Comment: Iraq confession puts Blair's integrity on line

By Robin Oakley, CNN Political Contributor

The most stinging attack has come from a former senior public servant. Ken Macdonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK, has written an article in the London Times accusing Blair of sycophancy to President Bush's power: "Washington turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour it gave him."

Macdonald dismisses Blair's oft-repeated line that "I only did what I thought was right" and that he understands the views of his critics but had to make the decision he did as "a narcissist's defense."

John Chilcot's inquiry into the prelude to and the preparations for war will call Blair himself to give evidence, publicly, in the New Year. But the inquiry will not announce its findings before the British general election expected by May 2010 at the latest.

The inquiry has been taking evidence so far from ambassadors and senior civil servants and military and intelligence figures.

The former head of the Defence Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett testified that there was "no conscious intention" to manipulate information about Iraq's weaponry. But he did concede it should have been more specific about the now-discredited claim on 45-minute delivery. (That only applied to battlefield weapons, not ballistic missiles).

Jeremy Greenstock, former UK Ambassador at the U.N., who admitted he came close to resignation over the war, agreed the war was legal but said it was of "questionable legitimacy" because of the lack of U.N. and public support.

Military figures criticized the lack of preparedness, especially by the U.S., for the post-war stage.

Perhaps the most damaging testimony for Blair, who has been dogged by claims he was "George Bush's poodle" over Iraq, was that from the UK's former ambassador in Washington, Christopher Meyer. He told the inquiry Blair suddenly began using the term "regime change" in April 2002 following a private meeting with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Blair's former foreign affairs adviser David Manning has also testified that Blair was willing to back Bush on regime change, though he had urged him to secure U.N. support for that objective.

Whether Blair and the Labour government now led by Gordon Brown are being seriously damaged by the inquiry is in rather more doubt.

There have already been four major inquiries into the war and the intelligence gathering which preceded it and Blair himself has already been forced out of Downing Street sooner than he would have wished as a consequence of his involvement with George W. Bush.

Journalists, academics and politicians will never lose their taste for re-hashing the events that led up to the war. But the evidence suggests that Joe Public no longer has quite the same fascination. Currently British voters are showing much more concern with events in Afghanistan, where 100 British troops have died this year compared to the 179 who lost their lives in the entire Iraq war.