Andrew Rawnsley: What a shame Blair chose the wrong pretext: "Like all of his post-war grief over Iraq, this is the penalty for how he pursued the prewar propaganda campaign. He always had cogent and powerful arguments for acting against Saddam. Here is a vicious tyrant who has been in defiance for many years of countless UN resolutions. Sanctions and sporadic bombing have hurt the people of Iraq rather than their slavemaster. Military action was the only means to free Iraq and conclusively deal with Saddam. Had Tony Blair argued that, he would not be in the mire he is in today. The fundamental error was to subordinate his moral case for dealing with Saddam to a 'threat' argument which now looks so threadbare."

This is a remarkable statement from the Guardian columnist, but short of admitting the truth, it is the last refuge for the warmongers Bush, Blair and Howard, and their compliant media propagandists. The claim that UKUSA acts in the interests of human rights in Iraq has no more credibility than that it acts to prevent a threat from WMDs. Policy on Iraq during the 90s was described by Dennis Halliday as 'genocide', with the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. During the worst period of Saddam's crimes, the 1980s, he acted with the full support of "the West". The reality is that the talk of human rights and liberation of Iraqis is as false a pretext as the talk of WMDs. The reason for the war, as we all know, is the oil, empire, hegemony, the neo-conservative clique in Washington. Rawnley's argument is also not plausible, because in order to get a population to support a war, you have to frighten them with talk of threats from enemies. The public will not support a war on the basis of "getting a bad guy," why would they? This is why WMDs had to be used, and beaten up to a mass of lies to overwhelm the population.

Andrew Rawnsley: What a shame Blair chose the wrong pretext: "Like all of his post-war grief over Iraq, this is the penalty for how he pursued the prewar propaganda campaign. He always had cogent and powerful arguments for acting against Saddam. Here is a vicious tyrant who has been in defiance for many years of countless UN resolutions. Sanctions and sporadic bombing have hurt the people of Iraq rather than their slavemaster. Military action was the only means to free Iraq and conclusively deal with Saddam. Had Tony Blair argued that, he would not be in the mire he is in today. The fundamental error was to subordinate his moral case for dealing with Saddam to a 'threat' argument which now looks so threadbare."

This is a remarkable statement from the Guardian columnist, but short of admitting the truth, it is the last refuge for the warmongers Bush, Blair and Howard, and their compliant media propagandists. The claim that UKUSA acts in the interests of human rights in Iraq has no more credibility than that it acts to prevent a threat from WMDs. Policy on Iraq during the 90s was described by Dennis Halliday as 'genocide', with the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. During the worst period of Saddam's crimes, the 1980s, he acted with the full support of "the West". The reality is that the talk of human rights and liberation of Iraqis is as false a pretext as the talk of WMDs. The reason for the war, as we all know, is the oil, empire, hegemony, the neo-conservative clique in Washington. Rawnley's argument is also not plausible, because in order to get a population to support a war, you have to frighten them with talk of threats from enemies. The public will not support a war on the basis of "getting a bad guy," why would they? This is why WMDs had to be used, and beaten up to a mass of lies to overwhelm the population.