Faced with an ultimatum, the Taliban again refused to surrender Bin Laden, who initially denied involvement, and an American-led aerial bombing campaign followed.

In fact the Taliban publicly offered in October of 2001 to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country, provided the U.S. halted the illegal bombing of Afgh­anistan and produced the necessary evidence about involvement of Bin Laden or any of his associates in the 11 September attacks. Would they have gone through with the offer? We'll never know because Bush rejected it, put­ting an end to any possibility of a potentially peaceful, legal resolution to the events of 11 September 2001, and opened up the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the millions who have lost their lives or had them destroyed as a result.

Update: Jason Burke says he'll correct obituary.

The paradox for NATO and the Americans is that in September, 2010, they will have deployed the largest number of troops they ever had in Afghanistan, and yet that is when they are the most vulnerable, as the supply needs for this huge force are potentially crippling.

‘Mere mortals are still inspired by a certain awe,’ he gushes.

Bill Clinton is ‘an extraordinary mixture of easygoing charm and ferocious intellectual capacity. Probably . . . he is the most formidable politician I ever met.’ President Bush ‘has great intuition.’ And of Barack Obama, he says: ‘The personal character is clear: this is a man with steel in every part of him.’

Stay classy Blair.

Meanwhile he's been pelted with eggs and shoes at a book signing in Ireland:

Skirmishes broke out between protesters and police at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Protesters shouted … "Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?"

"It really is shameful that somebody can be responsible for the death and destruction that he was responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan and walk away without any accounting for that and become a very wealthy man off the back of it."

… perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek …

In October of 2001 the Taliban publicly offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country, provided the U.S. halted the illegal bombing of Afghanistan and produced the necessary evidence about involvement of bin Laden or any of his associates in the 11 September attacks. Bush rejected this, putting an end to any possibility of a potentially peaceful, legal resolution to the events of 11 September 2001, and opened up the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq and the threat of invasion of Iran, along with the millions who have lost their lives or had them destroyed as a result.

It's one of life's more savage ironies, but one which has become drearily familiar, that your headline "Death toll rises in Afghanistan" (Leader, The Herald, July 11) means British military fatalities. These are given piquancy because they exceed similar losses incurred in Iraq. Thus the headline. As a matter of fact, combined, they approximate the loss of Iraqi civilian lives only last week—repeat, week—in Mosul and Baghdad. But that's how war's rhythms (and its successes and failures) are calibrated. That hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis have died since 2001 hardly raises an eyebrow, far less engendering a headline. But, then, death "over there" was held to be one of the reasons for invasion, and for stopping it "over here", on the streets of Leeds, London or Glasgow. Or so it is said. Thus death over there, excepting ours, is inconsequential in our mindset: even a million deaths by invasion and occupation.