Michael Howard's intended audience, I suspect, is Labour MPs who might form an anti-Blair coalition. he'd rather fight Brown.

I agree completely with your approach to this issue, Melanie. I think Blair will get away with it, and if he doesn't then Gordon Brown is waiting in the wings- which is possibly worse. The Tories should be saying that Blair's leadership has been disingenuous, naive and outrageously short-term, but not false or fundamentally wrong. The BBC assert that Gilligan was '90 percent right'- that's the diametric opposite of the truth. Blair was the one 90 percent right- as all the movement in the ME recently has demonstrated.

Those latter accusations- 'false and wrong'- are precisely the line the BBC are pushing, and they don't even care if they don't get all they appear to want. Their goals are to cover their backs and get footholds on this whole 'neo-con' project. Howard is thus falling straight into their trap, although as he's a cautious fellow I don't think he'll be badly burned, just prevented from making the longer-term political inroads that he must make.

We shouldn't forget- it isn't Blair that the BBC hates, but Bush. Bush should have an ally in Michael Howard, which ought to make the BBC Howard's enemy- and if there ever was an organisation that deserved to have more enemies than it does, it's the BBC.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush did the right thing in Iraq; but they lied to the public, their civil servants, and their armed forces about their reasons, in order to get support from the public and the US Congress.

Most of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi Arabians; and Al Qaeda's reason for hating the US was their anger at the presence of US bases in Saudi Arabia (no, the reason wasn't Palestine, nor "world poverty" as some have claimed). Suddenly the US realised it had a problem: Saudi Arabia had a friendly government but a highly hostile population who, for whatever reason, resented the US presence. US bases in Saudi were there to defend the West's oil supplies against Iraq: so by conquering Iraq the US could not only safely remove its bases; it could liberate Iraq's substantial oil reserves for free trade, and attempt to establish a friendly government in an oil-exporting country with a more secular tradition than Saudi Arabia.

The problem was that Congress wouldn't go along with it. The only cause that would unite Congress (and the US public) was Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). So this became the public reason for the war. Was it right to tell that lie? That's the age-old question of whether the end can justify the means.

David Kelly gave his personal assurance to his contacts in Iraq, that if they complied with UN requests on WMD, their country would not be invaded. When asked by a friend what would happen if Iraq was invaded, he replied "I will probably be found dead in the woods". Did he mean that he would feel he had betrayed his Iraqi contacts, and would be unable to live with himself? He was a man of honour, unlike his political master, Geoff Hoon, who was caught out lying not merely to Parliament (sadly, we're used to that), but to a judicial enquiry into a man's death.

The Hutton Enquiry gave us a glimpse of the inner workings of 10 Downing Street, and in particular the controlling and bullying habits of Alastair Campbell. It does matter how the Prime Minister's office conducts its affairs. It does matter whether Mr Blair lied to us and to the Hutton Enquiry about Dr Kelly's death. On this scale, the exaggeration of a news story by a rival media outfit is trifling indeed.

"if Iraq was invaded, he replied "I will probably be found dead in the woods". Did he mean that he would feel he had betrayed his Iraqi contacts, and would be unable to live with himself?"

Kelly left it a bit late for the Iraqi invasion to be the cause of his suicide. More likely Gilligan's briefing of the two committee MPs made Kelly realise that his widespread leaking & lying to MOD investigators was about to be revealed.

I hope Tory Central Office studies your article, Melanie, and ponders deeply. They would have had to pay dearly for such a complete and perceptive analysis from an outside consultant. They will pay dearly if they do not heed your advice, provided gratis. You obviously read the transcripts of the Hutton enquiry in its entirety, as I did. As for the highly selective, dramatised and emotionalised version in the play (Justifying War) on BBC 4 two nights ago - how dare the BBC, one of the parties under scrutiny, show such a warped presentation to sway soppy public opinion whilst a learned Judge is still deliberating. Do not some sort of tacit sub judice obligations apply here? It was disgraceful manipulation,

Ian Duncan-Smith and the vast majority of Tories supported the invasion of Iraq. It was long overdue and absolutely necessary and will eventually lead to a more stable, not less stable Middle East, as is already indicated by the diplomatic overtures.

The Tories must attack Blair for his ludicrous domestic policies, not the only policy he ever implemented that was not only bang on, but absolutely imperative.

Small c conservatives will not forgive Mr Howard if he tries to take out Blair for the wrong reasons. By persistently giving the West the old numero uno for twelve years, Saddam Hussein demonstrated that the United Nations and Western Governments were weak. Hence the increasing belligerence of tinpot wacky Islamists, who have now achieved martyrdom, and other anti Western powers.

