The Muddled Mind of Lord Prescott

Back when he was Tony Blair's deputy prime minister he was for it but now Lord/Baron John Prescott says the Anglo-American war on Iraq "can't be justified."

Prescott says he supported the conquest of Iraq back in 2003 because he'd been told that George w. Bush would sort out the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

Speaking on BBC One’s This Week, however, he said he “can't just disown it” but now thought the war was wrong.

“I go through my thoughts trying to justify it,” he said. “It cannot be justified as an intervention.”

He had been persuaded of the wisdom of the intervention because, he said, Mr Bush “was quite prepared to have a plan for Israel and the whole problem in regard to Palestine and he promised.”

But the plan "fell apart as it often does in American politics because the influence domestically is too great", he added.

Prescott's former boss, Tony Blair, has spent the week moaning that people are still "very abusive" of him for dragging Britain into America's Iraq adventure and he's given up trying to persuade them (i.e. everybody but himself and Dick Cheney) that it was the right decision.