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You know all of this, but the focus on Saint Bambi is because he so obviously lied and because nobody expected much of Bush. There is also the assumption that the US wouldn't have started the Iraq war without the UK.
Oliver Schick-
Absolutely, I just feet frustrated that it's been made ALL about him by some people. To the point that the fact that the reasons for the intelligences failures have been sidelined, even to the point of some people glossing over the colossal shithousery by Saddam Hussein and Iran and the fact that we thought we knew he had WMDs because we (as in the allies) fucking sold them to him.
Another issue that bothers me is that nobody really seems to give a shit about the war Crimes committed by the Allies in Iraq in 1991 such as the burying alive of between 450 and 4,000 Iraqi soldiers using bulldozers. 450 being the figure that Cheney has admitted to, 4,000 being the independent estimate.
Edit: sorry, just feeling really fucking angry about western middle East policy overall and am easily triggered by the Blair thing. He was bad but not the worst and some of the worst people involved haven't taken one ounce of criticism yet by comparison.
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Conversely, a lot of people don't realise that if Iraq hadn't at least maintained the illusion of having WMDs, Iran would have bulldozed in. And the last time that happened, 1.2 million people died.
I struggle to think of a more complicated shitshow.
Stonehedge
I find it very frustrating that the complex series of geopolitical events that led to the deaths of at least three million people (including a genocide of 250,000 Kurds) involving Iraq, Iran, Russia, Germany, the UK and the USA is so often distilled down to "Tony Blair is a war criminal" and accusations of warmongering by just one participant.
I'm not for a second saying that there is not a lot of blood on his hands but it does deflect the blame from a lot of people with far worse culpability.
I think it also insulting to the memories of the dead from those wars that "Tony Blair is a war criminal" has been used to campaign against Labour.