Not Exactly the Spanish Inquisition

The ascended incarnation of the Vicar of Downing Street has pre-empted Chilcot's comfy chair by submitting to the soft cushions of a BBC chat show. Asked whether he would have joined in Operation Iraqi Liberation even had he been aware that the dossiers forged by his minions were inaccurate, his reverence said that he "would still have thought it right to remove" Saddam Hussein; and of course there are very few legal or ethical considerations which can trump Tony's thoughts about what is right.

Britain's leading liberal newspaper unfortunately does not record whether Tony was asked about his statement to the House of Commons on 25 February 2003, wherein he said that "even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntarily disarming through the United Nations. I detest his regime but even now he could save it by complying with the United Nations' demands." Apparently the reason Tony lied about Saddam Hussein's prospects for self-preservation was that Saddam Hussein was a "threat to the region" because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people. The fact that Saddam Hussein did this dastardly deed as a friend and business partner of, among others, the government of Tony's spiritual godmother and sometime house guest Margaret Thatcher, was also, it appears, charitably passed over. "This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region," his reverence continued. "Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way", the way it has presumably changed since the invasion and Tony's subsequent kaleidoscope-fluxing, massacre-preventing, ceasefire-enforcing stint as peace envoy.

Tony also spoke of his religious beliefs. At the time of the invasion, as a Roman Catholic believer masquerading as a member of the Anglican communion, he was of course lying about those too; but again the corporation responsible for inflicting Thought for the Day on a bored population seems to have balked at calling him to account. In any case, his reverence denied that he was motivated by a wish to smite the infidels simply for the holy satisfaction of doing so. Instead, his religious faith "gives you strength if you come to a decision, to hold to that decision". It must be awfully jolly, when you have helped to kill a few tens of thousands and caused untold misery to hundreds of thousands more, to have a still, small voice that whispers in the quiet dark, and always tells you that you were right.