Blair ‘prayed to God’ over Iraq
Prime Minister Tony Blair has told how he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.
Mr Blair answered “yes” when asked on ITV1 chat show Parkinson – to be screened on Saturday – if he had sought holy intervention on the issue.
“Of course, you struggle with your own conscience about it… and it’s one of these situations that, I suppose, very few people ever find themselves in.”
Anti-war campaigners attacked Mr Blair’s comments as “a joke”.
Mr Blair told show host Michael Parkinson: “In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people… and if you believe in God, it’s made by God as well.”
“When you’re faced with a decision like that, some of those decisions have been very, very difficult, most of all because you know these are people’s lives and, in some case, their deaths. “
“The only way you can take a decision like that is to do the right thing according to your conscience.”
Anti-war campaigner Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon died in Basra in 2004, said: “A good Christian wouldn’t be for this war.
“I’m actually quite disgusted by the comments. It’s a joke.”
Blair struggled with his conscience? No he diiiint.
Blair had an audience with Pope John Paul II right before the war The Pope warned him against invading Iraq and God certainly made his views about Iraq known to the Pope:
John Paul II stated before the 2003 war that this war would be a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified.
In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the Holy Father, but also one Cardinal and Archbishop after another at the Vatican spoke out against a “preemptive” or “preventive” strike. They declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war. Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said that such a “war of aggression” is a crime against peace. Archbishop Renato Martino, who used the same words in calling the possible military intervention a “crime against peace that cries out vengeance before God,” also criticized the pressure that the most powerful nations exerted on the less powerful ones on the U.N. Security Council to support the war. The Pope spoke out almost every day against war and in support of diplomatic efforts for peace.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has great plans. He tried to avoid revealing them prematurely, because he was weary about the public response. But they have leaked out in a written parliamentary reply and were picked up by The Observer. Blair is reportedly all set to broom out good old Secularism and to invite God to the center stage of policy making. In a “major break with British traditions that religion and government should not mix”, according to The Observer, he has appointed a religious body, representing Christian and other faith groups, as high-power advisory committee to the British Government. The “Faith Community Liaison Group” is part of the Home Office. Its sphere of influence includes officially the Department of Education, Culture, Media, Sport, Trade and Industry.
Chair of the ministerial working group is Fiona Mactaggert, Home Office Minister for ‘Civic Renewal’.. Mactaggert describes the committee’s tasks: “Its terms of reference are to consider the most effective means of achieving greater involvement of the faith communities in policy-making and delivery across Whitehall [and] to identify the specific policy areas where this input would be most valuable. The Prime Minister is aware of our plans and attaches considerable importance to this.. It will lay down the foundations for the effective involvement of the faith communities’ perspectives and needs in policy development across government..”
Christian groups are rejoicing about the Prime Minister’s move. Says Graham Dale, director of the Christian Socialist Movement, of which Blair is a member: “The group will have the freedom to engage in policy issues across the board but also to address other less tangible areas like values in public life. It raises to a new level the recognition of faith as a factor in government consultation and indicates the government’s willingness to engage with people of faith in every area of public life.” Besides various Christian groups, there are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jewish communities represented in the committee.
Tony Blair is a committed Christian, who “keeps the Bible by his bed”, reports The Observer. But up to now his special relation with God remained more or less a private affair. With his new project, to place religion at the center of British politics, he has finally come out as a political agent of religious revival.
Daily Mirror, 26 December 2002
BLAIR SLAMMED OVER IRAQ WAR BY HIS OWN PRIEST
By Tom Newton Dunn, Defence Correspondent
TONY BLAIR was yesterday accused of “moral surrender” over war in Iraq – by his own priest.
Father Timothy Russ hit out after the Blair family attended his Catholic church near Chequers.
After the service Fr Russ, a family friend, told the Daily Mirror violence and loss of life are not God’s way to solve the world’s problems.
Father Russ, priest at St Anne’s Roman Catholic Church near the PM’s Chequers home said: “Man must live by the will to integrity rather than the will to power. The PM is caught up in the will to power game. That is his problem.
“He has had a moral surrender from his past. His positions have changed over the years… He may not like me very much for telling you but it is my job to try to speak the truth from God.”
To a professed Christian the pressure not to invade Iraq from church, spouse and public would have been horrendous and the ‘dodgy dossier’ sexed up by Campbell and Scarlett with the ‘WMD in 45 minutes’ claim must have seemed to Blair like a gift from God himself, the perfect justification for this crusade. 
Blair needed to believe the fake intelligence because it enabled him to justify his own actions internally (and at home with his wife, the Catholic human rights lawyer). The fact that the dossier wasn’t true and he did actually knew that, was a mere inconvenient trifle. It needed to be true. Funny how lying slipped his conscience.
I see now why he’s so attracted to the Vatican. as a Catholic you get to confess all your sins on a regular basis, confidentially, and can walk away automagically forgiven by doing ‘penance’. Blair can lie with a clear conscience, knowing that as long as he repents and does ‘penance’ he’s got away with it.
What he forgets is that rest of us are not all Catholics, or even Christians, and we won’t let him.
Tags: UK Politics Tony Blair Iraq War God Religion Christianity Roman Catholic New Labour
