Catching Up

Ten years ago, the Reverend Blair arose in the House of Claimants and made a speech all about how nasty and evil and awful Saddam Hussein was, and particularly about Saddam Hussein's nasty and evil and awful programme for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. These weapons, proclaimed his reverence, were chemical and biological and lots of other nasty and awful things which made them far more evil and far less sexy than Trident or depleted uranium or cluster bombs; and, said his reverence, somebody ought to do something about it. What is more, that somebody was none other than himself and his chum George, and wouldn't history be proud?

The press went into orgasm. The Reverend Blair's sermon was sincere and statesmanlike and Churchillian and Thatcherite and sincere and brave and profound and noble and sincere and wonderful and sincere and, as it later turned out, not entirely reality-based. Quite a few of us realised this at the time. Ten years ago, I knew that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations inspectors knew it; the non-decent Left knew it; the millions who had protested on the preceding 15 February knew it; the chimpanzee-trainers in the White House knew it; the French knew it; the CIA and MI6 knew it; and now at last, joy of joys, the BBC and the British Free Press know it too. Time has elapsed, lines have been drawn, and lessons have doubtless been learned. The Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair was asked if he would care to comment on the fictitiousness of his pretext for helping to destroy a country and kill a few hundred thousand of its people; but apparently he was too busy counting his morals.