Madam, - Tony Blair's studied contribution to the Hutton inquiry - which resumes next Monday - is worthy of a more detailed analysis than it has so far received.
His use of language was revealing, and it is noteworthy that key statements he made were unintentionally paraphrased again and again in the media, so as to distort the truth of what he actually said. He at no time said he would have resigned if the 45-minute claim had been inserted at the behest of No.10 in the knowledge that the claim as wrong. He said that "it would have merited his resignation". That is not saying the same thing.
To use the passive voice, and not to use the personal pronoun "I" was, I feel, deliberate in someone who is a consummate wordsmith. And, by saying, as he did, "if it had been done ...it would have merited, etc." (my italics), is not the same as saying "it wasn't done". In fact, the phrase, he used allows for a reading that might just go as follows: "I misled Parliament and the British people. I did this in the interests of a higher good which was the 'taking out' of a regime of unparalleled evil. Strictly, my resignation was merited, but because I know that what I did was right in the higher order of human action, I shall ultimately be vindicated".
Tony Blair's brand of theological certitude is awesome and frightening, and would not be out of place in the Spain of the Inquisition. It is certainly not out of place in the fundamentalist mindset of a large part of the Republican Party in the US. Blair's bedfellowship with George W Bush is therefore coherent and logical, if one locates it in the domain of religious dogmatism. The justifications for invasion of Iraq adduced by the American and British administrations have been at both mendacious and self-righteous. Tony Blair, alas, with all the passion and obsession of a convert to a cause, has no difficulty in donning the mantle of self-righteousness.
In an interview on March 3rd he said that, even if everyone else believed he was wrong about going to war, he knew that he was right (my italics). The use of the "if" clause, commented on above, and the detached conditionality of the phrase "it would have merited my resignation", instead of the straightforward "I would have resigned, is, I think, more than a semantic quibble. - Yours, etc.,
Dr CIARAN COSGROVE,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.