10:00 am GMT Lyne is trying to soften his softballs. He wants to
know whom Blair met with and consulted. Blair names Jack Straw. Blair
says the options were:
1. sanctions that worked
2. the UN inspectors doing their job
3. removing Saddam
Blair refers to "WMD".
But how were the sanctions not working?
How did the UN inspectors fail?
Since when is removing a nation's leader a legal "option"?
Maybe someone other than this "Sir" should have been allowed to do this questioning. Here's how Wikipedia describes him:
"He is an advisor to JPMorgan Chase, who have been chosen to operate the Trade Bank of Iraq, which will give banks access to the financial system of Iraq. He was a special adviser to BP, which currently has major interests in Iraq."
10:05 Lyne points out that by April 2002 Blair was inclined to "regime change". Blair says the key issue was "WMD". But no "WMDs" could legalize an aggressive war. It's tempting to be frustrated with Lyne for not pointing out that the WMD claims were lies, but the deeper lie here is the concerted pretense that it matters. An illegal war of aggression is simply illegal regardless.
10:10 Blair is insisting on quoting from his 2002 speeches to show that his concern was in fact his and Bush-Cheney's pretenses about "WMD". Nobody even objects to this crazy conflation of various types of weapons, used to suggest a nuclear threat without actually claiming it. Nobody points out that we know they knew no such threat existed. Nobody brings up the Downing Street Minutes or the White House memo or any of the dozens of other smoking guns on this. Presumably they are all "classified".
10:12 Lyne points to Blair's recent interview (which may turn out to have done a better job than this Inquiry) in which he said he would have favored regime change even were there no WMDs (as of course he knew there were not -DS). Blair lies that what he meant in the interview was purely that you cannot talk about the threat now in the same way, given what we now know. Lyne does not point out that Blair knew it then.
10:15 Blair calls SH "a monster" and nobody asks him to define that in terms that do not include himself. He goes on to recommend doing the same thing to Iran that he did to Iraq, thereby establishing more firmly his own monsterhood.
10:18 Now Chilcot announces that only two documents were "declassified" yesterday, including the one Blair brought up, so those two will now (or sometime soon) go on the Inquiry website.
Questioning now will be done by Lady Usha Prashar who wants to know exactly why Blair wanted regime change, (never mind its illegality).
10:24 More softballs. More details about who was at which meeting. Then she asks about Blair's understanding that regime change could not be done without UN approval. Blair seems to acknowledge that. (So why is he not immediately handcuffed? Why does this thing drag on?)
10:27 She asks what Blair and Bush discussed privately at Crawford. Possibly the softball of all softballs. Why would Blair reveal anything? He doesn't.
The Telegraph's liveblog is pretty useless, but points to better information:
"10.22 It seems that everyone is talking about the #iraqinquiry on
Twitter... everyone accept Alastair Campbell, whose @campbellclaret
account has been silent for 17 hours."
10:34 Blair is now taking credit for having pushed Clinton to bomb Yugoslavia. He's straying off into his OTHER war crimes, given the absence in this Inquiry of any serious confrontation of his Iraq war crimes.
10:39 Lyne questioning again. Blair says that the "UN route" could have succeeded or failed, and either way they (he and Bush) would have to go ahead with the regime change. "Success" here means sanctioning the pre-determined war. (Again, why not handcuff him now and get the reward?)
The Guardian has a better liveblog than the Telegraph's here.
10:49 a.m. GMT TAKING A 15-MIN BREAK having thus far accomplished next to nothing.
Here are what the Guardian considers the key points thus far:
