As the United States honored war veterans on Memorial Day May 28, an investigating committee in the United Kingdom questioned former Prime Minister Tony Blair about suspicions that media mogul Rupert Murdoch corruptly influenced his decision-making.
Blair denied to the Leveson Inquiry any improper conduct during his decade as Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007, which encompassed Blair’s support for the Iraq War favored by both Murdock and U.S. President Bush, shown at left awarding Blair the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a 2004 ceremony at the White House.
Coverage by columnist Michael Collins of the Blair testimony is excerpted below, drawn from his column, Rupert Watch: Tony Blair Lying at the Leveson Inquiry. Collins, at right, began this way about Blair, leader of the traditionally left Labour Party and thus a seemingly unlikely ally for either Murdoch or Bush:
He [Blair] retains that familiar fatuous exuberance for failed policies and continues to deny the deadly lies he told in over a decade as Prime Minister. He was, as always, quite literally unbearable.
President George W. Bush had major problems selling his disastrous invasion plans for Iraq. The public smelled a rat. Strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans opposed a preemptive invasion without confirmation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by UN inspectors. That was during December 2002 and January 2003. Bush needed something special to push his diabolic plan over the top. Read the rest of this entry »
