Iraq: Will Tony Blair Finally Stand Trial for His Part in the “Supreme International Crime”?

Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research

“I think most people who have dealt with me, think I’m a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.” (Tony Blair, BBC “On the Record”, 16^th November 1997.) 

On 30th November last year, Michael Gove, currently UK Environment Minister, pretty well unloved by swathes of the population whatever Ministry he heads, declared, at the post Chilcot Inquiry debate in Parliament regarding Tony Blair’s role in dragging the UK in to a monumental tragedy for which history will not forgive:

“History, I think will judge him less harshly than some in this House do.”

Deciding whether or not to illegally invade Iraq was a “finely balanced act”, fantasized Gove.

It was not. It was a pack of lies, many of which came from the Blair regime, as confirmed by Colin Powell’s delusionary address to the UN on 5^th February 2003, in subsequently unearthed correspondence and of course, the Chilcot Inquiry. 

On 15^th September 2004, the then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in an interview with the BBC World Service, asked if the invasion was illegal, stated:

“Yes, if you wish.” He continued without caveat: “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view and from the Charter point of view it was illegal.” 

Blair, his Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw and his Attorney General Lord Goldsmith did not face a Nuremberg type trial – and surreally, Blair, after his 2007 resignation was appointed Middle East Peace Envoy. Straw and Goldsmith went back to business as usual.

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Hussein's CIA interrogator: If Saddam had remained in power, rise of ISIS 'improbable'

RT

Islamic State would not have enjoyed the success it did if Saddam Hussein had remained in power, John Nixon, the former CIA agent who grilled him, claims. Nixon says the West should deal with leaders it "abhors" to have a stable Middle East.

Nixon was the first to debrief Saddam after his capture in December 2003, 13 years ago. His book, entitled Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein, is a first-hand account of what the invasion of Iraq and the execution of Saddam Hussein have entailed.

No flourishing ISIS under Hussein

"In the course of interrogations, Saddam 'turned our assumptions upside down'," Nixon wrote in one of the excerpts from the book, published by Time and the Daily Mail. In particular, ex-CIA agent asks what would have happened if Saddam had remained in power and comes to the conclusion that, among other outcomes, it would have made the rapid rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) almost impossible.

"It is improbable that a group like ISIS would have been able to enjoy the kind of success under his repressive regime that they have had under the Shia-led Baghdad government," Nixon wrote.

According to the ex-agent, Saddam was well aware of the potential risks posed by the flourishing jihadist movements and was keen to suppress any such attempts. "Saddam felt that Islamist extremist groups in Iraq posed the biggest threat to his rule and his security apparatus worked assiduously to root out such threats."

A recently published Chilcot report, conducted by British MPs on the country's involvement in the 2003 Iraq war, backs Nixon's assumption on IS.

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UK foreign secretary: US decision on Iraqi army led to rise of Isis

Comment: The only thing they don't mention - yet again - is that this was purposeful and NOT and due to intelligence failures or lack of geopolitical foresight, though basic incompetence and corruption was certainly part of regime change and it always is. The essential point to remember was that this had been planned for years as part of Neo-Conservative doctrine. 

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The Guardian 

 

The UK has stepped up its criticism of the American conduct of the Iraq war, with the foreign secretary saying the single most disastrous mistake was the mass removal of supporters of the Ba’ath party from the Iraqi army, which he claimed had led directly to the formation of Islamic State. 

 

“Many of the problems we see in Iraq today stem from that disastrous decision to dismantle the Iraqi army and embark on a programme of debaathification,” Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, told the foreign affairs select committee. 

 

“That was the big mistake of post-conflict planning. If we had gone a different way afterwards we might have been able to see a different outcome.” 

 

He added: “It is clear a significant number of former Ba’athist officers have formed the professional core of Daesh [Isis] in Syria and Iraq and have given that organisation the military capability it has shown in conducting its operations.” 

 

He said the current regime of Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, had “a clear policy to reverse and to end the debaathification programmes and reintegrate Ba’athists into civic life but he is unable to get through the political system because it has become a touchstone of the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq”. 

 

Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP on the committee and a strong supporter of the Kurds in Iraq, revealed that in 2003 she had personally gone to lobby Paul Bremer, the US head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the body overseeing the administration of Iraq, about the Iraqi army issue. She said she had complained that senior Iraqi professional soldiers, some with family backgrounds in the UK, were being pushed aside even though some of them were “willing to help in the changed circumstances”. 

