Gordon Brown's Baghdad Brickbat For Tony Blair ...

So, British prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown got to Baghdad and back without the need for a flag draped wooden box form of transport - in spite of the (nine shot) shelling of the so called, so-safe Green Zone while he was there.

Well goody-goody for you, Gordon. It's just such a shame some 150 or so of our uniformed young countrymen who went were sent to Iraq weren't so sodding lucky. Eh?

Credit where it's due though, chancellor. You must have thought long and hard before deftly delivering your (hardly hidden) brickbat, so obviously aimed at your soon to be ex boss, Tony (bloody liar) Blair.

Gordon Brown has promised to prevent the "party political" use of intelligence material so that he would never repeat Tony Blair's mistake in taking Britain to war on a flawed prospectus.

On his first visit to Baghdad, the incoming prime minister said he would learn lessons from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when Mr Blair based his case for war on intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Brown said he had already begun discussions with Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure security and intelligence material was collected "free of the party political process" and was " fully verified" if it was to be made public.

"That is learning the lessons from things that happened in the past, and we should make sure that we can do things better in the future," he said.

And how about this?

His remarks were seen as a barely coded criticism of Mr Blair and an attempt to draw a line under a controversy which left a stain on the [Blair, New Labour] Government.

Well, we shall wait to see what we shall see - before judging Gordon Brown by his actions rather than by 'barely coded criticisms'.

Read the rest of The Independent's relevant report, right here.

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