Ignorance is no excuse
Unless you’re the PM.
As we all know, the justification for America-Iraq War II was a lot of spurious bollocks about weapons of mass destruction which even the security services seemed to know weren’t there. The former Dear Leader’s excuse for lying was the claim that it was true because he believed it to be true at the time. The book asks, “But did he believe that he knew it?”
It’s hard to be certain, but from what I’ve read, Blair seemed to believe that he knew and wasn’t much interested in reality for an answer. You could’ve called him a complete twat and he still would’ve heard, “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” But belief and fact are not the same thing. Belief runs the gamut from completely untrue to almost certainly true, but unsupported by available (or any) evidence.
Is believing in an unproven fact any different from believing in a falsehood? It might be natural to assume that believing in an unproven fact is better than believing in a lie, but both would appear to be equal until one is shown to be true and the other to be false. But it’s how the belief is used which is another matter. Whether a belief turns out to be true or not, it ought not to be used to further some end until its status can be confirmed, although this is what Blair did. He believed there was evidence and assumed it to be true so that he could accompany Ayatollah Dubya on his crusade to Iraq.
It’s hard to be certain, but from what I’ve read, Blair seemed to believe that he knew and wasn’t much interested in reality for an answer. You could’ve called him a complete twat and he still would’ve heard, “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.” But belief and fact are not the same thing. Belief runs the gamut from completely untrue to almost certainly true, but unsupported by available (or any) evidence.
Is believing in an unproven fact any different from believing in a falsehood? It might be natural to assume that believing in an unproven fact is better than believing in a lie, but both would appear to be equal until one is shown to be true and the other to be false. But it’s how the belief is used which is another matter. Whether a belief turns out to be true or not, it ought not to be used to further some end until its status can be confirmed, although this is what Blair did. He believed there was evidence and assumed it to be true so that he could accompany Ayatollah Dubya on his crusade to Iraq.
Tomorrow, Meanies vs. Ingrates and the usefulness of deterrents.
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