Blair lied to go to war when even the UN Weapons Inspectors said they could find no evidence of WMD
Blimey! How confused are you? Didn't the weapons inspectors make that statement
after the conflict, not before? In which case it has little if any bearing on the decision to act against what was, at the start of the conflict, a known fact. Unless poor Tone (in this instance) is accused of failing to achieve to 20-20 hindsight. OK, he overdid the 45 minutes but, but not the known and proven existence of the weapons.
Saddam had nerve gas. We know because he'd used it on several occasions. Proven without doubt. We know he had hordes of Scuds that could deliver it against Israel, as he had promised to do on numerous occasions. Proven without doubt.
Never in the history of warfare (
afaik) has someone with a devastating capability such as that chosen to dispose of it secretly in the face of an inevitable, and inevitably futile conflict. So, without that 20-20 vision Bliar stands accused of failing to use, how tha heck could he or any of the Western Allies have anticipated him to do this? Yet he did. As the facts show. And had he been told a the last minute that Saddams WMD had mysteriously "disappeared" would anyone have believed he had disposed of them, rather than just hidden them? No, of course not. Intel like that would have been laughed out of existence for being so preposterously and obviously wrong. Yet that is what happened. We'll find out one day where they went. (Jordan is my guess).
And as to whingeing about rendition, has every conflict not seen underhand and murky activities?
Have we got so politically (in)correct that we must put terrorist or military threats in the hands of the fukken CPS and social workers when action needs to be taken against them NOW? So what if some of them got hurt? Prefer hundreds of our boys to die instead because you so wanted to wrap the enemy commanders in cotton wool that you left them be instead of playing it a bit rough?
God help us!