1. A thread detailing Boris Johnson’s amazing adventures in journalism during the Iraq war.
2. Boris backed the government's position on Iraq in 2003, writing that Saddam Hussein was a zit that needed to be squeezed. 
3. Specifically berating non-experts like Martin Sheen for not being experts.
How times have change.
How times have change.
4. Despite backing the government, he did turn on it in an incident which saw his boss, Conrad Black, castigating him for playing “opportunistic party politics” with the death of Dr David Kelly.
5. By October 2004, the “manipulative and morally degenerate” Boris is attacking journalists who are being loyal to the government over the war and calling for Tony Blair’s impeachment.
6. Not out of sincerity, Gwen Halley suggestrf, but because the slow masticating panda “has no real ideas or core beliefs of his own”.
(So maybe not everything has changed.)
(So maybe not everything has changed.)
7. And while there may be some truth in this, a month later we find out Boris Johnson woke up horrified to hear that George W. Bush had been re-elected.
8. But, no. He backed George W Bush while throwing the weight of the Spectator behind him.
Apparently, impeachment doesn’t stretch as far as the President.
Apparently, impeachment doesn’t stretch as far as the President.
9. Imagining campaigning for something and then waking up after the results have been announced feeling terrible and filled with regret?
10. Of course, Tony Blair is now a great ally, and his support proved an invaluable testimonial to the president.
11. All in an article declaring that Tony Blair “must make sure the president delivers”.
12. Unsurprisingly when it all went badly, guess whose support he referred to as “messianic”?
13. And he condemns the government’s spin doctors for exaggerating the threat.
We do. however, have the benefit of being able to cross reference that position with Boris Johnson’s original article from before the war.
We do. however, have the benefit of being able to cross reference that position with Boris Johnson’s original article from before the war.
14. The substance of his argument was that we shouldn’t wait for evidence which was never going to be complete, and instead take pre-emptive action based on the fact Saddam Hussein was a problem that wasn’t’ going to go away.
15. So Boris Johnson's war can be summed up as backing the war, then needing Conrad Black to be his moral compass.
Yes, Conrad Black...moral compass...
Yes, Conrad Black...moral compass...
16. Attacking he fellow journalists.
17. Calling for the impeachment of Tony Blair at the same time as backing George W Bush’s re-election.
18. Calling for Tony Blair to back George W Bush, before going on to complain that Tony Blair backed George W Bush.
19. And accusing the government of spinning the evidence of a threat. Evidence that he had previously said would never be conclusive and we shouldn’t wait for.
20. Boris Johnson acted so badly in the war, one journalist called him arrogant, spoilt, manipulative, morally degenerative, nasty, shameless, malicious, a pint of milk laced with arsenic, and sloppy. All in one article!
21. At best he was only these things, and at worst, something he was accused of at the time, he was profile profiteering from the war.
/End
/End
