'Feral' Blair

Tony – the liar – Blair compared the news media to “a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits” and further lamented that he “was not the first prime minister to face extraordinarily brutal treatment”. (The Independent: Simon Kelner: Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq? ; The New York Times: Blair Compares News Media to ‘Feral Beast’ in Angry Parting Shot)

Yo' Blair! Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren't you!? The real problem is that the news media were not 'feral' nor 'brutal' enough early enough to tear a budding war criminal like you – and your buddy Bush – too pieces so the Iraq war could have been avoided. Far from 'feral', the press was too weak and meek to denounce your blatant lies with sufficient ferocity to kick you out of office and into the place where you belong: the dock of an international war crimes tribunal. The lies you invented to start the Iraq war amount to incitement to genocide and mass murder and warrant the death penalty.

As Martin Bright observes (New Statesman: It takes one to know one): “In fact, the real media scandal remains the journalists who were complicit in justifying the spurious intelligence on behalf of the government and presenting it as fact to an unsuspecting public. Collectively, the profession failed in its duty by being too credulous in the weeks leading up to the war. Too many journalists who should have known better became willing collaborators in the government's propaganda machine, rather than holding the government to account.”

When you leave office in two weeks time, Mr Bliar, you will walk out of damned Downing Street No 10 a free man. 650,000 Iraqis are dead as a result of your lies. That will leave a permanent blood stain on the reputation of Britain. One of the reasons is, the British press was not 'feral' enough.