What a coincidence. A day after the Americans have withdrawn their combat troops from Iraq, former Brit PM, Tony Blair, launches his memoir in the US. Not in Great Britain, mind you. That would have almost guaranteed widespread protests.
Mehdi Hasan, writing for NewStatesman, reflects on what he has read in the book - and in the process tears, from limb to limb, many of Blair's statements.
One example:
".... for me, it's the extracts from the Iraq chapter that caught my sleepy eyes (and not just became A Journey is being published on the day after the last US combat troops left that war-torn country). TB continues to distort, evade, pretend and mislead on the issue of Iraq. He is the ultimate Blair - and so I couldn't help but fisk the available extracts from his Iraq chapter.
'I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility'
Never did you guess? But why did you have to "guess"? Six of the country's top academic experts on Iraq and international security warned TB, in a face-to-face meeting in November 2002, that the consequences of an invasion could be catastrophic. Cambridge University's George Joffe, one of the six invited to Downing Street, got the impression of "someone with a very shallow mind, who's not interested in issues other than the personalities of the top people, no interest in social forces, political trends, etc". Meanwhile, the Joint Intelligence Committee warned TB in February 2003 that the threat from Al Qaeda "would be heightened by military action against Iraq".
Mehdi Hasan, writing for NewStatesman, reflects on what he has read in the book - and in the process tears, from limb to limb, many of Blair's statements.
One example:
".... for me, it's the extracts from the Iraq chapter that caught my sleepy eyes (and not just became A Journey is being published on the day after the last US combat troops left that war-torn country). TB continues to distort, evade, pretend and mislead on the issue of Iraq. He is the ultimate Blair - and so I couldn't help but fisk the available extracts from his Iraq chapter.
'I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility'
Never did you guess? But why did you have to "guess"? Six of the country's top academic experts on Iraq and international security warned TB, in a face-to-face meeting in November 2002, that the consequences of an invasion could be catastrophic. Cambridge University's George Joffe, one of the six invited to Downing Street, got the impression of "someone with a very shallow mind, who's not interested in issues other than the personalities of the top people, no interest in social forces, political trends, etc". Meanwhile, the Joint Intelligence Committee warned TB in February 2003 that the threat from Al Qaeda "would be heightened by military action against Iraq".
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