So, Tony Blair‘s Head of M15 opposed the “war on terror”. Eliza Manningham-Buller also opposed the invasion of Iraq. I wonder whether she said so at the time. Her confession comes in a Reith lecture to be broadcast next week – but it is already in the can. One wonders whether by the time the Iraq Inquiry reports there will be anyone to be found beyond the former  Prime Minister and his old friend George W Bush, to defend either the “war on terror”, or the invasion.

And yet, beyond Robin Cook and a tiny handful of other political rebels, there were only two “officials” who put their beliefs on the line at the time. The redoubtable Elizabeth Wilmshurst – number two in the Foreign Office legal department – and Carne Ross, a senior UK diplomat at the UN – both paid the ultimate price in both nobility and pensions, in resigning over it all. Both were fast rising stars in their departments, none of their superiors saw fit to join them.

Carne Ross’s book, The Leaderless Revolution, is published this week. I have read it, and it is a remarkable call to arms. Ross believes the present domestic and international “system” cannot deliver the change the world urgently needs and calls on the individual citizen to play his and her part as never before.

The Iraq war is far from over. The killing continues apace – 250 civilians a month according to latest figures from Baghdad. A suicide bomber killed 29 in the capital’s biggest mosque last weekend alone. Just before the invasion, Tony Blair summoned four of the UK’s top Iraq analysts to Number 10 to advise him. All four counselled strongly against going ahead with it. As they left, after a solid one and a half hours of deliberation, Mr Blair is reported by one of the academics as saying: “But you do agree, don’t you, that Saddam is a very bad man?”

Another “very bad man” is still lurking about in Libya today. I first encountered Gaddafi in the 1970s. His was a Green Book-supported cult of personality – but a strangely egalitarian one. Libyans initially did rather well out of him – he spread the wealth about and spent on schooling and health. But as with all such cults, the green turned to brown, and eventually to black, tinged with the red blood of those who opposed his dictatorship.

Once again, the west allowed itself to become obsessed with another “very bad man” with oil. As our own Lindsey Hilsum has observed, the Libyan matter may not end easily or soon and could yet be messy. The rather nicer man, King-Al Kalifa of Bahrain, whom I found Tony Blair taking tea with in Sharmel Sheikh when I went to interview him there on the last day of 2005, has been left alone to bludgeon some of his country’s people and their doctors back into order. The US has this week rewarded him by extending the rental on Bahrain’s bunkering facilities for the US navy until 2016.

We are left with the son of another “very bad man” President Assad of Syria, who continues to kill his people unabated, and unfettered by any misgivings of the west. The nice erstwhile ophthalmologist from Willesden had been seen as infinitely nicer than the father who slaughtered 10,000 of his people in a go. Syria’s continuing bloodshed will bubble up to the top of the page if Libya does begin to settle. But with less oil, and the UK and others suffering defence cuts, the eye specialist is likely to benefit from the west’s blind eye for a time yet.

Follow @jonsnowC4 on Twitter.

Once in a while something happens to a newsman on television in the middle of a live television interview that in a split second tells you a thousand truths. So it was on Monday night when I was interviewing one of Libya’s deputy Foreign Ministers. Just before going on air, we had heard a reasonably well sourced rumour that Moussa Koussa – his boss – had defected via Tunisia.

In the course of my interview, I challenged the Deputy with this information. Even though we were connected by little more than a jumped-up video phone, his face – two foot high in the studio wall in front of me – was clear. I saw in that very moment, a flicker, a flicker I could well have missed had we been face to face. The flicker, together with a miniscule pause and change in the timbre of his voice told me I had hit home. “He has been in Tunisia, he is back, he is in a meeting later tonight,” the Deputy told me. Oh yes? Our informant had talked of Koussa having travelled to Tunisia in a road convoy…if he really were back, it would have to have been by plane, at night, under bombardment from the enforcement of the no-fly zone. I rapidly concluded, Moussa Koussa: no fly. Moussa Koussa had defected!

But I could not prove it. All I could do was to Tweet my strong sense that Koussa had defected, and await developments. Koussa is well known to MI6 who were pivotal to engineering a channel with him in the reopening of dialogue over Megrahi, the accused Lockerbie bomber. Koussa’s defection via Tunisia and Farnborough airfield has all the hallmark’s of their cloak, and their sheathed dagger.

