“I ask him the childlike question: does he want to save the world?”

Blair replied, well, more or less, aw shucks, yes.

The murderous assault on Gaza, which was under way during the interview, was mentioned in passing. “That is war, I’m afraid,” said Blair, “and war is horrible.”

No counter came that Gaza was not a war, but a massacre by any measure. As for the Palestinians, noted Dougary, it was Blair’s task “to prepare them for statehood”.

The Palestinians will be surprised to hear that.

But enough gravitas; her man “has the glow of the newly-in-love: in love with the world and, for the most part, the feeling is reciprocated”. The evidence she offered for this absurdity was that “women from both sides of politics have confessed to me to having the hots for him”.

These are extraordinary times. Blair, a perpetrator of the epic crime of the 21st century, shares a “prayer breakfast” with President Obama, the yes-we-can man now launching more war.

“We pray,” said Blair, “that in acting we do God’s work and follow God’s will.”

To decent people, such pronouncements about Blair’s “faith” represent a contortion of morality and intellect that is a profanation of the basic teachings of Christianity.

Those who aided and abetted his great crime and now wish the rest of us to forget their part – or who, like Alastair Campbell, offer their bloody notoriety for the vicarious pleasure of some – might read the first indictment proposed by the Blair War Crimes Foundation: “Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, four million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.”

These are indeed extraordinary times.

http://www.countercurrents.org/pilger020509.htm

and, from our own little “rattus” …..

Bernard Keane writes:

John Howard has told a right-wing US thinktank that Australia joined the attack on Iraq because the US was its security guarantor, and that Aboriginal people will only ever be “fulfilled” if they become part of mainstream Australia.

Howard has given a series of interviews to the online program Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by former Republican speechwriter Peter Robinson for the conservative Hoover Institute in association with The National Review, one of the homes of US neo-conservatism. The interviews are being released this week under the title The Aussie Way with John Howard.

In the first interview on the Iraq War, Howard makes it clear that the primary reason his Government agreed to participate in the attack on Iraq was because of the need to keep retain a strong relationship with the United States.

Asked why participation in the attack was in Australia’s national interest, Howard immediately replied: "It is always in Australia’s national interest to work closely with the United States because ultimately the United States is our security guarantor," before going on to say the attack on Saddam Hussein removed a "potential facilitator of future terrorist activity."

The Howard Government ignored evidence that National Party-connected wheat monopoly AWB was paying bribes to Saddam’s regime, providing nearly $300m to potentially fund Iraqi military and terrorist activity. Howard did not mention the actual pretext for the attack, Iraq’s purported possession of weapons of mass destruction, or the claim of then-Defence Minister Brendan Nelson that securing oil supplies was also a reason for Australia participating in an illegal attack that has so far led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the undermining of NATO’s attempts to stabilise Afghanistan.

Howard also brushed off criticism of his claims that al-Qaeda would support Barack Obama, saying "we had a stoush, but that’s all right" and that Obama had changed his approach to withdrawal from Iraq since his campaign.

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=NzE3YjFmNjBlMzRmZDlhMDczNThmYzU1ZTk3NjYwY2E=,&source=cmailer