Reply #29: If you don't understand Blair's motivation, I suggest that

[AP]

you and I read 30 Days and then discuss it.

Also, if you read the The Clinton Wars too, you'll see that Clinton thought that Hussein was a very serious threat. Not one justifying an invasion, but that was Clinton's attitude towards sovereinty. So now you got Bush looking at the same serious information, but not leaking the serious stuff, and media which doesn't care about the serious stuff (and you can come up with theories about why they'd do this -- perhaps to make sure the only thing anyone talks about is war and getting rid of Blair, rather than talking about an economy in the crapper). So Bush decides to invade. If he goes it alone, Europe and Britain are screwed economically for 100 years. If Blair goes in, he has a chance of saving Britain, Europe, and probably the Iraqis too (remember, was it, Mosul? -- "the British army played the roll of America's missing conscience").

By the way, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who read the articles which cited the sentences which were allegedly sexed up. Here's a paraphrase: raw report: Iraq can deploy to is units chemical weapons in 45 minutes. Dossier: Iraq can deploy chemical weapons in 45 minutes. BBC shouts "sexing up". Everyone else left scratching head. Mind you, the BBC never challenged the notion that raw intelligence reports were accurate. They didn't have a problem with raw reports, and have no experts disputing that. (Kelly had his opinions, but he admittedly wasn't high enough to know the full intelligence.) The BBC were making an argument of 'sexing up' designed to cast doubt about Blair's character (and nothing else, like bad intelligence) because they knew that would hurt him politically. And Gilligan and the Governors care about politics. They don't care about the facts, because the tories still in intelligence will be on their side if a tory PM takes over.

Look, I have a problem with invading a country on pretence. But I'm not so stupid to blind to the real political machinations here, which are designed to get a nice Tory in power who will totally turn a blind eye to misery and social injustice, just like they did in Yugoslavia.

So what say? We read 30 Days and The Cliton Wars, and we rethink the knee-jerk BS.