Tony Blair - Bliar ?

[whiffey]

'Bliar' is an epithet commonly applied to TB. Do you realise how serious the accusation of 'lying' actually is ? If you said such a thing to most people you'd be up on a charge. So, what I want to know, is how and when did Tony Blair tell deliberate lies, words pre-designed with malicious intent to deceive the British people - and I'd like proof please.

Off you go, all you blaring baying mob.

[jno]

http://www.democrats.com/reward6

[whiffey]

Where did you hear it legend ? A bit of proof would help.

[jake-the-peg]

I believe the thrust of the web page jno posted is probably the case but I don't believe that what they say proves the point.

That Bush and Blair said their plan was to avoid war and that it was untrue that they'd made up their minds is not IMHO rebutted by the later statement that they would try to use the UN but that war would follow if that was unsucessful.

It's probably not possible to prove this "beyond reasonable doubt" but there are a lot of indicators stories and other circumstantial evidence that indicate that Bush certainly had made his mind up and that Blair knew this. You could be charitable and say that Blair thought there was still an opportunity to avoid war and was thus not lying but it's hard to believe.

Of course the natural follow on to this question is whether it's reasonable not to expect a head of state to lie. Margaret Thatcher certainly did about the Belgrano as we discovered when Clive Ponting was prosecuted for leaking the papers.

Perhaps there's a public interest defence to political lies - It's certainly a different matter when there's an issue of National security compared to saving their own skins

[True Blue 36]

can the queen throw out the government or still chop off his head? Just wondered. really annoyed with this EU rubbish, its like living in Russia or something - can anyone actually stop us from sining away our country - or is that it, we voted him in we pay the price?

[fairkatrina]

Never mind about Iraq, Afghanistan etc, his first lie was back in 1996 - "Education, education, education!"

[jno]

there is of course never going to be any 'proof' of what a person is thinking, as whiffey is doubtless aware; a court will generally be happy with reasonable inferences from his actions.

[ELVIS68]

Never mind about education...what about "tough on crime"?

[legend758duo]

its hard to get proof of lies nowadays that will convince people. :-))

[jno]

the thing about education is that nobody actually wants it - except for themselves. If they get A levels it's great. If everybody gets A levels they just whinge that standards are falling. So polilticians are onto a loser there. But more and more people are getting qualifications, so Blair can say he's delivered.