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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 US-led invasion in 2003, made the remarks in a piece to be published in today’s Sunday Mirror.
Last Wednesday the Chilcot report returned a damning verdict on Britain’s role in the US-led war, finding it joined the conflict before all peaceful options had been exhausted and that judgements about Iraq’s capacities were “presented with a certainty that was not justified”.
It also disclosed Blair had written to then US president George W. Bush that “I will be with you, whatever” eight months before the invasion.
Prescott, now a member of the House of Lords, wrote: “I will live with the decision of going to war and its catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life.”
In 2004, the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq war, it was illegal.
With great sadness and anger, I now believe him to be right.
Blair this week voiced “sorrow, regret and apology” over mistakes made in the conflict.
But he insisted the war was right and the world was safer without toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the party for what he called “the disastrous decision” to go to war.
Some 150,000 Iraqi people were killed in the six years after British and American troops invaded, plunging the country into chaos and creating fertile ground for jihadist groups like the Islamic State.
A total of 179 British troops also died.
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Little comfort to the thousands of dead, wounded and maimed for life.
I think we can all agree that Iraq prior to the war was a great place to live… no troubles whatsoever where the people loved their leader and that everyone lived in a kind of utopic existence.. there was no undercurrent of trouble whatsoever no mass graves or subjection of a vast swathe of people – and the Baathist leadership who now control ISIS would have just slinked off into retirement once Saddam had died. The Sunnis and Shiites were living in perfect harmony. All of this is often forgotten. If only we had left things as they were – this is the narrative we should now be adopting. Repeat ad nauseum.
So you’re saying they’re better off now? Is that right?
You’re too dumb to understand that there is was a range of options available that didnt include an illegal invasion of Iraq that destabilised the entire region?
So if some guy is abusing his kids the best option is to go in, kill him and a few kids in the process, burn the house down and in doing so cause a fire that takes half the neighbourhood and if anyone complains you can say you did the right thing by getting rid of him.
Gabby no one is saying that Saddam was a kind and benevolent ruler. Could you tell me how many car bombs went off in downtown Baghdad while he was there? How many children were born with birth defects due to depleted uranium rounds being scattered all over Fallujah? How many Sunnis were members of IS and were in a de facto civil war with their Shiite neighbours? When did Al Qaeda gain a foothold in Iraq, was it before Saddam was ousted or after? Oh and any word yet on those WMD’s that were supposed to be knocking around the place?
If you think that Iraq is a better place now why don’t you go over there and let us know how you get on. After all George W democrified and peaceified it so you should have no problems walking around the place.
@cathal no i’m not saying that. @coles – ‘You’re too dumb’ – great start to a comment.
@Peter – yeah simple analogies with no basis in reality and not taking into account hundreds of complexities is the best way to describe the Iraq situation. If you need to but things into simple analogies in order to suit your narrative that’s just great for you.
Ok i’ll play along – Did you know that the guy who initially killed him had known about the abuse all along and even gave him a heavy duty cane to beat his kids with? did you know that one of the kids in the house wasn’t actually being abused but was secretly working for the dad had been killing off the neighbours kids and burying them in their backyards while hiring some of his school mates to threaten the parents of these kids if they talked they’d lose the other kids? And this abusive father also ran the local extortion operation and had his operatives in the other houses and they had been harrassing the neighbouring districts? So when the neighbourhood burned down the neighbours remaining (who had been committing acts of extortion) set up a NEW neighbourhood – housing all the homeless and creating awhole new system of local government). The father it turns out had not just been abusing his own kids but with the help of the other fathers set up a town wide system of abuse kept in place by extortionists and mafia bosses.
I love the way that the commenters red thumb the Guardian link which essentially agrees with the above article but with caveats – without even reading it.
@brian – I don’t think Iraq is a better place – you’ve just ran off a with a memorised rant – that i’m sure you’ve vomited out at numerous social occasions. What i was actually inferring as was pointed out in the link i posted – that not all is as straightforward is that Blair was fully to blame for the mess Iraq is in.. the war hastened and inflamed the situation but the causes are deeper rooted than a simple narrative.
Sadly these lives mean nothing to these people. Only thing that matters is money and oil, resources. As Kofi Annan said.
In 2004, the UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq war, it was illegal.
How many more countries has regime change been the goal? Libya? Syria? Again countries where there is oil . Syria a pipeline.
It’s notable how the U.S. and U.K’s commitment in toppling brutal dictators like Hussein always aligns with their strategic interests. While equally blood thirsty regimes like Saudi Arabia remain entirely unmolested or indeed supported as necessary to expand the West’s imperial reach.
Imperial and capitalist wars are never in the interests of the majority working class as it’s always us who bears the burden of the killing and the dying to advance the cause of the ruling elites. Our real enemies wear the same uniforms and sing the same national anthems as our soldiers.
They should all be jailed..
