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So, what did I make of Tony Blair's appearance today at the ? Well, my overwhelming sense is that what we witnessed today was an extraordinary insight into the inner workings of the Blair mind.

You may agree or disagree with the decisions that he took - but after his six hours in the witness box, you can't really claim that you still don't understand why he took the view that he did.

Maybe you had better things to do today than sit glued to the TV to watch him in action. So here are some of the things he said that stick in my mind:

-- Everything changed after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Not the risk that Saddam Hussein posed, but what Mr Blair called the "calculus of risk". In other words, what might have seemed a tolerable risk before 9/11 was no longer tolerable after the attacks.

-- He didn't make a "secret deal" with President Bush at his meeting at the Presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 - but he did say, in terms, that he was committed to joining the US to "deal with" Saddam.

-- He is convinced that UN Security Council resolution 1441 did provide legal cover for the use of military force. He wouldn't have gone to war if the then Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, hadn't said that in his judgement military action would be legal - and, despite all his earlier misgivings, that is what Goldsmith eventually said.

-- As for the intelligence on which he based his assessment of the risk that Saddam posed, yes, the intelligence was wrong in some important aspects, but he is still convinced that Saddam had every intention of reviving his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes if he'd been given the chance.

Was there an apology? No. Contrition? No. Tony Blair was totally convinced in 2003 that he was doing the right thing - and today, despite everything that has happened since, he is still equally convinced.

Here's the key quote: "What is important is not to ask the March 2003 question but to ask the 2010 question. Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons who were going to follow him, in charge of Iraq, people who had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people? What we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons programme ..."

On his relations with the US, one thing he said intrigued me. He referred back to the discussions he'd had with President Clinton ahead of the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999. What it boiled down was this: Clinton had helped us out on Kosovo, and I strongly felt we should back the US on Iraq. And don't forget, there was no explicit UN backing for the Kosovo intervention either.

Did anything surprise me? Well, I was surprised to see how very tense and nervous he looked at the start of the day - true, he wasn't on trial, but I suspect that to him it felt as if he was. And to be honest, I'd forgotten how fluent he is when making a case. This was a man who had done a lot of homework.

As for the members of the inquiry team, the professional interviewer in me rather admired the way they managed to interrupt his flow and stop him wondering off down textual by-ways where he plainly would have felt more comfortable.

So did we learn anything today that we didn't already know? Not a lot about the mechanics of what happened, perhaps - but, in my view, a great deal about what was going on inside Tony Blair's head.

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When say they'll provide $140 million to win over Taliban fighters -- and when President Karzai says "We must reach out to all of countrymen" -- do you think it has anything at all in common with the idea I canvassed last September: bribery?

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Here's a thought for you: might the people of Haiti be a lot better off if they signed up as soon as possible to become the 51st state of the USA?

It's not entirely a rhetorical question. Slightly over-stated, perhaps, but not entirely rhetorical. For one thing, if magazine is right, it's already happened: "Haiti, for all intents and purposes, became the 51st state at 4:53 p.m. Tuesday in the wake of its deadly earthquake."

It's the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, with a recent history of decades of maladministration, violence, corruption and grinding poverty. Then came the earthquake.

What little Haiti had is now gone. And that includes its government.

All right, perhaps joining the US isn't such a good idea. The gobbling up of other people's lands is no longer as fashionable as it once was. So how about becoming a protectorate, either of the US, or of the UN?

Here's what the suggested a few days ago: "Once the immediate challenges brought by the earthquake are under control, Haitians should request a formalisation of the country's dependence on the international community, i.e., a 25-year United Nations Protectorate (or some analogous political designation similar to the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo) ...

"Under this framework, the international administration would, in effect, be able to perform or help in the performance of basic civilian administrative functions; facilitate a political process to strengthen self-government in Haiti; coordinate humanitarian and disaster relief of all international agencies; fund and support the reconstruction of key infrastructure; maintain civil law and order and promote human rights."

Here's how a letter-writer in the put it: "If ever a nation screamed in unrelenting agony to become a U.N. protectorate, it is Haiti. But that would assume the United Nations is capable of anything other than feeding upon itself at the expense of others ...

"The United States has the resources to put tens of thousands of additional troops into Haiti, to establish order where order hasn't really existed in memory, and to bring the situation under control. But it takes no stretch of imagination to figure out what would happen then. However pure our motives, we would be accused of occupying another country, of nation building, of imperialism."

Indeed so. Haiti has a sorry history of being occupied, ruled, pillaged and exploited by outsiders. And yet ...

Might it be that it'll need long-term, consistent international involvement long after the last victims of the earthquake have been buried? Might it be that whatever government can be re-formed in the weeks to come, it'll need a lot of help - not just financial, but logistical, administrative and political - for many years?

There's no shortage of candidates. Brazil has been running the UN peace-keeping force there since 2004, and does not take kindly to the idea that now the US is about to take over.

France is a former colonial power, and is just as unimpressed by the idea that the Americans have an automatic right to run the place.

