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Blair deserves "contempt" over Iraq war

03/09/2008

Tony Blair's decision-making before and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq deserves "contempt", Lord Owen has said.

The former foreign secretary and leader of the Social Democratic party claimed Mr Blair and US president George Bush displayed all the characteristics of what he described as "hubris syndrome" in their failure to plan for the conflict's aftermath.

Lord Owen, a neurologist before his political career, is pushing for the syndrome to become medically recognised as an environmentally induced psychiatric disorder after research for his book In Sickness And In Power.

He argued in a lecture to the Royal United Services Institute in London that the pair joins Anthony Eden, David Lloyd George and Neville Chamberlain in the ranks of those who have fallen victim to the syndrome.

"Bush and Blair deserve contempt," he said.

"For those two politicians to so lightly enter into this conflict… was an act of hubris of a quite deplorable nature. I believe both suffered from a very real attack of hubris syndrome."

He said he had spoken to senior civil servants during Mr Blair's tenure who had noted a real difference in the prime minister's behaviour during his time in Downing Street.

Whereas at the beginning he would maintain an open mind, by the end Mr Blair was entering meetings on a variety of issues with his opinions already fixed, Lord Owen claims.

"Parliament is meant to hold these people to account," he added.

"The press are meant to hold these people to account. The Cabinet is supposed to hold these people to account. None of them were there to stop either Bush or Blair."

The result only heightened the pair's descent into hubris syndrome, he claimed. Mr Blair's "almost messianic" behaviour is balanced, on the other side of the Atlantic, by Mr Bush's infamous 'mission accomplished' appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1st 2003.

Lord Owen said the former prime minister had a real opportunity to influence the post-war future of Iraq when a senior diplomat asked him to deploy British troops in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

This was "one of those rare moments where British decision-making made a difference", he argued, suggesting the move would have prevented the US military flying home 16,000 of its own troops and limiting the ensuing insurgency against coalition forces.

"It was a failure of government," he continued. "I want to focus people's minds on the fact that decision-makers who are themselves completely sane… can be changed by the office itself."

Only independent medical assessment can help prevent a repetition of the 20th century, which Lord Owen said was littered by individuals struggling to carry out their duty of office because of health issues.

Whether it was Anthony Eden on amphetamine during the Suez crisis, Richard Nixon's alcoholism or Winston Churchill's "black dog" of depression, the 70-year-old insists states have suffered as a result of limited assessment of their health.

He concluded: "We shouldn't be forgiving of them. We are not constraining our democratic leaders."