I had a sort of minor epiphany this afternoon.

I was reading some blogs from Iraq which I ended up at via Bloggers4Labour and Harry’s Place, and I was particularly interested in this article on the Free Iraqi blog and all the comments which have been added to it by various people.

What struck me was the very high regard, respect and admiration a lot of people overseas, especially in Iraq have for Tony Blair. I am instinctively against war in general but this gave me a whole new perspective. Its ironic that the actions which have made him most unpopular over here have had such a strong opposite effect elsewhere.

After reading this, and thinking about it, I am a lot more prepared to accept that there was a moral dimension to invading Iraq. That is not to say that I am not suspicious about the motives of America (Oil, the many financial links between the Bush family and the companies like Halliburton, and so on) but I can see that there is a lot of appreciation in Iraq itself.

I really can’t imagine what it must have been like living there under Saddam, although if things had been just a little bit different I might have found out… when I was working at ICL I had considered applying for a job over there but before I could look into it too closely Saddam invaded Kuwait and ICL scaled things down somewhat.

Hot on the heels of that, I saw Tony Blair’s speech at Scarborough on Sky News and found myself strangely motivated by it. I think it was a very well-delivered speech and made some excellent points. In fact I went straight out and delivered some Labour newsletters which I had spare.