 

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House of Commons: Jeremy Corbyn response to Chilcot

The Politics Hub

See also: Jeremy Corbyn responds to Chilcot: "The Iraq war was an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext"

In Damning Report, Chilcot Inquiry Slams Blair Over Legal Basis For Iraq War

Comment: The Chilcot inquiry still remains a whitewash since it delivers a verdict that it was merely incompetence and a "failure of intelligence". It was no such thing. This was a long term planned project and should be seen as such. By underscoring the "failure of intelligence" nonsense the inquiry reinforces the official narrative.

 

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Zero Hedge 

 

The Chilcot Inquiry, a British public inquiry into the nation's role in the Iraq war, was published moments ago. The massive report covers almost a decade of UK government policy decisions between 2001 and 2009 and took seven years to complete.  It covers the background to the decision to go to war, whether troops were properly prepared, how the conflict was conducted and what planning there was for its aftermath, a period in which there was intense sectarian violence.

 

One of the key focus areas of the report is the rationale that Tony Blair gave to the public in taking the UK to war, and whether or not the war was necessary. Upon its release, the report concluded that military action "was not a last resort", and that Britain chose to join the invasion of Iraq in 2003 before peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted.

 

 
The report's main focus is on what commitments then-Prime Minister Tony Blair gave to then-US President George W Bush ahead of the invasion, and whether or not Blair misled the British public over the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which ultimately turned out to be non-existent. Critically, the report determined that the threat posed by WMDs in Iraq was presented with a certainty that was not justified, and the government failed to achieve its stated objectives of the war.

As summarized by BBC, the main points of the report are:

• The UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.
• The judgements about the severity of threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - known as WMD - were presented with a certainty that was not justified.
• Intelligence had "not established beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons.
• Policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence assessments. It was not challenged, and should have been.
• The circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action were "far from satisfactory".
• There was "little time" to properly prepare three military brigades for deployment in Iraq. The risks were neither "properly identified nor fully exposed" to ministers, resulting in "equipment shortfalls".
• Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were "wholly inadequate".
• The Government failed to achieve the stated objectives it had set itself in Iraq. More than 200 British citizens died as a result of the conflict. Iraqi people suffered greatly. By July 2009, at least 150,000
• Iraqis had died, probably many more. More than 1m were displaced.
• The report sets out lessons to be learned: It found former prime minister Tony Blair overestimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq; and the UK's relationship with the US does not require unconditional support.
• It said ministerial discussion which encourages frank and informed debate and challenge is important. As is ensuring civilian and military arms of government are properly equipped.
• In future, all aspects of any intervention need to be calculated, debated and challenged with rigour. Decisions need to be fully implemented.

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See also:  Invasion of Iraq, The Secret Downing Street Memo: “Intelligence and Facts were being Fixed”

“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”

‘Unforgivable’: Majority of Brits can’t absolve Tony Blair of his Iraq war sins

Comment: Tony Blair deserves everything that's hopefully coming to him. He's built his Bliar Empire quite literally from the blood of thousands of maimed and murdered families. His crimes are as huge as his repellent delusions of grandeur and commensurate denials of culpability. Be afraid Tony. The elite will throw you to the dogs as quick as you can say WMD. And that time may well be coming soon. 

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RT

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair can never be forgiven for taking the UK into the Iraq war, a majority of Brits said in an opinion poll.

Pollster YouGov carried out the survey ahead of the publication of the long-delayed Chilcot Inquiry report, which examines the legality of Britain’s 2003 Iraq invasion.

It found only eight percent believe Blair did nothing wrong, while 53 percent said they could never forgive him.

Some 15 percent of respondents said it was time to forgive Blair for his misjudgment.
Perhaps the most damning finding was that just 25 percent of Labour Party supporters are in favor of forgiving their former leader.

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Is the UK’s Iraq Inquiry Set to “savage” Tony Blair?

Felicity Arbuthnot
Dissident Voice

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series

In spite of all the scepticism regarding the long delayed UK Iraq Inquiry into the illegal invasion of Iraq, with predictions (including by myself) that it would be a “whitewash” of the enormity of the lies which led to the near destruction of Iraq, to the presence of ISIS and to probably over a million deaths, The Sunday Times (May 22nd, 2016) is predicting an “absolutely brutal” verdict on those involved. The paper claims that former Prime Minister Tony Blair, his then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of British Secret Intelligence (MI6) are among those who face “serious damage to their reputations.”

