[Barry the Sprout]

Originally posted by Donut: Well I care. I care because my elected leader told me we were going to war because there was an imminent threat that Saddam would use WoMD against us. That is how he sold the war to us, that is how he sold the war to his own party, that is how he sold the war to the House of Commons. 45 minutes he said! That was how long it would take Saddam to fire his WoMD at us! How on earth can he have got it so wrong. I can see that the end result of the war was to remove an evil dictator. But that wasn't put forward by Blair until he realised there were no WoMD If Blair had said that was the reason for war I would support him. But at the back of my mind I can't help thinking - this was the first time that Britain had gone to war on the basis of intelligence reports, and they were totally wrong, how can I possibly trust Tony Blair any more? Is it right for a leader to mislead the people about the reason for war - even if the end results are beneficial? He might not be so lucky next time. We all shake our heads when we hear about terrorism - but deep down the West only do anything about terrorism when their interests are threatened. What are we going to do about Chechen terrorism, about Maoist terrorists in Nepal, about terrorists in the Sudan where genocide is about to take place? The answer is nothing will be done - because it doesn't affect us. That's why Iraq is not part of the war on terrorism. Iraq had some links to Middle East terrorist groups - but those groups weren't threatening the US/UK, the war on Iraq was part of a whole different agenda! An agenda, that Richard Clarke's revelations at the weekend show, is slowly emerging.

I think you're right on the money here. I'd just like to reiterate what I've said before on this issue - I think the war would have still been wrong if they had had WMD's, but what really pisses me off is that Blair and Bush quite obviously lied about it and now don't even have the grace to admit so.

I would actually have a lot of respect for Blair if he said that he had only wanted to go to war to remove a dictator (the reason he focuses on now, as obviously its the only one that bears any weight at all) but had to lie about WMDs in order to get the public behind him. His line has always been that it didn't matter if the public didn't agree as he knew he was doing the right thing anyway - if he were to really think that then he shouldn't be skulking around hiding behind obvious lies. It does him no credit and merely exxagerates the real reason he went to war, which had absolutely nothing to do with WMDs or even brutal dictators (because, lets face it, we support enough of those around the world) and instead had everything to do with power politics.

[ 03-22-2004, 10:02 AM: Message edited by: Barry the Sprout ]