Thursday, February 23, 2006

Little Lies

Tony Blair comments on the attack on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra.
[T]he very purpose of those who desecrated the shrine is to stop the will of the Iraqi people, expressed in an election in which over 10 million of them voted for the country to come together in a unity government.
Little lies, oft repeated. Blair apparently believes that this makes them true.

The reality is that the alliance which campaigned primarily on the need for a unity government, the Iraqi National List, received 8% of the votes cast. 977,325 people to be exact. Blair is about ten times over the mark.

The other main alliances are sectarian and these sectarian alliances received the overwhelming majority of the votes cast. They may, some indeed do, express a desire to form a unity government but, significantly, there are enormous disagreements concerning the shape and powers of such a government. Blair talks as if 10 million people voted for the unified secular Iraqi government he appears to have expected them to. They most certainly did not.

But Blair is not a man to let the facts get in the way of his Iraq policy. The whole thing was built on a lie. It should come as no surprise that more lies are needed to sustain it.

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