London 13.10.2011

Malcom Rifkind

Sir Malcom Rifkind, could you describe your work for us?

I’m a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The JIC is different and it’s part of the government machinery for dealing issues and getting the coordination between the intelligence agencies. My job, I was appointed by the Prime Minister to chair what is called the Intelligence and Security Committee, which has British members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. We have been given the responsibility to provide independent oversight of the intelligence agencies, we are vetted to the oil intelligence material and our responsibility in behalf of parliament, on behalf of the wider public is to be able to investigate any allegation, any claims, any problems, any difficulties and report to the Prime Minister and to parliament our conclusions.

I was appointed by the Prime Minister shortly after last general election. The committee as a whole started functioning in October, my appointment was about in July.

And how do you evaluate the work done so far in respect of the Iraq war?

In the last 12 months we have done any work on the Iraq war. We are very interested in the Iraq Inquiry and I know Sir John Chilcot, who’s chairing the Inquiry but like everybody else we will wait to hear his report. We have great interest in that, but the committee, which I chair, in previous parliaments investigated Iraq issues. It investigated the handling of intelligence in relation to the Iraq war and it has done a number of reports on Afghanistan, on handling of detainees, questions of rendition and a range of issues of that kind. These were over the last few years. I’ve only been involved in the committee for the last 12 months.

How do you judge the work done by the Iraq Inquiry? Do you think for example that the absence of a lawyer amongst the five panellists might weaken the investigation process?

No. The main value of the inquiry is that Sir John Chilcot and his colleagues have complete access to all the intelligence material, all the government papers, and all the files. They have taken evidence right across the spectrum and I think it is a sensible way of having that kind of investigation that is needed.

Is that why the publication of the final report is being delayed?

I’m not in a position to know. I don’t think they are delaying it at all. My understanding, but you’ll have to ask them, is that they have completed all the taking of evidence. But it’s a major report they are producing. It takes time to produce and they are as speedily but as competently as they can. These things take time, but we are expecting that the report will be published in the next few months, in the short term, not in the long term.

Originally they said this autumn. Now it appears it will take more time.

Sure, that is not unknown. There are not huge numbers of people involved. It’s a small committee with a small staff and they want to get it right. What they are investigating are matters of history so it is better they take a bit longer and get it right than rush it out and produce a less than perfect study.

Do you foresee any clash with the government or with the previous governments because of the criticism that the report should contain?

I think it’s very unlikely that there could be a clash with the present government because it is looking at historic matters, at what happened several years ago under Mr Blair’s government. The committee has not been looking at contemporary issues but at issues of that time. Yes, it is highly possible that they will say very critical things of Mr Blair’s government and the handling of the Iraq issue, because it is clear from the evidence that has been given to the committee and the questions asked by the committee of witnesses that these are important issues. One issue for example, which I would expect them to deal with in considerable detail, is the allegation that the Cabinet were not fully involved in the decision.

The “sofa-style” government..

Exactly. There were lots of questions asked during the taking of evidence on this sort of issues, so I would expect that to be a major issue they would deal with. I think they will also look at the whole question of the handling of intelligence, which has already been investigated by the Butler Committee. But there are still issues to be addressed on matters of that kind.

What about your article over the misuse of intelligence and the 45-minute claim?

The main criticism I made, and I made it for several years, is that never before have the intelligence agencies been asked to produce a report for publication, a public report in their name, to help the government of the day advance a particular proposal. They should not be asked to do that. It was quite wrong even if what was often referred to as the “dodgy dossier”, even if that report had been 100% accurate, 100% uncontroversial. It was still wrong in principle for the intelligence agencies to be asked to help the government by producing such a document. The purpose of the intelligence agencies is to produce intelligence and analysis to assist the government in whatever policy the government wants to pursue. What the government does with that intelligence is its responsibility. If the government wants to produce a document in the name on the Prime Minister they are free to do so, but we all know that the reason why this document was produced in the name of the JIC was because the Prime Minister, Mr Blair, hoped it would help boost his credibility in the arguments he was making. Well, that might have been his intention, but it was improper to use the intelligence agencies for that purpose. They are not part of the political debate. They are not part of the political process. They shouldn’t be on one side or the other and to be fair the previous government, since that happened, has admitted that that was a mistake and it should not happen again and they are right.

