The case for war: here we go again?

In April 2002, Tony Blair told us: “Saddam Hussein’s regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. “He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also.”

On 24 September 2002, he told the house:

“It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes.“

Lest we forget, we have been mired in Iraq for a decade and as well as thousands of dead and injured US & UK troops, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed and injured as a result (IBC report documented civilian dead at between 114,406–125,376 as at 6th September 2013 excluding some 50,000 deaths reported in the Wikileaks documents and the 250,000+ civilian wounded reported by the Human Rights Ministry of the Iraqi government).

As you watch David Cameron make the case for war against Syria on this evening’s news, take a moment to watch Tony Blair’s speech to the house of commons in 2003 and ask yourself: Is Cameron’s proposition any more believable or palatable than Blair’s?

The question is whether to risk the lives of foreign civilians and potentially British troops in a costly adventure where we cannot even be certain which group is truly our enemy:

THIS IS A TIME FOR HONESTY NOT FOR ORATORY, A TIME FOR LEADERSHIP NOT DOGGED LOYALTY AND A TIME TO CONSIDER BRITAIN‘S BEST INTEREST NOT CAMERON’S PRIME MINISTERIAL LEGACY