For a start, I miss his charm and articulate ability.
Foe a second, his very odd eye problem is starting to look as though he has a tumour inside his skull.
Only cartoonist Steve Bell seemed to notice this; it always worried me. When it was the three B's (during the time when I was having problems) Blair/Brown/Blunkett - I commented that the three UK leaders only had two working eyes between them.
For a third - nobody, surely, has ever doubted Blair's integrity and the fact that he thought he was doing the right thing; the question is - was he?

His eye looks terrible - has he been smashed in the eye ? Looks dreadful. Cherie ?

Not at all convincing without his spin doctors. This shows how much he is the creation of the "team" - like a band member going solo - he is a mere shadow of his former self.

Why does he not just tell the truth and say it was a silly idea - Bush bamboozled him into going to war and looking back now he wished it was otherwise. Then everyone would be happy and the enquiry could end. In future it could and should not happen again. Unless Blair is found to have declared an illegal war - a future war like this COULD HAPPEN !

Fascinating viewing today - he is an A CLASS celeb.

you are being far too kind JK.

a good idea at the time ?...what to knowingly start a war in which tens of thousands of innocents will die ? I don't think so.

We may as well say Hitler thought it was a good idea at the time...and he probaly did when you read his speeches !

however with Blair he at times looks like he has some messianic entity inside him..at other tiimes looking very personable. It makes me start to believe in David Ike's reptiles

It would be nice to think that sometime in this "enquiry" whitewash someone would stand up and point out America's role in the rise of Sadaam, and their continued support of him and his excesses right up until he invaded Kuwait in 1990....

JK2006 wrote:

For a third - nobody, surely, has ever doubted Blair's integrity and the fact that he thought he was doing the right thing; the question is - was he?

I'm the nobody who doubted Blair's integrity. I didn't trust him in 1997, even before the election, and I didn't trust him throughout his premiership. He had fake written all over him - it was just spelled differently.

Glad he's gone. Don't miss him one iota.

The problem I have - and I've always been 100% against the invasion of Iraq - is one touched on by Blair - that times have changed and local or regional excess can lead even more rapidly today to our own danger.

For example, should we have invaded Germany to stop the Nazis abuse of Jews? Not only on reasons of humanity but to stop Hitler proceeding? Should we have killed thousands of Germans (many innocent) to stop millions dying later?

It's never quite as black and white as it seems - especially when it's your finger on the button.

There is a major difference between what happened with Hitler and what happened with Hussain.

Hitler had already begun hostilities, was invading other lands, killing thousands and posing a real and immidiate threat with the most powerful military machine in the world.

Hussain was blockaded and confined to his own territory, unable to even defend himself let alone threaten anyone else. Also, the weapons inspectors were in Iraq and reporting zero findings.

Those two differences are fairly black and white. Even if action had to be taken against Saddam Hussain, there were many options open other than a full scale military invasion.

Chris Retro wrote:
It would be nice to think that sometime in this "enquiry" whitewash someone would stand up and point out America's role in the rise of Sadaam, and their continued support of him and his excesses right up until he invaded Kuwait in 1990....

absolutely- Saddam would have been nothing without western support.

but that's the way it goes- we are perfectly happy to support brutal regimes till they do something that doesn't suit us, then we go on about democracy and invade them.

Problem is JK everybody else in the region that mattered was against the war in Iraq.Even staunch allies the Saudis were against,as well as Turkey etc,even Kuwait was lukewarm.
They knew that with Saddam gone Iraq would implode.For the vast majority of people Saddam was a necessary evil.
America went in there without a plan for the aftermath.Any fool can use their armed superiorty to beat an underdog,but it takes the type of intelligence & understanding to do what was achieved in Germany after VE day that the Marshall plan achieved.Planned well in advance of the defeat.

Blair made a hash,and as such must be punished for his actions.He will not of course,because of who he is.Is that justice?

Never liked Blair,and Cameron is of the same ilk.Give me the brute honest of Michael Foot,or Enoch Powell over the spin of either of the current party leaders anyday.

