Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
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.
The more important the matter, the more important to excercise critical judgement, and if they trusted him they were mugs, given that he was so obviously bull****ting, and believing in his own messiah-like infalibility.

And yes, there was opposition within the political and media classes to the Iraq war, but largely of a technical and legal nature. If it was the wrong thing to do, then obtaining a UN-mandate wouldn't have made it right.