Apology of Tony Blair

Having watched Blair's inteview to Fareed Zakaria, I didn't believe my eyes (well, rather ears) first. Tony Blair did publically admit and say apologies they had been misinformed by their intelligence about Iraq, and they had had bad plans about Iraq's future after Saddam was thrown away.

(As soon as the CNN uploads the full video, I'll replace this short extract.)

Some of his words as written by the Daily Mail:

... I apologise for the fact that the intelligence I received was wrong.

Because even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people against others, the programme in the form we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought. So I can apologise for that.

I can also apologise, by the way, for some of the mistakes in planning and certainly our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you had removed the regime.

Of course you can't say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.

As far as I see it, the British ex-PM says, simply speaking, "I was a stupid bloody moron, and all the shit of today is firmly based upon those bricks I with my boss from the White House shitted out in 2003."

We have tried intervention and putting down troops in Iraq. We've tried intervention without putting down troops in Libya.

And we've tried no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria.

I feel my knowledge of English steadily acquired in the course of about 35 years, fails me. Is it somehow fair to say West tries (well, has tried) "no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria"??? How can a politician so calmly express such bold lies?

Well, there's no place for romanticism; Dr. Göbbels taught the world quite a lesson in the art of political lies. There's a saying, "photography cannot lie". However, it is extended: "but photographers can and do". And the politicians can surely give workshops in this art even to Photoshop guru's.

Besides, another question arises: who gave right to 'them' (evidently, USA and their puppets) to try interventions and putting down troops here and there?

It's not clear to me that even if our policy did not work, subsequent policies have worked better.

My translation: "Sorry, I am a stupid moron and do not understand what I did, and what consequences our actions would have."

Tony Blair also said:

But I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam. I think even from today 2015 it's better that he is not there than he is there.

More than half a year before the military intervention, on September 1, 2002, Thomas L. Friedman wrote in the NYT:

As I think about President Bush’s plans to take out Saddam Hussein and rebuild Iraq into a democracy, one question gnaws at me: Is Iraq the way it is today because Saddam Hussein is the way he is? Or is Saddam Hussein the way he is because Iraq is the way it is?

We shall never know the answer. However there are more and more voices, even from those sentenced to death by that impersonation of universal evil called Saddam Hussein, that Iraq was better with (and under) Saddam.

The journalist went on in his article:

I mean, is Iraq a totalitarian dictatorship under a cruel, iron-fisted man because the country is actually an Arab Yugoslavia — a highly tribalized, artificial state, drawn up by the British, consisting of Shiites in the south, Kurds in the north and Sunnis in the center — whose historical ethnic rivalries can be managed only by a Saddam-like figure?

Or, has Iraq, by now, congealed into a real nation? And once the cruel fist of Saddam is replaced by a more enlightened leadership, Iraq's talented, educated people will slowly produce a federal democracy.

And here, there is only one answer possible to the second paragraph, and that's a decisive 'No'. Iraq's people cannot produce a federal Western-style democracy, just because it is Iraq's people, not that of Germany or, say, France. Thus, there goes 'Yes' to the question of the first quoted paragraph.

One more short video from 2002, to refresh your memory.



Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator, no doubt. He was responsible for many thousands of human deaths, for cruel tortures, opression of rights and freedoms, etc.; and when Tony Blair or anyone else call him a monster, I readily agree. He definitely was one. And as for him, he was already judged for all his deeds by Allah, and this judgemend was supposedly just and fair, in comparison with that parody on justice that sentenced him to death.

However, the military operation carried out with the most active support of the man who has just brought his apologies, put the country into a true chaos. Th UN Health Agency counted more than 150,000 only non-combatants killed in Iraq in the first three years of military operation, that is in 2003—2006. Add to that estimated 16+thousands of killed Iraqi military and police and 26+ thousands of killed insurgents.

We also should not forget 4,400+ of KIA (and 32,000+ WIA) American soldiers and more than 300 KIA's from Coalition forces, 179 of which came back to the UK. Besides, there were killed about 1000 'non-military' Americans. The conflict took lives of about 200 journalists and their aids.

And there's no single sign that chaos in Iraq comes to any end, whether democratic or totalitarian.

So, Hussein was a bloody monster (so was Gaddafi, for the matter). Well, who are Mr. Blair and the WH residents?