Oh dear, oh dear...

I used the word "depressing" about Tony Blair's appearance before the Iraq Inquiry the other week - so what adjective do I use for Gordon Brown's performance? Evasive and dissembling immediately spring to mind, but they're not quite right. It was in fact a minor master-class in appearing to answer the question whilst in reality giving little or nothing away. It was a combination of pleading ignorance, dealing in generalities and avoiding specifics and hiding behind statistics. After four hours, we had learned precious little - which I'm sure was the purpose of the exercise as far as Brown was concerned. Perhaps the most telling comment he made was that as he saw it the justification for going to war with Iraq was not the fear of weapons of mass destruction, nor even regime change, but to punish Iraq for failing to comply with UN resolutions. I assume therefore that, even as we speak, plans are in hand to invade Israel, whose decades-long policy of disobeying or ignoring UN resolutions puts Saddam's in the shade? Or is it, as I suspect, one law for our friends and another for everybody else?