A Good Reason For Glancing At The Mail

[poliphilo]

I know the Mail is a dreadful paper- but it's currently performing the service the Chilcot Enquiry keeps not providing (at vast expense to the public purse) by publishing material from Tom Bower's investigation into Tony Blair and his conduct of the war in Iraq. Bower interviewed practically everyone involved and has built up a picture of a Prime Minister who went all presidential (and more- because there are checks on a US president) and ran British foreign policy on single player mode. He rejected informed advice, listened only to yes-men and the voice in his head he calls God, spin-doctored the information he put before colleagues and the country, misrepresented his intentions- and wasted lives as if they were pixels. Max Hastings in an related think piece says he doesn't suppose Blair will ever be sent on a one-way trip to the Hague but that the least we can do is exclude him from public life for ever. 

Comments

[matrixmann]

It's quite astonishing what comes out now about Blair's position in the Iraq and the Libya war through investigations in the UK itself. You didn't calculate that to happen.
It's only a pity it only reaches international press. Resident press? They're all busy with the refugees at the Macedonian border, with Merkel, with Turkey, with Putin being a villain and that's it. It doesn't even drop in a side note, although it is pretty interesting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's extremely interesting. In brief the system failed. The checks and balances didn't kick in. Blair was allowed to act like a dictator.

[matrixmann]

It also makes the question pretty interesting: Why did he act this way that he did?
If he had already decided in 2002 to go to war against Iraq and his subordinates only still had the task left to find or fabricate something to make it plausible, then what got him to be so sure about the campaign?
Or, regarding warning Gaddafi and maybe getting him out of the mess if he had wanted - why did he want to save him, if the international community was so agreed on the fact he needs to leave? Okay, admittedly that may also be a matter of the personal department. But even though, why? Why then, in comparison, was the rest of the international community so eager to get rid of him out of the blue?
This is all speaks pretty much a geopolitical game - you only don't get what is the strategy behind it. What is or are the factors that lead all these pieces of a puzzle to a logically-functioning image?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Blair wanted to be best friends with whoever was American President at the time. He'd also managed to convince himself that Saddam was uniquely wicked.

I'm afraid it may simply come down to Blair being shallow and ignorant.

[matrixmann]

"Greedy" also comes up during the investigations.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. His career since leaving office has been all about making money.