

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GILBERT: What is the feeling in Iraq towards us,given our part in 2003?

MILIBAND: I think the view of us we are seen to have played a part in freeing the country from a tyranny that is bitterly remembered. That is true for significant sections of the population. Obviously for the Kurds, obviously for the Shia, but for some of the Sunni as well. Now, when you are the Foreign Secretary of Britain, your recent actions have have always got to be put into a rather longer-term context. John Jenkins talked about some of the I can’t remember the exact adjective that was used to describe it, “Son of Naji”

CHAIRMAN: Abu Naji.

MILIBAND: That’s right. People are probably not old enough to remember the 1920s, but it has been passed down from generation to generation, and sometimes that means people overestimate our powers, but I think that the simple way of putting it is people want the people enough people I have talked to want in Iraq, want Britain to be part of their future, a partner in their future.

Gordon Brown gives evidence at the Iraq Inquiry

These are the most significant quotes from the session of the Iraq Inquiry with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

You can read the full transcript of the session here

And you can watch the video here

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5th  of March, 2010:  Morning and Afternoon session: Evidence

• Chancellor of the Exchequer, 2001 – 2007; Prime Minister, 2007 – 2009

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Brown:

“So it was, for me, a hope right up until the last minute that diplomatic action would work, and I think the efforts that Tony Blair and Jack Straw made in putting our case to the other countries and putting our case to the United Nations, they should not be faulted, because they tried everything within their power to avoid war.”

–

“I think that this is the gravest decision of all, to make a decision to go to war. I believe we made the right decision for the right reasons, because the international community had for years asked Saddam Hussein to abide by international law and the international obligations that he had accepted. Resolutions were passed by the United Nations, and, at the end of the day, was impossible to persuade him that he should abide by international law. My feeling is, and still is, that we cannot have an international community that works if we have either terrorists who are breaking these rules, or, in this case, aggressor states that refuse to obey the laws of the international community.”

-

Important exchanges:

CHAIRMAN: Given all that experience, I should like to ask right at the outset whether you believe the decision to take military action in March 2003 was indeed right.

BROWN: It was the right decision and it was for the right reasons.

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PRASHAR: I understand that, but can I just be more specific about this? Because what I really want to establish is whether you saw this as a real and present danger in March 2003.

Brown: The evidence that we had — I met the intelligence services on a number of occasions during the course of 2002 and early 2003, and in addition to my discussions in the Cabinet and in addition to my discussions with Tony Blair himself, I was given information by the intelligence services which led me to believe that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with by the actions of the international community.

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PRASHAR: So your concern was mainly about the breach of the United Nations Resolutions. It was defiance by Saddam Hussein of those resolutions that you felt was a reason to invade

BROWN : Yes, my view has always been, throughout this episode, that the sanctions and then the No Fly Zones and then the tightening of sanctions and then, of course, the demand that Iraq disclose to the international community what it had and what it was doing, this was all about the implementation of a new international set of rules that were necessary in a post-Cold War world, that we had already seen how much instability could be caused by individual states that were either failed states or rogue states, as well as seeing the effect of terrorism and the action of non-state actors in terrorism, that we had essentially failed in Rwanda to take action where it was necessary, we had tried hard in the Balkans to take action that was required, but 14 resolutions of the United Nations had been systematically violated and ignored by Iraq and it was our responsibility to make sure that the international order could work for the future.

-

PRASHAR: But that was the decision to go to war. I’m talking about when you became aware of the UK’s support for the US invasion if one was to take place?

BROWN: We would support the US invasion only at the last minute when we were deciding that it was not possible for the diplomatic route to work any further.

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PRASHAR: As the situation evolved in 2002 and 2003, were you and other senior members of the Cabinet consulted on the developing policy?

BROWN: Of course, of course. We had reports, as you will see, regularly to the Cabinet about the diplomatic course that was being taken and, of course, a lot of the discussions were leading up to the first resolution, 1441 in November, and the Cabinet was regularly kept in touch by Jack Straw and by the Prime Minister about what was happening. So I cannot see an argument that says that the Cabinet were not informed.

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PRASHAR: You were convinced that the WMD was a real threat?

BROWN: The information I was given was that there was evidence that was known to many countries, not just our country, about the weaponry that the Iraqi Government held, and, of course, at that time there was a greater certainty amongst the intelligence community that this weaponry was there.

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LYNE: You have referred to Iraq as an aggressor state and clearly Iraq had been an aggressor state. It had an appalling record of aggression against all of its neighbours under Saddam Hussein but at the time we are talking about, in March of 2003, was there actually a current threat of aggression by Iraq?

BROWN: I think all the evidence that people had in November, let’s say, before we come to the March resolution, that all the rest of the world agreed that there were problems that had to be addressed by Iraq if they were to be a member of the international community, and they felt that he had a final opportunity to deal with issues where he had not been honest with the international community and had not disclosed, far less dismantled, any of his weapons. So from November to March, the issue was not, it seems to me, that the rest of the world did not agree that there were disclosure problems and did not agree that there were disposal problems, the question was whether people would be prepared to follow the rules of the international community that, where someone consistently and persistently is a serial violator of the rules of the international community, action has got to be taken.

-

LYNE: But we have heard from other witnesses that, while the Americans heard what we said about the importance of putting pressure on the process, effectively they did almost nothing to achieve this, except, at the very last minute, to publish the road map. So our efforts to persuade them to push this forward hadn’t succeeded.

BROWN: President Bush did become the first President to commit himself to a Palestinian state and it was a very important step forward.

-

LYNE: You were widely seen as one of the most influential members of the Cabinet, as the most likely successor, accurately, to the then Prime Minister.

BROWN: It is very kind of you to say all this, but the fact of the matter is I did not feel at any point that I lacked the information that was necessary, that I was denied information that was required. But my role in this was not to second guess military decisions or options, my role in this was not to interfere in what were very important diplomatic negotiations; that was what the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary were involved in.

-LYNE: So in the absence of the sort of structures that you have set up and that Mr Blair set up after the Butler Report, was it the situation, on 17 March 2003, that the Cabinet, and particularly the most senior members of the Cabinet, were adequately briefed, adequately informed, adequately aware of all the different aspects of this question in order to share in the collective responsibility for the decision?

BROWN: Undoubtedly I was, and I had full information.

LYNE: You were?

BROWN: There is no sense in which I felt that I had inadequate information.

LYNE: A different aspect of the same theme, I think. One of the important questions obviously that the Cabinet had to be clear about was the legality of the conflict. Were you fully satisfied with the advice that was given to the Cabinet on that point?

BROWN: Yes. I believe that the role of the Attorney General was to advise us on the matter of the legality. He gave us advice, he was certain about the advice he gave, and we had then to go on and make our decisions on the basis, not simply of the legal advice, but the moral, political and other case for taking action.

LYNE: If you had known that his position had been equivocal only ten days previously in formal advice presented to the Prime Minister, would it have changed your view?

BROWN: I don’t think it would have changed my view, because unless he was prepared to say that his unequivocal advice was that this was not lawful, then the other arguments that I thought were important played into place, and that was what I have already talked to you about: the obligations to the international community, the failure to honour them, the failure to disclose, the failure to discharge the spirit and the letter of the resolutions, particularly 1441, and I knew that there was a debate about whether 1441 should lead to a further decision or to a further discussion. I knew that that was an issue. But it seemed to me the Attorney General’s advice was quite unequivocal.

LYNE: Do you think that this Cabinet, in which only two members were fully in the picture, 100 per cent in the picture – and you were obviously more in the picture than those who were not as close as you to the Prime Minister — was able to take a genuinely collective decision, or was it being asked essentially to endorse an approach that had been taken by your predecessor at a time when the die effectively was already cast?

BROWN: I have got to be very clear I believed we were making the right decision for the right cause. I believed I had sufficient information before me to make a judgment. Of course, I wasn’t trying to do the job of the Foreign Secretary or trying to second guess something that had happened at other meetings. I was looking at the issue on its merits and, as I have said to you before, I was convinced of the merits of our case. Equally, at the same time, we have learned about how we do these things in the future, and it was important to me that the matter went to Parliament and the matter went to a debate in the House of Commons and we have got to the remember to the vote in the House of Commons was absolutely overwhelmingly in favour of taking the action that was necessary.

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LYNE: Two of your colleagues who were around that table, the former Development Secretary and the then Foreign Secretary, in their evidence to this Inquiry, have told us of the concerns that they had. Mr Straw described this decision as the most difficult decision he had ever faced in his life and one of the most divisive questions of his political lifetime. It was obviously a very difficult decision for him. Was this a decision that you had any personal reservations about?

BROWN: Nobody wants to go to war. Nobody wants to see innocent people die. Nobody wants to see your forces put at risk of their lives. Nobody would want to make this decision, except in the most gravest of circumstances, where you were sure that you were doing the right thing. I have said that I think it was the right decision made for the right reasons. I think the issues that arise in reconstruction and what happened afterwards are issues where I want to learn the very important lessons, and we are learning important lessons for the future, but the decision to take the actions we did, was the right decision and it was made for the right reasons.

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BROWN: If there had been any chance that the Security Council would have been prepared to come to a decision based on its merits, within a few weeks’ time, I would have supported that, but countries had made it clear that, irrespective of the merits, they were determined not to enforce the will of the international community.

LYNE: Which countries?

BROWN: A number of countries were making it clear that, irrespective of what actually the results of the investigation were, that although the 1441 had said that they were prepared to consider all necessary measures –

LYNE: But which countries said that?

BROWN: — they wouldn’t be prepared to do so.

LYNE: Which countries said that?

BROWN: I think it was being made clear by a number of countries in the region, and I think France and Germany was making that clear also.

LYNE: Germany wasn’t on the Security Council. Are you really referring to France here?

BROWN: Statements were made by President Chirac which were very clear that he was not prepared to support military action.

LYNE: At that time.

BROWN: He was not prepared to support military action and could give no indication that there was a time when he would support military action.

LYNE: After he made his statement, didn’t the French Government immediately contact Number 10, the Foreign Office, the British Embassy in Paris to say that the British Government was not interpreting his statement in an accurate way.

BROWN: That may have happened, but, you know, I wasn’t the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister. The contacts that would be had with the French would be through them. What I knew is that there was very little chance on our assessment that the diplomatic route could lead to success if a number of countries were not in themselves willing to consider the action that would flow from that. Look, I think you have got to understand — and I know the Committee will want to look at this – we are at the beginning of a new phase of the world community. We were in a post-Cold War phase, where the tensions between Russia and America are not the paradigm within which people see what they should do as individual states around the world. There is a danger in this period that certain countries, rogue states, would be prepared to take actions that hurt the international community and certainly disobeyed the laws of the international community, and this was a test of whether the international community could hold together. Unfortunately, we could not bring all countries along, but if the international community had then decided that, after 14 resolutions and after a huge attempt at diplomacy and after trying sanctions but not succeeding with sanctions, it was going to give up on this, then I think we would be sending a message to every potential dictator around the world that they were free to do what they wanted. I think that is a very important message to learn; that nothing was going to be perfect in a situation where we were in the midst of creating the — if you like, the institutions and the practices of a new world. It was perhaps inevitable that some countries would not feel part of that process for the time being, but relationships between France, Germany and Britain and America, are stronger now than they have ever been and I think that shows our determination, as all countries working together, to create the international community that requires that international law and international rules be observed.

