Iraq: where there was doubt, Blair brings clarity at last

It’s such a relief finally to understand one of the great moral questions of our time. And it’s thanks to Tony Blair, whose intellectual and ethical qualities must be one of the wonders of the modern world.

Following his appearance before the Iraq enquiry yesterday, I now realise that our justification for the war isn’t that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction then. It’s that had we not overthrown him, he might have had them now. The legality of the war is unassailable simply because it prevented the development of what might otherwise have become a terrible threat.

This is an exercise in preventive justice that ought to be extended into other domains.

This is an exercise in preventive justice that ought to be extended into other domains.

• young men without proper jobs should be arrested on the grounds that they might otherwise become car thieves

• students should be arrested on the grounds that they might otherwise take illegal drugs

• anyone expressing an inclination to go into banking should be arrested on the grounds that they might screw the economy and then ask us to fund their bonuses

• and perhaps a British Prime Minister who gave any sign of developing faith, religious or otherwise, should be arrested on the grounds that he might kill an awful lot of people on no better basis than an unshakable belief in his own infallibility