Blair also discussed his belief that after the September 11 attacks, Cheney "thought the world had to be made anew and ... it had to be done by force and with urgency." "He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc," writes Blair. In his interview with Amanpour today, Blair elaborated, saying you can't "dismiss" Cheney's view:
BLAIR: He didn't say that in those meetings, but, you know, Dick was always absolutely hard-line on these things. I mean, I think he would openly avow this. His worldview was that the world had to be remade after September the 11th.
But you can't dismiss that Cheney view and say, well, that's just -- that's stupid. It's -- it's not. It may require amendment. You may disagree with it, but...
AMANPOUR: Is it possible?
BLAIR: Well ... it's possible over time, with the right combination of hard and soft power, I think, to get to the point where nations that we regard or did regard as threats become allies. But that is not always going to have a hard power solution to it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/05/tony-blair-attack-iran-cheney-iraq_n_706116.html