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BROWN: You have really got two things happening at once. You have got an attempt from both Iran and by Al-Qaeda to make their mark in Iraq, but you have also got the Sunni insurgency and you have also got the tension between Sunnis and Shias. So it is not wholly an external problem, but that did contradict to the instability of Iraq.

LYNE: It contributed, yes. Were these problems that — all of them, that we could have anticipated and should have anticipated?

BROWN: I don’t think we could have anticipated everything that happened subsequent to the invasion.

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FREEDMAN: I want to turn now to a point that you almost anticipated in an earlier answer. You will be aware representations have been made to us, not least by bereaved families of personnel killed in Iraq, and these alleged that decisions you took as Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding the funding of the war had an adverse impact on operations. I’m just going to use the words — the questions that they put to us and pass them over to you. That’s the most straightforward way of doing it. So they asked basically these three questions: were you aware of concerns about the lack of armoured vehicles; did you receive any requests for funding, particularly between 1997 and 2006, for the purchase of armoured vehicles; and lastly, were any concerns raised with you about the use of Snatch Land Rovers?

BROWN: I do understand the concerns of every relative where there has been a death in conflict. It is right that we give the fullest explanation possible and my sympathies go out to people who have questions that they wish answered, and I will do everything in my power to answer, as I will continue to do, the questions that people have. I think, if you look the question of expenditure in Iraq, you have got to start from this one fundamental truth, that every request that the military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down. I would add to that, as long as I have been Prime Minister, I have always asked the military at the point at which they are undertaking any new operation, can they assure me that they have the equipment that they need for the task that they are undertaking, and at every point the answer to the question is, “For the operation that we are undertaking, we have the equipment and we have the resources that are necessary”. I don’t believe that any Prime Minister would send our troops into conflict without the assurance from the military that they had the equipment necessary for the operation and I do not believe that there was any request that was made for equipment during the course of these events in Iraq that was turned down. Now, as for the issue relating to Snatch, the point at which the Ministry of Defence decided that, as a result of the change in tactics by the insurgents against them, that they wanted additional and other vehicles to deal with the problems they faced in the Basra area, we immediately agreed with the Ministry of Defence that they should have the additional money. It was 90 million for new Mastiffs and new Bulldogs. So the first time the request was made, we met it immediately with £90 million, and that was a decision that military commanders could make only themselves as to when and where they needed these new vehicles, but once these new vehicles were asked for, they were offered and the money paid, and I think within six months, because that was the quickest procurement programme for these vehicles — these vehicles, or at least some of them, were available in Iraq. As far as vehicle spending after 1997, let me just say that the strategic defence review set the scene by which spending reviews were then made. Every spending review, 2002, 2004, 2007, involved a rise in real term spending. It is not for me to make the decisions that the military themselves, along with the Defence Secretary, can make about specific items ofequipment, but the real terms rise in spending was there for the military to make the decision as they thought best. At that time, as you probably know, FRES was the programme for vehicles that was interesting the military most, but again, I have to say that that programme, even if it had been carried out in full, which it hasn’t been because of military decisions, that would have not given us the right vehicles, as I understand it, for Iraq. So when we needed the vehicles, when the Ministry of Defence asked for them, when a request was made, the expenditure was allocated and the vehicles were provided and that’s the Mastiff and Bulldog, and of course, other vehicles have been provided with, I think, 1 billion now spent on vehicles, about 1,000 vehicles for Iraq and Afghanistan.

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FREEDMAN: It is a pretty tough way for these lessons to be learned. There was a lot of grief between March 2003 and now, from which we have finally worked out some of the things that need to be done. Part of the difficulty, going back to my original question, was that these sorts of needs were understood, lessons had been learned from situations elsewhere and that we were aware of the difficulties and dangers that could face our forces and face any efforts at reconstruction and we were aware that the Americans hadn’t quite taken this as seriously as we seemed to be taking it.

BROWN: Now you have a situation you can lack back on where – in Basra for example, a million people — in the 2 million population of Basra, a million people have got electricity, have got water, we have got 150,000 teachers, we have got 15,000 new schools, we’ve got 100 health centres. That has happened, but it did take a long time. You see, I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-conservative proposition that somehow at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty or democracy could be conjured up. What I believed was that the case for intervention was that international law had to be observed, but I also believe that if you are rebuilding a country, the people of that country have got to be more intimately involved in the process of doing so. So at the earliest point it was important that we had an Iraqi army, Iraqi police, we had Iraqi politicians and we had Iraqis running their own economy.

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GILBERT: I would like to ask you to what extent did the increasing scale of British military commitments in Afghanistan affect what we could do in Iraq?

BROWN: At no point, would I say — very clearly I’ll say at no point were the needs of Iraq neglected because of other things that we had to do.

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CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I have got one broad question before coming to the end of the hearing. It is this: clearly life in Iraq today is almost incomparably much improved from where it was under Saddam, or indeed in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. We have elections coming up. We have many fewer attacks and casualties, though they did continue, and economic life is developing and resuming and not least in the southeast, in Basra. But at the same time, after the seven years of our engagement nearly, a number of serious acts of terrorism do continue. We have heard quite a lot of evidence that, although there is a degree of stability and the establishment of democracy, this is still fragile and not to be relied on completely. The US are still going to keep a very large body of troops in the country by agreement for as long as it may take So looking at the whole history of our engagement in Iraq, Prime Minister, over the past seven years, has it actually contributed sufficiently and materially both to the creation of a new international order, if you like, certainly a just peace concept, and a greater respect for international law, with sufficient consensus among the comity of nations, or are we still, as it were, in an uncertain or interim or conditional state so far as Iraq goes?

BROWN: I think these are the right questions to ask. First of all, as far as the international community is concerned, I think there is progress. There is a recognition that America and Europe must work more closely together. We have had international institutions like the G20 that are now stronger. Britain, America, France and Germany talk regularly about issues that we need to deal with in common, in contrast to what happened before, and I think that recognition does exist that you have got to build up the international community’s institutions, otherwise other countries and failed states or rogue states will feel free to take action, and of course it does raise the question of Iran and other countries. As far as Iraq is concerned, it seems to me that you have got to look at what the alternative would have been. We found a country where there were millions of people who were without work or without proper sustenance and who had been neglected by the regime. So there is no doubt that the improvement in the conditions of living of people in Iraq, schooling, hospitals, jobs, the ability to use and get the oil wealth of Iraq for their own people is improved. But obviously the loss of life is something that leaves us all sad. The loss of life, particularly after the success of the initial military operation to remove Saddam Hussein, is something that is — leaves me very sad indeed and we have got to recognise that war may be necessary, but war is also tragic in the effect it has to people’s lives.

[Just ignore the stupid comments below. Know-All-trash]

Why Tony Blair and George W Bush were right about Iraq

On Sunday the Iraqi people go to the polls in the most important election since the US and British invasion of 2003 removed Saddam Hussein. It is also probably the freest election ever in the Middle East, outside Israel.

And all that is thanks to George Bush and Tony Blair and the brave soldiers of the US-led coalition, including those 179 British troops who died in Iraq.

The election will be untidy, votes will be bought and bullied, there will be violence, perhaps even atrocities by those determined to stop Iraqis from making their own choices. The results will almost certainly produce no clear winner. There may have to be weeks of tortuous negotiations until a coalition government is formed, with all the new parties, such as the Ayad Jamal Al-Din’s Ahrar party, propelled into kingmaker roles. Iraq still faces many dangers.

But the transformation is extraordinary. The give and take of politics now exists in a country which, under Saddam, was described as “a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave beneath”.

More than 6,000 parliamentary candidates are standing on Sunday. As the election has approached more parties, secular and sectarian, have been campaigning. There is a party representing women. There have been countless live TV debates. The press in Iraq is the freest in the area.

All such progress is watched with envy by neighbouring populations (especially in Iran) and with concern bordering on rage by their rulers.

The years since 2003 have been horribly bloody as different sects and national groups in Iraq have struggled against each other, reinforced by terrorist murderers from outside. The most brutal fights have been between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Under Saddam the Sunni minority viciously suppressed the Shia majority. The invasion ended all that.

Inevitably many Sunnis reacted with fury. With the direct help of al Qaeda, Sunni extremists did everything they could to bring down the first Shia government elected in 2005.
Fighting for re-election in Iraq is the Shia Prime Minister Maliki, an exile under Saddam who has developed into a strong, indeed sometimes ruthless leader. Many Sunnis fear that he is too close to the Shia dictatorship in Iran. Some people feared that the Sunnis would boycott this poll, as they did in 2005. But so far they have not.

For the elections to be really significant they have to be regarded as legitimate by all parties, otherwise frustration could spill into violence. And the real test of democracy is whether those in power are willing to surrender it if they are defeated at the ballot box.

The scholar Fouad Ajami said this week: “Peace has not settled upon Baghdad but Iraq is, even in its present condition, a rebuke to the dynasties and dictatorships of the Arab world.” Ajami says America, and Britain, can be proud of what the blood of their soldiers has achieved — “a representative government, a bi-national state of Arabs and Kurds, and a country that does not bend to the will of one man or one ruling clan.”

I have an Iraqi friend who returned from exile in London and has been working non-stop for women’s groups and secular parties, despite being targeted many times by terrorists. So long as Iraqis like her believe Iraq has a great future, so do I.

Sheen often played Blair

With the likes of Frears, Polanski and Harris, it’s quite refreshing to hear someone of the movie or entertainment industry speaking sense these days.

Michael Sheen, the actor who portrayed Blair in several movies, told the Sun how he met him once and gave an interesting reflection on Tony’s appearance in front of the Iraq Inquiry.

In sum, for the intellectually compromised out there, he provides three useful wisdoms:

A) Whether you agree or not with Blair, he “has a very strong set of core values and a very strong sense of morality”.

Question: Does a man with a set of core values and a very strong sense of morality lead an illegal war deliberately based on lies?

Answer: NO

B) As Prime Minister “you make decisions that people are not going to agree with.” Quite. You even HAVE to make those decisions. That’s what people are voting you for, eh?

Question: Does an unpopular decision with the public make Blair a liar, war criminal and mass murderer?

Answer: NO

C) According to Sheen, Blair is honest aka. SHOCK!!!: “He certainly believes what he says, his big thing is that he has never lied and I think he really does believe that”

Question: Is Sheen right when he says that he thinks that Blair believes he never lied?

Answer: Definitely, because it is the TRUTH.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Extract:

Michael also revealed his views on Blair’s performance at the Chilcot inquiry last month when the man who decided to bring down tyrant Saddam Hussein was unrepentant.

He said: “Whether you agree with Blair or not, he obviously has a very strong set of core values and a very strong sense of morality.

“Yet as a prime minister you make decisions that people are not going to agree with.

“When people’s lives are at stake they are very tough calls.

“He is a very good performer, he’s very good with people and arguing and debate. He certainly believes what he says, his big thing is that he has never lied and I think he really does believe that.“

Extract:

In the autumn of 2003, Tony Blair looked more vulnerable than at any previous time in his premiership. Polling suggested that half the public wanted him to resign. Sixty per cent of his own party members said he was wrong to go to war in Iraq and approaching half of them wanted him to quit immediately or at the next election. Tensions with his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, were growing. John Prescott organised a dinner party for the two men to discuss their differences.

