{"id":5178,"date":"2009-01-30T14:44:54","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T13:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2009-01-30T14:44:54","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T13:44:54","slug":"tony-blair-admits-daily-doubts-about-the-war-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/tony-blair-admits-daily-doubts-about-the-war-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Blair admits daily doubts about the war in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/politics\/4395367\/Tony-Blair-admits-daily-doubts-about-the-war-in-Iraq.html\">James Kirkup<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mr Blair, now an international envoy to the Middle East, spoke of his &#8220;sense of responsibility&#8221; over the deaths of soldiers and civilians since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n<p>Asked if he suffered from doubt over Iraq, Mr Blair replied: &#8220;Of course you ask that question the whole time. You&#8217;d be weird if you didn&#8217;t ask that question.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Blair spoke in an interview with The Times, which is due to be published tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>In some of his frankest comments on the Iraq war, he spoke of his daily reflections on the decision and its consequences.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;The most difficult thing in any set of circumstances is the sense of responsibility for people who have given their lives and fallen \u2014 the soldiers and the civilians. If I did not feel that, there really would be something wrong with me, and there is not a single day of my life when I do not reflect upon it . . . many times. And that&#8217;s as it should be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yet Mr Blair still stands by his decision to back the US invasion of Iraq, suggesting it could actually have saved lives.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;On the other hand you have to take the decision and I look at the Middle East now and I think, well, if Saddam and his two sons were still running Iraq how many other people would have died and would the region be more stable?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By James Kirkup Mr Blair, now an international envoy to the Middle East, spoke of his &#8220;sense of responsibility&#8221; over the deaths of soldiers and civilians since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Asked if he suffered from doubt over Iraq, Mr Blair replied: &#8220;Of course you ask that question the whole time. You&#8217;d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1615,16],"tags":[55],"class_list":{"0":"post-5178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uk-news","7":"category-war-terrorism","8":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}