But one Koussa, does not itself a Gaddafi fall signal. There have been rumours of tensions in the past – he is supposed to have been ‘struck’ by one of Gaddafi’s sons. He is not, and was not a military man.  Top level diplomatic defections have been two a penny. This is indeed the most top level yet, and may prove useful. But the harsh realities in Libya lie in the carnage and bombardment littering the coastal towns of North Eastern Libya. The military stranglehold on Tripoli and on the relatives of other potential ‘high value’ officials in Gaddafi’s regime is complete. Koussa’s defection may prove to be a hairline fracture, even a potentially noisy one. But for genuine splintering – a military or Gaddafi familial defection would be needed.

My own limited exposure to dictators suggest that the greatest danger  to them resides, not in defecting Foreign ministers, but in the hidden hand of the close friend or relative ‘behind the arras’. The talk is of exile for Gaddafi. It is not talk that I find consistent with the Gaddafi I have met and reported. My sense is that the Colonel will be disposed of by his own – sooner, or later. How soon – I don’t know, I need another two foot high face in the video wall and a pointed question perhaps, to find out.

What an odd thing Libya is. In all the warring adventures of the last two interventionist decades, Libya must rate the oddest. And what a strange event today in London – a full-blown international summit – 35 nations attending in one form or another, discussing an entity which will not itself be present – Libya.

I first went there in 1978, lured by the Colonel’s already rich reputation for eccentricity; he was courting the odious Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin. Yet in those days we were also slightly taken with his Little Green Book – given that Mao’s Little Red one was causing so much stir further East. Given the exploitation and inequality of other regimes in the region, Gaddafi’s Green option appeared at the time to spread Libya’s wealth more equitably. The average per capita income ranged around $7,000. Even today its up around $15,000 a year – twice that of Tunisia to the West, three times that of Egypt to the East. Hence, so many knuckled down beneath his absurd regime.

Gaddafi has never changed. In those early days he balanced the spread of wealth with the spread of fear. Both were eased by his abolition of national institutions and empowerment of local village committees. Gaddafi as an individual was weird to encounter. He didn’t make eye contact. He mooched about whilst he talked and about 55 per cent of what he said, sort of stacked up, the other 45 per cent was, how can I put it? Extraterrestrial?

Read more in the Channel 4 News Special Report on Libya

He had oil – has less after the last few days. He had isolation too, and grubby expatriate hangers-on. It was easy to be taken in by him. Exotic in a way. But I never imagined that sustaining relations could be made with him. Libya has wondrous visual treasures – one of the most complete and beautiful Roman amphitheatres in the world amongst them.
About seven or eight years ago, I became aware of the son in London, Saif. I was invited one late night to his modernist black marble-laden no-expenses-spared London home. Relations were stony cold. I got nothing from him – he seemed a refined chip off the old ruffian’s block.

I find it hard to believe anyone has a comprehensive idea of who the ‘rebels’ are. A good number were Gaddafi loyalists – but that was an easier thing to be, than not. The coalition of nations meeting today have a problem. They could have a very odd entity indeed on their hands, even if it is not present at their table. I wouldn’t want to trade places with them as they try to work out what they have already done and where it takes them. Nowhere simple…Gaddafi has already seen to that.

Teachers, how do they do it? You think it’s a creamy career, well-paid with great holidays? It is so much more as I discovered at 08.50 one morning this week at Parliament Hill School, a comprehensive in north London.

Religious Education was my subject. The object was to publicise the Teach First scheme that lures new graduates straight into the classroom before they launch on some other career. 53 per cent get hooked and stay longer in the profession.

God vs the Big Bang was today’s subject. Thank God for Google! I discovered the universe is 13.75 billion years old. First task: clean the white board… what a grimey mess… what was wrong with the old blackboard and chalk?

Twenty-three sixteen year old girls in class…  expectant if slightly “early-in-the-day” looks on their faces. But so attentive, interested, and engaged… wonderfully multicultural spread. We talked, we illustrated, we explained, and my Googled info and a page of Genesis kept me a step ahead, the ‘real teachers’ plus a crew of Teach First operatives looking on. It was tough, demanding and not untiring. Indeed the first forty minutes went like a train. Then I hit the buffers..I had run out of material.

