Word: blaire
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Warmth, shelter and free entertainment: it's a compelling offer for Londoners facing a chilly age of austerity. But the capacity crowd that queued before dawn to attend Britain's seven-week-old Iraq inquiry as it prepared to welcome its first headline act, former Labour premier Tony Blair's communications supremo Alastair Campbell, sought more than respite from the cold. "I'm here because I hold this man partly responsible for that terrible, terrible war," explained a retired therapist, shivering in her tweed coat...
...inquiry is charged with identifying the lessons from the tangled processes that led to war and the serial failures to plan adequately for its aftermath. Campbell, Blair's most influential adviser from before the Labour landslide victory in 1997 until Campbell's September 2003 resignation, was at the heart of those processes and witness, if not co-author, of those failures. But spectators scanning his craggy face and acerbic testimony for signs of contrition will have been sorely disappointed. What they got was an unyielding defense of Britain's role in the Iraq conflict and a tantalizing hint of bigger...
...Blair's star turn is expected to be so heavily subscribed that the inquiry has launched a public ballot for seats. A key question will be at what point the British government gave pledges to Washington about taking part in military action. The inquiry panel's questions to Campbell revealed for the first time the existence of private letters in 2002 from Blair to U.S. President George W. Bush. The "tenor" of these letters, said Campbell, was "We are going to be with you making sure that Saddam Hussein faces up to his obligations and that Iraq is disarmed...
That assurance was given at a time when Blair was publicly pushing the U.N. to force Saddam into compliance. Campbell denied any lack of sincerity in the efforts to secure a solution through the U.N. The former spin doctor has already given evidence to a number of inquiries with narrower investigative remits and has published a thick volume of his diaries. His central narrative remains consistent: Blair believed there was a growing threat from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; he worked hard for a peaceful solution and to steer an overeager Washington away from precipitate action against Iraq. Campbell...
...dubious legal reasoning. The commission set up by the Dutch government to probe the run-up to the war found that Balkenende's then caretaker administration blithely accepted foreign assurances about Iraq's WMDs, even though Dutch intelligence agencies were "more reserved" in their assessments. (See pictures of Tony Blair's decade in power...