'I did what I thought was right'
How embarrassing.
Tony Blair looking for an international rule, some saying he might be replacing Paul Wolfowitz...
Corrupted war mongering Paul Wolfowitz will be replaced by a liar and war mongering, congratulations for all
Blair must so regret that Al Gore didn't win the 2000 election. If Gore had been President on 9/11 his history as the major liberal hawk of the Clinton admin suggests he would not have hesitated to use US military power to overthrow Saddam and Baath regime as an opportunistic response, given the headaches Saddam had given the Clinton admin. However, Gore's approach would have been entirely different to the hard right cowboys of the Bush Admin and the neos wouldn't have got a look in: Gore and Blair together would have put a premium on persuading the French and the Russians that their interests would be looked after post regime fall, with the result that the UN would have given the operation a clear imprimatur. Furthermore with a Gore Democratic Admin instead of the loathed and perceived illegitimate Bushites, much of the impetus would have gone out of the western anti war demonstrations leading to a much greater probability of Saddam losing his delusions that his time was up and higher chance he might have accepted comfortable exile, a la Idi Amin, or been overthrown by his own party.
And Michael Moore wouldn't have made so many zillions!
Ah, but as Donald Rumsfeld would say, you have to go with the history you have not the one you would like.
It occurs to me that Tony Blair defines the era we live in... the only problem being, I can't define Tony Blair. He is an ignis fatuus, a will o' the wisp.
Blair is a man who has no equal in his understanding of the politics of today. A man who can play the system's virtual reality like a Bach organist's toccata and fugue, but who has been utterly ruined by reality/reality in its ageless shape of war.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/
Perhaps this tells us more about our system's divorce from reality than it tells us about Tony Blair. DS
In only 10 years Tony Blair has singlehandedly transformed the political landscape in UK and Europe. David Cameron and the Tories have been remade in his image. Sarkozy and Merkel walk in his shoes.
And who could ever have imagined Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein walking hand in hand?
Bill Clinton did much the same in the US. President Hillary should put Blair and the First Gentleman to work to sort out Palestine.
Thanks Helena. Simple, elegant, powerful -- and for me, educational. Thanks to google, I came up with these two links, this one on Wilfred Owen's WWI poem (with explanations helpful to me)
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html
and the basic wikipedia entry - with the relevant Horace poem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_Est
Learn something "new" every day.... This one's a keeper.
Deputy Dubya
And Sheriff Dick Cheney, too
Made Blair their poodle
Helena, your frind give good analysis for Blair.
It is not only God that will be Blair's judge over Iraq
"His cravenly pro-US policy on the Middle East misunderstood Bush's real agenda and resulted in catastrophic failure"
Avi Shlaim
Monday May 14, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2078846,00.html