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© 2016 AFPIraq war was illegal, says Blair's former deputy
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© 2016 AFP
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kcjapan
LONDON — Tony Blair’s deputy as prime minister when Britain joined the invasion of Iraq has said he believes the war was illegal, days after a long-awaited report excoriated Britain’s role in the conflict. — John Prescott, number two in the Labour government when Britain took part in the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
This will get messy. George W. Bush, the GOP and an illegal war.
SimondB
Had Prescott (and other cabinet ministers) resigned in protest before the invasion it very well may not have gone ahead. Only one minister, Robin Cook, had the decency to do so prior to the invasion. And his reasoning at the time turned out to be 100% correct.
Blair was in awe of Bush (while most of the world saw him for the war mongering fool he was/is) and was willing to do anything to curry favour. He even started to mimic his walk - the one where he looks like a gunslinger. Bush on the other hand took Blair as an useful idiot. Probably one of the rare times his judgement was correct.
Both of them should be charged for war crimes. But the Chilcott report does also beg the question: when is the USA investigation into their role in this disaster going to take place?
nath
Never. Admitting they were wrong would require admitting they aren't perfect.
bass4funk
Now that it's all over, let's move along. Nothing more to see or hear.
nath
See, that's the American attitude on the matter. "Oops, our bad. But what's done is done so, whatever."
bass4funk
No different than from the left dismissing a certain democratic candidate.
kcjapan
Quite. An illegal war and nothing. Identical.
bass4funk
Get over it, move on, what difference at this point does it make? What do you expect to happen next? You think they're going to barge the doors of Bush, Cheney and Blair, haul them off and sentence them to life? It will never happen. Liberals need to stop wasting time and money and just move on with their lives, we have rehashed the Iraq debacle over and over again and there will never be an arrest or indictment.
Lloyd Weems
As the late Nobel prize winner Harold Pinter said, "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism ...inspired by a series of lies upon lies...responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people, and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?”
Blair and Jack Straw should be in the dock in the Hague, alongside Bush, Rumsfeld and the rest of the war criminals. Sadly, it will never happen. Meanwhile ISIS, created as a direct result of that illegal war, continues to terrorize the planet, the spawn of Bush and Blair's lies.
SenseNotSoCommon
Clare Short, UK cabinet minister, from her 12th May 2003 resignation speech
Spit on the graves of hundreds of thousands, why don't you?
Let this be the start of a reconciliation, to get the lid back onto the Pandora's Box opened in 2003.
nath
Other than the fact that there is absolutely nothing even remotely similar at all between the two, I agree that it's no different.
Yeah, that's a good approach to take with murderers too. Get over it, move on, what difference at this point does it make? The victim is already dead, talking about it won't bring them back, right?
In this case, it's not liberals, it's non-American citizens.
kcjapan
"Get over it, move on, what difference at this point does it make?" - commnets
How much truth shouldn't the world know of?
The truth is a funny thing when so many have been harmed so greatly, by 'you know who'.
If that thought makes one uncomfortable, perhaps that explains their voracious appetite for self-deception.
bass4funk
Nothing similar? We are talking about lies, therefore, it is essentially the same thing, Yeah, liberals want to make the stupid excuse it's different, but it's really not. Bush, Cheney and Blair lied and Hillary lied. Next....
nath
Not only that, both things can be expressed in English! I'm sold. They are identical.
Jimizo
"Liberals need to stop wasting time and money and just move on with their lives"
I realise after reading your previous posts you don't know much about UK politics. Here are a few facts. Tony Blair was a Labour PM - a party further left than the 'socialist' Dems who send you into a frenzy of ranting and ROFLing. Many of the people furious with the Iraq bloodbath were Conservative voters along with Labour or Liberal voters. Liberal or conservative had little to do with it.
For you, everything is a partisan issue of liberals v conservatives. This one isn't.