Teachers, I have to ask again, how do they do it?! I fell back on what the girls really wanted to talk about – a life in the media…we ran out of time.

09.50 I walked out, done, but not dusted – oh for the old blackboard… but my white board drawing of the Big Bang, must remain an educational classic!

So to the work face. An intriguing day of Libya, billionaire property dealers arrested, and more.

On the bike and dash to the New London Theatre in Drury Lane for War Horse – had some American friends in town who’d asked what they should see – we had decided Morpurgo’s epic was it. I’d seen it before… but taking up a third of the way through, I was swept up in the horse strewn battlefield of the First World War as if I hadn’t. So brilliant – the puppeteers inside the horses, the fabulous frameworks of the horses, and the breath-taking performances of the humans. The shock of the tank and the knowledge that my own Grandpa had been an officer there too – believing in the age of horse, long after the tank had come to bear.

Afterwards we pondered on the packed theatre (700 souls) nine performances a week, six venues across the world – a million people a year absorbing, crying their way through one of the greatest antiwar dramas ever conjured.

And those horses – made by a small black African studio in South Africa. How the world turns – now, how old is Earth girls?

We are back where so many of us have been before.

“Humanitarian disaster” – have we heard those words before? We heard them of Kosovo before the Nato intervention went ahead without UN approval. We are hearing them again now of Libya. The navies and airforces of the West are jostling in the Med for potential action. Yet what is happening in Libya is a very Libyan development – just as Egypt‘s Tahrir Square was a very Egyptian affair. The infection may have been triggered by Tunisia but the manifestations have been peculiar to each country. None more peculiar than Libya, and it was ever so.

I first went there around thirty years ago – Gaddafi had already been in power for a dozen years. His methodology was odd, his behaviour still more so. His Little Green Book was no mimic of Mao’s red one. It was about dispersal of power to the villages of Libya – kind of peasant empowerment. Yet it all seemed to end up with all power centralised upon Gaddafi himself. As the years went by his hold became murkier and more eccentric than ever. His influences in the outside world moved in and out of assorted individuals, companies, and movements. A bank here, an oil company there, an LSE there.

Saif Gaddafi first arrived in London an apparent breath of fresh air seven or eight years ago. Westernised, supposedly. I found myself once in his Belgravia apartment trying to secure an interview. What a grand place – ultra modern, loads of stone and black marble – cutting edge. But he was odd. He was somehow inexpressively moody, dark, yet somehow also available. He clearly wanted his country reengaged with the outside world, but without questioning the role of his father in Libya’s disengagement.

Neither Saif nor his father will go easily, as they are proving. They have a stranglehold on the power system in Tripoli and can potentially hold out for months, if not years. The West would be ill-advised to attempt physically to speed the process up. That way lies a violation fo Libya which many rebels will rejoin Gaddafi in resenting. This is a Libyan affair for the Libyans to resolve. At its end, Gaddafi and his son will die in Tripoli. They regard themselves as indistinguishable from Libya. They are convinced that they are Libya, Libya is them.

The most likely scenario remains that Gaddafi will be taken out by one of his own, not by us.

Across the Arab world, there is little real sign that any of these revolutions is running smoothly. Vast “people power” is both heavenly, and fearful, to behold – however, it does not change either a country or a system overnight. The upheavals across the Arab world may take many years to resolve. Tunisia‘s revolt is apparently marginally in reverse. Egypt’s is still many more words than tangible action. But the work is begun. It is up to us to let it take its course. I never met one Arab revolutionary who wished for outside intervention or interference.

Whilst we obsess about Gaddafi’s hold – as we have for more than a generation, other movements challenge our interests in the region. Yemen, teeters on the edge of total disintegration. Oman is becoming nastier, with a very British underbelly of ex-army officers at its security core. Jordan remains hard to forecast and far from happy. Kuwait and Saudi rumble uneasily. Sudan festers. Morocco grumbles. Algeria may hold on. It’s a litany of repression and rebellion in unequal mix in which none of our hands are clean.

Dropping bombs, knocking off Gaddafi, doing any more than sheer isolation of unpopular leaders (freezing assets and outside interests is popular) will almost certainly end in Saddam like tears. Revolution will have to take its course. The world has few other viable options, and war is not one of them.

