***Tony Blair Giving Them Hell***

Fox news | Stardate:0302.15

[The Wizard]

A great, great speech on why war with Iraq....find the replay on CSPAN

[GirlShortstop]

has anybody found an audio file for this speech?
Please post if so

Bump [with my fingers crossed that this request is fulfilled].

[The Duke]

God bless Tony Blair.

Should we have God bless Bill Clinton as well? Is this sudden love affair with Tony Blair the political equivalent of "Stockholm Symdrome"?

I am amazed how readily conservatives will tear out one-another's throats over the slightest difference, and yet embrace a liberal who happens to agree with them on a single issue. Were I a liberal I would feel tremendously empowered.

If Tony Blair, or any pal of Bill Clinton, is in support of this war, then it's not out of "humanitarianism" or "compassion", but rather because those people who are backing him want this war to take place.

[alnick]

Blair is really hammering home the plight of the Iraqi people under Saddam's regime. The millions of tortured, murdered, and exiled by Hussein.

Good. The people on our side need to talk about that more often in response to those who "only want peace," who object to the war because innocent Iraqis will be killed. Innocent Iraqis will be killed anyway. The difference is that when the war is over, the Iraqis will be safe, happy, and liberated.

[speedy]

I do not have the impression that Blair's party is backing him on this. And this isn't any garden-variety single issue. It would be much more difficult getting support for this war even in the US without such stalwart support from Blair.

[Frankss]

Tony Blair is my favorite lefty. Is there an address where a person could e-mail Tony Blair to show support and to thank him?
Josemaria Aznar (Spains president) is also backing us pretty good, at a political risk to himself. Does anyone know of a site where a person could e-mail to show support to Spains president?

[basque69]

Bravo Tony Blair. If the Brits would have had his leadership in 1776, we would be drinking tea and warm beer.

[basque69]

Bravo Tony Blair. If the Brits would have had his leadership in 1776, we would be drinking tea and warm beer.

[Fractal Trader]

We'll be in by March 3rd

What happened to your report of the "go codes" being activated on February 15th? Change of plans, or bad info?

[AHerald]

Your cynicism blinds you.

Blair may support and advocate some of the same weenie social policies as Clinton, but that's where the comparison ends.

He's got a 34% approval rating, and the overwhelming majority of Brits, not to mention most of his own party, are against his position on Iraq and yet he's stayed the course. On this issue he's a leader. A leader who's risking total political failure to fight for something he believes is right and just. That's something Clinton (most politicians, for that matter) is genetically incapable of doing.

[AHerald]

Amen.

[xsmommy]

and who would have thought it after him playing bubba's butt boy for so many years. i have never been so pleasantly surprised, and it makes me appreciate him all the more for it.

[truthkeeper]

What courage he has shown. I salute him too.

[George W. Bush]

I am amazed how readily conservatives will tear out one-another's throats over the slightest difference, and yet embrace a liberal who happens to agree with them on a single issue. Were I a liberal I would feel tremendously empowered.

This is entirely unjustified. Churchill himself sponsored many liberal policies in his early career with which no conservative would agree. But domestic policy is one thing and facing up to a common military threat against Western civilization is quite another.

We were there with Churchill when it counted and, generally, against the will of a majority of our own population. As wrong as Roosevelt was about many other domestic policy matters, he was right in that. Now, with Blair in the opposite position, he is deserving of our support, not criticism over far less critical domestic policy issues or a past gullibility over European unity which went so badly wrong in central European intervention. You fail to even give him the benefit of the doubt that he may have learned something in office about trusting the French and the Germans and their plans for Europe and a common defense.

If you listened carefully to Blair's speech, you'd see that there is a subtext of opposition to the plans of the Axis of Weasels destroying NATO and trying to create a United Europe of the kind that requires that surrender of all national sovereignty to France/Germany/Belgium.

Blair, in this speech, is doing much of what many of us want to see him do, fight off the attempt to turn all of Europe into the handpuppets of the French.

We can criticize the gungrabbing and other liberal social policy of the Labor Party later. This just isn't the right time because it's unlikely that Blair's ejection from office would bring Tories to power. Instead, we'd get a British Labor PM that would be a surrender-monkey of the French kind. Blair has gone a long way out on a limb to help us and he did so for the right reasons. This isn't the time to talk about chopping off the limb he is standing on. Particularly when he is standing against such domestic opposition to be our loyal ally and is in so much more difficulty politically than our own president is.

[NewCenturions]

Bravo to Blair! He has been consistently strong through all this. Makes me proud of my British ancestry (...meanwhile, my German side hangs it's head in shame!)

[VRWC_minion]

Its at least good to see that Clinton and Blair are at polar opposites on this key issue.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

This "single" issue is a very important issue. Furthermore, there aren't many other countries putting their necks out. So yes, God Bless Tony Blair.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

The Prime Minister told Labour party delegates today that he wanted to use the United Nations to solve the situation in Iraq.

Oh yes good ole Tony.

Some of his reasons for supporting an attack on Iraq (I do support an attack on Iraq)

"A country where today, 135 out of every 1,000 Iraqi children die before the age of five - 70% of these deaths are from diarrhoea and respiratory infections that are easily preventable."

"Almost a third of children born in the centre and south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition."

Of course, it's for the children ya know.

Another thing most may have missed was his knock at Mrs.Thatcher, when he pompously announced there would be no more cigarette advertising.

"Take yesterday, and an end to tobacco advertising. Opposed by the Conservatives. The right thing to do. And done by a Labour Government."

For the children ya know.

"After years of under-investment, we are now making the commitment to public services that people have wanted to see for decades.

More teachers, more nurses, more police. That is what you get from a Labour Government."

Sound familiar?

Well, it's for the children ya know.

"British values. Labour values. Values worth fighting for. Values to inspire our journey of change. Values to sustain us for the great challenges ahead. Values to drive us as we create the Britain that we promised and the Britain that today our world needs."

Our world!

Very ironic that the only people Tony quoted were Iraqi.

Thanks Tony.

Long Live Margaret Thatcher.

More of a man than Tony could ever dream to be.

[tomahawk]

Despite his socialist leanings, Tony Blair is a good man on security issues and the war against terrorism.

[dalebert]

Where is Jimmy Carter? Human rights should have him out in front on this. Ha!

[RobbyS]

WHo would have guessed that Tony Blair would prove to be another Churchill? On the ohtre hand, he was the one who--unsuccessfully--pushed the Europeans to act in Yugoslavia to avert the catastrophe that followed. He found they are incapable of acting. I think this is the cause of his passionate resolution.