That November evening, the three men met at the Deputy Prime Minister’s grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House. John Prescott typically liked to serve his guests with steak and kidney pudding.

Brown arrived in a foul temper. When they sat down for dinner, the Chancellor complained that his seat wasn’t high enough. Prescott went off to find another. “Do you want a different chair as well, Tony?” he asked. “No, it’s all right,” responded Blair sardonically. “Gordon has always looked down on me.”

On Brown’s subsequent account to his camp, Blair admitted that he was in a deep hole. “I won’t turn it around before the election,” he said. If Brown was co-operative and helped to “get me through the next six months”, Blair pledged he would hand over the premiership in the summer of the following year. “Naive as always about Tony, Gordon believed him,” says one of Brown’s closest confidants. He left the dinner more certain than before that he had a promise of a handover.

The morning after the Prescott dinner, Brown called four key aides, Spencer Livermore and Sue Nye, and the two Eds, Balls and Miliband, together for a meeting at the Treasury. “Tony has said he is going to go,” he told them excitedly. “We should start preparing.”

“Are you sure?” asked Nye. “We’ve been here before,” remarked Balls, unconvinced. Livermore and Miliband also expressed scepticism.

“It’s going to happen,” Brown assured them. “He said it in terms. Prescott was there. Prescott won’t let him break the promise this time.”

Blair gave a rather different account of the dinner to his friends, suggesting that he’d implored Brown to be more co-operative by saying: “I’m happy to give you your place in the sun, but you’ve got to accept that I am Prime Minister.” He suggested he’d done a half-deal, making a handover conditional on Brown’s good behaviour.

Spring 2004

The wall of the staircase which sweeps up from the ground floor of Number 10 to the first floor is lined with portraits and pictures of all its previous occupants, the still famous and the long-forgotten men and one woman who have ruled Britain from Downing Street. They are in chronological order. At the bottom of the stair is Sir Robert Walpole, the first and longest-serving Prime Minister. At the top, a hanging space waited for Tony Blair. When he was in a mordant mood, he would draw the attention of a visitor to the spot. He would say: “That’s where they put you when you’re done.”

By the spring of 2004, he felt done. The amazing run that began with his election to the leadership in 1994 and swept him through two landslide victories was definitively over. His morale was collapsing, his health was deteriorating, his unpopularity was spiralling and many of the ambitions of a badly wounded leader seemed to have crumbled to dust. He had hit the rock bottom of his premiership.

Consummate actor that he was, Blair was skilful at concealing the severity of the descent from the public and the media. He was also adept at masking it from the great majority of his colleagues and officials. “He managed to disguise it from most people,” says his Cabinet Secretary, Andrew Turnbull. “It wasn’t visible to me. I only believed in The Wobble when it became clear afterwards that there had been one.”

Only those closest to him could see the interior collapse of the Prime Minister. There had been few days since 9/11 when he had not been living on his nerves. He found it difficult to sleep. When it eventually came, rest often did not last long. He would wake with a start in the middle of the night to find sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

His hair was dramatically thinner and what remained of it was much greyer than it had been in May 1997. There was a yellow tone to his skin. “You look young. Why do you look so much younger than me?” he remarked to a junior minister of a similar age. The other man responded: “Because I’m not Prime Minister.”

The make-up that was slapped on him for public appearances did not entirely camouflage the stress and exhaustion etched into his face. Those who saw him when he was not wearing pancake were often shocked by how he looked.

Nights were also broken by Leo, now aged nearly four. Leo would be disturbed by the ring of the phone in the flat, or just wake up anyway, and then refuse to go back to sleep. Blair had “a day from hell” when he came back from a European Council late one night to find that Leo was with Cherie in their bed. The Prime Minister ended up trying, and failing, to get his own rest in Leo’s little bed in the nursery. During a short break in Bermuda at Easter, another holidaymaker thought Leo was the Prime Minister’s grandson. That commentary on how old he was looking made Blair sigh: “I obviously need to get to the gym.”

He had tried to deal with the stress by taking up a fitness regime about which he had become quite fanatical. He would work out at Number 10 and use the running machine in the gym in the police guardhouse at Chequers. The result was to make him look thinner and more haggard. He would complain of exhaustion to close friends, groaning: “I’m so tired.”

His heart condition was worrying both him and Cherie. In October 2003, he had a scare while spending the weekend at Chequers. His chest was gripped with pain and on Sunday evening he was rushed to Hammersmith hospital in London to be given emergency treatment and placed under supervision for five hours. An irregular heartbeat was diagnosed. He and his aides were frightened that this intimation of his mortality would weaken his political authority. That Sunday night, David Hill, Blair’s Director of Communications, arranged to rush the Government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, to an interview for Radio 4′s The Westminster Hour in order to deliver reassurances that the condition was neither life-threatening nor incapacitating. That did not entirely succeed in smothering speculation about the Prime Minister’s health. There was more reason to be anxious than the media knew. Blair cut down on coffee, but perversely refused to take the pills that were prescribed for his condition. His heart would suddenly and scarily start to race, most alarmingly when he was performing at news conferences and in the Commons. “I had the feeling that he was only operating at 60 to 70% or so of his capacity,” thought one of his intimates. He confided to one of his most trusted aides that he even “spaced out” several times in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions.

There was a further toll on his family. Blair was “utterly aware of the fickle nature of people’s adulation and people’s hatred,” says his friend Charlie Falconer. He tried to insulate himself and his children by “preserving an ordinary family life”. Leo was too young to be aware of what was happening to his father. Not so Euan, Nicky and Kathryn. The Blairs’ children had to make a difficult adjustment. Their dad had been a hugely popular leader in his early years and they had largely enjoyed the celebrity that went with that. Now the children had a father who was widely loathed for the Iraq war, not least by their own age group.

An emotional trauma with one of the children came as a terrible shock to both the Blairs. As one of his aides says: “He’s a decent human being. He’s a very good dad. It shook him very deeply.”

Blair was increasingly doubtful that he could achieve more with the premiership. The Northern Ireland peace process, to which he had devoted commendably vast amounts of time and energy, was at an impasse. Iraq was so dire that Tessa Jowell, one of his closest Cabinet allies, publicly called it “a shroud over the Government”. Public service reform was still proving frustratingly intractable. A senior politician who saw a lot of him observed: “He’s not very happy. I’m not convinced he gets to the end of many weeks and thinks he has really achieved something.”

A threatening band of Labour MPs appeared to be in permanent revolt. “No Prime Minister can survive long-term with a deadweight of 60 or 70 rebels out to get him by any means possible,” noted a Cabinet member. ‘If 30 more have a genuine concern about an issue, that’s a hundred against you from the start.”

Then there were the endless guerrilla attacks orchestrated by the impatient Gordon Brown. “It’s just constant psychological warfare from Gordon,” one of Blair’s most senior aides told me at this time. “He will not give up until he has got Tony out.” Cherie was livid about the “constant attrition” from Brown “rattling the keys above his head”.

On 28 April graphic pictures of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners began to surface in the US media. They were broadcast on network television the next day and then carried around the world. In one of the most shocking photos, a female American soldier, Lynndie England, was shown with a cigarette dangling from her mouth giving a thumbs-up sign while pointing at the genitals of a naked and hooded young Iraqi who has been ordered to masturbate. The abuse was committed at the Abu Ghraib prison, one of Saddam’s torture chambers near Baghdad, which added to the ghastly symbolism. The iconic image of Iraq was no longer the toppling of the tyrant’s statue. It was a female American soldier holding an Iraqi detainee on a leash.

After many months of ignoring warnings from Amnesty International and others who had gathered allegations about torture and killings, Tony Blair was forced to respond. He called himself “appalled” and declared: “Nobody underestimates how wrong this is or how wrong this will seem to be.”

The full extent of the barbarity was not yet publicly revealed in 2004. But the pictures from Abu Ghraib were appalling enough to add to the crisis of Tony Blair’s premiership that spring. Already facing relentless accusations that he was mendacious about the WMD, these revelations ate into the moral case for the war. The head of the Foreign Office, Michael Jay, regarded it as hugely damaging.

“You have to conduct foreign policy in accordance with the values you espouse. If you don’t do that, you lose an enormous amount of moral authority.”

“He got down because of the aftermath of Iraq,” says Peter Mandelson. “There was a temporary lapse of morale, spirit, heart. He was prepared at that moment to walk away from it all.” Philip Gould, Blair’s political consultant, agrees that it was “Iraq – the enormity of it weighed him down”. Tessa Jowell, a Cabinet minister very close to Blair, says: “He was very low, he was very lonely and he was very tired.” “It wasn’t a spasm,” believes another ally, Stephen Byers. “He was wobbling for a while.”

David Blunkett felt Blair “was really down and needed lifting… when things are going badly you sometimes go into a black hole”. Peter Hain agrees that it “was a period of tremendousdarkness for him”. Alan Milburn reckons: “He’d lost confidence, the Government had lost direction, he looked very vulnerable.”

A senior member of the Cabinet who had known Blair for years says: “This was a very bleak part of Tony’s premiership. The war had changed the whole atmosphere of British politics. The north London liberal middle class where he came from was turning viciously against him over Iraq. He was utterly miserable and the neighbour was saying: ‘When the fuck are you going?’”

Cherie was consumed by anxiety that they would be out on the street if her husband suddenly quit. With his agreement, she secretly arranged the purchase of a £3.6 million house in Connaught Square. “A mortgage the size of Mount Snowdon” was guaranteed against his future earnings in retirement.

“It was all coming in on him at once,” comments David Hill. In the words of Sally Morgan, one of Blair’s closest aides: “Iraq was a quicksand swallowing him up. The atrocities. Those terrible photos. And he started losing people who had supported him throughout. He was stuck in this long, dark tunnel and could see no way out of it.”

The Cabinet Secretary saw it eating away at the Prime Minister: “The justification for the war didn’t stand up. In terms of making Iraq a more decent place to live, was it? No, it was in a worse place.”

The Tories were advancing on Labour in the polls and Blair’s personal ratings dropped to the lowest of his premiership. Those of Brown sparkled in comparison. The Chancellor consolidated his position with a 2004 Budget that increased spending on health and promised a further £8.5 billion over four years for education. “Gordon was at his peak,” comments Philip Gould.

Brown also found more money for pensioners. This was what the average Labour MP had come into politics to do rather than fight a disastrous war in the Middle East alongside a very right-wing President. A typical poll had more than a quarter of Labour supporters saying they might switch their vote because of the war. Polling indicated that Labour would have a much bigger majority at the next election if Blair was replaced with Brown.

Cabinet colleagues had rarely seen Brown so cheerful. “Gordon has got such a spring in his step, he’s so whistle-while-you-work,” noted one minister. “Something about the succession must have been said.” John Prescott knew that something had been said. In the early spring, Blair rang up his deputy and confirmed: “I’m going in June.”

In Number 10, Sally Morgan was hatching a quiet conspiracy to stop the Prime Minister from resigning. She would check his appointments diary. If she saw that he was due to meet a friendly face, she would ring the visitor beforehand to encourage him to pump oxygen back into the morale of the Prime Minister. She also invited allies in the Cabinet to drop by to cheer him up, call him at weekends and in the evening and have him to lunches and dinners so that he felt less isolated.

In late April, Tessa Jowell came to Blair’s study to offer her shoulder to him. “You’re going to get through this,” she told him. “I’m fine, darling. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he responded, unconvincingly. Jowell told him: “Never think you’re alone. We’re here for you.”

