So let me get this one straight. Tony Blair says that if it were true that his government has “sexed up” the Iraq dossier, he would have had to resign.
Okay.
This is the same dossier, remember, which warned us that Saddam had the capability to launch a devastating chemical or biological attack within forty five minutes — a claim we now know to be patently untrue.
Blair’s cutting it fine — arguing that he believed what he was saying at the time.
“Given that the process was that they had to decide what it was we could properly say, obviously we had to make this case because it was the case we believed in and this was the evidence we had,” he said.
Only 27 percent of the British public now say they trust him, down from 74 percent in 1998. I don’t claim to be an expert on British politics, but if he can’t do better than this, it seems a fair bet that the moving lorries might be showing up at Number Ten Downing sooner rather than later.
In a related story, Blair’s top aide has just announced his resignation. For — yes, you guessed it — “family reasons.”