The Iraq war will follow Blair wherever he goes. He lied, bullied, manoeuvred and deceived in order to get his way. But some now say that's in the long past and we should "get over it".
By Lindsey German
Stop the War Coalition
12 July 2012
Tony Blair joins the protest outside his comeback banquet at Arsenal football stadium. Picture by Matthew Aslett. See more pictures here...
The Blairs and the Milibands in their finery for the Arsenal banquet.
LITTLE did I think while watching the BBC’s TwentyTwelve about the London Olympics on Tuesday night that just 24 hours later reality would outstrip satire. Yet Ed Miliband’s announcement that his new policy review adviser is to be none other than Tony Blair, giving advice on the Olympic legacy, does just that.
Even at this late stage, Blair could perhaps secure a place in the comedy about the Olympics preparations, giving advice on security to the harassed character played by Hugh Bonneville, who in this week's episode was shot in the leg with a starting pistol.
Blair’s new position was announced at a Labour Party jamboree at the Arsenal Emirates stadium last night. The great and the good paid up to £500 a ticket to hear the good news.
The Emirates was an apt venue, and one in which Blair will surely have felt at home, given his forays into war in the Middle East, backed all the while by the Gulf States, who are a by word for reaction in the region.
I was one of those demonstrating outside the giant stadium to remind the guests that their main speaker was a war criminal. The organiser of the event, his henchman Alistair Campbell, helped to ‘sex up’ the September 2002 dossier that dishonestly claimed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could hit British interests ‘in 45 minutes.’
Campbell repeatedly used his journalistic talents to spin his and Blair’s way to war, regardless of the consequences.
Whoever told Miliband that rehabilitating Blair was a good idea has obviously forgotten the deep and lasting hatred and contempt that millions of people in Britain feel for him.
The political parties in Washington, D.C., have switched sides for the moment. Now the Democrats accept presidential power abuses, while the Republicans are outraged, selectively, by a few of them. Host David Swanson gives his thoughts. Guest Elizabeth Holtzman discusses the possibility of creating a climate of accountability by prosecuting George W. Bush. Holtzman was a member of Congress and of the House Judiciary Committee that voted for articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. She proposed the bill that required review of state secrets claims, as well as the bill that created a special prosecutor -- a law that was allowed to lapse following Kenneth Starr's abuse of it. She was there for the creation of FISA. She has brought Nazi war criminals to justice. She was a leading advocate for impeaching George W. Bush. Liz Holtzman's new book, co-authored with Cynthia Cooper, is called Cheating Justice: How Bush and Cheney Attacked the Rule of Law and Plotted to Avoid Prosecution, and What We Can Do About It. In the book, and in this interview, Holzman builds a case that Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney went out of their way to carefully protect themselves from prosecution but nonetheless left themselves open to it.