"Mizter T" wrote in message

On Jun 4, 10:21 am, Tony Polson wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

And then there was the illegal war(s). Blair cynically looked at them
from a party political point of view, and realised that he would be
toast with some of New Labour's new Middle England voters if he
opposed the war(s). So he wrong-footed the Conservatives and joined
up with some of the most repugnant war criminals that have enjoyed
power since 1945 - Cheney, Rumsfeld and their idiot stooge, Bush,
all for domestic party political gain.

I disagree - I really don't think Blair approached Iraq from a party
political standpoint at all. I think he essentially agreed to back
Bush, and then justified it to himself and others by focussing on the
evilness of Saddam Hussein's regime coupled with the somewhat forlorn
hope that the new Iraq could be a beacon to the rest of the Middle
East (and to an extent the wider world), plus a few other ideas (e.g.
felling a 'rogue state' would demonstrate to others that they should
be good).

I don't think either Afghanistan or Kosovo/Serbia were approached from
a party political angle either (and I would also demur with you in
labelling them as "illegal wars" but that's moving onto new
territory).

Blair had got the UK into several other small wars, from which the
outcomes were largely successful, so he probably had become
over-confident. He also probably remembered what the Falklands and first
Gulf wars did for the re-election prospects of the PMs of the day.