In his own words

In his party conference speech yesterday, our glorious leader was candid about his reasons for going to war:

"I know there are people, good people, who disagreed with the decision to remove Saddam by force."

Surely the decision to remove WMDs?

Comments

[Nosemonkey]

Hmmm...

Tony Blair, 13th January 2003: "even now Saddam should take the peaceful route and disarm. If he does not, however, he will be disarmed by force."

When did "disarmed" come to mean the same as "deposed"?

Patricia Hewitt, 6th March 2003: "Even now, Saddam can put a stop to the possibility of war by co-operating fully with resolution 1441"

Was she off-message?

[Backword Dave]

These are lies. Fake news stories planted in the archives by terrorists. Blair must have said "deposed."

[bedblogger]

Is anyone able to find the footage of Blair's Statement to Parliament, 12.30pm, 25/2/03? It was within this Statement he stated "Even now, today, we are offering Saddam the prospect of voluntary disarmament through the UN. I detest his regime . . . but even now, he could save it by complying with the UN's demand"". In fact is any footage of him saying Saddam can stay in power available anywhere?

No 10 has recategorised this most important Statement to the MPs on why war was being, ahem, considered as a last course of action, the day before the essential-to-win Commons vote.

All Blair's Statements appear to be available to download from No 10's own website as they are an important part of democracy and transparency ('scuse me while I fall out of bed laughing), so Downing Street decided to re-name it a speech. As Blair makes these at the opening of an envelope these are frequently only committed to history as transcripts, not as footage. Cunning, eh?

I've looked everywhere my tiny brain can think of and no joy. Several media networks said to my face they do not have "clean feed" of the entire historic 30 min statement, only the edited highlights shown on news programmes that day. No 10 is only making the transcript available, as they clearly do not need the footage available to show the masses in this revisionist world.

Any help is gratefully apreciated to get to the bottom of this before I commit another ranty post on the evils of Blairite spindoctors rewriting history to the blogosphere. Contact me at www.blairwatch.co.uk.