BRENDAN O’NEILL writes that Tony Blair’s critics are the big spinners:
In this sense, it is fitting that the postwar debate, if you can call it that, is over how many minutes it would take Saddam to launch an attack, over questions of time and timing. Ancram, Short and others’ concerns about the Iraqi venture were always a question of timing and tactics, rather than anything to do with a principled opposition to war.
Yet now they hide behind the doubts about the 45 minutes, claiming that this ‘duped’ them into supporting war. We should be grateful that Blair and co didn’t include the claim that Saddam could launch weapons within 20 minutes in their dossier, which was apparently an option – otherwise the likes of Ancram and Short might have supported Iraq being nuked off the face of the Earth.
Those bloodthirsty militarists! Fortunately, Bush never would have permitted that.