[The Heir To Blair] Oh no, here we go again...

6 February 2003:

Tony Blair: The danger is that if we allow Iraq to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons they will threaten their own region, there is no way that we would be able to exclude ourselves from any regional conflict there was there as indeed we had to become involved last time they committed acts of external aggression against Kuwait...

North Korea is a country, its people are starving, that is virtually living on the export of ballistic missile technology. Their nuclear scientists are people who are working for other countries as well as North Korea and I'm simply saying to people, if you allow this stuff to proliferate, if you allow it to be traded in, and there are companies so-called supposedly respectable companies in the world trading in this stuff, the terrorists are trying to get hold of it - they will succeed at some point unless we deal with it.

4 April 2003:

David Cameron provoked surprise today when he claimed that North Korea now possessed the capability to launch a nuclear strike against Britain. The Prime Minister pointed to the escalating threats from the regime in Pyongyang as evidence of the need for the United Kingdom to retain the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Speaking to defence workers in Scotland, he said he was "very concerned" about North Korea as it had "extremely dangerous technologies in terms of nuclear and its weapons". He said: "North Korea does now have missile technology that is able to reach, as they put it, the whole of the United States and if they are able to reach the whole of the United States they can reach Europe too. They can reach us too, so that is a real concern."

Like any sane person, I didn't believe that crap about Saddam being able to launch WMDs within 45 minutes for one second. If that really had been the case, then we wouldn't have given him an ultimatum and several weeks' warning that his country was going to be invaded, would we?

And I find my intelligence further insulted by Cameron's claim that the North Koreans have got a spare couple of very long-range missiles which they intend to fire at the UK. Even if they did (which they don't), the chances of them scoring a direct hit are virtually zero.