JC - I refer to the very early days - Crystalnacht (a time we may soon see in the UK) - and I suspect my choice would have been to send in a crack SAS team to take out Hitler, just as they should have done with Sadaam, but then I wasn't there, then, and receiving intelligence.

I actually agree - if they wanted to remove Saddan they should have done it with a specialist unit. But that WOULD have been illegal. Therefore, they blurred the legalities by invading on a lie backed by no-one.

Blair is certainly a WAR CRIMINAL if you apply the law to him. If I killed someone because they might hurt me a few years later ( in self defence ) do you think I would get off so lightly ?

Blair should stand trial. Only then when he is faced with PROPER QUESTIONING will he be put on the spot. He "believed" Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction - but he STILL Provides not one word of evidence to back that view. He just MADE IT UP. Pulled it out of thin air.

JC wrote:
There is a major difference between what happened with Hitler and what happened with Hussain.

Hitler had already begun hostilities, was invading other lands, killing thousands and posing a real and immidiate threat with the most powerful military machine in the world.

Hussain was blockaded and confined to his own territory, unable to even defend himself let alone threaten anyone else. Also, the weapons inspectors were in Iraq and reporting zero findings.

Those two differences are fairly black and white. Even if action had to be taken against Saddam Hussain, there were many options open other than a full scale military invasion.

Kuwait is another land

Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and was killing more.

Pity nobody asked Blair why he chose, of all the nations he listed as being a threat after 911, he chose defenceless Iraq rather than the powerful North Korea as a target. And why does he still believe that Iraq had something to do with 911? Even at the time there was no evidence of such a link.

Talking of earlier days. We had the chance to remove Saddam Hussain after he invaded Kuwait but we bottled it. Since then, Iraq had been strangled to near starvation and monitored from land, air, sea and satellite. If a pin had dropped in Baghdad our military leaders would have known about it. No intelligence person could seriously have seen Iraq as the most major threat. But I guess our leaders lacked intelligence.

What Tony Blair and his followers seem to be saying is that if we truly and sincerely believe that a man on our street is a danger to us, even if that belief turns out to be wrong, we are justified in killing him.

Or how about these men who truly and sicerely believe that raping women is God's work. They believe that what they are doing is right so surely, under Blair's philosophy, they should not be punished or even stopped.

He, and the current government, would not accept such excuses from us, so why should we accept it from them?

Remember.... Saddam was George Bush Snr's achilles heel. It came as no shock that his idiot son would try and finish the job for Daddy once he forged himself into the Whitehouse.
I knew it would happen long before George W "won" the election, it was probably part of the reason why 9/11 happened when it did.

Emma Bee wrote:
What Tony Blair and his followers seem to be saying is that if we truly and sincerely believe that a man on our street is a danger to us, even if that belief turns out to be wrong, we are justified in killing him.

Or how about these men who truly and sicerely believe that raping women is God's work. They believe that what they are doing is right so surely, under Blair's philosophy, they should not be punished or even stopped.

He, and the current government, would not accept such excuses from us, so why should we accept it from them?

what you say is correct.

Blair has said Saddam killed a million (?) so he was justified..in what..killing hindreds of thousands of inocents?..Blair has played God. And he will get awy with it.

And what the hell is a "rogue nation" ?

I'd say Australia is a "rogue nation" Veritas - a strange place full of the families and descendants of criminals from dear Queen Victoria!

Very good Matthew Parris take on Blair

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/column...s/article7008890.ece

Tony Blair has the mistaken belief that he is the MESSIAH and can decide on all disputes. He was very clear about this yesterday. His work as PM and his work as Middle East envoy and his bizarre Catholic conversion has totally made him lose his marbles.

I feel sorry in a way for a man who wanted really to be famous and a rock star - he cant get much sleep at night these days.

He performed yesterday - what he genuinely believes in his heart is possibly different.

It is a real shame that he had the chance to put the record straight and did not do it. Hence his nervous start when he was shaking - he knew he was about to BS.

JK2006 wrote:
I'd say Australia is a "rogue nation" Veritas - a strange place full of the families and descendants of criminals from dear Queen Victoria!

so the criminals are all descendent from Queen Victoria ??..she must have put it about.

I know it's full of bloody great big rogue spiders that give me the willys.