Tony Blair's messianic justifications for the Iraq war

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely called "George W. Bush's poodle" over the Iraq war. After watching Blair testify before the Iraq war commission of inquiry in Britain, it can now be said: Blair was not Bush's poodle. He is a hardcore neocon on Iraq.

Watching Blair repeatedly claim he made no mistakes on Iraq was sad, strange, even ridiculous to behold. His messianic zeal for the Iraq war, messianic even in retrospect, was difficult to watch. Set aside that more than 4,000 Americans and Brits died for a war that should not have been fought, which contributed to Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora, and which destroyed our hard-won victory in Afghanistan and will now take a decade of blood and treasure to regain, if at all.

Blair's zeal, his certainty of his own correctness, his refusal to take any responsibility for any mistakes, is a hallmark of the neocon way of thinking and the neocon psychology. It is also, unfortunately, a trend for politicians in our times. George W. Bush once said he could not remember any major mistakes. At times Barack Obama appears reluctant to publicly acknowledge mistakes.

The Iraq war was one of the great blunders in modern military history. We will spend many years trying to fix Afghanistan, after the war we had won was given away by the neocons whose messianic zeal to pursue the Iraq war did great damage to the U.S., Britain and NATO and many Iraqis.

With Blair, while the blunder of the decision to invade Iraq is clear to so many, he persists in claiming his own perfection with the same messianic zeal that led to this unwise war from the beginning.

Whether Blair was Bush's poodle, or just another neocon, my answer to his self- justifications on Iraq is: Shame, shame.