So here's the Lustig Plan: convene an international conference. (Yes, I know, another one. It can't be helped.) Propose that Haiti applies for UN protectorate status under the umbrella of three nations: the US, France and Brazil, who will act as co-guarantors of its independence.

Establish a multi-billion dollar development fund, to operate over a period of 50 years, to approve, finance and oversee the construction of schools, clinics, roads and industries which will enable Haiti to start developing a viable economy.

Oh yes, and write off all remaining debts. That means mainly Venezuela ($167 million) and Taiwan ($91 million).

The world's richest nations have not been good to Haiti over the 300 years since France took possession in 1697. It may have become the Western hemisphere's second independent republic (after the US) in 1804, thanks to a successful slave revolt under Toussaint Louverture, but its history since then has not been a happy one. The US occupied it from 1915 to 1934, then came the ghastly Duvaliers, with their Tonton Macoutes thugs, and then another US invasion in 2004.

Maybe this time the world - and Haiti - can do better. What do you think?

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If you were giving Barack Obama an examination grade for his foreign policy record during his first 12 months as US president, what would you decide on? 75 per cent? 85 per cent? Fail?

It's a question someone put to our panel of foreign policy experts here in Washington after a special edition of The World Tonight broadcast last night. (It's still available via Listen Again on the website if you missed it. And there's a longer version, including questions from an invited audience, going out on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service at 6pm GMT tomorrow, Saturday.)

We were last here just over a year ago, a few weeks before the Obama inauguration, when no one yet knew what kind of a President he'd turn out to be. A year on, it should be possible to start making a judgement.

There was a much quoted saying during the Obama campaign, whenever people marvelled at his oratorical skills: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." And there's certainly been no shortage of hard decision-making for the new President over the past 12 months.

Before the election, he said he'd pull US troops out of Iraq - and he still says that by August of this year, all combat troops will be gone.

He said he'd shut down the military detention base for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay - and sure enough, as soon as he took office, he ordered that it should be shut within 12 months. It's still open.

He said he'd reach out to Iran to engage them in meaningful negotiations about their nuclear programme. He reached out, but Tehran didn't respond. There are no meaningful negotiations.

He said he'd put real effort into reviving the Israel-Palestine peace process. Not much success there, either.

And as for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change, well, Copenhagen has been and gone, and you know what happened there.

Our panel of analysts at the were divided about how big a shift there's really been in US foreign policy since Barack Obama took office. Sure, there's been a shift in style, but with a few exceptions, the consensus seems to be that continuity is the name of the game.

One member of our audience wanted to know why Obama, this son of a Kenyan father, hasn't done more to engage the US in Africa. To which the response was: how many hours are there in a day? He just can't do everything.

And then we discussed the dogs that didn't bark. The global banking system did not collapse during 2009; and the US - still the motor that drives the global economy - did not plunge into depression. Presidents don't get much credit for things that don't happen - but Obama's supporters argue that he played a major role in preventing an even bigger global economic and financial disaster.

As for those examination grades, our panel of analysts gave him between 75 per cent and 90 per cent, with one unmarked paper on the grounds that after just one year, he has still far from completed his assignment.

What would you award him?

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I wonder what you make of this piece by Annie Lowrey at .

Are some of the detainees released from Guantanamo "returning" to terrorism activities, or have they become "terrorists" while they were in detention?

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I fear one of the predictions that I made a week ago may already be coming true.

I wrote then: "There'll be a resumption of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. Calls from outside for restraint will be ignored."

Here's what has been happening over the past few days:

-- On Tuesday, several hundred pro-Palestinian activists clashed with Egyptian police after Egypt refused to allow an international aid convoy cross into Gaza.

-- On Wednesday, there was a shoot-out between Hamas forces in Gaza and Egyptian forces during a protest over Egypt's blockade of the Gaza Strip. One Egyptian border guard was killed.

-- Yesterday morning, at least 10 mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel. A Palestinian group called the Popular Resistance Committees said they fired the shells, in retaliation for the killing of two of their members by Israeli forces on Tuesday, apparently as they were preparing to fire rockets into Israel.

-- Late last night, Israeli warplanes launched a series of air strikes against Gaza, following the firing of a Qassam rocket which landed close to the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. Two Palestinians, includng a 14-year-old boy, were reported killed in the air strikes.

Now, you will notice that all these clashes are in, or on the border with, Gaza - and that they involve both Israel and Egypt. As you may have read, the Egyptians are beefing up the security on their border, trying to restrict the lucrative subterranean cross-border smuggling operations that largely keep Gaza from total collapse.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, is furious - but the Egyptians are deeply suspicious of Hamas, which is an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in Egypt, and which they accuse of smuggling weapons from Gaza into Egypt to help fellow-Islamists.

None of this bodes well for any future attempt to breathe new life into the inaptly-named peace process. For months now, the Egyptians have been trying to broker a kiss-and-make-up deal between Hamas and Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank - and to mediate in a prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel, which would lead to the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and the freeing of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was seized on the Israeli side of the Gaza border three and a half years ago.