Not before time, many will surely be thinking.

The Inquiry, which sat from November 24th, 2009 until February 2nd, 2011, is finally to be published on July 6th, approaching five and a half years since its conclusion. Speculation is that publication of the findings are being further delayed until after the June 23rd British referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. Tony Blair is campaigning on his pal Prime Minister David Cameron’s “remain in” ticket. Confirmation of his murderous misleadings before the referendum would further discredit all he had to say and seriously damage, if not detonate, the “in” campaign.

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‘Tony Blair lied on Iraq and will be exposed by Chilcot report’ – Corbyn

Comment: I'll believe when I see it.

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RT 

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies about weapons of mass destruction and his secret war pact with former US President George W Bush will be exposed by the Chilcot Inquiry, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.

Sir John Chilcot is due to finally release his long-delayed report on the legality of the 2003 Iraq invasion on July 6, seven years after the inquiry was commissioned.

Corbyn made the remarks on Tuesday in a speech at the London School of Economics to honour the late Ralph Miliband, a Marxist scholar and father of Corbyn’s predecessor, Ed Miliband.

While Corbyn supported some of the domestic achievements of Blair’s “New Labour,” he argued it had stuck too closely to its neoliberal, Thatcherite ideological roots.

Addressing Blair’s Iraq legacy, Corbyn warned: “The Chilcot report will come out in a few weeks’ time and tell us what we need to know, what I think we already know: There were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no ability to attack within 45 minutes and a deal had been done with Bush in advance.”

Corbyn took a leading role in opposing the 2003 invasion both inside and outside parliament.

Asked if Blair should be tried for war crimes, Corbyn said: “If he’s committed a war crime, yes. Everyone who’s committed a war crime should be.

“I think it was an illegal war, I’m confident about that, indeed [former UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan confirmed it was an illegal war, and therefore [Blair] has to explain to that.”

“Is he going to be tried for it, I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly,” Corbyn added.

Some MPs are trying to revive a campaign to have Blair prosecuted for his part in the war, either at an international tribunal or by a special parliamentary impeachment process.

Although rare, parliament can impeach a current or former official. It would involve a member of the Commons presenting evidence in the manner of a parliamentary motion, and if carried, it would then move to the House of Lords. If it was also passed by the Lords, the impeachment process would resemble a conventional trial.

The last time parliament attempted to impeach anyone, however, was in 1806, according to the BBC.

Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Alex Salmond said Monday that, rather than parliamentary impeachment, he favored Blair being brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

However, the ICC has said it is not yet able to exercise jurisdiction over international “crimes of aggression” – the offense often connected with Blair’s role in Iraq.

The ICC will rule on whether to extend its powers to try suspects of aggression on January 1, 2017.

Camouflage of British War Crimes in Iraq: Chilcot Inquiry Publication Delayed: “ to Avoid Embarrassing Tony Blair.”

Felicity Arbuthnot 
Global Research

 “Nothing justifies killing of innocent people.” (Tony Blair, CNN, 15th January 2015.)

The publication of the Chilcot Inquiry which began in 2009 and concluded three years ago, investigating the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq, so far costing a reported £10,375,000, is to be delayed until after the 23rd June UK European Union referendum on whether Britain stays in or leaves the EU.

According to the Daily Telegraph (1) Prime Minister David Cameron is “delaying (the) Chilcot Report to avoid embarrassing Tony Blair”, whose government’s “dodgy dossiers”, produced when he was Prime Minister, were such an integral part of America’s excuse to invade, overthrow and murder many of a sovereign government – with the UK tagging along as the fig leaf “coalition.”

One dossier of special significance was that of 24^th September 2002, published on the day Parliament was recalled to discuss its fictional “findings.” Fairy stories contained within included a government “investigation” in to weapons of mass destruction stating that Iraq possessed WMDs including chemical and biological weapons and that they had again developed a nuclear weapons programme. As was quickly established after the invasion, the all was entirely untrue..

Also included was the claim that Iraq had sought to acquire “significant quantities of uranium from Africa” (2) another claim also found to be complete nonsense.

In fact, had Iraq determined to have a nuclear programme it had no need to purchase uranium from anywhere, it has extensive deposits – which were discovered by the British in the 1950s, documentation of which must be somewhere in government records.

