Quote Originally Posted by Ash View Post
He wasn't leader of the 139 Tory MPs. Or the leader of the 557 MPs who voted to smash up Libya in another disastrous intervention years later.



Well, personally I resolved never to vote for him after he did a similar thing in '99. I would gladly have voted for the anti-NATO SNP given the chance, but that's just me. I do think your critique would be better applied to the political and media classes who have for the most part, gone along with the doctrine of humanitarian intervention for two decades now, and are now taking turns to stick the knife in, on, it seems, the basis of technical failures than principled ones.
He was the leader of the country and those Tory MPs could quite legitimately claim they felt that they should have had a right to trust the PM's judgement on such a matter. Equally, he didn't actually need a Commons vote to commit troops. As Prime Minister, he absolutely had the right to do it regardless (as he did in 99), so trying to spread the blame doesn't really wash.

I'm not sure your criticism of the media is entirely fair. I seem to remember quite a lot of questioning from all sides of the political spectrum.

Of course, the big joke is that, had Iraq been successful in its aims (whatever they were), Chilcott would never have happened. It would have simply been a 'the ends justify the means' job and tiresome details such as legality and honesty would have been ignored. In other words, what Blair is really being condemned for isn't starting a war, but starting a war we didn't win.