A medal for Blair? No, he should be on trial for war crimes
By Correlli Barnett
Last updated at 8:44 AM on 08th January 2009
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Only the second week of January, and yet it is safe to say that the
announcement that President George W. Bush has awarded Tony Blair the
Presidential Medal for Services to Freedom must take the prize for the
most nauseating single news item of 2009.
Of course, we can understand why Bush in the dying days of his
disastrous presidency would want to 'honour' the national leader who
took his country into two aggressive wars alongside America, when
Blair might actually have prevented them by refusing to join in.
The Medal is really a consolation prize awarded to one rejected
warmonger (prematurely retired as Prime Minister in 2007, largely
because of Iraq) by another (a President with the lowest poll ratings
in history, again because of Iraq).
Tony Blair with George W Bush
Tony Blair with George W Bush at the White House. The US leader has
awarded Blair the Presidential Medal for Services to Freedom
Yet instead of being awarded a medal, Blair ought to be standing trial
for criminal deception of the British Parliament and people by
dishonestly leading them into an illegal war against Iraq.
How bitterly ironic that now he is supposed to be a Middle East envoy
- a task at which he has proved to be so totally ineffectual. He has
made no difference to the situation there and is routinely ignored by
everyone involved - just look at the invasion of the Gaza Strip by
the Israelis.
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Compare his complete lack of success in the role of bringing peace
with the diligence and enthusiasm he showed when starting a war.
Such was his commitment in that role he ought to be standing trial in
an international tribunal for war crimes, including the plotting of
aggressive war (the central charge against the Nazi leadership in the
Nuremberg trials in 1946) and crimes against humanity.
Iraq war protest
A masked demonstrator during an anti-war rally in London in 2003
Consider the evidence already documented by the Hutton Inquiry in 2003
into the circumstances of weapons expert Dr David Kelly's death, and
the Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction carried out
in 2004 by a committee of Privy counsellors under Lord Butler.
This evidence in both these inquiries makes clear that Blair and his
accomplice Alastair Campbell, with the supine connivance of their
'sofa-cabinet' colleagues, deliberately set out to deceive the nation
by claiming that Saddam Hussein presented an immediate threat to the
UK through his ability to deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45
minutes. In fact he possessed no WMD at all.
The Butler Report of July 2004 paints a gruesome picture of how Blair
and his colleagues, together with the compliant John Scarlett
(chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee) set out to manufacture
a dossier that would convince the British people that an attack on
Iraq was acceptable.
According to Butler, the 45-minute claim should never have been
included. The dossier should have made clear that the evidence of WMD
was limited and unreliable. What's more, the Joint Intelligence
Committee should never have authored the dossier, as this gave it
undue authority. And finally, the key decisions over its drafting and
publication should have been taken by the full Cabinet - not by
Blair's cronies.
The importance of this dossier for an indictment of Blair for war
crimes lies in two things.
Tzipi Livni with Tony Blair
Blair, shown here meeting with Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni,
has been irrelevant in the Middle East process
First, it documents how in 2002-3 Blair and Co were actively endorsing
aggressive war against another sovereign state and second, Blair was
to go on using its dodgy evidence and false arguments in his public
speeches, in TV interviews, and finally in the crucial House of
Commons eve-of-war debate in March 2003 which gave him an overwhelming
vote in support of the invasion.
That debate stands as a special example of Blair's skill at deceit -
not only because of what he said and the trembling, heartfelt oratory
with which he said it, but also because, with British and American
forces in the Gulf already on their startlines, it was already too
late for Britain to stand aside.
Thus did Blair launch his war of aggression. We now know for sure that
it was an illegal war, lacking as it did authorisation from the UN
Security Council, and breaching as it did the UN Charter outlawing war
except in self-defence. In fact, we now know that only because of
enormous personal pressure from Blair and Co did Attorney-General Lord
Goldsmith change his earlier advice that without a further UN
resolution (the UN had previously passed a resolution demanding Iraq
fulfil disarmament obligations) the war would indeed be illegal.
Tony Blair and George W Bush
By committing the UK to join President Bush's invasion of Iraq, Tony
Blair is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of British soldiers
and thousands of Iraqis
Such is the case against Blair on the central count of planning and
perpetrating armed aggression. But what about the other counts in an
indictment of Blair for war crimes - such as crimes against
humanity?
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Blair's wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have so far cost
the lives of 316 British servicemen and women, plus some 7,000
wounded. For this needless waste of life and limb, and the grief of
their families, Tony Blair is the man responsible.
When it comes to the sufferings of the Iraqi people, Blair's
culpability cannot be separated from Bush's. But just as the Nazi
leaders were collectively as well as individually indicted at
Nuremberg, so Blair and Bush should be collectively indicted for the
human and material consequences of their attack on Iraq.
Iraq war
A US warship launches a Tomahawk cruise missile into Iraq. Blair took
Britain to war based on lies, says Correlli Barnett
Nobody knows for sure the total of Iraqi men, women, and children
slaughtered in the cross-fire between insurgents and the occupiers
since the invasion, but estimates vary between 100,000 and 600,000.
The number of refugees within Iraq and of those who have fled to
neighbouring countries like Jordan and Syria stands at some four
million. Four million!
And even today, six years after the appalling 'shock-and-awe'
onslaught of cruise missiles and bombs on Baghdad and other cities,
Iraq's infrastructure has still not been restored to what it was under
Saddam Hussein.
The world long remembers the Germans' bombing of Guernica in 1937
during the Spanish Civil War as a prototype war crime and the
precursor to the Luftwaffe's destruction of Warsaw in 1939 and
Rotterdam in 1940.
In each of these cases the attacks were launched against countries
posing no threat to Germany - just as Saddam Hussein's Iraq posed no
threat to America or Britain.
What then would, or should, an international war-crimes tribunal make
of 'shock-and-awe' or the pitiless American bombardment of Falluja in
2004?
Although the strategy and the armed forces were American, Tony Blair
was Bush's loyal accomplice throughout. He is therefore 'an accessory
after the fact' in these war crimes, and as such, also indictable.
Perhaps Blair should sport Bush's 'Freedom' medal when he finally
stands in the dock in The Hague.
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Comments (85)
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts
below?
The root of all evil is ... MONEY ... its a frightening world when you
read just how deceived some commentators are...!!!
Saddam was selling the oil in Euros,the war was about the USA
maintaining its hold on the oil by making sure it was sold globally in
$$$$$.
Click to rate Rating 60
- Hugh E Torrance, London England, 08/1/2009 13:10
For such a dishonest, lying, cheating ex PM this award is hugely
embarrassing to him and this country to which he has contributed
sleaze and a bunch of power hungry so called politicians to wreck it..
What a joke the award is, and what a joke to a man who does not
deserve it.
I despair!
Click to rate Rating 114
Find this story at
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1108883/CORRELLI-BARNETT-A-medal-Blair-No-trial-war-crimes.html>end
Peace,
Doc
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