Philip Gould observes: “He goes to women a lot at these moments: he finds it easier.” It was “women who were best at reassuring and bolstering him”, agrees Jonathan Powell, his Chief of Staff, because Blair felt he could be more emotionally open with them.

Other callers who worked to persuade him to stay were Hilary Armstrong, David Blunkett, Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke, Charlie Falconer, Alan Milburn and John Reid, who were all recruited to the campaign to make Blair feel loved. “Our job is to sustain him until the safety of summer,” Blunkett told colleagues. Patricia Hewitt, not so personally close to Blair, but no enthusiast for a Brown premiership, wrote a note urging him to stay. Peter Mandelson was an influential voice. “Don’t be so daft,” Mandelson told Blair when they discussed resignation. “Come on. Buck up. Buck up. Think of what you have to do. Think of what you’ve got to achieve. You’re the best politician in this country by a mile. So just get on top of this.”

Staff at Number 10 noted that Mandelson and Morgan suddenly started to involve themselves intensely in a plan to speed up “Iraqisation”, the handing over of control to Iraqis. “They were trying to show Tony there was a way out.”

Cherie was the most crucial actor in the campaign to stop her husband resigning. She had her moments of doubt about whether they could endure the pressures of power and she worried about his health and the children. But Cherie enjoyed being the chatelaine of Number 10 and didn’t want her husband to quit while he was behind. She detested the thought of surrendering the keys to Gordon Brown.

On the evening of Tuesday 11 May, the Blairs had dinner with Michael Levy, old friend, fundraiser and Middle East envoy, and Levy’s wife, Gilda. Jonathan Powell rang Levy beforehand with a warning that the Prime Minister was near resignation. “This is very important, Michael,” said Powell. “He really needs a lift.” The foursome sat down in a small private dining room at Wiltons in Jermyn Street. With paintings of hunting scenes on the walls, the restaurant was a traditional haunt of old-school Tories. Levy came to the dinner with both a warning and an encouragement. The warning was that donors to the party were picking up rumours that Blair might not be around for much longer. That was making it hard for Levy to prise open their cheque books. “You have to make a decision, Tony,” Levy told him.

The encouragement came in the form of praise for all Blair had achieved and all he could yet achieve as Prime Minister. Levy, ever the salesman, laid on his best patter to sell Blair to Blair. “Now is not the time to give up,” said Levy, flattering Blair with the argument that he was the only person who could win Labour a third term.

It seemed to have the desired effect. The next morning, Cherie waited until her husband was in the shower and out of earshot. Then she rang Levy. He had Cherie’s thanks: “Tony came home much happier last night.” A little later, she sent the peer some flowers.

Cherie was “by miles” the most significant influence in convincing her husband not to quit, according to Charlie Falconer. David Blunkett agrees she was “really crucial in persuading Tony not to step down”. She argued with him that to go now “would be read by history as a tacit admission of failure”, as indeed it would have been. “For her, it was beyond the pale to surrender to the next-door neighbour,” says Levy.

June 2004

Tony Blair was still out of the country when the country returned its verdict on him. Blair had travelled on to Washington for the funeral of Ronald Reagan as Britons went to the polls for the local and Euro-elections on 10 June. Labour lost more than 450 council seats, slumping into third place behind the Liberal Democrats. The Euro-elections were even worse. Labour’s share crashed to a terrible 23%. Blair was not exactly cheerful when he got the news, but neither did he react despondently. “They’re bad, but they’re not that bad,” he told those travelling with him.

Michael Howard’s Conservatives fell short of the psychologically crucial 40% threshold in the locals and scored a paltry 27% in the elections for the European Parliament, a dismal result for the principal Opposition party at a time when the Government was so unpopular.

In the wake of the results, Cabinet loyalists flooded the airwaves to play up the disappointment for the Tories and play down Labour’s pummelling at the hands of the voters.

“They were crap elections, but there was a brilliant operation afterwards. We had our people on every media outlet,” says Sally Morgan. The exercise successfully smothered attempts by some of the Chancellor’s supporters to stir up discontent against the Prime Minister.

The agitation was anyway half-hearted because Gordon Brown was working on the assumption that he would soon be moving into Number 10. “Gordon trusted him to hand over,” says one of Brown’s closest allies. “Against all previous experience, he still trusted him.”

To help save the elections from being a total catastrophe for Labour, Brown and his team had put a lot of effort into the campaign. They were disconsolate and mutually recriminatory when the outcome weakened Howard and therefore strengthened Blair. To Brown’s face, Ed Balls said: “You’ve been a mug.”

Blair was now almost completely resolved not to leave Number 10, his morale further buoyed by advice from Philip Gould that Labour could win another three-figure majority at the next general election. What Blair had yet to summon up was the courage to tell Brown that his promise of a handover was not worth the paper it was not written on.

“All conversation stopped,” says an aide at the centre of Brown’s circle. “It all went suspiciously silent. Tony couldn’t bring himself to tell Gordon directly. He couldn’t explain what he was doing.”

Brown came round to Number 10 to try to get an answer. Sally Morgan says: “Gordon was just losing it. He was behaving like a belligerent teenager. Just standing in the office shouting: ‘When are you going to fucking go?”‘

Members of the Chancellor’s entourage tried to take things into their own hands. Ed Miliband was always regarded as the least thuggish of the Chancellor’s crew, but the iron had now entered his soul. He stormed in to see Sally Morgan. “Why are you still sitting here? Why haven’t you packed up to go?” demanded Miliband. “There’s a deal and he’s got to go. There’s a deal. Prescott was the witness to it.” Morgan claimed never to have heard of any such deal: “I don’t accept what you’re saying is true.” She went into the den to tell Blair: “You’re not going to believe this. I’ve had Ed Miliband round telling me to pack up.” Blair contacted Prescott, who “went mad” because he didn’t want to be dragged into it. Miliband phoned Morgan soon afterwards. “How dare you tell people?” he shouted down the phone. “That was supposed to be a private conversation.”

According to David Hill : “It happened quite regularly. You’d have numbers of Brown people coming round to Number 10 saying: ‘You shouldn’t be here any longer’.”

Brown’s camp were becoming demented in anticipation of what they saw as an incipient betrayal. No one was more maddened than the Chancellor, who had been readier to believe the promises of a handover than the more sceptical Ed Balls and the rest of his entourage. Blair could not bring himself to tell Brown directly. So the media had the conversation for them.

18 July was the beginning of the tenth anniversary week of Blair’s leadership of the Labour party. On that day, the Observer splashed: “Blair: no deal with Brown on No 10″. My story and the commentary inside were based on extensive conversations at the highest levels within Number 10, where I had been given the emphatic impression that Blair had totally recovered from the psychological pit of the spring and was now fixed on fighting another election and serving a full third term.

It was widely conjectured among lobby correspondents that the principal source for this exclusive was Tony Blair himself. The Treasury took that as read. Brown vented his fury with his confidants. “Newspapers were hurled around the office and trampled on,” says one senior Brown aide. A boiling Brown then demanded an explanation from Blair. “I was asked a question,” replied Blair, mock innocently. “I answered it.” Brown shouted back: “Are you fucking going or not?” He did not get a straight answer from the other man.

John Prescott got the two of them together for one of his marriage counselling dinners at Admiralty House. “Give me a date,” demanded Brown. Blair finally admitted to his change of mind. He couldn’t go now, he contended, because it would look as if he had been defeated by Iraq. “I need more time,” he told Brown. “I can’t be bounced.” The dinner ended badly.

In August 2006, Tony Blair leaves for his summer holiday amid growing demands within the Labour party for him to announce a date for his departure.

Before Tony Blair’s departure for the Caribbean, his closest allies had counselled him that he would have to come back from holiday with a strategy to manage the rising clamour from Labour MPs for clarity about how long he intended to go on as Prime Minister. Blair remained hugely reluctant to say any more about this in public on the grounds that talking about it would just lead to “another Hiroshima of speculation”.

His silence only made his critics more voluble. There was a major debate with his aides at Chequers in April and another in July. Jonathan Powell was the leader of the diehards. The Chief of Staff believed that Blair should still be planning to remain at Number 10 at least until 2008. Phil Collins, Blair’s chief speech writer, took his side. So did David Hill, mainly on the grounds that the media would try to drag him forward from whatever deadline he set. That chimed with Blair’s own feelings. “Whatever date I give, my enemies will come back and demand a date six months earlier,” he told his aides. Collins observes: “He was always reluctant to give the date. That was the only thing he had left.”

Matthew Taylor, Blair’s senior policy adviser, was the most persistent advocate within Number 10 for a precise timetable. He argued that Blair would squash the endless speculation, silence his enemies and snuff out Brownite plots if he was publicly clear that he would leave in the summer of 2007.

Ruth Turner, the Director of Government Relations, tended to agree because she was “getting it in the neck” from Labour MPs and the Cabinet all the time – “he’s got to tell us, he’s got to give a date”. There was a strong dimension of Blair, the side of him that was anxious to avoid the fate of Margaret Thatcher, that wanted to leave Number 10 with dignity. That was in contention with the other side of Blair, who had meant it when he said he wanted to serve a full third term and hated the idea of handing the crown to Brown under duress.

He would talk “in almost mystical terms” about how “he had made a contract with the British people to serve a full term”. Whatever view they took, there was near universal agreement among his senior staff that Blair had to be more precise about his intentions. Even the ultras like Ben Wegg-Prosser could now sense that “it was going to be difficult to get beyond 2007″. The current vagueness offered no fixed point for his allies to rally around while providing ammunition for the Brownites and other Labour MPs who were saying that the uncertainty damaged the Government.

As the pressure mounted, some of Blair’s closest confidants were increasingly worried that it would all end badly for their friend in Number 10. One of them mournfully remarked to me that summer: “Prime Ministers never get their departures right, do they?”

What no one else knew was that John Prescott had presented Blair with a stark ultimatum. The two of them met alone in July shortly before Blair went abroad. Prescott was a very weakened figure after the humiliating exposure of his adultery with a junior civil servant. But he still retained one weapon, the threat of revelation, that he could use on Blair. The deputy had long been telling Blair he had to announce his departure date. Prescott also believed that it was only fair to give Brown two years as Prime Minister to establish himself before a general election.

When they met that July, Prescott told Blair that he must make a public declaration that he would leave by the summer of 2007. He said Blair had to make that announcement in his speech on the Tuesday of that autumn’s party conference. If he didn’t deliver, Prescott threatened, he would announce his own resignation in his speech on the Thursday and reveal that he was quitting because Blair had broken the promises to Brown witnessed by Prescott. “I will make it clear that you are to blame,” Prescott menaced the Prime Minister.

Blair protested that this was unnecessary. He had already given assurances to both Brown and Prescott that he was secretly planning to leave in 2007 anyway. But this time his deputy was not willing to be smoothed into submission. Prescott responded that private promises like that weren’t good enough any more. “Gordon doesn’t believe you. And I don’t fucking believe you.”

Harris: I was really surprised how often Tony Blair was wearing make-up, and not only in tv-studios. He did it also on the street or in the car (…) I felt like following an actor.

Too much acting Mr. Harris?

I admire Robert Harris. I really do. But only for his ability of incessantly ignoring reality and confusing it with fiction. Apart from that, he is a pathetic and bitter figure of a man, driven by frustration and disillusion of Tony Blair’s premiership.

