Mr Blair replied: "I honestly don't think you could have a Cabinet minister around that table who would say, 'oh my goodness, I didn't know we were saying Saddam had to comply with the UN inspectors or we were going to take military action'.

"I mean, I was saying it. At every Prime Minister's Questions I was being asked it."

Mr Blair added: "Daily there were stories that we were planning and about to launch military action with the US.

"So the one thing nobody could have been in any doubt about was either where I stood on the issue or what the policy of the government was."

Mr Blair said what concerned ministers most had been the prospect of entering an alliance with a right-wing Republican US administration against Iraq.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/confront-islamic-extremism-says-blair-2190548.html

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Twist the bullshit and extract essense of rose... Wriggle the butt, use toilet paper and flush... raise clean underpants and spray sanitized perfume in the bathroom... Ah... the smell of freshness...

El Paso, Texas - Margarita Morales Fernandez couldn't be in court to see the former CIA agent who allegedly killed her father and 72 others aboard a Cuban airplane in one of the world's worst airline attacks before September 11, 2001.

Fernandez and hundreds other victims are carefully watching the trial of former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles in US federal court.

His 11 charges include perjury for lying to US immigration officials, but terror-related offences are not on the docket.

"It will be 34 years since the terrorist attack that killed my father, but I remember it like it was yesterday, "Fernandez told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from Havana, Cuba. "I don't think this trial takes us closer to justice."

Victims of terrorism 

On October 6, 1976 a bomb exploded on Cubana Airlines flight 455, blowing it out of the sky and into the waters off Barbados, killing everyone on board, including Fernandez's father, the captain of Cuba's national fencing team.

Posada, 82, a Cuban-born Venezuelan-citizen, was considered the mastermind— a CIA-trained explosives expert who would stop at nothing in his personal vendetta against Cuban president Fidel Castro. Planned in Venezuela, the attack killed mostly Cuban nationals.

"The terrorist activities of Posada Carriles are part of the [current US court] indictment, but they are not what he is being prosecuted for," said José Pertierra, a Cuban-born Washington lawyer who is representing Venezuela's interests at the trial. "He is only being prosecuted for lying about them [attacks]… to an immigration judge in a naturalisation hearing."

Venezuela jailed Posada for the bombing, but the wily operative escaped from prison disguised as a priest and eventually fled to the US, stopping in other Latin American countries along the way where he continued his anti-Castro activities. Venezuela has repeatedly called for his extradition.

"For many years, the truth has been hidden," Fernandez said. "But I want people to learn that there are a lot of victims of terrorism in Cuba as well as in the US and other countries."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/2011112104142751917.html

Tony Blair today admitted to brushing aside warnings that invading Iraq would be unlawful and made clear his overriding priority, even at the expense of opposition and secrecy at home, was to maintain a close relationship with the US president.

In four hours of testimony to the Chilcot inquiry, ending with expressions of regret for lives lost that provoked jeers from relatives of the dead, Blair disclosed that he privately told George Bush he could "count on us" in helping get rid of Saddam Hussein, an aim, he said, for which his government should be "gung-ho".

A move from Britain to back off after the UN refused to support military action, would have had "disastrous consequences for a tough stance on WMD and its proliferation – and for our strategic relationship with the US, our key ally", Blair said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/21/tony-blair-george-bush-iraq

"disastrous Consequences for a tough stand on WMD?"....More bullshit from the bullshit art dodger... Blair and Bush knew Saddam had zip WMDs and they lied to go to war... End of story. All Blair's explanations are brainless butt-wriggles.

Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East quartet, was attacked by Palestinian officials for being biased in favour of Israeli security needs and seeming "to advocate an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank", the Palestine papers reveal.

The former prime minister, appointed to the job in September 2007, made the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem his base for efforts to boost the West Bank economy and improve Palestinian governance – key strands of the overall western strategy of backing the Palestinian Authority and shunning HamasIsrael. during negotiations with

He encountered little of the hostility he faced in Britain or the Arab world over the war in Iraq but met resistance when his initial plans for development projects were scorned for ignoring the realities of occupation and prioritising Israel's security over Palestinian economic needs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/26/tony-blair-criticised-israeli-bias-envoy

see toon at top.

Sir Gus said Mr Blair preferred to work with "smaller" ad-hoc groups of ministers and advisers and this had implications for how notes of meetings were taken.

"The nature of formality was diminished. If you reduce the formality, you don't have such good records of what happened and when you come to do audits, it is not as complete as any cabinet secretary would want it to be.

"By virtue of that, some of the people that are excluded from decisions can feel, just that, excluded and you don't get the full contribution of everyone to a joined-up decision."

Lord Turnbull, Sir Gus O'Donnell's predecessor, has said the Cabinet "did not know the score" when backing the invasion as it had not seen crucial papers setting out the different options for action against Iraq.

But, in his evidence, Mr Blair has insisted that there was frequent and robust discussion of Iraq in Cabinet and that he would be "astonished" if ministers were unaware of the military preparations than were going on in the summer of 2002.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12306377