Says the New York Times about Britain’s ongoing Iraq war inquiry:
So it is little surprise that the inquiry’s first three weeks of hearings have unfolded in ways that have done little to blunt a common view in Britain that the war, conducted on the governing Labour Party’s watch, was a historic blunder.
…
An insistent theme, in testimony from top generals, diplomats and intelligence officials, has been that as prime minister Mr. Blair, keen to build a close personal relationship with President George W. Bush and overriding his advisers’ cautions, hastened Britain into a war that it could, and perhaps should, have avoided.
…
In a BBC radio interview over the weekend, Mr. Blair, unrepentant, said that he would have gone to war against Mr. Hussein even if he had known beforehand that Iraq had no unconventional weapons.
Let’s turn to Mr. Blair’s words from July 18, 2003:
Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.
What about the far greater inhuman carnage and suffering of Bush/Blair’s war?
History will not forgive, Mr. Blair. Your people submitted to your will to go to war because you lied to them about the “threat” from Iraq, because they trusted you and believed you when you said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — for that reason and that reason alone.
History will not forgive.
