Tony Blair faces the music
So today Tony Blair must face the Chilcot inquiry about his involvement in taking Britain to war with Iraq. It seems that Tony Blair has faced most of the questions he’s going to be asked before so I’m not sure that it’s going to as explosive as the media seem to be building it up to.
There was talk that his statement the other day on TV that he’d still have gone to war even if he’d know that there were no (I’m not sure I can bring myself to use the abbreviation…) Weapons of Mass Destruction was a bit of a mistake and that he’s not as sharp as he used to be. I’m sure that he’ll just reiterate what he’s said before - I can’t see that there is going to be any real fallout from this as it all happened over five years ago.
It seems that the more important day will be when Gordon Brown steps up and has to answer questions about his involvement - it’s going to be important for no other reason (to most people) than the fact that there is an election around the corner. With the Tories already out in front it could be bad for Labour.
Good Hunting
His state of the union address seemed to attack the republicans more than anything else, it sounded like the same type of things labour are still saying now whenever they can bash things the Tories did in the 90s. Preparing people for failure… 
I’ve been relatively impressed with the Chilcot inquiry so far, since it’s good to see the major players answering some of the big questions. I agree that it won’t change anything though, not least because the coming election will be about the economy rather than about foreign policy. You can see the same thing in Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech: much more inwardly-focused than a year ago (http://bit.ly/bfGUg9)
The question that doesn’t seem to be being asked is why, given that we had decided to go to war, the war itself was executed so poorly. Presumably Blair would claim that the Americans would pursue their (broken) strategy whatever we did, but I don’t think that’s sufficient excuse.