Ming Campbell, QC, MP and (pay attention now)

….the only senior MP to have read Iraq right, from the start.

This from an interview in today’s Times, found in Iain Dale’s Diary. (When this conservative blogger is on form, when his sources and posting glands are working well, he is a delight to read. When he’s constipated he has a prod at the Liberal Democrats. Like today.)

Any road up. That line again: “….the only senior MP to have read Iraq right, from the start.”

And people, some in my party and plenty outside criticize Ming on the grounds of age (we’re all getting there, folks) of his occasionally stuttering appearances at Prime Ministers Questions (so what? Sound and fury, signifying little, much wanked over in the media, though).

But as The Times points out, he is the only senior MP who called Iraq right from the start. For overseas readers, the Labour Party followed George Bush to war in Iraq with indecent haste, with Conservatives lapdogging behind trying to up the bellum ante even more. The Liberal Democrats opposed the war, with Ming Campbell, then deputy leader, leading the arguments.

Tony Blair led the nation to war against public opinion, and lied to do it. Gordon Brown, now Prime Minister, supported him with word, with gesture and with money. He bankrolled it, although not generously enough to ensure that our forces had everything they needed to do the job properly. Then conservative leader Michael Howard and his successor David Cameron voted for it. When these wretches stand up in Prime Ministers Questions and offer condolences to the families of the dead servicemen in Iraq, they should do more, because they sent them there.

As they utter the words, a demon should enter the chamber and with a serrated knife and flay a little skin from the body of each party leader (past and present) who voted for the war (a square inch for each death would do) then hawk up some corrosive, bile laden spit and rub it into the wound. It would hurt. A lot, but probably not a much as being gutshot by an insurgent with an AK47. They would shrink from the demon next time, and maybe think twice about following a neoconservative US president to and illegal war.

Ming was right, the people who now lead and seek to lead this country were wrong. This was a massive miscalculation on the part of Blair, Brown, Howard and Cameron. Their votes and misguided leadership cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, destabilized a region and gave us pariah and enemy status with a political, violent movement with a bent for terrorism and no regard for their own lives.

These people are not fit to lead the country. They should be forced to meet every returning body off the plane from Basra, to attend the funerals and look in the eyes of the bereaved, listen to their upset. Then be thrown from public office. Ever last craven one of them.

And people dare criticize Ming ‘the only senior MP to have read Iraq right, from the start.’ Politics and the media in this country are badly wrong when such substance attracts sniping, and the abject failures who led us into this mess and now urge us to move on under the cover of UN resolutions are still in government.