Amid the bombs, Blair remains upbeat on farewell tour in Iraq

Tony Blair's farewell Boogie Bus yesterday alighted in Baghdad and Basra, where the man who had despatched British troops to Iraq dropped in to say goodbye to the men and women he has landed in the shit, who must have found it somewhat ironic that their leader was standing before them - as shells and mortars dropped all around them - and said, "You're doing a great job, I'm outta here!"

As exercises in shamelessness go, this was right up there with the best of them. He looked like a man saluting lemmings as they career off a cliff, only he's sitting in a golf buggy ready to quickly move off in the opposite direction towards safety.

'This is my last chance to thank you for the work you have done,' Blair said. 'Sometimes the impression is completely negative but what you have done here is absolutely remarkable.'

The PM contrasted the situation in Basra with that of Baghdad, plagued by sectarian violence and al-Qaeda. 'When you go out and talk to the majority of people here they tell you they want to live in peace.'

He concluded that the fighting in Iraq had global consequences. 'What you are doing has implications for Iraq and also for the wider world. If we don't sort this region out then there is, in my view, a very troubled and difficult future for the world ahead of us.'

Of course, he's ignoring the fact that - before his ill advised intervention - there was no civil war in Iraq and there were no al Qaeda terrorists, all that came about because Rumsfeld employed far too few troops to complete the job and the occupation forces never had enough men and women to restore basic order to Iraq.

As Blair promised the equivalent of the campaign song that accompanied his initial election ten years ago, "Things can only get better", it was hard to share his optimism as by every measurement known to man things in Iraq are steadily getting worse.

And, as always when Blair talks of Iraq - the war that will define his Premiership - he often abandons reality altogether in favour of hyperbole.

Blair re-emphasised Britain's commitment to the country. 'I've no doubt at all that Britain will remain steadfast in its support for the Iraqi people. The policy I introduced is a policy for the whole of the government. Even when I leave office I'm sure that will continue.'

Now I know that this was really a side swipe at Gordon Brown and a reminder that he was part of the government that got Britain involved in this mess, but it reads as if he's saying that the British people continue to support this war, which is, of course, a dreadful nonsense.

Recent opinion polls simply couldn't be more bleak on this subject:

72 per cent predict that Iraq will descend into civil war if British and American troops withdraw

61 per cent believe Britain's experience in Iraq makes them less likely to support military intervention

72 per cent say that Tony Blair's support for George Bush calls into question his political judgement

62 per cent believe that British troops should be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as possible

72 per cent believe that the war in Iraq is unwinnable

As Blair stood in Iraq yesterday, repeating his message that the public have long stopped listening to, mortars were literally hitting places he had only recently left.

Both in Baghdad and later in Basra, where he met British troops, mortars landed in the locations he visited. He brushed off the attack on the Green Zone, during which one bomb hit the British embassy compound shortly before his arrival, saying: "There are mortar attacks and terrorist attacks happening every day. We don't give in to them."

The Prime Minister appeared tetchy at repeated questions about levels of violence. Iraqi officials had assured him that there were signs of progress on security, he insisted. "There is violence and terrorism in Iraq, but what they are saying is that there is also hope and change."

What a mantra! Where there is violence and terrorism there is also hope of change. It is his campaign song! Things are so appalling that.. one, two, three... "Things can only get better"...

Of course, things in Iraq are actually so bad that General Dannatt has forbidden Prince Harry from joining his regiment when they are despatched there, and last month was the bloodiest for British troops in Iraq since the war was declared over in May 2003, with 12 soldiers killed last month alone.

Not that one would know any of this from Blair's triumphant farewell. For him it's all resolve, resolve, resolve...

Which is easy to say as you prepare to swan off to the States for a lucrative visit to the lecture circuit leaving young men and women to die in a war that happened on your watch, based on things that you said that turned out to be untrue.

I am not joking when I say I found this visit both shameful and embarrassing.

Supporters of the war like to cast themselves as Churchill and the wars detractors as Chamberlain. However, it is interesting to note that - as Blair swans off leaving chaos in his wake- he becomes one of the very few British Prime Ministers to start a war which they did not see through to completion before leaving office.

The most famous of those is, of course, Chamberlain. Despite all his rhetoric, that is the historical company that Blair now keeps.

As he prepares to depart we should, as Robert Fisk so wisely recommends, see him off with Cromwell's statement to the Rump Parliament in 1653, repeated - with such wisdom - by Leo Amery to Chamberlain in 1940: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

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