I NOTE that Tony Blair's position in relation to taking the UK into war against Iraq is now that Saddam was a "brutal dictator" and that "'he needed to be removed" ("Tony Blair 'offered to discuss' Iraq", The Herald, January 22).

Unfortunately for his reported rationalisation, his reasons for going to war at the time were based on slim and unsubstantiated opinions concerning the state of Saddam's weaponry, not on the need to remove a tyrant. As a result he allowed a dossier, subsequently discredited, to go forward in 2002 stating that Saddam had multiple weapons of mass destruction, which could be ready in 45 minutes.

This is a man whose position in relation to Iraq flip-flopped throughout the time he was Prime Minister. President Clinton, while in the White House, was against any invasion of Iraq. Accordingly, Tony Blair was vociferously in the same camp. George W Bush succeeded Bill Clinton and he was all for taking Saddam out. Tony Blair then had something of a change of mind.

This is the man who told the British people that he needed to get and would get UN cover for an attack on Iraq. When that did not become available, it was no longer apparently necessary.

Mr Blair, a former Labour Prime Minister, is now a multi-millionaire with an impressive property portfolio. One wonders whether or not, at moments of reflection, religious or otherwise, he pauses to think about how his reputation, at least in this country, has been fatally damaged. He took a massive risk by hitching his personal and political standing to the Iraq policies of the George W Bush administration .

Does he ever consider how Harold Wilson, who was Prime Minister of a country in a difficult economic situation and therefore not in prime position to upset the United States, resisted the pressure to send even a modest contribution of British troops to the vale of tears of Vietnam?

Ian W Thomson,

38 Kirkintilloch Road,

Lenzie.