Hands up those who didnt need

Tiptoes · 02-12-2003, 16:47

A leading psychiatrist to tell them this...

Blair not mad - expert
01/12/2003 21:49 - (SA)

London - Tony Blair is not mad, a leading psychiatrist said in findings published on Monday in answer to ironic suggestions by the media that the prime minister had lost it with his Iraqi policy.

Psychiatrist Allen Beveridge wrote of Blair in the latest issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: "He has the lawyer's ability to defend positions without necessarily believing in them..."

The expertise was prompted by comments in the media in connection with Blair's Iraqi policy, which closely mirrored that of President George W Bush and had drawn widespread opposition in Britain, including demonstrations during a Bush visit to London last month.

Writing in The Times newspaper, columnist Matthew Parris claimed Blair used illogical arguments to justify involving Britain in the Iraqi war without United Nations backing.

Parris wrote of "a demented capacity to convince himself it is the other guy who is cheating".

Another journalist, Peter Dunn, wrote in the leftwing weekly, the New Statesman, that Blair was suffering from "self-delusion on a heroic scale... ".

'Tricks of the trade'

Psychiatrist Paul Brok was also quoted in the press as saying Blair was "a plausible psychopath."

But Beveridge wrote in the highly respected journal: "The most prosaic explanation for these qualities is that he is a lawyer, merely using the tricks of the trade to argue a case... "

Blair's administration has been under attack for months about its sensational claim in a September 2002 dossier on Iraq that Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.

Blair remains Bush's strongest supporter of the war in Iraq, deploying more than 40 000 troops to support the campaign to oust Saddam.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction, claims in a BBC radio report that the government exaggerated intelligence on Iraq, and the subsequent suicide in July of British government weapons expert David Kelly, the source of the BBC story, turned into the worst crisis of Blair's six years in power.