Tony Blair at Chilcot: pants on fire 2

Video: a telling moment when Blair admits ‘inconsistency’

This time it’s personal.

Watching live feed of Tony Blair at Chilcot. Anyone else noticed how, when he’s on the spot he glottal stops for England (presumably seeking orfenticity) but adopts posh when he’s seeking high status? (One Tweeter noted ‘gaing’ instead of ‘going’, f’rinstance). Tweeters inside the inquiry have observed the shaking hand as he reaches for his notes. The slipperiness is on show for all to see.

Blair dismisses his own contradictions with sophistry. Hence, Sir Rodders Lyne’s question quoting Blair’s ‘unreasonable veto’ comment is brushed off as not counting because he was only making ‘a political point’. So the appearance that they were going to bulldoze through any inconvenient UN vetos regardless is only gloss. So says Tone.

EDIT: Channel 4 News video of Blair’s ‘political point’ and his admission of ‘inconsistency’ here.

“I was making basically a political point – however I accept entirely that there was an inconsistency between what he [Peter Goldsmith] was saying and what I was saying…”

His constant reference to 9/11 remains unchallenged. Yet the events of September 11th are and always were an irrelevance.

Did you know that our attorney general is supposed to take instructions from the US to determine the legality of UK policy? No? Neither did I. Neither did the UK electorate. Blair regarded Goldsmith’s advice as ‘provisional’ (Guardian).

Blair admits that Saddam might have obeyed the resolution — it looks like there was a race against time and they had to pre-empt Saddam’s brinkmanship by not waiting for the second resolution as SH might well have complied and thereby taken the boys’ toys away.

The Guardian blog points out:

Freedman says this is not necessarily the case. In March, Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, said that Iraq was allowing people to be interviewed. There was “progressively more cooperation”, Freedman says.

Meanwhile, Sky and BBC News allow Andy Coulson’s resignation to knock Blair off the front page.

I’ll be updating this throughout. It beats chucking something heavy at the telly.

UPDATE 12.18: One pic of the (tiny) demo shows a banner reading, “Saddam was ready to go into exile”. Of course, this would have meant no bangy war-games for the lads.

UPDATE 12.22: Channel 4 News #iraqinquiryblog tweets:

Blair: Iraq started to give out a little bit more in the last few weeks but it was nothing like full, immediate & unconditional cooperation.

UPDATE 12.30: Chilcot takes a break. Steve M Facebooks me: Tony has been getting in some practice.

UPDATE 12.45: IraqInquiryBlog Iraq:
Prashar: Why didn’t enough post-conflict planning take place? Blair: Planning DID take place. Should we have focused on different things?

Shocking. Prashar quotes Blair saying that was the responsibility of the Americans. Blair just denied he was going to leave it to the Americans. Words mean whatever he wants them to mean. Psychoboy!

UPDATE 13.00: IraqInquiryBlog:

Blair: Gordon & I honoured our commitment with resources required. Money really wasn’t the problem. If people had problems I wanted to know

Indeed, money was hardly a problem when Blair’s favourite JP Morgan (Blair ‘earned’ millions in fees from them) won pole position co-ordinating the pillage of Iraq.

UPDATE: Craig Murray writes:

The Chilcot Inquiry was summed up for me ten minutes ago, when Tony Blair quoted an extraordinary passage – I believe from George Bush, but didn’t catch his attribution. The quote said that WMD were not things that had a physical existence, but rather existed in the minds of scientists who could create them, other than nuclear weapons, at very short notice. This absurd expedition into metaphysical justification was greeted by Sir Roderic Lyne’s much vaunted forensic brain. MORE

HARPY MARX made the protest at Chilcot today and posts pix here.

THE CASE AGAINST BLAIR: 15 charges that have yet to be answered in The Independent.

Tony Blair dug his own hole in the Chilcot inquiry — Guardian