Tony Blair disingenuous over Iraq mess

I could not believe my ears this morning as I listened to Tony Blair's interview on BBC Radio 4's the Today program, with John Humphries.

When asked whether he should apologise for the state of Iraq, or took any responsibility for it he trotted out the line that it was not him, us nor the Americans who were responsible, but the insurgents and extremists.

That is a bit like saying, after all the families valuables have been stolen that it was not the fault of the pratt who left them at the end of the drive for any passer by to steal, but the sole responsibility of the thief. It is of course specious nonsense.

Let us be clear on this, and occupying power has a legal duty and moral responsibility to provide security over the territory it occupies. Blaming people who are against you or who have a vested interest in your failure is childish in the extreme. We knew, or at least ought to have known that there would be those who would try to wreck Iraq. We should have been prepared. We should have secured the borders and ammunition dumps from day one, as well as the infrastructure which was so badly looted. We should have brought in Marshall law from day one, until we had an effective police force to deal with law and order.

There is in fact so much we should have done that we did not do. I wrote about it here.

In fact in an interview with the Telegraph today, here, Sir Jeremy Greenstock echos many of my points. He says:

"In the days following the victory of 9 April [2003] no one, it seems to me, was instructed to put the security of Iraq first. To put law and order on the streets first. There was no police force. There was no constituted army except the victorious invaders.

"And there was no American general that I could … establish who was given the accountable responsibility to make sure that the first duty of any government – and we were the government – was to keep law and order on the streets. There was a vacuum from the beginning in which looters, saboteurs, the criminals, the insurgents moved very quickly."

Yet Tony Blair still seeks to shirk any responsibility. Words fail me. (Well printable ones do at least)

If you want to listen to the ducking and diving of Tony Blair in that interview you can listen again here, or read listeners emails here.

You can read more articles on Iraq here.