The document in question simply reported all the evidence that existed that suggested that Saddam was developing WMD. The report didn’t say: “we should go to war”. That wasn’t the problem. It was the fact that this was a document in the name of the intelligence agencies who are secret agencies! The proper name if the MI6 is Secret Intelligence Service. SIS do not normally produce documents on sensitive political issues. It was only asked by the Prime Minister to do so because he wanted support for his political case and that was wrong.

Why not add the exile option to these critiques? There was a huge debate within the Arab world on this point.

Hold on, there are two separate issues here. I was not involved, but I remember at the time the exile option being raised as a possibility just as it was in Libya with Gaddafi. I was not part of the government so I don’t have an idea of what the internal evidence was that might suggest that Saddam Hussein was interested in that. I have to say, and I’m very critical of the war, I’m very sceptical of the argument that Saddam would have agreed to go into exile anymore than Gaddafi was seriously interested. People like them are hardly interested to become old-age pensioner in the South of France. He wanted power and he was paranoid, a psychopath. So personally I’m very doubtful as to whether that could have actually been achieved. I know that some people said he had indicated he might be interested. That doesn’t surprise me because one of his well-known tactics, and Gaddafi did the same, was to buy time. He knew that the longer he could keep the dialogue going, by hinting that he might be prepared to step down, he wanted the window of opportunity for the US forces in the gulf to be used to pass. They couldn’t just sit there forever. Once they were sent they either had to be used or withdrawn. You can’t keep 100.000 American troops sitting in Kuwait, especially in summer. He knew that as well as Washington.

In my view, these troops shouldn’t have been sent in the first place. Once they were there it was in Saddam’s own interest to try to suggest that lots of other options were possible in the hope that they would prevent the Americans taking the decisive act of using these troops and starting the war. So even if he said things that suggested he was interested in exile, I don’t personally believe it. I can’t prove it. It’s just my judgement, my instinct.

I was struck by the lack of debate on this argument.

Well, Italy was never considering being part of the war. There was a different debate. In this country the issue was: “Do we go to war or do we not go to war?”. The issue was: “Is Saddam Hussein a threat with WMD? Or is he not?” The question of: “Can we avoid a war by him going to exile?” if it became a serious option, if that was the offer on the table, overwhelmingly this country would have accepted. And I’ll tell you something else, I think Tony Blair would have accepted. If it meant exile, not if it meant some other deal. If it meant really giving up power, leaving Iraq and the whole regime disappearing I have no reason to think Tony Blair would have been against it. I don’t know Bush, I know Blair and I think he would have been relieved because he was caught in a terrible dilemma. He had promised support to Bush, he believed that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power and yet he was tearing his party apart. He was becoming very unpopular in the country. Why should he have not welcomed a genuine exile, if it meant leaving power and the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime? I think it’s extremely likely that he would have seen this as a marvellous resolution because he could have then said forever this is what we achieved without a shot being fired.

You might know there was an Arab League meeting on March 1st 2003 at Sharm el Sheik, where the item was meant to be in the agenda. President Moussa tried to have this discussion but basically Gaddafi disrupted the meeting.

Yes, I’ve seen the report of that. But what does it prove?

It may prove that the Arab world was starting to really consider this opportunity. Therefore the Western countries should have had an interest in having this debate.

Forgive me, it was well known that all the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia were desperate to avoid a war because of the destabilization that it would create and also because of the fear – rightly – that the main beneficiary would be Iran, because of the destruction of Iraq and that was part of my reason for thinking the war should not have happened. I don’t doubt they would have liked Saddam Hussein to go into exile, I have no doubt they would try and persuade him to do so, I just don’t think there was a serious possibility that he would accept that advice.

It appears that if he was requested to go by Arab League and not forced out by the Western countries, he would have accepted. It makes sense.

Do you believe that? Why should Saddam do what the Arab League ask him to do if it means giving up power.

For the sake of his country and people.

Since when did Saddam Hussein care for anybody’s benefit except his own?

Well, at least he would have shown that he was better than Bush and Blair.

Yes, he wanted to do that, but not by giving up power. What is that we know about Saddam? About his history, about his personality, about his family.. Because the Arab League says “please give up power”? “Of course, if you want me to give up power, why didn’t you ask me ten years ago?” I’d like to believe it. I just don’t think it fits the facts. I may be wrong. We will never know. But that’s my judgement.

