I must say I have been enjoying The Blair Years, although I wish David Aaronovitch had presented the series rather than simply acting as the interviewer. David has been criticised for not being harder on Blair, but most people watching would not know he was there. It would have been better if his position as a supporter of the war had been made explicit, but it’s still gripping stuff.
I enjoyed the trail of senior civil servants (David Manning, Jeremy Greenstock, John Sawers and Christopher Meyer) lining up on Sunday evening’s programme to be wise after the event. It’s funny watching the new consensus coagulate: British and American war aims were always at odds, but Blair insisted on pressing on regardless of advice in the hope that he could reconcile the two.
It is now clear that the fandango danced around the UN in early 2003 was entirely for Tony Blair’s benefit. Although it was not mentioned, the Katharine Gun memo about how the US tried to fix the vote in the security council shows just how far the Americans were prepared to go to deliver the resolution Blair felt was necessary to persuade parliament.
Chirac’s role was also interesting. I hadn’t realised he was never convinced the weapons of mass destruction were there. Chriac was wrong about a lot of things, but for once, on this issue he was spot on. Perhaps he got lucky. Also fascinating was Greenstock’s evident shame that he had been complicit in the suggestion that France has pulled the plug on a second resolution.
One person who didn’t appear was Eliza Manningham-Buller, the outgoing Director General of MI5. But she did us the service of appearing on Desert Island Discs, where she not only revealed her liking for the White Stripes and The Rolling Stones, but carefully expressed her doubts about the Iraq adventure. The BBC chose to put out the story of her denials that she had left the job early in the backwash from 7/7. But the real scoop was her angry, on-the-record comments about the spurious link between Iraq and 9/11. What she wouldn’t talk about (and this applies to all the officials questioned above) is how strongly she had made her feelings felt at the time.
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