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Saturday 30 January 2010 - 07:55
Blair at Chilcot: a Well-rehearsed Performance
Story Code : 19504
By Michael Billington
What did we expect? That Tony Blair would break down in front of the Chilcot inquiry admitting he had taken Britain to war on the basis of flimsy intelligence? That he would beg God's forgiveness for the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis? That he would guiltily confess that at the famous meeting at Crawford, Texas, he had given George Bush unequivocal support for military action?
None of these things happened, of course. What we got was an event short on drama but long on the now-familiar Blair apologia: a kind of "je ne regrette rien" in which he argued that, whatever the messy aftermath, he was right to take us to war to remove Saddam Hussein.
Just occasionally the panel broke through Blair's impenetrable mask of self-belief. He looked a touch rattled when the notorious Fern Britton interview was mentioned and he seemed slippery and evasive when questioned about Lord Goldsmith's change of heart over the legality of military intervention. But except when being interrogated by the terrier-like Sir Roderic Lyne, Blair gave an assured, well-rehearsed performance.
We got all the familiar Blair mannerisms: the thumb and forefinger pressed together to underscore a point, the palms extended outwards to betoken moral certainty in the face of external pressure, even the occasional wry smile as when he claimed: "I was never short of people challenging me."
It was a clever, lawyerly, almost Ciceronian performance in which Blair trotted out all the usual arguments and gave a display of his question-dodging skill. But it would have been much more revealing to see Blair quizzed by the parents, many of them present at the inquiry, of the British soldiers killed in Iraq. Then perhaps he wouldn't have got away quite so easily, as he did here, with murder.
What did we expect? That Tony Blair would break down in front of the Chilcot inquiry admitting he had taken Britain to war on the basis of flimsy intelligence? That he would beg God's forgiveness for the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis? That he would guiltily confess that at the famous meeting at Crawford, Texas, he had given George Bush unequivocal support for military action?
None of these things happened, of course. What we got was an event short on drama but long on the now-familiar Blair apologia: a kind of "je ne regrette rien" in which he argued that, whatever the messy aftermath, he was right to take us to war to remove Saddam Hussein.
Just occasionally the panel broke through Blair's impenetrable mask of self-belief. He looked a touch rattled when the notorious Fern Britton interview was mentioned and he seemed slippery and evasive when questioned about Lord Goldsmith's change of heart over the legality of military intervention. But except when being interrogated by the terrier-like Sir Roderic Lyne, Blair gave an assured, well-rehearsed performance.
We got all the familiar Blair mannerisms: the thumb and forefinger pressed together to underscore a point, the palms extended outwards to betoken moral certainty in the face of external pressure, even the occasional wry smile as when he claimed: "I was never short of people challenging me."
It was a clever, lawyerly, almost Ciceronian performance in which Blair trotted out all the usual arguments and gave a display of his question-dodging skill. But it would have been much more revealing to see Blair quizzed by the parents, many of them present at the inquiry, of the British soldiers killed in Iraq. Then perhaps he wouldn't have got away quite so easily, as he did here, with murder.
Source : Guardian
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