Salma Yaqoob

Across every TV screen and newspaper appears the face of Tony Blair; the man who took us to war in Iraq; the man who justified this war by lies about weapons of mass destruction; the man whose decision to plunge Iraq into the nightmare of war has now cost the lives of at least 100,000 civilians.

Blair has, apparently, shed tears: ""Do they really suppose I don't care, don't feel, don't regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died", he says in extracts from his new book. But one thing he does not regret, and will not apologise for, is the decision to go to war itself.

He does not seem to understand that this is not about his personal feelings. Nothing is made better by knowing that he acted in 'good faith', even if we were to believe him. The deep and divisive political issues at stake are not resolved by the tears of Tony Blair.

He took momentous political decisions in the face of huge opposition. He now says he never guessed the "nightmare that unfolded". But as the Stop the War Coalition says: "The majority of people in Britain had no difficulty in seeing that the nightmare we faced was not Iraq, but Tony Blair and his war policies."