The Iraq war is the Suez of our time: "On the question of Iraq, Tony Blair isn't so much a deceiver as someone who simply has no grasp of objective truth. The pretexts he has used over the war were so flagrant that it's hard to sympathise with anyone who ever believed them. And even the angry arguments over what the PM really knew about '45-minute' weapons are empty, since they assume that WMD were the real reason for the war. It is - and a year ago was - entirely clear that this was not so: as clear as the truth was at Suez, the episode that Iraq so much resembles.

"In one of the searing columns he wrote in the last months of his life, Hugo Young put his finger on 'the great over-arching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny'. This was that 'he was committed to war months before he said he was'. That is so, but there is more to it. The observable fact is that the decision for war was taken not only before Blair says it was, but for reasons other than those he gave."

"Blair's motive was his conviction - his only real foreign policy - that he must support the US at all times... Suez [is] the comparison that so sharply illuminates Iraq. In 1956 the British and French wanted to destroy Nasser, who had kicked out the British army and seized the Suez canal, and had encouraged the rebellion in Algeria... London and Paris would not avow their true reasons, and instead concocted an elaborate plot: Israel would attack Egypt, and the European armies would then intervene between the combatants. Rarely has anything been seen at once as underhand and as transparent - until Iraq."

Howard's position and attitude is similar to Blair's. Both these contemptible liars will never be able to admit the truth and will go into retirement with the odour of disgrace ever lingering about them.

The Iraq war is the Suez of our time: "On the question of Iraq, Tony Blair isn't so much a deceiver as someone who simply has no grasp of objective truth. The pretexts he has used over the war were so flagrant that it's hard to sympathise with anyone who ever believed them. And even the angry arguments over what the PM really knew about '45-minute' weapons are empty, since they assume that WMD were the real reason for the war. It is - and a year ago was - entirely clear that this was not so: as clear as the truth was at Suez, the episode that Iraq so much resembles.

"In one of the searing columns he wrote in the last months of his life, Hugo Young put his finger on 'the great over-arching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny'. This was that 'he was committed to war months before he said he was'. That is so, but there is more to it. The observable fact is that the decision for war was taken not only before Blair says it was, but for reasons other than those he gave."

"Blair's motive was his conviction - his only real foreign policy - that he must support the US at all times... Suez [is] the comparison that so sharply illuminates Iraq. In 1956 the British and French wanted to destroy Nasser, who had kicked out the British army and seized the Suez canal, and had encouraged the rebellion in Algeria... London and Paris would not avow their true reasons, and instead concocted an elaborate plot: Israel would attack Egypt, and the European armies would then intervene between the combatants. Rarely has anything been seen at once as underhand and as transparent - until Iraq."

Howard's position and attitude is similar to Blair's. Both these contemptible liars will never be able to admit the truth and will go into retirement with the odour of disgrace ever lingering about them.