Tony Blair's ignorance of Iraq, and now Iran too?

The main impression I got from both Mr Blair's evidence to the inquiry last year and his autobiography was his extraordinary ignorance of Iraq. 

 Thus writes Patrick Cockburn in the Independent (ht) ... And Cockburn adds:

Mr Blair's enthusiasm for a confrontation with Iran stems partly from the fact that he never seems to have understood what went wrong for him in Iraq. It was not so much the war against Saddam Hussein that doomed the venture as the occupation which followed. He and President George Bush might have got away with overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his regime if they had swiftly withdrawn and handed over real power to an interim Iraqi government.

They did the exact opposite. Instead of withdrawing, the Americans and British occupied the whole country and showed every sign of wanting to remain in control. The occupation was, as Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister and one of the more pro-Western of Iraqi leaders, said, "the mother of all mistakes".

Interesting to note, BTW, how the Wall Street Journal viewed Tony Blair dealing with questions from the Chilcot Commission ....  "The prosecution of Tony Blair" .... muahahahaha  .... Can Faux Noose beat WSJ's headline?  (Update: in light of the comment--below--I now wish all the more for the prosecution of these war criminals.  But, we will have to start with Kissinger for his Vietnam and Chile decisions.)

Unfortunately, our President froze any potential for investigative commissions by declaring that he was only moving forward and not looking back.  One of the worst decisions he made--well, good politics, but atrocious for principles and democracy.