The forward to this piece of fiction was written by Blair and reads:

“The document discloses that his (Saddam Hussein’s) military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.”

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Sir John Chilcot and members of his Iraq inquiry panel have shared more than £1.5m in fees since 2009

The Independent 

Mounting anger over the sums of money paid to Sir John Chilcot and his committee have prompted calls for the Government to stop any further payments, amid demands by politicians for publication of the Iraq inquiry’s report without further delay. 

An analysis by this newspaper of all accounts released by the inquiry reveal that Sir John, his fellow committee members, and their advisers, have shared more than £1.5m in fees since the inquiry began in 2009.

This averages out at £231,308 each. And last year alone £892,400 was spent on the wages of the 11 civil servants and three support staff who comprise the inquiry’s secretariat.
The inquiry has not sat in four years – the last evidence session was in February 2011– yet it has cost the taxpayer £5.5m in that time. In total, more than £10m has been spent, and there is still no timescale for the publication of the final report – which Sir John initially aimed to complete by the end of 2010. 

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War Criminal Tony Blair Sidesteps Call For Iraq Note Release

RINF via Morning Star

TONY BLAIR ducked calls yesterday for him to sanction the release of his exchanges with former US president George Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The tight-lipped former prime minister said questions about the Chilcot inquiry were “for another day” as he was grilled by reporters after a speech on Europe.

Campaigners have criticised as a whitewash the decision to limit publication to “quotes or gists.” The mother of one soldier killed in the conflict has also lambasted Mr Blair.

Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said she was “sickened” by the decision to only publish selected sections and believed Mr Blair would “walk away from it with a smile on his face.”

Negotiations over the publication of the “vital” material, which includes 25 notes from Mr Blair to the then US president and more than 130 records of conversations between them, is understood to have been behind long delays in publication of the report into the invasion.

Tony Blair: never in the field of human history has one man earned so much from deaths of so many

Stop the War Coalition
Matt Carr
 
Just as we learned that the US and UK governments were conspiring to stop us learning the truth of the Bush-Blair Iraq conspiracy, Tony Blair picked up £150,000 for an hour-long speech in Dubai 

In the last fortnight a number of media commentators accused Russell Brand of naivete and political ignorance for his criticisms of the democratic system and the limitations of the right to vote.

This week however, the British public were presented with further evidence of how hollowed-out the democratic process has become, when the Chilcot Inquiry revealed that it was being denied access to 25 notes sent by Tony Blair to George Bush, and 130 documents relating to conversations between the two architects of the Iraq War, in addition to dozens of records of cabinet meetings.

There is no more serious decision that a government can take than a declaration of war, and there is no more serious test of a democracy than the ability to hold its leaders to account over why and how such decisions are taken, especially when a war is declared on false pretenses and results in a tragic and bloody disaster of the magnitude of the Iraq War.

The Chilcot Inquiry was established by Gordon Brown with the fairly mild remit to establish ‘lessons’ from the Iraq war, rather than ‘apportion blame.’ Much to its own surprise no doubt, it has shown more teeth than anyone expected, to the point when its investigations threaten the reputations – and the cash flow – of those responsible.

Today these noble statesmen have moved on. Bush now paints pictures of dogs and puppies, and makes donations to an organization that seeks to convert Jews into Christians. When he talks about Iraq at all it’s only to say that like Edith Piaf and Dick Cheney, he doesn’t regret anything.

Nor does his partner-in-crime, the Right Honorable Tony Blair, Peace Envoy and all-round money-making machine, who just gets richer and richer, and continues to urge on new wars with the same combination of bug-eyed fanaticism, pig ignorance and deference that once produced such sterling results in Iraq.

This week he picked up £150,000 for an hour-long speech in Dubai, whose subject, apparently, was something called ‘global affairs’. To paraphrase Churchill, never in the field of human history has one man earned so much from the deaths of so many.

And people are still dying in the broken country and interminable battlefield that Iraq has become. Yesterday, 67 Shi’ite pilgrims were killed and 152 more wounded in sectarian attacks on the Ashura celebrations in Karbala.