At least it’s an argument proving that there were huge interests behind the war and that nothing could stop them, not even an exile served on a silver plate. Because doing nothing was not an option.

Sure. The vast majority of the world wanted to avoid the war and would have been delighted if Saddam Hussein had been prepared to step down. All he had to do was make one speech, one sentence, saying: “I’m willing to leave Iraq, step down as president to avoid a war”. Then that initiative would have had to be treated absolutely seriously. Not just Blair, my guess is even Bush would have preferred that. Why shouldn’t he. To have victory without risk. It’s what politicians want! Bush and Blair were not irrational, they were foolish in my view, their judgement was poor, but they are not warmongers who just enjoy slaughtering people. That wasn’t the problem and to be offered the end of Saddam Hussein, which is what they said was necessary. The end of his WMD programme, which they believed existed, and to achieve all of that without a single American or British soldier having to die, why shouldn’t they be happy to have that? What they were afraid of is by giving this idea respectability before there was hard evidence that was simply going to cause delay. That was simply going to keep for weeks and months and it’s exactly what the Iranians are trying to do at the moment with their nuclear programme. They keep raising bogus initiatives to buy time. We would be interested in doing a deal with Brazil or Turkey by the uranium enrichment and all they are doing is trying to buy time. I don’t blame them, it’s a logical tactic, but we shouldn’t be fooled.

Therefore you don’t think that the diplomatic strategy implemented by the Arab League was at an early stage yet?

Well, it should have been up to Saudi Arabia. It’s no use in having these initiatives weeks before the war was going to break out unless they could deliver early results. The Arab League has not been very good at getting together, or speaking out.

Sure, the Arab League is not like the EU but..

I’m not sure I would go along with the comparison, or maybe yes I would go along with it but not in the way you are implying. I’ve made these remarks. You may say: “why was I against the war?”

Would you have voted against it if you were an MP at the time?

Yes, I hope I would. I was against the war because I believed that since the Gulf War the effect of the no-fly zone and the sanctions regime, which were not perfect, they had so damaged, emasculated Saddam Hussein’s power. He was no longer the threat he wanted to be. He had lost the ability and that is why in the Gulf War, after he had annexed Kuwait, the US-led coalition, because it was not just the US and the UK, it was Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, all the Middle Eastern countries provided troops because they thought he was a threat. And when the Iraq War happened, apart from Kuwait, all of the coalition of the willing was Baltic States and Micronesia. The countries of the region said: “we don’t like Saddam Hussein but we no longer believe he is that kind of threat” and that was my view.

In fact, Hans Blix said to the Iraq Inquiry that basically “Iraq was supine”.

Yes and not because he was a better man. He wouldn’t reform. He had the power removed from him. He was no longer able to invade other countries.

So you think this is just speculation?

No. First of all it was an honest attempt by significant number of people to try to prevent the war. There was nothing wrong in making that effort. It was a very honourable, very morale and ethical initiative. I have to say I never thought it was ever likely to succeed because we were not dealing with an ordinary dictator who might be interested in a long life retired in a comfortable part of the world where he could enjoy himself. Saddam was power or nothing. And also, he had lost touch with reality because we knew then and we know in retrospect that his understanding of what was happening in the world around him was very limited. The people around him giving advice only told him what he wanted to hear. They were too scared. It was too dangerous to give honest advice.

Recently, you criticised the secret meetings between Gaddafi and Mr Blair.

Right. There are two separate issues there. I’ve always paid tribute to Blair’s achievement, along with other people, in persuading Gaddafi to drop his WMD programme. That was a solid achievement not just by the British government, but by a number of people. Blair was a major contributor to that achievement and that is entitled to credit for. Where I think however he was extremely naïve was after that. He went along with his view that somehow Gaddafi could be persuaded to be a normal, responsible partner for the West, respecting human rights, law and order, against terrorism and all that sort of stuff. I’ve always thought that that was complete rubbish, very foolish and very bad. That is linked to the Megrahi episode. The arguments used for Megrahi’s release were humanitarian. But that’s not good enough. When you are deciding to release someone before they have completed the sentence, you have to take into account the severity of the crime, which in this case was mass murder of hundreds of people; you have to take into account how long they have spent in prison compared to their sentence (he was condemned to 26 or 27 years) and it’s five or six, a small proportion. The fact that he was thought to be terminally ill, even if they believed that, it might have been an argument for transferring from a prison to a prison hospital, giving his family access as much as they wish to see him. You can make his conditions much easier. It was not an argument for liberating him, particularly when that was likely to cause, as it did cause, quite severe damage to our relations with the US, because most of the families of those who lost their lives were American citizens.

