Tony Blair: What Became of the Likely Lad?

by Jordan Yerman | May 10, 2007 at 06:32 am

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When Tony Blair came to power in 1997, Britain breathed a sigh of relief. The musty trappings of Tory rule. Margaret Thatcher and John Howard (Snoop to Thatcher's Dre) had sucked away the UK's vitality and self-image, transforming the nation from an industrial economy to a service economy.

Enter Tony Blair, the likely ad with a megawatt smile and a pocketful of promises. None of these promises included a sustained military campaign based on forged documents, or a rapidly-growing culture of surveillance. Nor did it include an exodus of children from state-run to public (read "private") schools. Blair hitched himself to George W. Bush's star, following the Texan on a Quixotic adventure through the desert, and all he can utter in his defense is that most English of phrases: "... sorry!"

The media-savvy politician is learning the hard way that if you live by the sword then yo die by the sword: whether or not history is kind to Tony Blair, current events are clearly not on his side, and it may well cost Labour their time in the sun.

"Forged documents" The use of this phrase at this point is completely slimy. It competes with "selected not elected" in its sliminess and in its deliberate misrepresentation:

"Hitchens made another point. The forged documents claiming an Iraq-Niger connection were so crude that they could never have fooled the CIA or British intelligence for very long. Who would do this, and do it so badly? Nobody knows. But if the forgeries were meant to distract from other evidence that Bush was right, then they certainly worked. Look around in American journalism, and you will find great certitude that the forgeries destroyed Bush's claim.

That certitude can only be founded on the belief that Tony Blair, the U.S. Senate intelligence committee and the special investigative team of Parliament were all liars when they said there was substantial non-forged evidence backing Bush's claim. The investigative team was headed by the highly regarded Lord Butler, who served as a Cabinet minister under five prime ministers. It concluded that Bush's 16 words about Iraq's uranium shopping were "well-founded."" RealClearPolitics

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