Oil profits: Tony Blair took thousands of pounds from UI Energy Corporation Tony Blair prides himself on his moral compass, and claims that his profound faith has guided all the important decisions in his life. And yet his conscience apparently gave no peep of protest as he set about filling his pockets with Iraqi oil money. The news that our former Prime Minister took hundreds of thousands of pounds from multinational oil giant UI Energy Corporation is shocking enough - but even worse is the fact that he spent two years trying to conceal it, dubiously citing commercial confidentiality. The first fact merely tells us that our former leader is driven by a desperate desire to feather his nest, while the second shows that he must have known such a deal was wrong. Legally, of course, his oil fortune is above board. But morally it is unconscionable. This is the man who took the deeply unpopular decision to join forces with the Americans and topple Saddam. This is the man who rode roughshod over any objections with terrifying claims about 'weapons of mass destruction'. This is the man who said it wasn't about the oil. And in the years since, as we've learned about the dodgy dossiers and the secret meetings and the spurious reasoning, there was still one consolation: that whatever the dubious means he used to take us to war, at least Tony Blair was doing what he thought was right. Can we believe that any more, as he pockets another £100,000 from a speech to the credulous Americans who still worship him for his slavish support of George Bush? Does it ring true now we know that Blair also went to great lengths to hide £1 million he earned from advising the Kuwaiti royal family? Moral compass? He's driven by a greedometer. There's nothing this 'man of principle' wants more than to join the ranks of the multi-millionaires he idolises. He doesn't want respect, just riches. Meanwhile, since the Western invasion brought U.S. energy firms into Iraq, its government predicts a 300 per cent increase in oil production, which has already leapt from 300,000 barrels a day after the first Gulf War to 2.5 million barrels. There's money being made by the sackful here, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of it is going to the man who made the whole bonanza possible in the first place. As Blair and his rich chums cash in, Iraq's soil is stained with the blood of 179 British troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians. What did they die for? The oil to fuel Blair's first private jet? Our former Prime Minister famously claimed he felt the hand of history on his shoulder. What we couldn't see was that he also had his hand in the till. His moral compass? No, Blair follows his greedometer
Last updated at 11:29 PM on 19th March 2010
Saturday, 20 March 2010
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