At least seven Iraqis were illegally killed while in British custody between April and September 2003. A 180-page report by the International Criminal Court produced just one year before Blair got his knighthood said that hundreds of Iraqi detainees were abused by British soldiers between 20. Blair himself admitted there were “elements of truth” to the view that the invasion of Iraq helped promote the rise of ISIS.Īs a result of the invasion of Iraq, war crimes were committed on Blair’s watch. The broader legacy is one of rampant political corruption – Iraq ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world -and lethal sectarianism. Over a million may have perished in the conflict as a whole. Up to 6,000 people were killed in early 2004 in the aerial bombardment of Fallujah, a city still suffering from a higher than normal level of birth defects and cancers as a result of the munitions used. Allied forces refused to keep statistics of Iraqi civilian deaths, but one detailed survey carried out by Iraqi academics estimated that more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first eight months alone. So concerned was Blair about this advice leaking into the public domain that he told his Defence Secretary to burn the memo from the Attorney General which said this, according to the former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. As I noted at the time: “The old habit of mouthing what he thinks people want to hear irrespective of its accuracy lives on.”īlair’s Attorney General took the view that the Iraq war might be considered illegal. “I was determined to do everything I could to avoid it if we could,” he later said of the invasion of Iraq in the recently screened Blair & Brown: the New Labour Revolution. Well before UN weapons inspectors had completed their work, Blair wrote to President Bush: “I will be with you, whatever.” It’s now clear that, eight months before the invasion, Blair was committed to supporting the US-led war, whatever the evidence. In Iraq, Blair’s war was based on a false prospectus of Saddam Hussein possessing non-existent weapons of mass destruction. While the West’s military intervention is largely over, its economic sanctions continue to wreak havoc with the livelihoods of ordinary Afghans. The reactionary Taliban are back in power and the people’s suffering continues: 18.4 million people need humanitarian assistance and more than 30% of the population are facing emergency or crisis levels of food insecurity. The Stop the War Coalition have called a protest in Windsor on June 13th when Blair will join the Queen at Windsor Castle as part of a Garter Day procession.īlair’s war in Afghanistan cost over 100,000 Afghan lives and left the country in a state of ruin. A Freedom of Information request by The Sunday Times in 2012 revealed that Blair’s government considered knighting Syria’s brutal President Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of democratic uprisings within the country.īut in reality as Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, said – quoted approvingly in the Daily Mail for once – Blair’s knighthood was a “kick in the teeth for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan”. Blair would hardly be the first untried imperialist war criminal to be so honoured.įurthermore, Blair himself apparently believes that this is what knighthoods are for. After all, most prime ministers get peerages, and knighthoods have no political power attached. The Labour front bench sees no problem with Blair’s knighthood. And people have not forgotten: according to a poll, the decision to honour the former Labour prime minister is supported by just 14% of the public, with 63% against. It’s just a shame that the newspaper – and many others – were not so rigorous in exposing the fraudulent basis for Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when they were launched.Īround two million people marched against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Warming to the theme, the Mail was quick to emphasise Blair’s hypocrisy for accepting a knighthood after leading the charge to strip former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe of his. In contrast to Sir Keir Starmer, who said Blair “deserves the honour”, one Labour MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Daily Mail: “I just think it’s ridiculous he’s been given a knighthood – he’s an untried war criminal.” ![]() Furious soldiers – and the relatives of those killed in Iraq – are reported to be ready to send their medals back in disgust. Over a million people have now signed a petition calling for the award of a knighthood to Tony Blair to be revoked.
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