comical Blairi

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Blair makes Comical Ali seem the voice of reason

The former Iraqi regime spokesman's boasts seem almost prophetic.
Unlike the prime minister's deluded declarations

Marina Hyde
Saturday February 24, 2007
The Guardian

If one is to endure a prime ministerial discourse on Iraq for any
length of time these days, it is necessary - in the name of sanity -
to cultivate strategies of detachment. Destroying another radio solves
nothing, and there may be health risks associated with beginning one's
waking day shouting dementedly at the glottal-stopped voice drifting
over the airwaves. And so it was, listening to Tony Blair sing the
praises of his Iraq adventure on the Today programme on Thursday, that
my mind began to wander. If it wasn't all such a bleeding mess, I
thought vaguely, the prime minister's delusions of success would be
almost comical. Comical ... comical ... the word triggered some neural
connection. But what? Gradually but inexorably, the memory of another
charismatic proselytiser for Iraq's rude health began to resolve
itself.

Cast your mind back to the Iraq war as it was originally billed - the
one where we won in three weeks - and which revisionist historians may
just come to classify as a kind of phoney war curtain-raiser to the
prolonged horror that succeeded it. Quite the most entertaining cameo
of the day - even counting Clare Short's hilarious insistence on
staying in the cabinet so she could oversee the reconstruction effort
- was that played by Saddam's information minister Mohammed Saeed
al-Sahaf, who we came to know as Comical Ali.

Not for him the relentless negativity that so exasperates Tony Blair
where critics of his mission's success are concerned. "There are only
two American tanks in the city," the information minister would beam
beatifically during one of his must-watch daily briefings in early
2003, surrounded by reporters who would have been to able to count at
least three if they stood on a low chair. Or recall his declaration as
news channels screened footage of coalition troops patrolling Saddam
international airport: "They are not in control of any airport."

Listening again to Blair's Today interview, it is easy to imagine his
declarations as simply one melody in a discordant symphony, a series
of those beloved soundbites that could be spliced with contrapuntal
news of actual events. "We should be immensely proud." Crash! A
six-hour firefight in Ramadi leaves 12 dead. "What we had to do was
rebuild an Iraqi army and police - we did that." Bang! A US soldier
dies and three are injured by a roadside bomb in Diwaniya. "It is
better now that [Saddam] has gone." Wallop! A car bomb factory is
discovered in Baghdad. Just as it was with his apparent inspiration,
Comical Ali, it becomes ever more difficult to avoid the suspicion
that the prime minister is living in a parallel universe, where
success and failure are merely states of mind.

Of course, as mentioned, the information minister's input in this
historic saga was limited to a cameo. After being captured by
coalition forces, he was almost instantly released, evidently deemed
to have known so little as to be useless. Unlike Mr Blair, al-Sahaf
seems to have become swiftly aware of the limits of his appeal, and
after a few TV appearances, he now lives an unassuming existence in
the United Arab Emirates.

His prime ministerial imitator, however, is assumed to have far
loftier plans, with the North American lecture tour a seeming
inevitability. Enthralled audiences can no doubt expect more insights
such as we gained on Thursday, when the PM appeared to justify Iraq's
sprightly journey in the direction of civil war with the observation:
"You can't absolutely predict every set of circumstances that comes
about." Well quite. You can, however, have a vague punt on possible
outcomes, and if you are over the age of 15, not involved in a
still-unfathomed platonic infatuation with the US president, and
willing to listen to intelligence you didn't pilfer off the internet,
you might hazard the road ahead was slightly more pitfall-ridden than
seems to have been judged.

But will the time ever come, one wonders idly, when our revisionist
historians reconsider the ravings of Comical Ali? The idiocy of most
of his statements will, admittedly, endure. Footwear-based supremacy
has not been achieved, despite the much-vaunted boast that the Iraqis
would be waiting for the coalition forces "with shoes". But the smile
fades when recalling other pronouncements. "Do not be hasty because
your disappointment will be huge," the old crazy warned. "You will
reap nothing from this aggressive war, which you launched on Iraq,
except for disgrace and defeat." "We will embroil them, confuse them,
and keep them in the quagmire," he said later, adding that "they
cannot just enter a country of 26 million people and lay besiege to
them! They are the ones who will find themselves under siege."

There are, of course, rather fewer than 26 million people in Iraq
these days, but even those who dispute the precise extent of the
population depletion might agree that it comes to something when, in
hindsight, several statements by this preposterous character seem more
prophetic than anything spouted by the British government at the time.
Fortunately for Mr Blair, this kind of cynicism is not voguish in the
hotel ballrooms of North America. There he may expect to be
permanently cossetted against any unwelcome intrusions of reality, and
we can only wish him the speediest of journeys.

marina.hyde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright