THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Tony Blair has told how people are still “very abusive” to him 10 years after the Iraq War, adding that he has given up trying to “persuade people it was the right decision”.
In comments which could be interpreted as self-pitying Mr Blair said that it did not matter whether the continuing controversy about Iraq had “taken a toll on me”.
He said that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was “20 times as bad” as Syria’s President Assad but admitted that it would take a “generation” to make Iraq safer than it was in 2003.
Mr Blair is still cr[i]ticised for sending British troops into Iraq on March 20, 2003 in the mistaken belief that its Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
In the weeks leading up to the invasion, more than one million people marched through London against the Iraq invasion.
Asked in a candid interview on BBC2’s Newsnight whether he minded if “people call you a liar, some people call you a war criminal, protesters follow you; it’s difficult to walk down the street in a country”, he replied: “It really doesn’t matter whether it’s taken its toll on me.
“The fact is yes there are people who will be very abusive, by the way I do walk down the street and by the way I won an election in 2005 after Iraq. However, yes it remains extremely divisive and very difficult.”
Mr Blair conceded that he had “long since given up trying to persuade people it was the right decision”. » | Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent | Tuesday, February 26, 2013
