{"id":3847,"date":"2010-02-02T08:51:18","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T13:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3847"},"modified":"2010-02-02T12:23:41","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T17:23:41","slug":"the-right-honorable-clare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/02\/the-right-honorable-clare\/","title":{"rendered":"the right honorable Clare Short…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just when I thought I was done with the Chilcot Inquiry<\/a><\/strong>, there comes a character, Clare Short<\/font><\/strong><\/a>, who re-engaged me. Awakening early this morning, I checked to see who was on the docket. It was Clare Short, an MP from Birmingham, who was in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development<\/strong> during the lead-up to war. Unlike earlier witnesses who cache their comments in documents and facts, Short leads with her opinions and then gets to the facts. Her opinion was that Tony Blair turned the Cabinet into chats, but made all the decisions elsewhere – decisions which were, uniformly misguided. Like Wilmshurst, she resigned from the Cabinet a couple of months after the invasion in protest [asked why she didn’t resign immediately, she says she was talked out of it by Blair who promised unspecified things, but didn’t deliver]. I think I’ll summarize what she had to say in more detail when the transcript is up later today, but there’s one point so pervasive that it requires no details – Tony Blair was not up to her standards in any dimension [see her letters to Blair<\/strong> of February 14, 2003<\/strong><\/a> and March 5, 2003<\/a><\/strong> declassified today]. <\/p>\n

Tony Blair advertised that his decisions were made in concert with the Cabinet, to which Clare Short cries foul and can’t say enough bad things. But then again, she can’t say enough bad things about the decisions themselves, no matter where they were made. I called Clare Short a "character" above, and she is that – as in "what a character!" But she also is obviously a person of character – as in "character reference." Were she a character in the play, she would be a "truth-sayer," like a member of the Greek Chorus or Shakespeare’s Falstaff – someone speaking "aside" to tell what was really going on. If I ever move to Birmingham UK, I’m voting for Clare Short. Unlike Ms. Wilmshurst who was in pain testifying against her government’s decisions, Clare was a true Falstaff. She was having a grand old time [today’s testimony<\/strong><\/a>]. She was right, and she knows it…<\/p>\n

 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when I thought I was done with the Chilcot Inquiry, there comes a character, Clare Short, who re-engaged me. Awakening early this morning, I checked to see who was on the docket. It was Clare Short, an MP from Birmingham, who was in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development during the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}