There is a horrible choreography that comes into play after events of this kind. Each side strikes at the other, in retaliation for an earlier strike in the opposite direction. Each side tries to escalate its response, hoping to cow its enemy into an early admission of defeat.

But Gaza has been boiling up for months now, and it's only too easy to see how it could all erupt again. I suspect Hamas will want to try to keep a lid on things, but it's not the only player in Gaza, and other groups may well be keener to take the fight back to the Israeli enemy.

Incidentally, Israel has just successfully tested a new short-range missile defence system - it's called - which it says is capable of intercepting rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. The first operational system is due to be delivered in May. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone in Gaza wasn't already planning to see how it performs for real.

Just a quick word about The World Tonight next Thursday: I'll be live at the in Washington, for a discussion with top foreign affairs analysts there about President Obama's foreign policy achievements in his first year in office. I hope you'll be able to join us.

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I wonder if the name Anne-Marie Murphy means anything to you. Probably not, because it's nearly 24 years since she was in the headlines.

In April 1986, she was about to board a plane from London to Tel Aviv, to meet - so she thought - the parents of her Palestinian fiancé, a man called Nizar Hindawi. She was 32 years old, and pregnant.

She was also, unknowingly, carrying a bomb in her suitcase, hidden there by Hindawi, and primed to explode when the El Al plane was somewhere over Europe. The airline security people spotted it, and she never got on the plane. (You can read the official Israeli account of the story .)

I was reminded of Anne-Marie Murphy amid all the renewed discussion following the attempted Christmas Day plane attack about whether or not airline passengers should be "profiled" - in other words, singled out for more intense screening if they fit someone's idea of what a terrorist looks like.

Back in 1986, there was no particular reason to single out pregnant Irish women as likely anti-Israel terrorists. But Israeli security have long been suspicious of single women travelling alone, and they have no hesitation in asking the most personal questions about their relationships and private life.

It may be that it makes sense to concentrate anti-terrorism measures at airports on certain categories of passengers. But the Hindawi case reminds us that it's not always easy to decide what a terrorist looks like.

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Yes, it's time for Mystic Robin to make a fool of himself again with his predictions for the next 12 months.

But first, here's a quick tally of how I did last year. All in all, not too bad: I was right about the economy (although it didn't turn into the global banking melt-down that some commentators feared); I was right about Gordon Brown not calling an election and about growing instability in Pakistan (although I was wrong about the likelihood of more terrorist attacks in India); right about Obama on Iraq and Guantanamo; right about Obama delivering a major speech on relations with the Islamic world; wrong about growing unrest in Russia and China; more or less right about the elections in South Africa; wrong about the end of the Mugabe era in Zimbabwe; right about the outcome of the Iranian elections (although I didn't forsee the scale of the protests); and right about the outpourings of verbiage to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I reckon that's about 7.5 out of 10, so bearing that in mind, here goes for 2010:

1. The UK general election will be on 6 May; Gordon Brown will still be Prime Minister; the entire campaign will be dominated by discussion and dissection of the TV leaders' debates, which in the end will make little difference to the outcome: a Conservative victory with a slim Commons majority of 15-30.

2. China will become the US-EU bogeyman. It'll block a package of new UN sanctions against Iran, and will be "unhelpful" on climate change. There'll be lots of talk about Beijing "flexing its muscles"; Premier Wen Jiabao will gently remind Washington that China is continuing to keep the US economy afloat by lending it squillions of dollars.

3. The US mid-term elections will see the Democrats losing control of the Senate but hanging on to the House of Representatives with a reduced majority. President Obama will say he's "heard the people's message".

4. The US will start bombing "terrorist targets" in Yemen and Somalia following the attempted Christmas Day plane attack, apparently by a would-be al-Qaeda suicide bomber trained in Yemen.

5. The Iranian authorities will crack down hard against opposition protests. There'll be hundreds more arrests, and more protests. The regime will survive.

6. The global economy will stage a slow recovery. In the main developed economies, unemployment will remain high, especially among young people. There'll be more trouble in France among unemployed young people from Arab and African backgrounds.

7. There'll be a resumption of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. Calls from outside for restraint will be ignored. The Israeli government will say it's determined to do whatever is necessary to defeat "Palestinian terrorism"; Hamas and the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Brigades will say armed resistance to occupation is the only option available to them. The imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti will be released as part of a prisoner swap deal; he will quickly emerge as the man everyone wants to do business with.

8. Silvio Berlusconi will stand down as Prime Minister of Italy on health grounds.

9. The extra US troops will be deployed in Afghanistan; casualties on both sides will increase dramatically during the summer, but by November (mid-term election time in the US), Obama will claim his strategy is working.

10. Climate change negotiations will splutter on, with an increasing emphasis on finding other policy options besides Kyoto-style emission reduction targets. Expect to hear more discussion from the richer countries about the need to control population growth. There'll be a furious reaction from the poorer countries.

Sorry if you find all this a bit depressing, but remember, I could be entirely wrong. Anyway, this was my advice a year ago, and I repeat it now unchanged: enjoy the company of your family and friends; admire the trees and the flowers in parks and gardens; count your blessings.

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