The coalition demonstrated otherwise. Bullies must be confronted, not appeased. There have been few political moments that have afforded me more satisfaction than seeing that tyrant pulled from a dirty hole in the ground, looking like a bagman from the back streets of Waterloo, SE1 (and I danced in a field on VE Day when my brothers came home from WW2). Even when he is eventually put back into a more permanent hole, that will just be a formality after the act.

Get it right Michael Howard. We want Blair out and an alternative government in. But it won't be yours if you diminish the Iraq liberation by cheap opportunism.You know what Melanie writes
makes sense.

BTW Melanie, I take it you are not looking for a flood of new offers from the BBC? Splendid stuff!

KJN--

Congress wouldn't go along with it? You could scarcely be more wrong. The scenario you describe may have been true in Great Britain, but a reading of the war powers resolution makes it blindingly clear that WMD was not the sole issue here. That is true despite what some say now, pandering to their anti-war base in hopes of the nomination.

In fact, an even better insight is provided by reading the various speeches made in the Senate before the vote. My own Senator made it clear that regime change was the goal, that he did not believe there was any immediate threat from WMD, that containment was a failing policy, whose end would renew the WMD threat, and finally, that he wanted UN approval, which could only be hoped for if there was non-compliance, necessitating that the argument there be based on breached resolutions, that is, WMD.

There is a tendency to conflate and make parallel the arguments put forward and/or emphasized there and here. They were not the same.

Thank you for this viewpoint, which I shall look into more carefully.

"BTW Melanie, I take it you are not looking for a flood of new offers from the BBC? Splendid stuff!"

There is no reason why Melanie should not work for the BBC: after all, Andrew Neil presents a political programme on the BBC, despite having been one of the Corporation's fiercest critics.

What I find unsettling, however, is the repeated identification of the BBC as the root of all evil. It seems to be the essential ingredient of all British political conspiracy theories, whether of the Right or of the Left. I rejoice that Saddam Hussein is in jail, and feel some pride that our country played a part in putting him there, but I can understand why others felt uneasy about the unpleasant and (at least in the UK) dishonest political process needed to remove him from power.

And supporting our armed forces means much more than staying "on-message" during a war - it means, for example, making sure that they have adequate equipment to do their job; it means providing support when they return home from the conflict, particularly to those who have been traumatised. We would need to pay more tax to do these things better, or instead cut the public services that everyone uses, so we all have a tendency not to think too long or too hard about these options. It's much easier to criticise someone who wasn't waving the flag as vigorously as oneself.

KJN

In my lifetime most political process has been dishonest in so far as it all seems to be based on expediency. Would that it were not so. Moreover, the BBC was once more objective, reliable and, when appropriate, supportive of our armed forces on a justified mission. They once did not give succour to the enemy, when war was in progress, by railing against the war. That was once regarded by most citizens as treason, a concept now apparently dead. Not waving your own country's flag is fine. But waving someone else's when there's a war on, is not so good. And if you don't accept that is what some sections of the Beeb did doing the Iraq conflict ask the boys up at the sharp end what they thought of the BBC coverage. And what of Gilligan's mendacious handling of Dr Kelly? But then I was born in an age where patriotism was not considered a dirty word by most people, except by the very late Dr Johnson, a smart-ass about most things on the face of the Earth, and a few commy Cambridge graduates who had infiltrated our security services.

Much what you write is valid, but some if it seems to expect too much of politicians. Sometimes you have to hold your nose (as Melanie would say) and accept that the end did justify the means. Then get on with life. Why is the front windscreen bigger than the rear view mirror?

Hi.

I've thought about it, and I would like the Tories to continue to take cheap shots on this one, and go on to lose badly because of it.

I think what our governments have done towards winning the war on terror has been necessary and right. There may have been more that they could have done, but you can always say that. Our leaders have risen to history's critical challenge.

It would suit me to see all the coalition governments re-elected in elections that were basically referendums in the war. Let the courage and good judgment that Bush, Blair, Howard and others have shown have its reward, this once, and let later generations of ambitious politicians see whether valor in a good cause or backbiting were better rewarded by the voters of our generation.

It looks like Bush will win, very deservedly, and Howard will win his next election with the war being an issue, therefore also deservedly.

But the United Kingdom was going to be an anomaly, because the Tories were likely to lose their next national election without having put a foot wrong on the war.

They are getting it wrong now, however, thus making a morality play out of what otherwise be a standard political drubbing by a master vote-getter.

If Tony Blair wears all the punishment for his war (it's his, since the Tories seem no longer fully signed on), and wins the next general election, I'll call that justice and great news, even if not all his other policies are great.