December 1998: Blair - Having Bombed Baghdad, again! - Speaks from the Doorway of No. 10.

\x93The world\x92s a safer place tonight!\x94
- with babies in their graves,
& some of them in more than one…
Resourceful paleface braves
fire off their missiles, & recoil
at twice the speed of light
to wash their hands. They\x92ve made the world
a safer place tonight.

you lied in word, in deed, & by omission:
you blamed Saddam for things that you had done
& failed to do - the Shia insurrection,
incited, left to founder - sorry son!
with VX, sarin, stuff for nuclear fission -
you armed him, supplied anthrax by the ton,
you egged him on to fight Iran, then ditched him…
& now you cannot find the smoking gun?
too long past their use-by-date. oh? fine!
(don\x92t bother to say sorry: just resign.)

you lied about \x93eviction\x94 of inspectors
whom the UN \x93withdrew\x94 - you wanna bet?
phials, anti-poison-gas injectors,
antidotes to dangers to be met,
& posters: how to cope with radiation
were hailed as \x93proof of clear & present threat.\x94
duty-bound to free a captive nation?
ever think of rescuing Tibet?
oh. it\x92s unfair to hold you to that line…
don\x92t bother to say sorry: just resign.

there\x92s some bad bastards, but it\x92s no use fretting -
ex-Soviets Belarus & Kazakhstan.
our hatred of dictators could not threaten
Suharto, Burma, Saudi, Pakistan.
adjust the odds, it makes for safer betting;
where standards are too high, let down the bar.
for Chile we strained the rules, left Pinochet in;
Somoza, Marcos, Franco, Salazar,
we backed; who claimed their right to rule divine,
& never did say sorry, nor resign.

Afghanistan: \x93we\x92ll never walk away!\x94
you left them unexploded cluster bombs
like food parcels - they go off every day! -
to add to 20 million Russian mines.
& all the billions that you said you\x92d pay
keeps war lords ruling as in former times.
the bulk of it is mis-spent, gone astray,
they don\x92t add up, the economic sums.
damage limitation? not this time.
don\x92t bother to say sorry: just resign.

you lied about the poison factories;
lied about their nuclear capacity;
on links to Al Qaida came a freeze -
Bush yes, Blair no (gulp gulp); it took audacity…
45 minute standby - there\x92s a wheeze -
imminent threat! in coping with this facet we
might have bypassed other forgeries -
uranium from Niger? sheer mendacity!
you\x92ve been found out, you\x92ve overstayed your time,
so do what Denis Healy said: resign

you lied. you said it wasn\x92t about oil.
you bellowed this until your face turned blue.
& yet, available to any literate child:
what Goldstein said to Bush\x92s cronies whom,
cringe-making, blatant, we will not imbroil
after the war the inverse will be true.
I quote the Wall Street Journal - your blood boil?
mine does. we all could read it! so could you.
maybe you did; it chanced to slip your mind?
don\x92t even promise. do it now. resign.