He was once a staunch supporter of the New Labour project but turned his back on Mr. Blair and his policies when the UK joined the US in the invasion of Iraq. Now he believes that “Blair screwed it” (-NOT).

The result is The Ghost, not just a simple book but Harris’ way of re-writing history in an exorbitant and conspirational way.

Too much making-up, Mr. Harris? Or like Tony Blair would say: There’s always got to be a scandal!

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John Rentoul also reports on “More Blair-hating fantasy” , in the light of the premiere of the corresponding movie The Ghost Writer at the Berlinale.

Grim news from the Berlin festival of Blair-hatred masquerading as art.

Robert Harris, the writer of The Ghost and screenwriter of The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski’s film of the book, says:

The reporter seems to have transposed the two words “documentary” and “fantasy”. He or she then paraphrases Harris’s world view:

Yup. Definitely documentary.

However, first of all, let me deal with the Tories. You know what is next, eh? Another one of Dave’s Photoshop-adventure-posters. Guilty as charged. But I have to say, for my own defense, that I only would like to present you the answer to my recent question: Is it possible  making Tory hisTory?

Unfortunately, it is one of what John Rentoul would call Questions To Which The Answer Is No

Though, at least some positive response from the fabulous (or maybe not SO fabulous) “listening” Tory Party strategy center:

Well done, Dave!

But sometimes, not even the Tories are complete fools. They seem to have recognised that something is going terribly wrong with their poster campaign and that “it’s time for change”. Too much airbrushing of ugly policies, maybe?

For all the people who – STILL – have not had enough yet of Dave’s-Photoshop-adventure-postes, here is the invitation to make your own one. And since I am a generous person, I added another one as an inspiration.

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Now let me deal with Mr. Tony. He was also recently involved in a Photoshop-airbrushing-campaing a la Dave, however not quite deliberately. Like many of you have possibly noticed, he got a lot of teasing for his alleged deal with luxury brand Louis Vuitton. Since there are no official posters yet (I am eagerly waiting, btw), some know-all created his own posters. I have to admit, in fairness to the antis, they are quite good at Photoshop (of course technically only).

Right, enough airbrushing and photoshopping for now. I start losing my clear picture.

Today, Lance Price – Alastair Campbell’s former deputy – sparked a major turmoil with the serialisation of his new book

Once again, the Prime Minister is at the heart of a scandal. Not that the allegations made by Price are new (as I reported here), but they now come from a senior official who worked very closely, for a long period of time, with him and at least with some of the people around him.

What the storm is all about is Gordon Brown’s choleric temper and the book reveals what many others said before in the past, namely that Brown is difficult handle.

The Independent reports the following (excerpt):

Brown’s ‘reign of terror’ at Downing Street

Body blow for PM as former spin-doctor’s book reveals tantrums and turbulence at No 10

Severe doubts about Gordon Brown’s character and judgement have been raised ahead of the election in a highly critical book by a former senior Downing Street adviser.

In a series of interviews with current and former No 10 staff, Lance Price, deputy to Tony Blair’s communications director Alastair Campbell, paints a damaging portrait of the way Mr Brown runs government. He describes the Prime Minister “shouting at staff, jabbing an angry finger, throwing down papers, kicking the furniture”.

Mr Price, whose book is serialised exclusively in The Independent today and tomorrow, quotes aides as saying that the Prime Minister’s treatment of junior staff is “unforgivable”. They claim Mr Brown is obsessed with controlling hour-by-hour media coverage and shows “extraordinary flashes of anger” when a news story runs out of control. Others accuse him of allowing his staff to undermine ministers, including the Chancellor Alistair Darling, by briefing against them to the media. Although Mr Brown claims others had let him down by behaving in ways he would not have condoned, one official described that as “typical self-delusion”.

One staffer describes as an understatement the claim that Mr Brown has “psychological flaws”, a phrase attributed to Mr Campbell but denied by him. Insiders accuse Mr Brown of being “pathetic”, indulging in “self-pity” when things go wrong. Another who has witnessed his behaviour told Mr Price: “He is psychologically and emotionally incapable of leadership of any kind.”

The poisonous atmosphere inside No 10 is described as far worse than it looks from the outside and is said to stem from Mr Brown himself. He is portrayed as obsessed with short-term tactics. “Nobody knows what the big picture is. That has to come from the boss,” one insider told Mr Price.

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If it is true what Price says, Brown is clearly not up to the job. As Prime Minister, one of the most important skills is the ability to cope with pressure, crisis and failures.

Otherwise, you are not the guy running the country, but the guy the country is running against.

Ask your predecessor Gordon. He knows better than anyone else. The little but significant difference is that Tony Blair was perfectly capable of managing tricky situations. I can’t recall any of his staff complaining about the way he behaved towards them. He was always known as a fair, calm and likable operator.

In an interview about the role of the so called Garden girls, he was once asked if he had ever “thrown a stapler in anger”.

Have an educated guess………

NAOMI GRIMLEY: So despite the pressure you’ve never thrown a stapler in anger or anything like that?

TONY BLAIR: Well, I can’t remember doing that  … I mean … maybe they, maybe they can but no, no I don’t think so.

NAOMI GRIMLEY: Some people say your successor is a bit more grumpy around the office.

TONY BLAIR: Well, I mean …  I don’t know cos I’m not there. But I’m sure he finds them as valuable as I did. And I really did actually, genuinely did.

By Stan Rosenthal

A vital part of free speech is not just the right to speak up but the right to be heard. Some time ago I took the unusual (and expensive) step of taking out a full page advert in the New Statesman. I did so because I was becoming increasingly exasperated at the way the press and broadcasters were ignoring the issues we were raising in our Ban-Blair-Baiting campaign. Apart from being given a mention in the blogs of a handful of journalists (of which John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday is the most notable)  media coverage of what of what we were doing was conspicuous by its absence.

Thanks to the advert I at least managed to solicit a guest piece at New Statesman blogs to explain why I had placed that advert. However, despite Press Releases going out to every major newspaper and broadcasting channel, no one took up the story, except for the BBC World Service which invited me to participate in an interactive programme about Tony Blair’s appearance at the Iraq inquiry and then shut me off when I started to criticise how the BBC were covering it.

My next step was to put a five screen moving version of the New Statesman ad at the website of the Press Gazette, which claims to be visited by most journalists in this country.

[Here the corresponding youtube video]

Now, I thought, they really will have to sit up and take notice. Over a week later their silence continues to be deafening.

OK, I’m not naïve. I know very well that it’s hard to compete for media space when star footballers are doing the dirty on their wives. But surely there must be some sort of worthy story here about a small group of concerned citizens “We few, we happy few” as John Rentoul has put it, taking on the might of the media to try to get them to provide balanced coverage of the Iraq inquiry hearings. At the very least it is a viewpoint that needs to be considered.

One can only conclude that, like all large institutions under attack, there is a tendency in the media to close ranks and studiously ignore what they see as “these upstarts” who have the temerity to criticise what they are doing.

Dissenting voices like our own can of course use the blogosphere now but when it comes to reaching and influencing mainstream opinion this can only be done through the mainstream channels of communication. And if their personnel take exception to what you are saying about them you might as well be talking to yourself.

There has to be something very wrong about all this.

But maybe this one is the solution to the never ending story of new versions of the Tories’ uber-airbrush-campaign.

–> Making Tory hisTory

Excerpt:

Huckabee: Tony Blair has been under fire recently especially from the British press over his involvement in the Iraqi war. Grueling.

Blair: There’s always got to be a scandal as to why you hold your view, some sort of conspiracy behind it, some sort of deceit that’s gone on when actually there’s a decision at the heart of it.

That reminds me of Mr. Blair’s words to the Iraq Inquiry :

As I sometimes say to people, this isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception, it is a decision, and the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over 1 million people whose deaths he had causes, given ten years of breaking UN Resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons programmes, or is that a risk it would be irresponsible to take? I formed the judgment, and it is a judgment in the end. It is a decision. I had to take the decision, and I believed, and in the end so did the Cabinet, so did Parliament incidentally, that we were right not to run that risk, but you are completely right, in the end, what this is all about are the risks.

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Pictures:

These are the most significant quotes from the thirty-seventh session of the Iraq Inquiry.

You can read the full transcript of the session here

And you can watch the video here

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37^th day of public hearings

3rd  of February 2010:  Afternoon session: Evidence

• Rt Hon Ann Clwyd MP (the Prime Minister’s special envoy for human rights in Iraq since 2003)

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Clwyd

“There was the Iran/Iraq war in 1980 and then the campaign, the genocidal campaign against the Kurds, and there were thousands we were told who were arrested in a Kurdish city, Sulaimaniya, including 300 children. Again, bodies handed back to the families, and the families, before they could collect the bodies, actually were charged for the execution of their children before the bodies were handed over. There was an Observer report at that time who said that Iraqi forces delivered 57 boxes of dead children and each dead child was drained of blood and their eyes gouged out.”

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“I stayed and I talked to people on the top of the mountain, some of the Kurds. They were dressed in very thin clothing, some of them hardly had any shoes on their feet. It was really a very upsetting sight, and particularly women who had small babies in their arms and came up to you with the small babies in their arms. I was the only woman up there and they came up to me and tried to push the babies at me. They wanted me to take the babies, but some of those babies were already dead and it is a sight that, actually — and a situation which you never forget.”

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“I just want to just say briefly about rape as an instrument of war, because I went to some of the refugee camps after 1991, because, obviously, before 2003, it was only Kurdistan that I could go to, and I went to some of the refugee camps on the borders with Iran and I can remember just one woman in particular who had been a nurse and she asked me to come back into the back of the tent. She asked if she could talk to me and she told me she was the last nurse in a hospital which was under attack and she had locked herself in the bathroom, but eventually she was found and then she was raped repeatedly, but, of course, in a Muslim society, rape is such a disgrace that people do not like to talk about it, obviously, and she was so relieved that she could tell somebody that that had happened to her”

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“The Iraqi regime has cynically exploited sanctions, both to justify its neglect of its own population and as a tool to solicit external support for its reconstructed ambitions. A government which delights in showing foreign Parliamentarians suffering infants, when the warehouses are overflowing with food and medicine undistributed for years, surely reveals itself, save to the gullible.”

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(2003) I saw the Kurds were fleeing from the towns, the Kurds actually were, you know, going on cars, buses, all sorts of things out of the towns into the country  because they so believed that chemical weapons were going to be used against them again, and I can remember, in fact, Jalal Talabani, who was also in Kurdistan at that time, asking me to ask Tony Blair, when I returned to the UK, for chemical weapons protection suits. Now, the Kurds had their own intelligence and, you know, when you saw women going into the market and buying piles of nappies because they thought they could put the nappies over their faces to protect them from chemical weapons, you realise that people there took the very threat seriously indeed, the threat of Saddam attacking them again”

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(Right before the invasion) Can I go back just sort of two minutes before, to being in Kurdistan again? The Kurds had never told me before that they wanted to war. I mean they had their uprisings, you know, against the regime, the Kurds in the north and the Shia in the south, but I had never ever heard them say, “We want a war”. They had tried to overthrow him — Saddam’s regime themselves, but never had anybody said, “We want a war”. But this time they said to me, “There is no other way”, and that’s the first time I ever heard the Kurds — and I have a very long association with them — say that. “There is no other way”. So when I came back and we had this debate at the beginning of February — the beginning of March — middle of February in the House of Commons, and I spoke then explaining what I had just heard and seen in Kurdistan, and I said for the first time that, you know, with INDICT over the years we had tried every way, with sanctions we had tried, but actually even that twin-track approach had not managed to move the regime. So I felt myself there was no other option I didn’t feel that I could go back and face the Kurds and say that I had argued any other way because I couldn’t on the basis of what I had heard.

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“In  2003 they started excavating the Al-Hillah  sites near Babylon, and I went there to look at what was going on because there was a UK forensics team also  working there and giving assistance to the Iraqis about how to handle evidence, because – I mean, it looked  like a moonscape, it was so huge, the site. They estimated — I don’t know if they’ve revised the estimates since, but there were 15,000 bodies actually buried at that site in Al-Hillah, which is near Babylon,  and I thought it was a very sad way that the Iraqis had  to go to those sites, because you saw elderly women — when they excavated bodies, I think they excavated several thousand in that first round — if there was no identification with the body, they would then put — or rather, if they found identification, but couldn’t identify the name of the person or persons, they would  then put their possessions in a plastic bag on the top  of the grave and rebury the body, and, you know, old,  old women were going round these sites, looking inside  these plastic bags and pulling out a watch or a ring or  a piece of cloth or a lighter just to see if they could  identify them, and I thought, you know, that was really  a very great concern to see people having to try and identify their lost relatives in that way.”

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“They were just picking up everything they could find, documentation, and pieces of film, anything, and obviously record books of executions, because the regime, you know, like the Nazis, kept evidence very — they put everything down. Even how many bullets they used to kill people, methods of execution, everything was documented. There was a lot of photographic evidence as well of again, like in Cambodia, where they took photographs of the victims and then they had a huge record of photographs of their victims.”

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“I see progress in all areas. I have always been optimistic about the future for Iraq and one of the reasons for that is I monitored the elections in Basra, the first elections, in 2005, which was, you  know, a particularly joyful occasion, because people  were voting for the first time, and you know, it reminded me of being in South Africa when I monitored the first elections there.  People came out with their black fingers and they were waving them in the air at us saying, “There, we have voted”. There was an attack on one polling station in Basra in 2005, but apparently the women — women had turned out in great numbers, you know, about 80 per cent  turned out to vote in those first elections in 2005 and there was a rocketed attack on one of those polling stations which was mainly filled with women at the time, and, apparently, they all stood there and sang and defied those people that were attacking them, and the same now for the election — for the provincial  elections. You can see that the secular is winning over the religious, because more secular parties, more secular  candidates got elected in those provincial elections.  Again, there is a 25 per cent quota for women, which is  much better than ours in the UK, and you know, the  25 per cent quota I think is extremely important because  it is also so for the next elections in March, 25 per cent quota.”

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“I haven’t heard that from the Iraqis. In fact, they want more of the British. They have always said, I have to say, right from the beginning, you know, „The British understand us. We would like more of the British to come here, and, you know, we don’t want you to go away. We would like more help from you”. That’s why they can’t understand Inquiries like this. The Iraqis always say to me, you know — because weapons of mass destruction were Saddam — “Why are you still operating in this area? What we need is your help and your attention”, and obviously the Iraqis can pay for a lot of things themselves now, but nevertheless they appreciate the guidance that we can give them and we have had police trainers there. We have also had them in round tables.”

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“Can I just say at this point that, you know, I also have great understanding of those people who have lost husbands, sons, during the military action. You know, we sat in the House of Commons as Members of Parliament feeling particularly responsible when the Prime Minister read out the names of those who had died, and you know, we all feel great sympathy for those people, but I do hope that Iraq eventually will turn out to be the kind of country that everybody can be proud of, and, of course, not just British troops, but, you know, American troops, coalition troops, civilians who have died, many, many Iraqi civilians have died. Then I can only say how sorry I am and — but I hope that, at the end of it, Iraq will be a much better country. I know Iraqis — I say this because Iraqis tell me so often. You know, they feel great sadness about people from this country who have given their lives to achieve their freedom and they certainly appreciate it.”

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Important exchanges

CLWYD: I knew, you know, that the Iraqis were suffering, but I also knew that under the Oil For Food programme it took Saddam a long time to agree the terms of the Oil For Food programme. So, you know, when they could have been having essential medicines and foods, the regime itself was not playing the game.

LYNE: It was deliberately denying them to some sections of the population?

CLWYD: Absolutely

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GILBERT: Were you able to discuss these issues with the Prime Minister?

CLWYD: Oh, yes. I mean, every time I went to Iraq, I discussed these things with the Prime Minister  and also I was in telephone communication with the Prime Minister, so if something needed doing as a matter of urgency, then, you know, obviously I would communicate that fairly rapidly.

GILBERT: Did you feel that your requests were being attended to? Did you see results as a result of  what you were suggesting and proposing?

CLWYD: Yes, I did.

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PRASHAR: Can I move on to another area, which is the abuses that took place under Saddam? Because you have spent a lot of time dealing with some of these issues. What do you see as the main issues for investigation of abuses during Saddam’s time?

CLWYD: Well, unfortunately, the abuses we got to hear about, you know, as the evidence came out, and I think the cases of torture are very well-known to you. They were appalling. I was in the north of Iraq in February 2003. There was a young man who had been released from gaol, he had been given some kind of amnesty. He had been in gaol for eight years, and he talked about the kind of things that went on, you know, the amputations, a hand chopped off or a foot chopped off, or branding. He talked about a woman professor who was a prisoner there at the same time as him. She gave birth to a baby. She didn’t have enough milk to give the baby. She pleaded for milk, because, obviously, the diet was appalling. She pleaded for milk. They refused to give her milk. The baby died  a few days later and she held on to the baby for three  days until the temperature got so high in that  particular cell that the body started smelling, and the guards came, and the woman wouldn’t let go of the baby  and they took them both away and apparently they were  both killed. Another young boy, also in the same cell, a 15-year-old, who was actually crucified on a window frame. They are horrific abuses, you know, rape.”

You can read the full transcript of the session here

And you can watch the video here

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36^th day of public hearings

3rd  of February 2010:  Morning session: Evidence

• Rt Hon John Reid MP former Secretary of State for Defence

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Important exchanges

REID: I was given every opportunity, as were other members of the Cabinet, to ask questions. I could have asked questions of the Attorney General.

PRASHAR: Were you at the Cabinet meeting –

REID : Yes, I was, and everyone was allowed to speak at these meetings. I don’t recognise some descriptions of some of the least quiescent of my colleagues claiming to have been rendered quiescent, but I don’t know about the processes. I think people are perfectly entitled to take a different view.

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FREEDMAN: Can I just follow that up with  a point that has been put to us quite strongly by some  of the families of those who have lost their loved ones  in Iraq? It goes something like this, that they  understand that forces go to fight and what people sign  up for, but the problem in Iraq was that our forces went  in on a false premise, that they were going in to find  weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to be  there, and th they got there, the problems that were faced had not been properly anticipated, that there had been inadequate planning for the situation in which  our soldiers had to fight, and that this, therefore, went on for far longer than anybody had anticipated and it became a more enduring conflict, and that this was  therefore much more difficult to support and to understand than other conflicts. So my question is: was there an enduring problem that we faced, that the circumstances in which we went to war left public confidence undermined and less willing than in other conflicts to give us the support our troops would have liked to have had?

REID : Yes, around one central question, and I understand the feelings of the families, and it is this: if people believe that we told the truth, that we made the best judgment in terms of the evidence, the suffering won’t go away, because they have lost their loved ones, but they will not believe that they were in a sense betrayed. So at some stage there may be  closure. If people believe that we intentionally lied, that, for some bizarre reason, all of these people in the Cabinet made it up about weapons of mass destruction,there will be no such closure and there will be even greater anger to add to the grief. I understand that. I know what members of the Cabinet saw. I know the history of Saddam Hussein. I know what he did to women and children with chemical weapons. I know that he used chemical gases against the Iranians that even Hitler wouldn’t use because it would blow back on his troops. I know what sort of man he was. I know the evidence that was presented to us. I know what our intelligence service said, which is he had the precursor chemicals; 10,000 litres of anthrax, 4 tonnes of VX gas, I think I remember. I know we queried people about it. I know the whole history of the 1990s, of him pushing out the inspectors. I know that he was saying that he had the things, and I know that the weight of evidence, though it is fragmentary, all intelligence is fragmentary, though it is not complete, no body of evidence is complete. All of that suggested to otherwise rational and neutrally-minded people, who had to take these decisions, that he had this stuff, and, in the wider context that I mentioned already, it was very dangerous for our security. People will make their judgments on that. I am content with my conscience that I made a judgment in good faith and in truth.

FREEDMAN: I just want to emphasise that it is not just a question of whether the judgments were made as you say they were made, it is also a question of the perceptions afterwards about how they were made, and it is a question of whether or not you felt at the time that your task with public opinion had been made that much more difficult because of the beliefs of the way in which we had gone to war, whether you feel these beliefs were correct or not?

REID: Well, they had obviously made the task more difficult, and still do. I mean, there are families who hurt grievously. It is bad enough in any conflict when there is a loss of life. When there is a loss of life and a question at the back of your mind as to the nature of the entry into that, that must make the heart all the more. I don’t think that is the least  bit non-understandable. It is perfectly understandable and that means it is more difficult. If people, however, believe that this was done in bad faith, I think that’s where the capacity to stand up against foes in future becomes much more difficult. Of course it does, and that’s why it is so important that we have this open questioning here, so that people ca see that this has been conducted in a way where questions have been asked and difficult areas like this are being given. That’s why I have no difficulty in having this discussion, because people’s lives depended on it. It is just that I happened to have the belief, and still do, that the greatest threat to my children and the future generations of children, the greatest threat of a magnitude that is almost unimaginable, is the coming together of people who are unconstrained by any morality, indeed driven by a perverse morality, that says that there is no distinction between combatants and civilians, that murdering thousands or tens of thousands, it doesn’t matter.  Now, we have had these regimes before, like the Nazis, but they were constrained by the nature of their technology. They were constrained by having to use the exhaust fumes of vehicles or canisters of Zyklon B.  Nowadays, there is no such constraint on the capability. So that unconstrained intent comes together with the unconstrained capability.  God help the future generations, and that is part of what was at the back of our mind when we were making these decisions.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Dr Reid. I would like to ask my colleagues if they have any last questions before I turn to you for your own fine reflections? Well, can I ask — we have two things, I think, in mind. One is: is there ground which we have not been  able to cover so far this morning that you think would be relevant and useful; and the other is any more general reflections? You have given us a number in the  course of this hearing, but if you would like to give us a summation, the time is now.

