Open thread for night owls: Forgetting war criminals makes for 'magically disappearing blood'

At Dissident Voice, Media Lens writes The Return Of The King: Tony Blair And The Magically Disappearing Blood:

How many war crimes does a western leader have to commit before he is deemed persona non grata by the corporate media and the establishment? Apparently there is no limit, if we are to judge by the prevailing reaction to Tony Blair's return to the political stage.

On July 11, it was announced that Blair would be 'contributing ideas and experience' to Labour leader Ed Miliband's policy review. He will apparently provide advice on how to 'maximise' the economic and sporting legacies of the 2012 London Olympics.

The Guardian described the announcement mildly as a 'controversial move'; not necessarily in the country at large, the paper claimed, but 'perhaps especially within the Labour party'. One Guardian headline declared 'Return of the King'.

The 'left-wing' John Harris did his bit in the Guardian to smooth Blair's path:

He's only 59, the picture of perma-tanned vitality and keen to 'make a difference'. Could a fourth stint in No 10 even be on the cards? We shouldn't rule it out.

Harris declared 'that for all his mistakes, transgressions and howling misjudgments, there remains something magnetic about his talents.'

When Blair appeared at a Labour fundraising dinner at Arsenal's Emirates stadium, Harris noted that:

He was greeted by the obligatory crowd of protesters, still furious about his role in the Iraq war.

That's the curious thing about peace protesters; endlessly 'furious' about the country being dragged into an illegal war that led to the deaths of around one million people, created four million Iraqi refugees, devastated Iraq's infrastructure, generated untold suffering and burned obscenely huge sums of public money in times of 'austerity'. Perhaps we Brits should simply display that famed stiff upper lip and move on. [...]

[Given the talk of possible attacks on Iran, it] is worth referring once again to the testimony of General Wesley Clark, the former Nato chief, when he recalled a conversation with a Pentagon general in 2001, a few weeks after the September 11 attacks:

He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, 'I just got this down from upstairs' ' meaning the Secretary of Defense's office ' 'today.' And he said: This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.

It seems that journalists simply cannot help themselves in ignoring such inconvenient facts. And so, unless the public demands otherwise, corporate editors and journalists will continue to perform their usual obedient role in the service of power.

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