Tony Blair and The Iraq War Inquiry. The 10 questions I would ask him.

[TheBigotBasher]

Tony Blair will be interviewed as part of the ongoing Iraq War Inquiry later today. He is the Master of spin and untruths sold as truth. These would be my 10 questions to him.


1. What agreement was made with George Bush about the invasion of Iraq at Camp David and why?

2. What threat was there that required such an urgent intervention?

3. Given the opposing legal advice about the legality of war, given your previous role in law, wouldn't it have been better to err on the side of caution?

4. Why did you let the 45 minute claim pass? Who was behind this claim?

5. Did you place pressure on the Attorney General to change his mind about the legality of the War?

6. Was Saddam Hussein really a greater threat than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

7. Wasn't the unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan a greater threat to the US, UK and the region than Iraq?

8. What were your reasons for ignoring the United Nations when you had previously seen their support as critical?

9. Do you still stand by the speech you made to the US Congress, which helped sell the war to America?

10. The Government is now withholding crucial papers from this Inquiry, do you support that?

I do not hold my breath waiting for the tough questions or for honest replies from Blair.

I would also prefer to hear those questions being asked of Blair at the International Criminal Court.

[HeresyLives]

1. What I'd ask is a simple 'why?'

Why even get involved in the first place?

There was no known reason for the UK to go along with Bush on any of this.

Blair was a rising star voted in to help Britain, but he sunk himself and the UK by buying into this, and nobody knows why.

It wasn't a vote-getter, it didn't make money, it couldn't raise Britain's stature in the world, and it didn't do anything to help Blair personally. In fact he ended by being called Bush's poodle, a euphemism if there ever was one.

So why?

[TheBigotBasher]

2. A much shorter version of my first question.

I'd like a follow up on a few, but on his reasons I would really like for him to explain why the World is in his view safer now.

[HeresyLives]

3. Yes, it was never in danger in the first place.

So why on earth did he go along with any of this?

[TheBigotBasher]

4. Maybe a trade deal?

Or the promise of the job he has now as Middle East Peace Consultant (how ironic - actually why is he still in that job?).

I can not understand not just his support, but his use of the whole New Labour spin machine to sell this War as urgent and crucial, not just to the UK but the US as well.

If Blair did not support this - there would have been no Iraq war. Not even Bush would have gone it alone.

[HeresyLives]

5. Possible, but one never materialized.

And a retired PM always gets lots of job offers, whether they go off to war or not.

The UK paid off it's war debt, so it wasn't money. They didn't need help financially in the way of loans. There were even stories about compromising photos of Blair, but surely by now they'd have surfaced with the web and all.

Blair enabled Bush, and I have no idea why.

And he was so determined to do so, he practically begged to do so. As they say, 'wtf'?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Blair wanted to do it all along - he likes to intervene

He has a massive ego, and is convinced he knows best. He's already said that if he couldn't have used the excuse of the claim of WMD to invade Iraq, he'd have found another way of removing Saddam. So he's admitted that he wanted regime change all along (and he lied to the British Parliament when he said that wasn't his aim), although that was clearly against international law.

Here, for instance, is an article about his attitude to Kosovo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/325989.stm . And his (laughable, if the subject weren't so serious) attempts at being a 'peace envoy' and trying to 'bring all faiths together' show he still believes he's a 'great' international figure.

Blair wanted a way to depose Saddam. He found WMD a conveninent way to do it, and, as the Downing Street Memo said, 'fixed the facts around the policy'. The evidence so far to the Chilcot Inquiry has clearly shown that people were working that way round. Goldsmith was looking for ways to legitimise an invasion. In 2003, he wouldn't talk to the French negotiators about resolution 1441, because that would have weakened the case. But he was happy to talk to the American negotiators, because that gave him a claim that 1441 meant no further UN decision was necessary.