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Recent Articles PM was so right on war The Sun Wednesday April 13, 2005 IF this election was about Iraq alone, there would be no contest -Tony Blair should win, and win handsomely. Blair has shown extraordinary courage and commitment over Iraq. But he faces constant abuse from at least half of his own party, many newspapers, the BBC, and a large part of the population. It is fair enough to say you should not trust Blair because of failures over schools, the NHS, tax, spending, or immigration. But on Iraq he has been utterly reliable, extraordinarily brave-and absolutely right. Thanks to Bush, Blair and their allies, Saddam Hussein, the tyrant who made Iraq a concentration camp above ground and a mass grave below, is a tyrant no more. Saddam killed more Muslims than anyone else in the world. He spent decades trying to get his hands on weapons of mass destruction. He used them in the 1980s. He spent years blowing raspberries at the United Nations which tried to disarm him. Now he is in jail and Iraq is painfully but firmly on the way to democracy. In January, despite terrorist attempts to stop them, eight million Iraqis voted in the most democratic elections ever in the Arab world. Now, two years after the overthrow of Saddam, Iraq has a government which for the first time represents its many peoples. Thanks to Bush, Blair and the rest of the anti-Saddam coalition. Iraq faces huge problems still. The terrorists are desperate to stop democracy. But history is against them. Bush led the way. But after 9/11 it was easy for him to get America behind him. Blair had much less support at home. Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's biographer, says Bush and Blair are like Roosevelt and Churchill. They overthrew Nazism, while Bush and Blair ended the most fascist government in the Middle East. For the first time in our lives the Middle East has a chance of progress and peace. Thanks to Bush, Blair and their allies. |
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