REID: At risk of — you know, I think the most important one I have made is the one that I made here, which is perfectly understandable in matters like this, that we all have deep divisions in this country, because it is a democracy and you should never, ever embark on something that risks the lives of your young men and women without having thought this through. If nothing else, I hope that these will illustrate that, rightly or wrongly, in the end, we did try to think these things through. One, the coming together of unconstrained intention to murder with unconstrained capability to do so in a world where globalisation is bringing proliferation nearer to us all is the context in which your Inquiry takes place, Sir John, and I hope that that in some way is illustrated by the questions you ask and the  conclusions you come to. Secondly, the nature of conflict has changed. The nature of conflict has changed. The idea that there the Stabilisation Unit, on all of these new ideas, in a big sense, so that we can deploy to some areas in the world, in order to prevent these things, the services at however high a level, and the decent common values interpreted into a better life for many more people than we do, because poverty, ignorance, failed states and so  on are the root causes — they are the soil in which will be a conventional war under agreed, legal rules  where both sides will respect the rights of others for a determined piece of land for a determined period of time, at the end of which there will be a defined agreement and we will all go home, that has changed. There is a battle which is not about territory. It is an argument sometimes, sometimes, coming into conflict about sets of values. 100 years ago, we didn’t have to look at other people’s values because we didn’t have television, we didn’t have 24-hour-a-day media. We had colonial interventions here and there, but now it is impossible to avoid a situation where people have to confront these different values. We have to find a way  of resolving that without violence. Thirdly, if we are going to do that, we have to find a way of deploying other than guns, and, therefore, when we think of mobilising an army, we have to find a way of building on the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit, on  I leave that open. Fifthly, I wouldn’t like to leave without recording this sort of things flourishes. Fourthly, the question about our capacity to endure formally my lasting appreciation, my admiration and my deep, deep respect for every single person who, in our armed forces, became involved on behalf of this country in these conflicts. They are not part of the controversy. They are not part of the big argument about right or wrong. They just do what they are asked to do, and they do it for one reason, and that is they want to protect the security of this country. So for those who fought and those who fell, I just want to record my respect and admiration and deep sadness at the loss of life.

Today, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Alastair Campbell almost broke down. Everyone who is familiar with Tony Blair’s former Director of Communications and Startegy knows that this is extremely unusual for him.

But, as BlairSupporter puts it correctly, No bloody wonder!!

I’d like to ask the media the same question which the Daily Hail asked Blair, Campbell and Hoon the day after Dr. David Kelly’s suicide:

Proud now??!?!

I really DO understand Alastair is terribly upset by what he calls “vilification”. For over nine years, he and Tony Blair have been accused of  having taken the country to war based on lies (three independent inquiries cleared them!!!!)

But not enough. They are also being accused of  a lack of compassion and empathy for the people who lost loved ones.

That is outrageous as much as it is ridiculous!!!!!!

Both, Tony and Alastair, said on many occasions in the past that they feel deeply sorry for the loss of lives, as a result of the conflict.

It is true that Tony Blair did not repeat this at the end of his six-hour-session at the Iraq Inquiry, but as BlairSupporter points out, for very sensible reasons:

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• For a start, an apology is not really what these people want. They want a confession of prime ministerial wrong-doing/lies/deceit/criminal intent and an ensuing trial and conviction. Even crawling on his knees to each and every family present in that room would not have made the slightest difference to their perceptions. They would have concluded one of the following: he was still lying thus not being genuine, or he was acting for the camera being on a mission to deceive yet again. Or, most importantly and wronger and yet wronger still – that he was finally admitting it was all a big mistake to go into Iraq.
• Secondly, the relatives of the forces’ dead do not speak on behalf of all of us. Sixty million people are not represented by a few dozen or even hundred bereaved relatives, much as the relatives might they were. The voters spoke in their millions on their attitude to Blair and Iraq in 2005 when he won a historic third election.
• Thirdly, the armed forces is a voluntary organisation, and people join with their eyes open to the dangers. It is in some ways demeaning to the memory of the fallen to look to a prime minister to apologise for their paying the ultimate sacrifice.
• Fourthly, relatives are speaking for themselves, and not necessarily as their lost soldier would wish them to speak.
• Fifthly, there is an underlying undercurrent of hijacking of the apology cause by others. Others who are deeply politically motivated and highly suspect. As Rentoul says, “he must feel contempt for the way the Socialist Workers Party, which wanted Saddam Hussein to prevail, has exploited a tiny minority of the families of the servicemen.” For that tiny minority, the vocal ones who will never be satisfied, an apology was NOT a risk worth taking, imho.
• Sixthly any apology would have been purposely misinterpreted by the press as an overall apology for the Iraq campaign due to his personal fear of repercussions if he hadn’t apologised. This inevitable accusation of the sudden discovery of a conscience would have been entirely inaccurate in EVERY way, factual and by implication.
• Lastly, but there will be other reasons, I’m sure, Mr Blair has said he is sorry about the deaths of our troops on many occasions, even in his last parliamentary address.  If that did not satisfy the bereaved then, why would it do so now?

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Politicians are human, too and yes, they have feelings, and YES you CAN hurt those, as Alastair rightly explained to Adam Boulton on Sky News, minutes after the Andrew Marr interview.

So for heaven’s sake, give the man a break!!!!!!!!!!

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Related:

Alastair Campbell on his “emotional moment with Marr”

These are the most significant quotes from the session of the Iraq Inquiry with former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

You can read the full transcript of the session here

And you can watch the video here

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29th  of January 2010: Afternoon  session: Evidence

• Rt  Hon Tony Blair

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Blair:

“Yes, I think that is a fair summary of the legal background. I would say, however, just one point, Sir Roderic, which is that what was so important to me about Resolution 1441 was not simply that it declared Saddam in breach, gave him a final opportunity, but it said also, in op 4, that a failure to comply unconditionally and immediately and fully with the inspectors was itself a further material breach. This was extremely important for us to secure in that resolution, and we did secure it, and what we kept out of 1441 was an attempt to ensure that we had to go back for another decision.”

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“Now, we had begun military preparations even before we got the first resolution, the 1441 resolution. We had to do that, otherwise we would never have been in a position to take military action. But let me make it absolutely clear, if Peter in the end had said, “This cannot be justified lawfully”, we would have been unable to take action.”

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“It was always a very, very difficult balance to judgment, but the important thing was, in the end, that Peter came to the view and I think anybody who knows him knows that he would not express this view unless he thought it and believed it he came to the view that, on balance, the breach by Saddam Hussein of Resolution 1441 was sufficient, provided it was a breach of the obligations set out in op 4”

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“It was the introduction of the external elements of AQ and Iran that really caused this mission very nearly to fail. Fortunately, in the end, it didn’t, and the reason why that is important is that that itself, in my view, is a huge lesson, because those are the same forces that we are now facing, Afghanistan right round the region.”

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“There was very much discussion of the Shia/Sunni issue, and we were very well aware of that. What there wasn’t and this, again, is of vital importance and this certainly is lesson in any situation similar to this people did not believe that you would have AlQaeda coming in from outside and people did not believe that you would end up in a situation where Iran, once, as it were, the threat of Saddam was removed from them, would then try to deliberately destabilise the country, but that’s what they did, and there are some very important lessons in that, because what is important also to understand throughout this process, the Iraqi people, as a people, were not in favour of the violence, they were not in favour of sectarianism. As a people, they supported and have supported throughout the political process. Indeed today in Iraq you have now got, for the elections that are coming up, groups who are overtly nonsectarian standing for election, which is a huge thing for the whole of the Middle East and a great thing incidentally. So I think what I think in future you have to be aware of is that if you are dealing with a country where you are likely to get this as I say, this perversion of the proper faith of Islam as a major element in the equation, you are going to have to prepare for that very carefully. Your troop configuration has got to be prepared for it and you are going to have to be prepared for quite a fight over it.”

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“I also sent Jack to talk to the Iranians. A very big lesson from this for me was that we tried with the Iranians, tried very hard to reach out, to in a sense make an agreement with them, to give them a strong indication that it wasn’t the American forces were not there, having done Iraq, to move through to Iran or any of the rest of it and one of the most disappointing, but also, I think, most telling aspects of this is that the Iranians, whatever they said, from the beginning, were a major destabilising factor in this situation and quite deliberately.”

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“At the time and you know, we know so much more about these groups and how they operate now, but, at the time, the single thing people were most determined to prove was, in a sense, they were two separate problems, because the Americans had raised this question of a link between Saddam and AlQaeda, and, really, our system in Britain was determined to say, “No, come on, keep the two things separate. We are not saying Saddam had anything to do with September 11″, and that was very much how AlQaeda were seen. Now, I think and this is a very interesting point because it is absolutely goes to the 2010 point that I raised earlier. My view is, if we had left Saddam there, and he had carried on, as we said, with the intent to develop these weapons and the knowhow and the concealment programme, and the sanctions had gone, I have little doubt myself but it is a judgment and other people may take a different judgment that today we would be facing a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran, competing both on nuclear weapons capability and competing more importantly, perhaps, than anything else competing, as well as the nuclear issue, in respect of support of terrorist groups.”

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“It is a constant problem for Israel. They get attacked, they then use great force in retaliating. Before you have gone two weeks, they are the people who have started it all.”

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“Here is the point that I think we have got to get ourselves into in the western world, if I can put it like this, or when we are doing these types of operations: yes, it is our responsibility, but let’s be quite clear why we face the difficulty. We face the difficulty because these people were prepared to go and kill any number of completely innocent people in suicide bombings, because, as you know, in the first half of 2004, I think we had 30, in the first half of 2005 that then went up to 200. We should be prepared to take these people on, and the fact that they are prepared to act like this should not be a reason for our not being there or fighting them.”

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“However much you plan, and whatever forces you have, if you have these elements, AQ on the one side, Iran on the other, who are prepared to destabilise, you are going to be in a tough, longdrawnout, difficult situation, but my point is very simple: the fact that these people, in breach of not just the rules of international law, but humanity, are prepared to do these terrible things in order to frustrate the will of the Iraqi people should not mean we back away from confronting them. We should be there with the Iraqi people, alongside them, as we did and were in the end, in order to make sure that, having been released from Saddam, they were then released from the reign of terror. I do speak to Iraqis, and I spoke to one just a few days back who said to me, “We have changed the certainty of repression for the uncertainty of democratic politics”. He said, “It is difficult and challenging, but the progress is extraordinary”, and nobody would want to go back to the days when they had no freedom and no opportunity and no hope. So I understand what you are saying, but and we do have to take our responsibilities seriously in these situations, but we are in exactly the same situation now in Afghanistan, and heaven knows where we will be in the same situation again in the future, and the lesson out of it, in my view, is you have got to be prepared for the long haul and you have got to be prepared to stick it through to the end.”

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“And just to say some of the things that I think are taking place in Iraq today, if you look, for example, at the electricity, you look at income per head, which is several times what it was under Saddam, you look at now the money that is being spent on infrastructure, I think, yes, it was a very, very difficult fight indeed, it was always going to be difficult once these external factors came into play of AQ and Iran, but, sure, when you go into a nation building situation in the future, I think we will be far better prepared and better educated than we were then. I would just give one if we are talking about was it worth it in terms of the Iraqis themselves, if you look at the latest information from the Brookings Institute and the polls that they are doing about the right direction, wrong direction for their country, they are actually upbeat about the future. You know, if you look at whether they believe that security and services are getting better, a majority of them think they are, despite all the trouble, despite the fact these terrorists carry on. Let me just give you one example of where I think you can see both the nature, since we are talking about how is it for Iraqis because the Iraqis were themselves less worried about the issues to do with United Nations and so on; they were worried about their country and the oppression. Just focus for a moment on what the Saddam Hussein regime was like. In 2000 and 2001 and 2002 they had a child mortality rate of 130 per 1,000 children under the age of five, worse than the Congo. That was despite the fact that Saddam had as much money as he wanted for immunisation programmes and medicines for those children. That equates to roughly about 90,000 deaths under the age of five a year. The figure today is not 130, it is 40. That equates to about 50,000 young people, children, who, as a result of a different regime that cares about its people that’s the result that getting rid of Saddam makes. And you can talk to Iraqis, of course, who will say to you, some of them, particularly those from the Sunni side still worried about whether they will be able to come into the politics and some of them may say, “Well, I don’t believe it was worth it.” But I think if you ask the majority of Iraqis today, “Would you really prefer, with all the challenges that lie ahead, to be back under Saddam?” I think you would get a pretty overwhelming answer to that question.”

