Good for Tony Blair. He stood up to the ridiculous Chilcot Commission investigating his decision to join the US to topple Saddam Hussein.
WSJ: Instead, Mr. Blair offered a ringing defense of the decision to invade Iraq, and a very different set of lessons for the present. “This isn’t about a lie, or a conspiracy, or a deceit, or a deception. It is a decision,” Mr. Blair told a packed room that included relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. “And the decision I had to take was, given [Saddam's] history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program?”
That’s a point worth remembering over all the Monday-morning recriminations about “dodgy dossiers” and missing WMD. We have never for a moment believed that the British or U.S. governments deliberately misled their publics over what they thought they knew about Saddam’s weapons. Every Western country, including those opposed to the war, believed Saddam had WMD.
But the important point was never so much about what Saddam did or did not possess so much as it was about what he intended. And as Mr. Blair pointed out Friday, “What we now know is that he [Saddam] retained the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons program when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to do. . . .
“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 . . . in respect of support of terrorist groups. . . . If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are.” …
Blair also warned about the threat from Iran. Was Obama listening? Perhaps he was. Maybe he was listening to Blair, or perhaps he was listening to Ahmadinejad himself.
The choices we had:
1. Ignore Saddam and assume he didn’t have WMDs or wouldn’t have them any times soon. All the while allowing him to continue commiting violations of the Cease Fire agreement. **Note to libs: the war WASN’T over.**
2. Assume Saddam had WNDs with intent to use them or given them to AQ or some other radical Islamic faction.
Either way, use of WMDs is known to a commander as as the most dangerous course of action and we HAD to eliminate this.
Once liberated, the people of IRAQ trashed their own country rather than take charge of it. Of course that is Blair’s & Bush’s fault right?
Imagine if we didn’t take out Saddam and AQ resumed attacking the US? Don’t be decieved, once broken in Afganhistan AQ was moving to Iraq and Pakistan. They successfully attacked other countries: Spain & England. Expand this to include WMDs.
And Bush was evil?
Oh By the Way: Big Ears isn’t doing SQUAT. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve been LUCKY so far.
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[...] 2. Good for Tony Blair- He Stood His Ground 3. “Never apologise, never explain. Just get the thing done, and let them howl.” (Agnes Macphail, Canadian politician.) [...]
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