Tony Blair Heading for Handcuffs and a War Crimes
Indictment?
Further Revelations – “Bombshells”. “Burning” the Evidence
By Felicity ArbuthnotNovember 08,
2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "GR"
- “I think most
people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of
guy, and I am.” (Tony Blair, 21st
October 2011, BBC1.)
Given the ongoing
revelations on the extent of Tony Blair’s duplicitous collusion in
the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq, it seems – to muddle
metaphors – the “bunker busters” and Cruise missiles are finally
coming home to roost.
In what has been
dubbed “an apology” Blair even took to CNN in an interview with his
pal Fareed Zakaria to – sort of – explain himself. It was no
“apology”, but a weasel worded damage limitation exercise as more
and more revelations as to disregard for law – and to hell with
public opinion – surface. The fault was that “… the intelligence we
received was wrong”, there were “mistakes in planning” and a failure
to understand: “what would happen once you removed the regime”, said
Mr. Tony. Statements entirely untrue. It is also now known he
plotted with George W Bush in April 2002, a year before the
onslaught, to invade, come what may.
He also found it: “hard to apologise for removing
Saddam.” Sorry Mr. Blair, the all was lawless, illegitimate and
criminal – and Saddam Hussein was not “removed”, he was lynched, his
sons and fifteen year old grandson extra-judicially slaughtered in a
hail of US bullets – the all in a country whose “sovereignty and
territorial integrity” was guaranteed by the UN.
Whatever opinions of the former Iraqi government,
the crimes committed by the US-UK war of aggression and aftermath,
make the worst excesses of which Saddam Hussein’s Administration
were accused pale by comparison.
Blair brushed off the mention of a war crimes
trial and made it clear that he would trash Syria as Iraq, had he
the chance. To this barrister (attorney) by training, legality is
clearly inconsequential.
Now no less than the UK’s former Director of
Public Prosecutions (2003-2008) Sir Ken Macdonald has weighed in
against Blair. That he held the post for five years during the Blair
regime (Blair resigned in 2007) makes his onslaught interesting.
Ironically Macdonald has his legal practice at London’s Matrix
Chambers, which he founded with Blair’s barrister wife Cherie, who
also continues to practice from Matrix Chambers.
In a scathing attack, Sir Ken states (1):
“The degree of deceit involved in our decision
to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a
foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions …” Referring to the
CNN interview he witheringly dismissed Blair’s performance
saying: “ … playing footsie on Sunday morning television does
nothing to repair the damage.”
Moreover: “It is now very difficult to
avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming
subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and
cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly
clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard
to believe even he found truly credible.”
Macdonald cuttingly cited Blair’s: “sycophancy
towards power” being unable to resist the “glamour” he attracted in
Washington.
“In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he
remains so.” Ouch.
“Since those sorry days we have frequently heard
him repeating the self-regarding mantra that ‘hand on heart, I only
did what I thought was right’. But this is a narcissist’s defence,
and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no
answer to death.” No wonder Sir Ken had headed the country’s legal
prosecuting service.
Macdonald’s broadside coincides with further
“bombshell revelation” in the Mail on Sunday (2) revealing that “on
the eve of war” Blair’s Downing Street “descended in to panic” on
being told by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith that “the conflict
could be challenged under international law.”
There was “pandemonium”, Blair was “horrified” and
the limited number of Ministers and officials who had a copy of the
written opinion “were told ‘burn it, destroy it’ “ alleges the Mail.
The “burning” hysteria centered on Lord Goldmith’s
thirteen page legal opinion of 7th March 2003 – just
twenty days before the attack on Iraq. The “pandemonium” related to
the fact that at this late juncture with: “ … the date the war was
supposed to start already in the diary”, Goldsmith was still: “
saying it could be challenged under international law.”
It is not known who gave the “burn”, “destroy”
order, but the Mail quotes their information as coming from a former
senior figure in Blair’s government. They then “got to work on” Lord
Goldsmith. Ten days alter His Lordship produced an advice stating
the war was legal. It started three days later, leading eminent
international law Professor Philippe Sands to comment memorably: “We
went to war on a sheet of A4.”
A spokesman for Tony Blair called the claims or
orders to destroy “nonsense” adding that it would be: “ … quite
absurd to think that anyone could destroy such a document.” With
what is now known re the lies, dodging and diving related to all to
do with Iraq under Blair, the realist would surely respond: “Oh no
it wouldn’t.”
The US of course stole and destroyed or redacted
most of the around 12,000 pages of Iraq’s accounting for their near
non-existent weapons, delivered to the UN on 7th December 2002 and
Blair seemingly faithfully obeyed his Master’s voice or actions.
In context of the lies and subterfuge of enormity
being told both sides of the Atlantic at the time, it is worth
remembering George W. Bush, that same December, on the eve of a NATO
summit, addressing students and comparing the challenge of the Iraqi
President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led
to World War II.
We face … perils we’ve never seen before.
They’re just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and
mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced.
On 1st November this year, in an
interview on BBC1, Blair was asked: “If you had known then that
there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?”
He replied: “I would still have thought it right
to remove (Saddam Hussein.”)
Adding: “I mean obviously you would have had to
use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.”
Thus he would, seemingly, have concocted a
different set of lies to justify the assassination of a sovereign
head of State.
Perhaps he had forgotten the last line of Attorney
General Goldsmith’s legal advice of 12th February 2003: “
… regime change cannot be the objective of military action.” (3)
So is Charles Anthony Lynton Blair, QC.
finally headed for handcuffs and a trial at The Hague? Ian Williams,
Senior Analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, New York, has a view.
He believes:
… it’s increasingly serious enough to be
worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry
Kissinger and Chilean Dictator Salvador Allende and other people
around the world.
Now, he’s got to consult international lawyers
as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because
there’s said, (may be) prima facie case for his prosecution
either in British courts or foreign courts under universal
jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because
there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an
illegal war of aggression, violating United Nations’ Charter and
was responsible for all of those deaths.
Justice, inadequate as it might be given the
enormity of the crime, may be finally edging closer for the people
of Iraq as international jurisprudence slowly encroaches on Tony
Blair.
Notes
-
http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/how-tony-blair-lied-misled-and-cajoled-the-british-people-into-a-war-they-didn-t-want
-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3298498/Burn-destroy-Pressure-builds-Blair-Chilcot-report-s-revealed-ministers-told-destroy-key-evidence-eve-conflict-showed-Iraq-War-ILLEGAL.html
-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/how-goldsmith-changed-advice-on-legality-of-war-2015252.html
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http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/26/435016/UK-Iraq-War-Tony-Blair-UN-Williams
Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research,
2015