Did it also damage the reputation of the British democracy?

The decision was technically taken by the Scottish government and not by the British government and the British government tried to distance itself from it, saying “it has nothing to do with us”.

But they didn’t succeed very well.

Well, to be fair, the Scottish national government in Edinburgh did not want to be ordered what to do. The made their decision for their own reasons, but it was also the decision the British government wanted them to take and that was wrong.

Regardless of the outcome of the Iraq Inquiry, do you think that Tony Blair or the British government should apologize for the decision taken by the government to go to war?

I can give you my personal opinion. I do get irritated by this growing fashion and enthusiasm for apologies. Particularly, for apologies to be given by people who were not themselves the people who took the decisions. So that our government apologizes for something that happened hundreds of years ago.. We apologized for slavery in the 18th century, we apologized for something that Julio Caesar did, or Attila the Hun, you know. I’m sounding flipping, I don’t mean to but, you know, there can be circumstances when an apology is justified. If the minister or government has itself done something which is discovered to be wrong and unjust and has hurt other people then the process of healing can sometimes benefit from that. But sometimes you are asked, or governments are asked, to apologise for things that happened in a different age, when values were different, when judgements were based on different criteria and that I think is pretty dumb.

Also in this case?

In this case, if Mr Blair wants to apologize, I think there would be some reason to do that because he allowed his instincts to outweigh his proper responsibilities. And he made the wrong decision with serious consequences. If he felt he had to acknowledge that by apologizing, then that would be very welcome but I see no point in asking people who were not part themselves in that decision.

Do you think that the mistakes made in the judgement of the Iraq and the business trips of Mr Blair to Libya to meet with Gaddafi constitute a sort of loophole in democracy?

No, not necessarily. It is entirely acceptable that Prime Ministers should develop personal relationships with other Heads of government if they believe that the public interest can be best served in that way. You can’t do everything through ambassadors and public speeches. Private diplomacy is necessary, desirable. Sometimes secret diplomacy is necessary and there are many examples when it has produced first class results of which have benefited the world. So I don’t criticise that kind of procedure, but when you’re doing it that way you have to do two things: you have to first of all not treat it as a one-man mission. We are not a system of personal government, we are a cabinet government. So these matters should be discussed collectively, if not by all, at least by the ministers who have the main responsibility in this area. And secondly, if you are doing things that are secret, you have to be much more certain you got it right. Starting wars is requires you to be much more certain that you’re right because the price to pay if you’re wrong is much higher.

I’d like to ask no your opinion about some documents leaked in September 2009 where the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, refused to disclose documents containing a confirmation that was given to the Americans, through the person of Ellen Tauscher, that the Iraq Inquiry would have put in place measures to cover the US interests during the inquiry.

I think I know what you are referring to. One of the issues that emerged is the relationship between the intelligence agencies and this particular example you mentioned between the UK and the US. The UK and the US for many years, it goes back for 60 years, have a very close cooperation and collaboration in sharing information. Fundamental to the principle of one intelligence agency giving some of its intelligence obtained, to another intelligence agency is what is called the “control principle”. The country that is receiving this information promises either not to publish it or to make it available to anyone else without the permission of the country that supplied it and that is something that applies to all intelligence agencies around the world because otherwise they would share information. You collaborate with the allies who are closer to you, who you trust, but you don’t want the information to get in thirds where you have no idea who would be seeing it. I think the example you are giving refers to that situation where the Americans had asked for assurances and they said they do not want this information to be released to third parties and the Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, gave those assurances. That was the right thing to do.

He said the American interests would be protected.

It has to be. It’s not just an ethical question. If you don’t do that they will never again provide you with information. It’s self-interest. It’s not just saying: “we promised and we must keep that promise”. If you don’t keep your promise the information dries up and in the relationship between the UK and the US, because of the size of the US intelligence operation, ours is very good but theirs is ten time the size, we receive far more valuable information from them than we are able to give to them. So, it’s cutting of your nose off your face. The Chilcot Inquiry would have seen the information but on a confidential basis. What they will not be permitted to do is to publish it. When it comes in the report, they will not be able to refer to it in any detail that would identify it. That is the distinction.

