John Prescott - Still a Dick

There seems to be no shortage of politicians and other officials who come out against the very thing they supported while they were in power now that it's too late for them to have any effect on the issue.

John Prescott, who was deputy prime minister when Britain went to war with Iraq in 2003, says the invasion by UK and US forces was "illegal".

Writing in the Sunday Mirror, he said he would live with the "catastrophic decision" for the rest of his life.

  BBC

He's going to "live with" it. Millions of victims of it don't get the chance.

He said he now agreed "with great sadness and anger" with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan that the war was illegal.

Whichever way the wind blows.

"My first concern was the way Tony Blair ran Cabinet. We were given too little paper documentation to make decisions," he wrote.

But you made them anyway.

"A day doesn't go by when I don't think of the decision we made to go to war. Of the British troops who gave their lives or suffered injuries for their country. Of the 175,000 civilians who died from the Pandora's Box we opened by removing Saddam Hussein," he went on.

He also expressed his own "fullest apology", especially to the families of British personnel who died.

He has degrees of apology, apparently.

Tony Blair has apologised for mistakes he made but has said he stands by his decision to take the country to war.

Meanwhile Tory MP David Davis said he will submit a motion to hold the former PM in contempt of Parliament over Iraq.

If the motion is accepted, MPs could debate and vote on whether he is guilty of misleading the House of Commons before the summer recess.

And then what? Nothing, if I'm any judge of the way things work.

I was going to criticize Prescott for his timing, but to be fair, he did speak up as early as 2009 when the Chilcot inquiry began. That still was beyond any time that his objection might have made a difference, so I'm going to go ahead and call him an asshat.

In an interview [published December 10, 2009] in the New Statesman the former deputy prime minister says: "I do wonder, looking back now, having the privilege of discussing with Tony [Blair] about all this: how did I then go along [with it]?"

[...]

Prescott recalled witnessing "hair-raising" conversations about Iraq between the then prime minister Blair and George Bush – "because Bush has got his own kind of approach ... It did make you think" – and said of the former US president: "Listen, Bush is crap – you know it, I know it, the party knows it."

He said he had imagined how Blair could have stood up the president: "I've often thought, 'Well, you could have just said 'Sod you ... we're not doing it.'"

  Guardian

And where were you, Mr. Deputy? You could have made a public statement. You could have just said 'I'm resigning in protest.'  And you could have said why.

He said he once told Blair: "You're a bloody Tory."

"Tony is a Christian social democrat," he added. "He wasn't a socialist."

He wasn't even a social democrat. He was "conservative" through and through.

Prescott also discussed the 1994 Labour leadership contest, eventually won by Blair after Gordon Brown stepped aside. "I personally would have supported Gordon. And then Tony would [have] become the obvious successor . . . Gordon was more politically in tune with me."

[...]

He recalled advising Blair to sack Brown, and said of Brown: "Gordon would say, I can't trust [Blair] . . . 'Well for Christ's sake, go then. I don't want to hear impossible moans, because all you're trying to do is persuade me to go one way or another.' "

You just said he was "more politically in tune with" you. You can't even keep your story straight in one interview.

Paddy Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, also came under fire. "[Blair] asked me whether Paddy Ashdown could join the Labour party, and I said, 'If he walks in that door I'm out that door. No discussion.'"

'But go ahead and join that crap Bush in an illegal and immoral war. I'm with you there.'

And then, in 2010, his pendulum swung back to the reality....

Prescott did not think the cabinet should have been shown the detailed advice of the then attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, on the legality of the conflict. "All I wanted to know, and I think the Cabinet and the prime minister, is is it legal and can you legally justify military intervention? He said yes."

Dismissing as fashionable criticism of Blair, he said: "True leadership is not about having the benefit of hindsight. It is about having the gift of vision, courage and compassion, and I believe that Tony Blair had all those three."

  Guardian

So, not only did he not voice objections, he didn't want to know if any existed.  But, suddenly, now that the wind is blowing against Blair and the war, his "first concern was the way Tony Blair ran Cabinet. We were given too little paper documentation to make decisions."

 And now, he's very, very sorry, and he has to live with that.

No, asshat. You get to live with it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.