You have to hand it to Blair, he really does not conceal his contempt for his people or the parliament.
Blair admits misunderstanding '45-minute' claim
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had misunderstood a key part of an intelligence dossier on Iraq which he used to persuade a sceptical nation to back a war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Blair told the House of Commons he had been unaware that the controversial "45 minute" claim in the government's September 2002 Iraq dossier referred only to tactical battlefield weapons, and not long-range ballistic missiles.
He is a lying, sniveling little weasel
Now that he has copped to misunderstanding key parts of the dossier, lets look at some of the other key parts that he evidently misunderstood.
- The PM is so confused and incompetent that he doesn't understand the difference in implications for global security between a nation possessing LRBM's and battlefield weapons when it comes down to deciding whether the country should go to war should be fired on the spot.
- He also had to believe that he had adequate proof that a 45 minute launch capability for something existed in Iraq.
- But in order to "misunderstand" the kind of weapons to which the 45 claim referred, he still had to believe that he had adequate proof that Iraq had LRBM's. Not just scuds, weapons capable of delivering nuclear, chemical or biological weapons to London and possibly New York.
- He also had to believe that he had adequate proof that battlefield WMD existed in Iraq.
By adequate proof I mean that the evidence supported an unprovoked war of aggression 4,000 miles away, that kind of proof.
We know he believed all these things because he went before Parliament and the people and proclaimed that Iraq was a clear threat to the "world" and that it had to be attacked and its people killed and its bridges and buildings and power stations bombed to stop it becoming a threat on the scale of Germany in 1939. Anything less than that was "appeasing".
We also know that the statements on which he relied were festooned with conditionals and caveats, that his intel people mistrusted him so much that they wrote CMA memos to that effect.
But it was all so easy a year ago, he didn't need to produce evidence to anyone, he just lied about the evidence he had and depended on Saddam to provide it ex post facto. You might think that relying on your enemy to justify your war against him might be a slim strategy, but apparently Tony didn't understand that either. And now he wants us to believe that he didn't understand the evidence he had.
But then, its no wonder he didn't understand the validity of the evidence if he can't tell the difference between a 100 foot rocket and 155mm artillery shell. You'd think that might be one of the qualifications for getting the job, wouldn't you?
But he still wants to keep his job, even though he is so thick
- that he can't understand what he is being told,
- that he can't tell the difference between an elephant and a mouse and
- that when his intel people say, there might be a horse and there could be a gopher half way round the world, it doesn't mean there's a rogue elephant and 6 tigers coming up the path right now!!
In a just world he would be hauled out of parliament in irons and charged as a traitor and a criminal. A war criminal.
And Bush and Howard would be in the cell with him where they can jerk each other off till they are hauled off to the gibbet, still gibbering.