I want to see justice done. I want to see a signal sent out to wannabe warmongers that nobody is above the law. You'll find these people are willing to throw other people's lives away but will crap their pants if their own spolied arses are on the line. This one is much, much bigger and darker than your obsessive Benghaziing.
kcjapan
"As the late Nobel prize winner Harold Pinter said, "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act" - comments
In other words: The Genie Can't Be Put Back In The Bottle.
Jack and the Beanstalk
Doing nothing is granting carte blanche to do it again. If one of Bass4's loved ones was murdered, do you think he would declare it "water under the bridge"?
bass4funk
As a matter of fact, I had one of my best friends died in Afghanistan a few years ago, how did I feel? Awful, but nothing I can do. I just hope our allied forces get as many of the jihadists as they can. But I also knew as well as he knew that being a soldier, you might pay the ultimate sacrifice one day. It goes with the territory.
kcjapan
"I just hope our allied forces get as many of the jihadists as they can."
The Forever War.
Fre Okin
"It also disclosed Blair had written to then U.S. President George W Bush that “I will be with you, whatever” eight months before the invasion."
Bush poodle!
Iraq should drag UK and US to the International Court of Justice to demand Trillions of dollars in compensation for lost lives, property, and lost oil revenue.
kcjapan
Iraq should drag UK and US to the International Court of Justice to demand Trillions of dollars
You break it you bought it?
timtak
Until we realise how lucrative it also was, we will do it again, and again.
Jimizo
"You'll find these people are willing to throw other people's lives away but will crap their pants if their own spolied arses are on the line."
"I'm not so sure about that. Example if they go out and fight these wars and gets killed in the process, who's going to govern?"
That isn't what I meant. A tin-pot, cross-eyed halfwit cowboy like Bush or a slimy lawyer like Blair would probably be more of a hindrance than a help in battle. I'm talking about the knowledge that an illegal war could carry the penalty of jail time even if you are a US president or a UK PM.
Animals like this need discipline.
PTownsend
Because we realise how lucrative it also was, we will do it again, and again.
And use more Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems instead of humans to fight the war. The LAWS currently used are being field-tested and calibrated so more effective ones can be made, further enriching the military-industrial-academic complex.
Bush 43 did what his daddy and his daddy's friends in the mineral's exploitation business - in the US and throughout the world - told him to do. Remember, Bush 41 was head of the CIA before his vice presidency and presidency. He's always been involved in nastiness. And oil.
US: get off petroleum! Find your own energy alternatives to hydrocarbons.
akkk1
Now that it's all over, let's move along. Nothing more to see or hear.
Right. It only cost needless deaths of 150,000 Iraqi lives and the destruction of their country. so much for American concern for human rights.
bass4funk
They're not in power anymore, so they're pretty much irrelevant.
Understand, so what do you wish to happen?
I feel the same way about the Democratic Party as well as the GOP.
Moonraker
John Prescott is slime. From left-wing, union activist to House of Lords without missing a beat. His very existence emboldens those who believe there is no truth, no integrity; it is all just will to power and ideology.
Jimizo
"Animals like this need discipline."
"I feel the same way about the Democratic Party as well as the GOP."
Exactly. All leaders. Bush and Blair tried for war crimes would send a message out. Stop turning this into a partisan issue. Blair is from the left-leaning side of UK politics and Bush is from the US right. It's irrelevant.
I fear the hawkish Hillary Clinton as president - she's dangerous. Trump's childish hair trigger, ignorance of foreign affairs and loose trash-talk makes him beyond dangerous. These are two animals who need discipline more than most.
timtak
PTownsendJUL. 10, 2016 - 01:14PM JST
There are those of course who would kill oil producers, their families and children to make money (and it becomes easier with weapons that you point out we use these days) but in general it has to be framed as self defence so that we do not disgust overselves.
gcbel
so, when do we get an apology from Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and every Republican and Democrat, posters here that supported the rush to war?
Instead, a pathological hatred of Obama because reflecting back the utter failure of their Bush presidency. No longer relevant? We're still feeling the effects of that disastrous decision today.