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“I had to take this decision as Prime Minister and it was a huge responsibility then, and there is not a single day that passes by that I don’t reflect and think about that responsibility, and so I should. But I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse and possibly in circumstances where it was hard to mobilise any support for dealing with that threat. I think we live in a completely new security environment today. I thought that then, I think that now. It is why I have said this to you a number of times today I ake a very hard, tough line on Iran today, and many of the same arguments apply. In the end it was divisive, and I’m sorry about that and I tried my level best to bring people back together again, but if I’m asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, our own security is better with Saddam and his two sons out of power and out of office than in office, I indeed believe that we are, and I think in time to come, if Iraq becomes, as I hope and believe that it will, the country that its people want to see, then we can look back, and particularly our armed forces can look back, with an immense sense of pride and achievement in what they did.”

“Responsibility but not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein. I think that he was a monster, I believe he threatened, not just the region but the world, and in the circumstances that we faced then, but I think even if you look back now, it was better to deal with this threat, to deal with it, to remove him from office, and I do genuinely believe that the world is safer as a result. I know sometimes, because this happens out in the region, sometimes people will say to me, “Well, Saddam was a brake on Iran”. Let’s be clear, there is another view of foreign policy in this instance, which is the way, if we had left Saddam in place, he would have controlled Iran better. I really think it is time we learned, as a matter of sensible foreign policy, that the way to deal with one dictatorial threat is not to back another, that actually the best answer to what is happening in Iran is to allow the Iraqi people the freedom and democratic choice that we enjoy in countries like ours.”

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Important exchanges

BLAIR: My judgment, having spoken to Jacques Chirac and we kept perfectly good lines open, actually, through this, and I was very anxious to make sure for the aftermath situation that we came back together again in the UN Security Council. So I wasn’t, you know, trying to be in a position where France and Britain, as it were, fell out, but it was very, very clear to me the French, the Germans and the Russians had decided they weren’t going to be in favour of this and there was a straightforward division, frankly, and I don’t think it would have mattered how much time we had taken, they weren’t going to agree that force should be used.

LYNE: In any circumstances, at any time, on this track?

BLAIR: Unless there had been something absolutely dramatic that the inspectors had uncovered. That might have made a difference to them, but the mere fact that he was in breach of 1441, despite this being his final opportunity, my judgment, I have to say and I think this is pretty clear is that there was by then a political divide on this, of a pretty fundamental nature.

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BLAIR: The further resolution was clearly politically preferable. For us, if you can get everybody back on the same page again, it is clearly preferable, but if you actually examine the circumstances of 1441, the whole point about it and this is the argument I used with the Americans successfully to get them to go down this route and by the way, I should just point out, at the end of October 2002, I remember specifically a conversation with President Bush in which I said, “If he complies, that’s it”. There is no

LYNE: Yes, I think you mentioned this earlier

BLAIR: But this is important, because people sometimes say it was all kind of cast in stone from

LYNE: But wasn’t Number 10 saying to the White House in January and February, even into March, that it was essential, from the British perspective, because of our reading of the law, to have a second resolution?

BLAIR: It was politically, we were saying

LYNE: Not merely preferable, but essential.

BLAIR: No. Politically, we were saying it was going to be very hard for us. Indeed, it was going to be very hard for us.

LYNE: Weren’t we saying it was legall necessary for us, because that was his advice?

BLAIR: What we said was, legally, it resolves that question obviously beyond any dispute. On the other hand, for the reasons that I have given, Peter, in the end, decided that actually a case could be made out for doing this without another resolution, and, as I say, did so, I think, for perfectly good reasons.

LYNE: Well, it must have been of considerable relief to you, on 13 March, when he told you that he had come to the better view that the revival argument worked, because, at that point, he had given you, subject to you making the determination, the clear legal grounds that you needed.

BLAIR: Yes, and the reason why he had done that was really very obvious, which was that the Blix reports indicated quite clearly that Saddam had not taken that final opportunity.

LYNE: But he had done it in disagreement with the international lawyers, all of them, as we understand from Sir Michael Wood, then in the government’s employ.

BLAIR: I seem to remember but I may be wrong on this; if I am, forgive me but I think that he had also sought the advice of Christopher Greenwood QC.

LYNE: He had, and we discussed that, and it didn’t appear from our discussion that there were many other people outside government arguing in the same direction that Lord Goldsmith eventually argued.

BLAIR: Obviously, other countries, of course, were having the same issues as well and having to decide this and it wasn’t I don’t think it is right to say it was irrelevant that the American lawyers had come to a different view.

LYNE: Clearly not irrelevant, because it had a big impact on him, but, apart from America, were there other countries in which we have heard recently what a Dutch review has found on this, but were there other countries in which people were arguing in favour of the revival argument?

BLAIR: I think all countries who took the military action believed they had a sound legal basis for doing so. All I am pointing out is, actually, when you analyse 1441, it is less surprising as a conclusion to come to than as sometimes is made out today, because the fact is1441 was very deliberately constructed. It had, if you like, a certain sort of integrity as a resolution to it. It basically said, “Okay, one last chance. One last chance, Saddam, to prove that you have had a change of heart, that you are going to cooperate”, and he didn’t.

LYNE: We are not lawyers, we have simply listened to the views of lawyers, Lord Goldsmith, Sir Michael Wood, Ms Wilmshurst, Mr Brummell, and looked at what they told us about the balance of legal opinion on this subject. Lord Goldsmith obviously was not in a position in which he had wide support within the international legal fraternity within the government, indeed any, I think, in the UK, when he made his judgment. But he is a lawyer of the highest eminence and they accepted his authority, even if they didn’t agree with it. So that was the final position.

BLAIR: Sorry, forgive me, Sir Roderic. All I’m trying to say is, when you actually go back and read 1441, it is pretty obvious that you can make a decent case for this.

LYNE: Well, let me not pass judgment on that. I’m asking questions and I do not have an opinion to state on it. I would just like to ask one final question to wrap up this legal chapter, and this is really you were in the position, ultimately, where you had to give this determination. You had to go through with the action, Lord Goldsmith was preparing with the assistance of Christopher Greenwood for the possibility of legal challenge. He knew that he had taken a decision that some others, many others, perhaps, were arguing with and were going to argue with, and he had put something to you that was described as a reasonable case, but, nevertheless, not one that he would have confidently put before a court. You then had to decide whether you were convinced that this was a strong enough legal basis to take a very serious action of participating in a full-scale invasion of another country. How convinced were you, at this point, that you had a strong legal case for doing what you did?

BLAIR: I would put it in this way. What I needed to know from him was, in the end, was he going to say this was lawful? He had to come to conclusion in the end, and I was a lawyer myself, I wrote many, many opinions for clients, and they tend to be, “On the one hand … on the other hand”, but you come to a conclusion in the end and he had to come to that conclusion. Incidentally, I think he wasn’t alone in international law in coming to that conclusion, for very obvious reasons, because, as I say, if you read the words in 1441 it is pretty clear this was Saddam’s last chance. So that was what he had to do. He did it. As I say, anybody who knows Peter knows he would not have done it unless he believed in it and thought it was the correct thing to do, and that was for us and for our armed forces, that was sufficient.

LYNE: You weren’t worried by him saying that he wouldn’t expect to win in a court with this one.

BLAIR: I do not know that he said “not to win”, he simply said, you know, there is a case either way and there always was a case either way. That’s why it would have been preferable, politically, and to have removed any doubt, to have had the second resolution, but in the end, we got to the point in the middle of March when, frankly, we had to decide. We were going either to back away or we were going to go forward, and I decided, for the reasons that I have given, that we should go forward.

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PRASHAR: But was that assurance given to you because they wanted to give you a view that they had a “can do” approach?

BLAIR: No, the one thing about the military, in my experience, is they tell you very bluntly, quite rightly, what their situation is, what they want, what they don’t want, and what they think about things, and Mike was very, very clear that they had the readiness. I think there were something like 250 different urgent operational requirements that went into this. All of them I think Kevin Tebbitt told you this were properly met, and, incidentally, had anyone at any stage come to me and said, “It is not safe to do this because of the lack of proper military preparation”, I would have taken that very, very seriously indeed, but they didn’t, and they got on with it, and they did it magnificently, as they always do.

PRASHAR: But the point is the formal approval did not come until January anyway, and, in fact, we do know that that was the case, the equipment was late.

BLAIR: I didn’t know I mean, as I say, there are, as it were, issues to do with logistics that they are far better able to tell you about. All I know is that they regard themselves as ready, and what is more, they performed as ready. They did an extraordinary job.

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PRASHAR: I now want to turn to the sort of general aftermath planning, because, on 21 January 2003, you were giving evidence to the Liaison Committee. You said: “We cannot engage in military conflict and ignore the aftermath. In other words, if we at this stage of military conflict, we also have to get a very proper worked out plan as to what happens afterwards and how the international community supports that …” Several witnesses have told us that the planning and the resources for the aftermath of war was important, if not more important than the planning for resourcing the war itself. Now, what happened? Because you know, this was inadequate and a lot of people have said it didn’t quite work.

BLAIR: First of all, I think we have got to divide it into two sections here. Actually, we did an immense amount of prewar planning. I think Mike Boyce said to you in his evidence that they spent as much time on Phase 4 as the other phases of the operation. We had the officials meeting obviously. We had the ad hoc meetings, we had Cabinet meetings, actually, that were discussing these issues. The real problem was that our focus was on the issues that, in the end, were not the issues that caused us the difficulty. It wasn’t an absence of planning, it was that we planned for certain eventualities and, when we got in there, we managed to deal with those eventualities, but we discovered a different set of realities and then we had to deal with those. So the vast bulk of the prewar planning was focused on the humanitarian, number one, I think probably more than anything else. Indeed, I think there was a House of Commons Select Committee report on 6 March 2003 saying you have got to do even more on the humanitarian side. All the focus was on that.

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BLAIR: I think the most reliable figures out of the Iraq body count on the Brookings Institute may be 100,000 over this whole period the coalition forces weren’t the ones doing the killing. The ones doing the killing were the terrorists, the sectarians, and they were doing it quite deliberately to stop us making the progress we wanted to make. So my attitude and I took this line very, very strongly with people when we say, “Isn’t it terrible that the death toll went to 2007, that high?” yes, it is terrible, but the first question to ask is, “Who was killing them?” and this turned out to be precisely the same people that we were trying to fight everywhere and our responsibility was to stick in there and see it through, which eventually happened with the surge, with the Charge of the Knights down in Basra, and today, of course, the situation in Iraq is very, very different and the people are better off and have a decent chance of a proper future.”

FREEDMAN: Certainly better off than they were in 2007.

BLAIR: Or in 2003, or 2002, or 2001.