This year, more than 6,000 people have died in Iraq – exactly ten years after it was ‘liberated’ and its society effectively destroyed by the madcap free market experiment, the incredibly botched occupation, the lies and manipulations, the death squads, the suicide bombers and all the other disastrous consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That matters, and should matter most of all in the countries that made it happen. Yet now we find that the inquiry established to ‘learn lessons’ from the war will not be able to know what the two men most responsible for this bloody debacle were saying to each other, or what Blair was saying – or not saying – to his cabinet.

If a democratic society cannot establish mechanisms to hold its elected officials to account over a war that amounts to one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in British history – a war that according to the Nuremberg process amounts to a war of aggression and the ‘supreme crime’ then it is not serious.
If such a society allows those responsible to cloak themselves in secrecy on spurious grounds of reasons of state that are designed to protect them from scrutiny – then such a democracy is essentially a simulacrum, an elite-managed spectacle, a Darren Brown magic trick that provides the illusion, but not the substance of public participation in the political process.

It means that democracy is a kind of theatre, in which the public is allowed to play a limited role, like the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or Strictly Come Dancing, and press a buzzer for this party or that party, but it cannot be privy to the backrooms where politicians and civil servants take decisions without consultation and without explanation.

That is why it matters that the US State Department and Whitehall are conniving to keep Bush and Blair’s machinations under wraps. One of the key individuals who is blocking the Chilcot Inquiry’s access to key documents is Sir Jeremy Heywood, the UK’s most senior civil servant, formerly private secretary to Tony Blair during the lead-up to the Iraq War.

To expect such a man to behave otherwise is a bit like expecting MacBeth to hold a public inquiry into the murder of King Duncan.

But Heywood should not be allowed to get away with it, and nor should the Coalition, which is also complicit in this cover-up. All of them clearly hope that Chilcot will just go ahead without these documents and produce some polite and-all-very British pseudo-criticism that Blair can agree to and no one will pay any attention to.

Then everyone will agree that lessons have been ‘learned’, when we won’t have learned anything at all. We shouldn’t let this happen. Because it isn’t just about them and it isn’t just about Iraq. It’s also about us.

Because if a government can get away with this, it can get away with anything.

Memo reveals intelligence chief's bid to fuel fears of Iraqi WMDs

Sir John Scarlett wanted dossier to strengthen case for war

www.guardian.co.uk/

The senior intelligence official responsible for Tony Blair's notorious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proposed using the document to mislead the public about the significance of Iraq's banned weapons.

Sir John Scarlett, who as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee was placed "in charge" of writing the September 2002 dossier, sent a memo to Blair's foreign affairs adviser referring to "the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional".

The memo, released under the Freedom of Information Act, has been described as one of the most significant documents on the dossier yet published.

The disclosure supports the evidence of the former intelligence official Michael Laurie, who told the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war that it was widely understood that the dossier was intended to make a case for war and misrepresented intelligence to this particular end.
 The role of the Joint Intelligence Committee is to present impartial intelligence-based advice to ministers. Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications, told Scarlett that the dossier's credibility depended on it being seen to be the work of Scarlett and his team of experts.

But the 2004 Butler review found that the published dossier had presented a more certain case on Iraq's weapons than was set out in the committee's reports. In spite of this, Scarlett went on to be head of MI6.

Scarlett's memo was sent to Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser, in March 2002 after an early draft of the dossier had been drawn up covering four countries with "WMD programmes of concern": Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, had commented that the paper "has to show why there is an exceptional threat from Iraq. It does not quite do this yet." In response, Scarlett suggested that the dossier could make more impact if it only covered Iraq. "This would have the benefit of obscuring the fact that in terms of WMD Iraq is not that exceptional," he wrote.

Clare Short, the Labour cabinet minister who resigned after the war had started, said: "Those words show that John Scarlett was in on the deception from the beginning and was being duplicitous deliberately."

Elfyn Llwyd, parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru, said: "It is clear to me that John Scarlett was not an objective player in all of this." Llwyd asked why Chilcot had neither published the Scarlett memo nor questioned Scarlett about it. "It again calls into question the credibility of the inquiry," he said.

Following Scarlett's memo, the dossier was limited to Iraq but a week later it was put on hold for six months. Laurie told Chilcot that the dossier had at this time been "rejected because it did not make a strong enough case".

Significantly, Scarlett's memo was copied to Sir Joe French, Laurie's boss at the Defence Intelligence Staff. In his evidence to Chilcot, Laurie attributed his belief that the dossier was intended to make a case for war to what he had been told by French.