So the fact the British public hears but is prevented from accessing this information, of course secrecy is crucial but..

But it’s not abused, this is the whole point.

How do you establish when it is the point?

Look, the public interest is that where information must be kept secret because otherwise terrorists would hear about it, or the Russians, or the Chinese, anybody who is hostile to our interests, then it is everyone’s interest to have that information kept secret. You cannot share secret information with 60 millions British citizens without Al Qaeda getting it as well. So you have to make a choice. The problem, the challenge is to try to ensure that the government of the day does not use that as an excuse to keep information secret not because it would help terrorists but because it would embarrass the government and that’s why my committee exists. That is why we are appointed by act of parliament. We are not part of the government, so we don’t have to defend the government. If the government is embarrassed that’s their problem not ours. We have the legal right to have access to all the most top secret information, to find out information the Americans have given to the British intelligence agencies. We see it, we can ask questions about it privately and if we believe that this is not being handled in a public interest and it’s been abused for other reasons we can make a complaint about that. We can draw attention. That is a way you can reconcile. But you do not meet the public interest by saying you keep secret information secret. That way you might as well cause harm to your intelligence agencies.

So in your opinion the Cameron government, looking at the reasons, and all the mistakes made and the lies that were told to the British public..

Those are all subjective opinions, I might agree with you, but not everyone would. These are controversial issues. That’s why we have the Chilcot Inquiry, to come to a view on that.

All right, imagine then that the Chilcot inquiry would publish a very critical report with evidence that both the parliament and the public were misled. Do you think that the current government should take action somehow to restore some faith in democracy? Emma Bonino always says it looks like the US, the UK, and the Italians of course, have replaced the sense of State with the raison d’état, the reason of State.

I think the controversy and the disillusion over the way Blair behaved has already had consequences. First of all on the use of intelligence, the Blair government itself has publicly admitted they got it wrong. Not that just the intelligence was wrong, but that they should have never asked the Joint Intelligence Committee to produce this document. It has never happened before and the JIC said it would never happen again.

The second thing is that parliament insisted that the legislation has been passed that in future Britain cannot go to war without a vote of parliament.

But the parliament did vote.

Yes but it wasn’t a legal requirement. It was a political decision that Blair took, that the parliament should vote. Thirdly, what has already happened is for any Prime Minister, for example when Mr Cameron was arguing for support for the Libya operation, there was much greater scepticism than there would have been 20 years ago or 10 years ago, because in the past if the Prime Minister said “this is in the national interest”, people would say “it is your job to tell us and if you say it we accept it”. Because of the way Blair behaved, that was eroded and it takes time to be re-established. If the Chilcot inquiry will be very critical of the government and of Blair, that will have a major impact on his reputation. It’s not a criminal matter; it’s a judgement, not criminality. So there are no legal consequences, but quite serious political consequences.

Over the last 10 years or so a new right has started to develop: the “right to the truth”.

I thought that begun with the Old Testament and the Moses.

Apparently the UN are updating it.

They’re catching up!

Yes, they also established the 24th March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. Although at early stage, do you think that such a right could serve both the Iraqi civilians who suffered grave losses and abuses and the families of British and American fallen soldiers?

It is always healthy to publicize the need to respect human rights and to condemn violations of human rights. Whether you do that through a day or some other symbolic way it may vary from time to time and from country to country. But that is essentially symbolic. It’s quite useful but what we are living through has been over the last 100 years a massive increase in the pressure on governments to respect human rights. It didn’t just begin a few years ago. Gladstone, when he was Prime Minister of this country condemned the Ottoman Empire for atrocities in the Balkans and public opinion was hugely critical. These things happened in the past. Now they are much more woven into the fabric of international relations so we have for example the “responsibility to protect”, which is now a new concept, we have the International Criminal Court which is not just a symbolic court: Milosevic, Karadzic and other have got to The Hague. It’s getting important consideration. So, huge progress, but a long way to go.

How did you defend you position on the Iraq war while you were not an MP?

