Rewriting history is never OK

The exceedingly rich former prime minister wanders the world these days telling anyone who wants to know that, where Iraq is concerned, he would do it all again: Saddam Hussein was a supremely nasty individual who had to be removed at all costs. The tiny, marginal deviation from the truth is that Blair said nothing of the sort at the time.

Does it matter? Ten years have passed; people forget; and no-one has ever doubted the essential fact that Saddam was a conspicuous monster. A lot of people who once sided with Blair would prefer if we now laid aside every fact save that. The eager accomplice in the Iraq war is counting on that.

Salmond's unspeakable offence has been to refuse to play along. Last week, on the eve of the anniversary of the war's beginning, he got into a row with Lewis Macdonald MSP and others on the Labour benches when he reminded them of how they behaved in a symbolic vote in the Scottish Parliament a decade back. He called on them to "recant". He suggested people died because of their votes. Labour called this "tasteless politicking", an attempt to exploit "the deaths of brave Scots fighting in the British Army".

The occasion was another symbolic vote: a Scottish Government motion condemning the invasion of Iraq as a "reckless, illegal military conflict with incalculable human and material costs". In 2003, those who favoured the war won the day at Holyrood. This time, the invasion was condemned by 73 to 10, with 33 abstentions, mainly from Labour MSPs.

Afterwards, a Labour spokesman said: "Whatever your views on the war, those who voted both for it and against it did so out of honest conviction."

Johann Lamont, the party's Scottish leader, said she had supported the war because of Saddam's tyranny. "It was a division," she said, "between what, on balance, people believed the better thing to do. Not the right or wrong thing to do, but the better thing to do in the most difficult of circumstances."

Those are, needless to say, Blair's lines. Conviction, what was believed, a choice of evils, the defeat of tyranny: all forgivable. If this particular onslaught on the facts is maintained as the years roll on, even those who were adults in 2003 will wind up believing that a bloody conflict – one whose nightmarish aftermath continues for the Iraqi people – was a matter of good intentions, honest belief, and the need to remove a despot. Historical memory will have been trashed.

A fact, then. In the prelude to war, Blair said time and again that regime change was not the British aim. George W Bush said much the same on behalf of his country. They had reason. On this side of the Atlantic, as the Chilcot inquiry would discover, Blair had been warned as early as July 2002 by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action".

The problem for Blair was that he had already cut his deal with the Americans, irrespective of any British national interest, in the preceding April. As a Cabinet Office document, also seen by Chilcot and also dated July 2002, put it: "When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford [the Bush ranch in Texas] in April, he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion-"

Blair got his coalition, after a fashion, but not his legal justification for regime change, nor United Nations backing, nor the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that were supposed to supply the next-best basis for action. Now he simply tells the world that Saddam was so repellent, so murderous, he had to go. This was fair argument, as it happens. So why didn't Blair say as much at the time? Why construct the elaborate edifice of lies when the truth, as he now describes it, might have done the trick?

By the end of 2009, the politician who had once enjoyed both popularity and trust was being interviewed by Fern Britton, who does not qualify as anyone's idea of an inquisitor.

"If you had known then that there were no WMD, would you still have gone on?" she asked. Blair's answer: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam]." Yet when addressing parliament and public, Blair had maintained military action was justified solely because the dictator was in breach of demands he abandon his WMD.

Today, Blair is uninhibited. His tactic, as in a recent BBC Newsnight interview, is to invite the audience to wonder what would have become of Iraq, the region and the world if Saddam had not been "removed". A lot of people who bought the tale of honest allied intent and WMD a decade ago still clutch at the proffered straw. It is, nevertheless, a perversion of the historical record.

And so what? Blair told a few lies for the sake of a better world? Isn't this all, as the Labour spokesman suggested, just a matter of opinion, "whatever your views"? It amounts to saying, "Tony meant well, so forget about it". It amounts to saying that history can cease to matter in the space of a decade.

Why, then, is it dreadful bad taste for Salmond to remind people of their naivety, their mistakes? Our present government is contemplating an effort to arm Syrian rebels. This time, such an intervention might be justifiable. But there is a fear that arms could end up in the hands of people linked to al-Qaeda. Ten years back, we were told Islamists were in cahoots with Saddam. It was the opposite of the truth.

When history is rewritten, or dismissed as irrelevant, someone is preparing the ground for a fresh round of lies. They regard a decade as a decent interval in which to bury the truth and manufacture their excuses. Those excuses too are lies. Each one makes history matter more, not less.