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Originally Posted by Genteel Death
I do think that Tony Blair knew very well what the intentions of invading Iraq were and still are, he just had to present it, like any other head of state with a ''leftist'' goverment, with the rethorical, liberal debris which imposed itself on mass protests regardless of their provenience.
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I suspect that Blair's decision to side with the US will be something that'll puzzle historians for decades to come. Here was a young 'progressive', 'reformist' PM with clear European sympathies suddenly standing alongside what he must've recognised as a backward US regime. The obvious answer is that Blair simply had to side with the US, regardless of who was in charge: that the much talked about 'special relationship' was one that no British PM could avoid. And yet we know that Bush actually put far less pressure on Blair to join him than was at first thought. I certainly think it would've been diplomatically
difficult for Britain to join ranks with the UN but not I suspect terminal in terms of our ties with the US.
I agree with you that Blair was forced to sell the war to a sceptical people by using scare tactics about WMDs but what his real motivations were (both politically and personally) for actually supporting the war, I still can't quite fathom - at least in terms of his own political ambitions/vision