Intervention in Iraq 'pretty much of a disaster' admits Blair, as minister calls it his 'big mistake'

To most of us it's a statement of the bloody obvious, but coming from Tony Blair it's being hailed as his first ever admission that the war in Iraq is disastrous. Of course, his spokesperson is anxious to put some distance between Blair and the apparent slip up into honesty, and is claiming that his words are being misrepresented.

The words in question came during an interview with Sir David Frost for the newly launched Al-Jazeera English channel.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV station, the prime minister agreed with the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost when he suggested that intervention had "so far been pretty much of a disaster".

Mr Blair said: "It has, but you see, what I say to people is, 'why is it difficult in Iraq?' It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al-Qaida with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

These follow hot on news reports that Blair's trade and industry minister, Margaret Hodge, described Iraq as Blair's "big mistake in foreign affairs" during a private dinner organised by the Fabian society, and that she went on to criticise Blair for his "moral imperialism".

According to the Islington Tribune, she said she had accepted Mr Blair's arguments on the threat posed by Iraq because "he was our leader and I trusted him" - before adding: "I hope this isn't being reported."

Sadly for her it was being reported and she has now made herself unavailable for further comment.

The worry for Blair is that Margaret Hodge is one of the faithful. This is not dissimilar to the desertion of the neo-cons from the Bush stance in Iraq that is taking place across the water.

Leaving aside whether or not she should have known a reporter was present, this gives us a rare insight into how even Blair's most loyal ministers present themselves when faced with left wing opposition to the war. They claim they "trusted him", which is exactly the same excuse that Perle and the other neo-cons are using to distance themselves from Bush.

So the claim is either that his incompetence wasn't foreseen, or that if they knew then what they know now, they wouldn't have voted for the war.

It really is rats deserting a sinking ship. And I still consider their blind trust to have been despicable. One of the things that most bothered me before the Iraq war was the sheer paucity of the evidence that Saddam had WMD. Blair produced several dossiers, neither of which was remotely convincing. Hodge and others may claim that they felt the PM had more information than he was making available, but that leaves the territory of trust and bounds into the arena of grand delusion.

Any evidence Blair had would have been made public. This was obvious by the sheer lengths he was going to in order to convince the public of his case. I know Blair once hinted - or if I remember correctly he got Cherie to call MP's and repeat this twaddle - that if we could see the evidence that was crossing his desk the decision of whether or not to invade would be perfunctory.

This struck me as false for two reasons. Firstly, he was getting the information out through Cherie in a way that was not directly linked to himself. And secondly, this implied that the decision to go to war was based on evidence that Blair had seen. The latter never struck me as true.

It always appeared to me that Blair made a decision to go to war and then went hunting for evidence that backed that decision. That's an entirely different process from the one that we were being asked to believe that the government were indulging in.

Much as I disagree with him, there's something rather magnificent about Blair's delusional insistence on sticking to his guns. He's never - other than the odd slip of the tongue like the one that occurred yesterday - going to admit to the sheer scale of his folly. He can't. For were he ever to admit this one would expect him to announce his resignation almost in the same breath.

Maybe I'm an arse, but I prefer Blair's stance to the weasel words of people like Hodge; people who enabled an illegal war to take place and who now seek to distance themselves from that disaster by shifting the blame towards others.

Blair is, at least, owning his actions - he's just refusing to admit that they were wrong.

Hodge, Perle and others are attempting to slink away from the responsibility that history will surely heap upon their shoulders.

They have no excuse. They were shown no evidence that we did not get to see. They voted for war because the leader of "their party" was calling for it and they "trusted him".

The decision on whether or not a nation goes to war should be made for stronger reasons than as to whether or not an individual "trusts" their leader. There's a little thing called evidence.

In this case it was lacking; as was Hodge, Perle and the others moral compass.

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