It wasn’t just me. In parliament people like Kenneth Clarke who’s in Cabinet today, was against. Each of the parties, Conservatives and Labour, had strong minorities that took a different view. I think part of the explanation why the Conservative Party supported Mr Blair was that our own leader was Ian Duncan Smith, who was even more pro-American and instinctively supportive of Washington was doing. At least as much as Blair was. Possibly more. That had a powerful impact.

In his book The secret way to war Mark Danner writes: “we’ve entered an ‘age of frozen scandal’. The great problem in this new age is that revelation is followed by nothing but more revelation.

I don’t follow that argument at all. He implies that there was in the past some golden age. What was the punishment imposed for those who were responsible for the First World War?

Well, there was Nuremberg for the Second World War.

Sure, since we’ve had the Internet and the ICC we’ve had many examples of people who have been punished. I don’t understand that because he’s right to say that the circumstances have changed, but it’s a change in the right direction. What has happened is that because of the Internet, because of mobile technology and so forth, because Freedom of Information Acts it has proved increasingly impossible, not just difficult, not just for democratic governments, by Britain or Italy, but for dictatorships like China to conceal what they are doing, what they are up to. And when you combine that with GSP, which is able to pinpoint someone in North Korea or in Cuba or in the remaining dictatorships. We have far better ability and that is used in a very practical way. First of all to identify when things are happening and should not be happening and to allocate responsibility to the people involved. If he’s saying accountability is not perfect of course he’s right. If he’s saying dictators or Prime ministers often get away with it he’s right. But to say that somehow it didn’t use to happen it’s getting around. It’s less easy to get away with it now that it was ever in the past because there are much more open governments, more transparent.

So, provided that the end of the Iraq Inquiry will be that the public was misled, the Iraq might be an exception to the positive trend whereby democracy is getting better.

The fact that Blair behaved in a particular way, once that war was over, he would have like to forget about it. He hasn’t been allowed to. Not just by public opinion, but by even when the Labour Party was still in power, they set up the Chilcot Inquiry. His own party, his own government was obliged by public pressure and by parliamentary pressure to set up this inquiry. That didn’t happen in the past. Sometimes it did but not frequently. One can easily criticise that what is happening is not enough but what is supposed to happen? What does this gentleman want? Does he want Mr Blair to be tried for treason, put in the tower of London?

Not in the tower but to The Hague..

In my judgement, although I was very critical, he’s not a war criminal. I think he was misguided, I think he was foolish. His judgement was poor. But that has never been a criminal offence. You don’t convict someone for being a war criminal because he got it wrong. When someone wants to wage war for aggressive reasons and is doing so for criminal purposes then you are quite properly taken in The Hague. But because they thought, misguidedly, some are right. You and I might agree that the war to liberate Kuwait was justified. I think the war to liberate the Falkland Islands was justified. I happen to think it was right the judgement to go into Afghanistan. Many mistakes since then but the original decision I think it was the right one. Iraq I think it was the wrong decision. Kosovo I think it was the wrong decision. So you have to make judgements, but because I think it, that doesn’t mean people who don’t agree with me are criminals who ought to end up in The Hague.

In a way you are blaming it to the intelligence.

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that politicians, Prime ministers sometimes do very stupid things. Sometimes they are so convinced that what they are doing is right that they don’t weigh the evidence properly. Their judgement is faulty and for that reason they have to be sensed, they have to stripped of power, their reputation may never recover. That’s a big punishment. Blair will go to his grave..

..with a lot of money.

No, not for that reason. He has a lot of money because a lot of people wish to use his skills since he stopped being Prime Minister.

..and since he’s become Catholic.

Well, Catholics have no monopoly on virtue or vice. Blair didn’t become what he is because he became a Catholic. I mean, since Blair ceased to Prime Minister he’s a private citizen and he’s perfectly entitled to do what he wants. If people want to employ him, that’s his good fortune. But Blair is not a Saddam Hussein. He’s not a Milosevic, nor a Mladic. Even Berlusconi is not a Mladic. Berlusconi may be a criminal for domestic reasons, not for international reasons. He doesn’t star wars.

No, but he breaks every possible rule, from the parliament to the Cabinet..

Yes but the unique difference when Blair misbehaves is that he becomes unpopular in Britain. When Berlusconi does, you still vote for him.

But you have a functioning media.

You too have functioning media, but Berlusconi owns it.

The political parties own it. Thank you.