Tamarama
That war was all about protecting US Oil interests in the Middle East. It had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and certainly nothing to do with democratizing Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East. US hegemony - the kind of behaviour that led to 9/11 in the first place. And Britain were stupid to be drawn into it, as were Australia.
And look at what it has left us with. A super violent and divided Iraq, ISIS, which rose directly out of the ashes of the war, and Syria in complete ruins.
What wonderful work, America.
banger
So war criminal charges against Blair's cabinet??they hang many ELECTED leaders in mid east on basis of same charges?acts against humanity etc etc.
bruinfan
@Jimizo
Thanks for educating the ignorant. Thumbs up for your posts here.
bass4funk
Sorry, but wrong.
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/11/150444802/where-does-america-get-oil-you-may-be-surprised
At least Saddam is gone, NO one misses the butcher of Baghdad! Thank God for that.
Oh, but you can't blame Bush and Blair entirely for that, you have to give Obama credit as well and especially the overwhelming sectarian violence that brought most of the carnage. That's where the real blame should go.
I feel if Europe wouldn't at that time been so cowardly, we could have possibly at least stopped a lot of the carnage in the aftermath, but that's all history now. Time to move on.
PTownsend
You see a duck, I see a rabbit. Modus vivendi.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/20/iraq-war-oil-resources-energy-peak-scarcity-economy
The US and UK have tag-teamed for oil other times. Read up on British Petroleum (BP today) and UK leadership convincing Eisenhower and the US to put the Shah of Iran in power using the red scare card, instead of WMD. Or Daesh.
Tamarama
Oh, really??? Firstly, the information you have provided is from 2012, so the assertion that the US of 2012 'doesn't really need to protect oil imports militarily' may have changed from, say 2001/2. Right?
This would suggest that, even today, Iraq still supplies the US with a significant amount of oil:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
And this would suggest that oil supplies from Iraq were peaking in September, 2001:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMIZ1&f=M
Right?
Depends who you ask, I'd suggest. Have you seen what modern day Iraq is like?
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/07/middleeast/iraq-baghdad-bomb-toll-rises/
That's 3 days ago. 300 people killed in Baghdad. Yep, things are really swimming along there in Iraq, huh.
No, this is about the Iraq war started 2003. Obama assumed office in 2009.
You say cowardly, I say discerning and circumspect and not blinded by aggressive American rhetoric. I admire them for it. They have a conscience.
FizzBit
Just once I wish these MSM journalists could say the word "petrodollar".
TheRat
So it is just lies huh? Well, bush's lies cost around a million lives (real estimate) and endless refugees while Hillary's lies (and republican cutbacks in funding security in Libya cost 4 people's lives. So no comparison!
nath
Specifically, which lies would those be?
Open Minded
Bass4funk: thousands of people have been killed illegally by the USA coalition against the UNO and the only words you have is move on?
This guy has the guts to admit his huge mistake. Good on him!
Can you do as well a self questioning about your own certitudes?
u_s__reamer
@Fizzbit
Can we say the word "Israel", too? I'm a philo-semite, but I appreciate the truth as well, and the deafening silence on the piece of the puzzle called Israel in the geopolitical games played by USUK forces in Iraq is keeping us all in the dark. Taboos sure are the darndest thangs, ain't they?
bass4funk
I was talking about now, not then.
That's not what I am saying, but still the majority of the oil overall that supplies the US does not come from the Mideast, also, we have every right to protect our investment as bad as it might sound to some people people. We need oil pure and simple whether it's for cars, paints, plastics, a lot of products need the ingredient of oil without it you would have chaos, the US, Russia and China are large developed nations that highly depend on it, NOW if you want to make the argument that these nations need to ween themselves off oil, then I would agree with you, but it doesn't happen overnight.
bruinfan
@wipeout,
Thanks, best post on this article. I hope that justice is served. I am saddened by the evil of many who caused this war.