The media - both the old part and the new 'n' improved online part - are as excited as a puppy at feeding time about Tiny Blur's appearance at the Chilcot enquiry. Oooh! Oooh!

Excitable commentators would have us believe that Tone will go in bright-eyed and enthusiastic, but be led out in handcuffs, a broken man.

We all know that there wasn't a legal case for the war. That there was no thought given to whether this was the right thing to do, or to what would happen if it was done.

We also know that this was really America's - well, Dubya's - idea, and we all know that Tony only joined in because his tongue was jammed so far up Bush's arse that he had no choice but to follow him wherever he went.

We also know that the press were more than happy to go along with the whole fucking charade. To faithfully reprint - on the front page, in huge letters - every single lie and distortion that Blair and Campbell cooked up.

We all know - even without this ridiculously expensive show trial - that we were misled, lied to and ignored, while politicians abused their power to do just whatever the fuck they wanted to.

So it would be great if Tony - and all the others - acknowledged that. Made some form of apology. Suggested some ways in which redress could be made.

But - much as we might fancy that idea - that's not gonna happen, is it?

No. Tony will squirm uncomfortably for a few hours. His every word, gesture and nervous blink will be relayed in real time to the waiting world. Then, at the end of it, he'll saunter out, past the cameras, onto an aeroplane, and resume his obscenely lucrative world tour.

This time next week, he'll be evangelising to some Christians, or some Capitalists, or a combination of the two, as if nothing had happened.

It would be lovely to see Blair whip out an onion, dab at his eyes, tearfully confess to having done wrong, and announce that he's prepared to take his punishment like a man, and that he'll do whatever it takes to make thing right.

But don't get your hopes up.

.

..over and over and over again, with a bit of luck.

Many would love to see the rictus-grinning Blair bought to justice for his part in the illegal war in Iraq.

None more so than the good citizens who have set up a website dedicated to the arrest of Anthony Blair. And they're prepared to offer a reward for his arrest. They freely admit:

"The intention is to encourage repeated attempts to arrest the former prime minister. We have four purposes:

- To remind people that justice has not yet been done.
- To show Mr Blair that, despite his requests for people to “move on” from Iraq, the mass murder he committed will not be forgotten.
- To put pressure on the authorities of the United Kingdom and the countries he travels through to prosecute him for a crime against peace, or to deliver him for prosecution to the International Criminal Court.
- To discourage other people from repeating his crime."

And to encourage a large number of arrests, wherever the Bliar goes, the site offers..

"..a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, for crimes against peace. Anyone attempting an arrest which meets the rules laid down here will be entitled to one quarter of the money collected at the time of his or her application"

Obviously, they don't want - or they must pretend not to want - Blair injured or endangered by any arrest attempt, but the site carefully describes how to make a peaceful citizens' arrest:

"..calmly to approach Mr Blair and in a gentle fashion to lay a hand on his shoulder or elbow, in such a way that he cannot have any cause to complain of being hurt or trapped by you, and announce loudly, “Mr Blair, this is a citizens’ arrest for a crime against peace, namely your decision to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq. I am inviting you to accompany me to a police station to answer the charge.”

No longer will T. Blair be able to claim he can feel the 'hand of destiny' on his shoulder - it'll be the hand of the public. Wherever he goes, whatever he does.

If you don't think you can get your hands on the slippery bastard personally, why not chip in and top the pot up?

If you do think you can get yourself to somewhere the lying, gurning bastard might be, then why not give it a go? The pot is currently just over six grand.

The satisfaction of a job well done, the discomfiture of a loathsome shit, and some cash in hand?

What are you waiting for?


(tip of the hat to Old Holborn)

Sir Christopher Meyer was Britain's Ambassador to Washington back in the days when the evil Blair - rather than the gormless Brown - held the levers of power.

Sir C. has been wheeled into the latest Iraq enquiry, and boy has he given laughing boy Blair a hard time.

Pulling no punches, he criticised Blair's failure to "defend Britain's national interest" and his simultaneous failure to insist on much tougher conditions for his backing for President Bush. Attaboy!

Warming to his task, Sir Chris shared his view that crazed warmonger and Bush-poodle Blair had secretly - secretly - agreed to go to war at a meeting at the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in early 2002, saying:

“There was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there. To this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch,”

He even threw in a little soundbite guaranteed to enrage lefties everywhere, along the lines of 'Maggie would've done it better,Tony'. Mmmmmphh! Now that's gotta hurt.

"I think she would have insisted on a clear, coherent diplomatic strategy, and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we remove Saddam.”

Oh Ambassador, with these juicy observations, you're spoiling us.

_

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Tony Blair is a slippery, self-serving, lying bastard, who doesn’t deserve a single second of the acclaim he gets in certain places, or a single fucking penny of the millions he and his slot-gobbed missus seemed to have amassed.

And now we learn, to our appalled fascination, that this git is about to walk, unelected and unopposed, into the role of the President of the EU.  They'll probably put his grinning fucking face on the Euro notes - the Euro notes that we'll all be forced to have in our wallets soon.

How the fuck did this come to pass? And how can we stop it?

The answer to the second question is probably "Tough Shit. We can't".

Just as soon as those Czechs are bullied and bribed into signing the Lisbon Treaty, laughing boy will put on the Crown. Even CallMeDave can't do anything - Brown has already bravely crept in through the back door of the EU building at midnight, and courageously signed the Treaty when no-one was looking.

So that's just fucking nice, isn't it? All stand! Here comes president B-Liar!

But there is one crumb of hope, one faint ray of light, as George 'what a nutter' Monobiot, writing on his blog, points out. There is one good thing that could come out of this.

There's no doubt that, for what he said and did about Iraq when he was Prime Minister, Anthony bloody Blair is a good old-fashioned war criminal. Jack 'knows about the law' Straw clearly said, on record, to Blair:

"..the conditions required to launch a legal war:
i) There must be an armed attack upon a State or such an attack must be imminent;
ii) The use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable;
iii) The acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack."

And added ..

"..the development or possession of weapons of mass destruction does not in itself amount to an armed attack; what would be needed would be clear evidence of an imminent attack."

So, yeah, bang to rights, Blair-baby: guilty of the waging an unprovoked war.

Luckily for Tony, in 2006, Law Lords decided that the international crime of aggression is not incorporated into UK domestic law. That means that while he and his ghastly spouse remain in the UK, there's no way of prosecuting Teflon Tony.

But, this crime can be prosecuted in several other countries: Estonia, Latvia, some of the states of the former USSR, possibly (but only possibly) even Germany. Best stay away, Tony, unless you want your collar felt.

Of course, at the moment, Blair is a private citizen. He can go where the fuck he wants - and stay away from where the fuck he wants - and not tell anybody what he's up to.

But, once he becomes El Presidente, that'll stop: he'll have a 'proper' public diary, and we'll all know where he's roaming in his new Kingdom, and when he leaves it on 'official' business.

He'll be suddenly vulnerable. Vulnerable to a maverick judge putting out an arrest warrant. Vulnerable to a citizens' arrest from one of his millions of motivated enemies. We might even see the bastard in the dock one day.

So, yeah, Tony, be President. Please. Get out there. Put yourself about. Go on. Travel the world, grinning and waving.

Just watch your back, eh?


_