Maybe it was the X-Factor strobe lights, inflicting a strategic, mind-maiming onslaught of superficial glamour.  It could have been Richard Hammond wincing uncomfortably as a Morrisons Executive waved a service-revolver in his face, dictating where he should purchase his freshly gutted Christmas salmon.  It may even have been sheer apathy, but what remains clear is when the news arrived that Tony Blair had confessed his Parliamentary crimes to that woman from the Ryvita adverts on Saturday 12^th December 2009, no one much cared.

 “When it comes to a decision like that, I think it is important that you take that decision as it were on the basis of what is right, because that is the only way to do it” Mr. Blair declared before a nodding-not-quite-with-it Fern Britton.  When asked whether he would have continued to follow his subjective ideals had there been no evidence of WMDs, Blair was careful to say he “thought” it would have been right to remove Saddam Hussein anyway. 

 All well and good, but one could be forgiven that implying a course of direct action without government backing would construe, say, a gross abuse of power?  Again, is it just to overlook the illicit nature of an invasion built on a succession of lies, presented before Parliament as a ‘sexed up’ dossier?  The answer, somewhat grimly, is yes.  Despite the million who marched in protest, the thousands of innocent civilians “strategically” carpet-bombed and the defiant few who still campaign for our ex-premier to be brought before a tribunal, it seems that one megalomaniac’s fanatical, if somewhat convenient personal endeavour, was always destined to reign supreme over another tyrant’s extremism.

 Hypocrisy is a given in Western civilization.  The unrelenting decolonization of the 20^th Century may have symbolized brief windows of independent freedom for much of the third world, yet any illusion of cultural and economic development have been periodically shattered by American and European intervention, funding countless military coups, endorsing rightwing leaders who in turn have staged unimaginable crimes against their people and allowing conglomerates to exploit the turmoil that the ensuing poverty has left behind.  Only when the beasts we create bite back, do our religious convictions and moral superiority suddenly take form.

 Genocide is a crime against humanity, and rightly so.  Any person who is willing to destroy countless lives, such as Hussein, should take absolute responsibility for the consequences.  Only in cosy West-London apartments, where conscious-clear politicians grin inanely before national celebrities, are those guilty of equal atrocities harder to spot.