Of course he can live with regrets he’s living in comfort in London. Not having to worry a bomb drop through his home soon or will he get shot out in a market place. Blair and Bush can feel regretful and remorse as much as they want but the went too war on lies and thousands off innocent people have died and are being killed ever since.
Has there been a war that the Brits haven’t been in?
The English peoples were not masters of war until after the Norman conquest in 1066. Since then, they have been at war/conquering other peoples for the last almost 1000 years as we well know. Unfortunately now, much of their economy and higher social structures rely on perpetual war .. it’s amazing that shortly after the ‘Peace process’, they were at it again with the yanks ..i.e. they needed the peace process to liberate their military resources and deploy them elsewhere. What was interment anyway up North in the 70s except a way of radicalizing and terrorising in the hope of prolonging and inflaming the ‘situation’; then deploying more troops when it worked and being able to rob more money then from the taxpayers. England needs wars to survive – 5 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the last few years, who are attempting to commit genocide against the Yemeni people. You won’t read that on the front page of your Sunday Times I am guessing.
Their people have been bred for war. It will take generations for it to be bred back out of them.
I blame the Romans, myself. I think Ireland would have civilised England eventually but for their bad influence :-)
The aftermath of the Invasion of Iraq is still being felt. Multi thousands dead, maimed, impoverished, a whole region of the world destabilised and on and on.
The chief architects of this horror, Tony Blair and George W. Bush appear blissfully unrepentant about their evil deeds. Blair, sees himself as some type of Messianic figure, while Bush remains in his bubble of ignorance ( he went mountain biking the day the Chilcot Report was published), that says it all.
The one message screaming at us is the need to scrutinise carefully the background and personality of those we propose to elect to leadership.
Funny how Corbyn is being criticised for his ‘dangerous’ political policies. Hardly more dangerous than what’s gone before him. Saw this Jonathan Pie satirical piece on Blair and though it was pretty on the money.
https://www.facebook.com/JonathanPieReporter/videos/920599301396297/
Corbin’s policies aren’t dangerous because he never actually does anything. He just sits there thinking peaceful talks.
@John what about before the Iraq invasion?
How typical to see the light now when it’s convenient to do so..
Prescott. The name is familiar. Oh wait, isn’t he the one who punched somebody in the face while he was deputy prime minister, and who also voted for war and later voted against an inquiry into the waf?
If someone hit you in the face with an egg at point blank range, what would you do? His reaction was instinctive for a former boxer. I’d have given the guy a couple more thumps for good measure.
As for voting for war, he was in good company and also the British public re-elected Tony Blair with a 68 seat majority in 2005.
If somebody hit me with an egg I’d deck them, and that’s why I would not be a suitable deputy prime minister at a time of global tension. (Admittedly there may be other reasons too)
Or perhaps you may be eminently suitable to be deputy prime minister. (a non-job), if you defend the right of someone to act in self-defence.
I appreciate your misplaced confidence in my abilities, Joe!
For god sake Presscott you knew well it was all a lie . Every dog on the street knew it.
Irresponsible idiots
“Sad and anger” indeed . Crocodile tears from a fat git who was too busy shifting his secretary to be bothered with small details such as the legality of war . Is he such a dope that he didn’t know that without a second UN resolution the “war” was always going to be illegal . Prescott and his long suffering wife is a social climber who long ago forgot and betrayed his working class toots and stood beside the charlatan Blair who was the best VP that America never had !
He had the temerity to claim he had made his peace with his God and stood by his actions . Surely the act of a scoundrel and one which I hope dams him to hell for eternity . That or the possibility that someone comes out the woodwork and stiffs him .
I don’t understand the obsession with the Iraq war. The Kosovo war was also “illegal” by the same standards and by the standards of the anti-war warmongers, but we don’t hear anything about that.
ssshhhh!
Whataboutery………………….
Bobby, that’s the considered reaction of the tabloid mind.
Can you explain why a country that supported the war, re-elected the prime minister who took the country into two illegal wars, by their standards, now get obsessed by one of those wars and one person?
David Icke stated in the mid to late 90s that the middle East was next on the list and that the Rothschild’s Zionists pushing their agenda would create havoc on this part of the world. David Icke has predicted many events through great research and has always being spot on. Blair is a reptilian alien head.
Riiiight…tinfoil, anyone?
The man should be facing a firing squad. The lies told by him Bush and others caused the death of hundreds of thosands and ruined the lives of many more. The invasion of Iraq was needed to protect the petrodollar, months before the invasion Iraq dropped the dollar from use in oil sales. America needed to correct this lest other countries follow.
“Number two” he he he….
Better late than never i guess, going to help get Tony behind bars to make up for it all?
That’s nice of Two Jags, but a bit too late in the day.
There has to be wars when you have the 2 biggest arms manufacturers in the world and if they’re isn’t one create one
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