If Fred Goodwin decided to make a speech giving people financial advice, the howls of derision and laughter would be as loud as a 747. Yet this is exactly the scenario that has played out with Tony Blair.
His latest proclamation that UK troops should return to Iraq is absolute lunacy. Under Augustine's just war theory, cities under siege were given a choice; surrender and accept military occupation or resist and have no mercy shown when they are eventually overrun. Mr Blair applied this to his wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr Blair is wholly responsible for the mess that Iraq today. The words existing and active never appeared in any intelligence assessment of Saddam's WMD capabilities yet they appeared in his Commons statement for war.
It is a sick joke Mr Blair claims he brought freedom and democracy to Iraq. What he brought was death and the destruction of a country.
Those who suffered are the 179 troops who lost their lives, the thousands of troops who lost limbs and suffer from other permanent wounds, the tens of thousands who suffer from post-traumatic stress and from the remorse of killing innocent people, the families and friends of soldiers and the broken marriages and single-parent children from those affected by war stress.
Others have suffered on the home front. Those whose moral conscience propelled them to protest the war were harassed by police and investigated and harassed by the security services.
Under Mr Blair the UK reached the point where any citizen who has a moral conscience was an enemy of the state
Alan Hinnrichs,
2 Gillespie Terrace,
Dundee.
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