The New Year turned, we made our amateur predictions, some made their professional prognostications, and not one of them predicted Tunisia, let alone Egypt, let alone Bahrain, and heaven forbid, Libya! No one anywhere in the world predicted this rebellious cascade.

Hence here we are in a world of no experts. The thinkers are having to think the unthinkable – the old UK outpost Oman, whose security is almost exclusively in ex-British army hands, now in turmoil, Kuwait wobbly, and fear stalking the whole matter of Saudi Arabia. There’s an excellent piece in today’s FT from David Gardner (a seasoned Mideast watcher) in which he sets out the issues in Saudi very clearly. But if the unthinkable happens and Saudi upheaves, the world economy will upheave with it. We should watch for the supposed “day of rage” posted on Saudi Facebook sites for March 11. None of the “experts” expect it. But then we live in the age of the inexpert and the unexpected.

Who’d have thought that Tunisia would claim the scalp of the French Foreign minister for insensitive family deals with the ex-President and for holidaying whilst the protest storm was rising? Now the French Prime Minister is under pressure too for having taken a holiday with Mubarak before the storm.

Tony Blair and his family took a holiday in one of Mubarak’s villas in Sharm-el-Sheikh in December 2005. I had to visit him there on 1 January 2006 to do an interview about the tsunami. He had just taken tea with the King of Bahrain along the road.

Fascinating how the worm turns. What appears in one phase of history to be bearable, becomes questionable, and a French head rolls.

But perhaps as unexpected and unpredicted as the events themselves is the remarkable vote in the United Nations Security Council. A unanimous vote to exile Gaddafi from the international community and to chase him down and prosecute him at the International Criminal Court.

Colonel Gaddafi‘s speech in which he talked of the protesters as “drugged” and “cockroaches” has horrid resonances with past events.

“Cockroaches” is what the Hutu assassins call the Tutsis before the massacred 800,000 of them. “Cockroaches” is what the Nazis called Jews before they gassed some six million of them.

The prospects in Libya are not good. The defection of such hardliners as Gaddafi’s number two, and the interior minister suggest a bid to hang on to power after Gaddafi goes. The idea that the people will take power and mirror developments elsewhere in North Africa are fanciful. The people have never had power in that country. For the first time in these revolutionary times, we are witnessing army units amongst the people as participants rather than protectors.

A Libyan army general has described seeing Libyan air transporters bringing in hundreds of African mercenaries on 14 February – that, he says, is when he and many others decided to defect. These “mercenaries” have reportedly been the principle assassins of the people.

In the meantime the Saudi King – widely regarded as highly vulnerable, has raided his country’s coffers to throw a desperate bribe at his people – wage rises and other goodies. The King of Bahrain tried it there and it didn’t work.
It is hard to imagine the repressive forces of Saudi, some of the most infamous in Arabi not feeling the blowback from this continuing upheaval across the Arab world.

So Libya burns and we are  left to the most basic devices, denied access, to try to fathom the truth.

In thirty-five years of reporting, I have witnessed two worldwide mass revolutionary movements: The felling of the Berlin Wall, and the protest movement across the Arab world.

Whilst the Berlin Wall consequences were essentially linear and continue to play out to this day. I would argue the Arab protests are more formless and much less predictable. The causes often distil around one word or one name.

Take the current standoff and protest involving tens of thousands of trades Unionists in the US state of Wisconsin – up in arms over the new Governor’s decision to abandon collective bargaining. Anything to do with Egypt?

Trouble in Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain and above all Libya. Anything to do with Egypt? Certainly. So where will it end, and when will it end? And will it threaten the double standards that have enabled Western democratic nations to nurture and sustain these and other corrupt and now endangered leaders?

As China battles to suppress images and news of Egypt and beyond – will this thing overwhelm China too?

Some take it as a given that it will eventually engulf one of the world’s least attractive regimes – that in Saudi Arabia. Can the ailing octogenarian King look forward with confidence to the current plan – in which his equally unwell octogenarian successor will take over?

And if not, then what? What of America’s oil supplies? What effect would social convulsion in China – America’s biggest lender – have on us all?

Returning home from a conference in India – I find myself wondering what if the Internet infection seizes a spark from the current unease there about the latest police investigation into vast corruption in government contracts.

We live in fascinating but highly dangerous times. 2011 may prove a more “interesting” year that perhaps we any of us ready for.