Airstrip One

Will the Tories oppose the war now it's over?

Michael Howard proved how opportunistic oppositions can (and should) be, when he indicated that the Tory Party may very well join in the hue and cry for an investigation on the really rather silly chemical weapons claims made by Blair (and most "anti"-idiotarian bloggers, lest we forget). Of course the Tories supported the war, although like many others they are claiming that they supported it not for the same reason as Blair but for secret reasons that are barely more credible such as Islamic terrorism supported by secular Saddam. However the luxury of opposition, and God knows you have to have some luxury considering all the chauffeur driven cars that the other side gets, is that the voters rarely remember where you stood. So the Tories could very well make some capital by opposing the war at last - even if it is over.

However we must define very carefully why the war party were just so idiotic in hindsight. It is not that they said that Saddam had chemical weapons, he certainly did at one point - even if that point is more than a decade ago -and there could still be a barrel of anthrax in some quarter of Basra just waiting to be discovered.

The point is that these weapons did not pose a threat to us. Saddam was too scared to use the weapons even when his regime was ending. If he didn't use the weapons to preserve his regime and very possibly his life when would he use them? Obviously not against Western cities to show that he's the big man - even if he did have the means of delivery, which he didn't. The idea that the weapons were not used because the armed forces had collapsed faster than anyone expected obviously does not square up with the idea that the regime could hide the weapons from US army experts for two months. Either he didn't have the weapons or he would never use them against us, in either case he was not as dangerous as Blair misled us (or many of us) to believe.