Iraq War's 5th Anniversary: The Legacy Of Madmen

In America, the US public was led to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for (amongst other things) the 9/11 tragedies, in the UK the buzz phrase was weapons of mass destruction. Intelligence reports before the war hinted at the fact that Saddam’s capabilities when it came to making war were seriously depleted, years of harsh economic sanctions, put in place by the US after Gulf War I had crippled the Iraqi economy.

Indeed, it was estimated before the war that around 500,000 Iraqi children had died of starvation as a direct result of the sanctions. Speak to the average Iraqi citizen today and you’ll hear the same stories, "we were poor and oppressed under Saddam, but at least we could walk around without the constant fear of being shot or blown to pieces."

Politics has always been about opportunism and band wagon jumping, if a politician sees an opportunity to win favour (and votes) then that is pretty much all it will take for said politician to get his media and PR team on the case. Tony Blair saw this opportunity in the aftermath of the twin towers attacks, the buzz phrase that would emerge from the ashes of the stricken buildings was; ’war on terror’. The phrase is classical Orwellian newspeak, it can be expanded or reduced to take in whatever situation the speaker of the phrase wishes and its meaning can’t be specified in any true terms. The phrase isn’t war on terrorists because that war would be easy to measure in real terms, i.e. how many terrorists you kill or foil.

For Tony Blair, the war on terror gave him the global soapbox that would cement his place in history.