Saturday 23 January 2010

A question for Tony Blair

There was a question on Any Questions yesterday (or today if you listen to the repeat) which asked for a question that could be posed to Tony Blair when he attends the Chilcot inquiry next week. The answers were apathetic. He will just evade any question that suggests he was wrong to take us to war. He acted on the best information possible, and even if his information was flawed, he genuinely believed it to be true and he genuinely felt that we had to go to war. He will tell us that he did nothing wrong. We have already had a preview of his answers by listening to Alastair Campbell. I got bored listening to Alastair after about ten minutes. I felt we were not going to learn anything from him, so I was not disappointed when we learned nothing.

Somebody has to be responsible for accepting flawed information that was passed on to the House. Somebody has to be responsible for misleading the House. If a deception is so grave that it commits us to an illegal war then someone has to accept responsibility for that. If you ask Tony a question about whether he lied to the House then you will get the answer “Oh no I didn’t”. It sounds like a pantomime, unfortunately it is a deadly serious question.

So my question to Tony is this: who is responsible for passing on the flawed information that led us to war? If I get a subsidiary question it would be how should this failure of responsibility be punished? If he evades this question or gives an ambiguous answer then I would ask the same questions to the man on the Clapham omnibus.

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3 comments:

  1. Don't politicians answer a difficult question with a question of their own?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Chilcott inquiry is another charade and will be another whitewash all payed for by the British taxpayer of course.

    On a local level of public accountability remember this:-

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/3398491.stm

    Did Mr Pearson, the Town clerk ever pay back the illegal pension enhancements the DA discovered in his investigation Michael?

    The evidence clearly shows that our system is currupt and rotten to core.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Sea. Yes they do try to supply their own questions and then give the answers. Lawyers only ask questions when they know the answers. As for your local question Steven, perhaps you could supply the answer as well as the question.

    ReplyDelete