Mixed media: Apologies and winning voters

MISLEADING CLAIM BRITISH BLOGGER - The call for an apology was never about whether or not it was a good thing to arrest Saddam Hussein, but about whether Blair deliberately misled the country with scare stories about terrorism and WMD and used the deaths of 3000 people in the September 11 attacks as justification to support the entirely unrelated US invasion of Iraq and the deaths of 14,000 more innocents.

This speech was a deliberately ingenuous (sic) attempt to distort the question; a smokescreen. Nobody ever called for Blair to apologise for removing Saddam from power - but from his response, you'd almost believe they had.

* Peter Gasston on Perfect

* * *

WEBSITE COMMENTATOR - You simply cannot put the Iraq issue to one side. And it was not just Blair himself. Blair and his central players misled the country and have made the world demonstrably a more dangerous place. What's worse, he will deceive again. How can we ever trust him on anything? I will never vote for him again - however poor the opposition.

* Tim from Cornwall on BBC world website

* * *

ARAB VIEW - The Prime Minister, however, could not help admitting that the intelligence he relied on to support the war, namely that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, had proved to be wrong. In fact, there was no go for the Prime Minister other than making this admission, because the entire world now knows this.

But, did he have to show bravado by saying he felt no need to apologise for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power? Who asked for an apology for his removal, after all? The Prime Minister, in his desperation, is barking up the wrong tree.

* Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates

* * *

BRITISH TABLOID - The lines of the election war debate are now clearly visible. The Prime Minister insists the invasion was right because "the decision was taken genuinely".

This is emotional fraud. It requires total abdication of judgment. We must love Tony because he believes he is doing the right thing.

Remember that this is the same Prime Minister who offered to keep the Iraqi dictator in power, if only he got rid of the WMD we now know he never had.

* The Daily Mirror

* * *

JUST ENOUGH ON LINE MAGAZINE - People may drift away from Labour over Iraq, but there isn't enough political energy to force a split in the party. Some members feel alienated, but theirs is a plaintive cry to just be recognised by the leadership, rather than a real rebellion. An audience member at "After the Party" complained that her branch had lost more people over Iraq than anything else. "What should the Labour Party do?", asked the chair. "We just want to be listened to," she said, "we don't give anything back."

* Josie Appleton in Spiked Online

* * *

MALTESE NEWSPAPER - The crowd applauded warmly. Sceptics were unconvinced but said the party would unite to win a fresh term in power.

"I don't think this speech changed anything on Iraq," former minister Clare Short, who resigned over the war, said. "Iraq will go on being a mess but the party wants to win the election and will pull together for that."

* The Times of Malta

* * *

LEFT-WING DAILY - He didn't give the full "sorry," but like the liberal parent who does not demand complete humiliation from a remorseful child, the Labour tribe took what they could get ... He could hardly have gone much further.

A full mea culpa, an admission that he had made a historic error in Iraq, would have sounded like a resignation speech. But he could not have done much less either. Anti-war sentiment is sufficiently strong, in Brighton and beyond, that a defiant "I was right and you're all wrong" might have turned a mood into a movement.

* Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian

* * *

AMERICAN NEWSPAPER - The jury was out on whether the Prime Minister had managed to put an end to the most divisive issue of his seven-year-long premiership.

"He should have apologised more," said [Labour Party] delegate Wayne Busbridge. "But it is evenly split. It is a very emotional subject."

* Newsday quoting an AP report